Nov 10 2006
Since We’re Talking About Wolves
My favorite economist defines democracy as “two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.”
Nov 10 2006
Sheep and Wolves
Once upon a time, the wolves sent an embassy to the sheep, desiring that there might be peace between them for the time to come.
“Why,” said they, “should we be forever waging this deadly strife? Those wicked dogs are the cause of all; they are incessantly barking at us and provoking us. Send them away, and there will be no longer any obstacle to our eternal friendship and peace.”
The silly sheep listened, the dogs were dismissed, and the flock, thus deprived of their best protectors, became an easy prey to their treacherous enemy.
- Aesop, Fables.
Nov 10 2006
These Security Barriers Work, Mostly
From the Navy Safety Center:
Seems the barrier system at a main gate had been down for a year. A contractor fixed it, and it had been working for several weeks. The security staff tested it every day when there wasn’t much traffic.
This wasn’t one of the tests.
An alarm had sounded in the main security building, which triggered a radio message to the gate guards telling them to stop traffic but not to activate the barriers. A guard at this gate activated them anyway, and not only that, he did it via the emergency-override system. This bypassed the traffic signals that warn drivers that the barriers are going up. When the usual barrier controls are used, one or more of the four barriers pops up in between three and fifteen seconds. The emergency override sends them all up in between one and three seconds.
A driver who had just had her ID checked had accelerated to about 25 mph when she found out how fast that barrier rises, how effective it was at stopping a car, and how a one-second warning at 25 miles per hour isn’t quite enough.
