Authored by: DanZ on Thursday, May 31 2007 @ 08:37 PM

emo video is now offline. no longer available.

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Authored by: evening on Friday, June 01 2007 @ 07:55 AM

This is so cool -- a lego gun that shoots rubberbands.

Hopefully these guys will help DHS do smarter things, including react in better ways. Silly govt types can't think of this themselves.

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Authored by: evening on Friday, June 01 2007 @ 03:29 PM

About the Chinese labor...I have it on good authority that Essex Jct knew there were problems with the property, but they didn't know about everything that was in the story. Let's just hope that everyone who can crack down on them will (whether it is the property, etc). If we can get some real action directly, perfect, but it isn't as easy as it should be (as my friend said, they're like mob bosses).

Oh, and now that this story is out, you better believe they aren't going to get the hotel on that property like they want. If they do, I'm sure we'll all have our Trustees' heads (speaking of E.J. residents).

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Authored by: billsimmon on Friday, June 01 2007 @ 04:42 PM

I saw the SF writers DHS piece and I'm sorry, but that's just so typical of DHS mentality. They focus time, energy and money on crazy, sci-fi terror plots ideas when any would-be terrorist needs only the will to cause chaos to succeed. Remember the DC snipers? Or the huge western wild fires that were started by a park ranger's camp fire? A terrorist only needs a match to cause serious economic and social strife.

Security measures that rely on us correctly guessing what the terrorists are going to do are a colossal waste of money and resources. Bruce Schneier has said...

It’s not like we pick our security, they pick their plot, we see who wins. The game is we pick our security, they look at our security, and then they pick their plot. The way to spend money on security – airport security, and security in general — is intelligence investigation and emergency response. These are the things that will be effective regardless of what the terrorists are planning.

Amen.

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Authored by: brooke! on Saturday, June 02 2007 @ 10:50 AM

I added a substitute emo-new-clip to replace the previous one.

I worked at a South Burlington restaurant (it was an awful place to work, it's across from the Ground Round,) that employed illegal Brazilian kitchen help, one prep cook and one dishwasher. The workers were paid via a third party, in cash. He was a Vietnamese guy named Tan (his business was called Tan's Delivery Service, or Tan's Cleaning Service or something, I've see his van parked in front of other restaurants) with a TON of saavy. Basically, he'd provide restaurants with illegal workers, who were obviously paid below minimum wage. The restaurants would pay Tan in cash, and he would presumably pay the workers in cash. (I saw him hand them envelopes.) The idea I got was that the restaurants somehow had a contract with Tan saying that the employees he provided were legal so that if there was a raid, their asses were covered. We all knew they weren't. I became close to them, learned how to call the boss a number of bad words in Portugese. The dishwasher was a literature teacher in Brazil, but made more money being an illegal dishwasher here. She had a son back in Brazil, who was 11, barely spoke English, and had never seen snow before moving here.

It happens a lot. The Ming's setup seemed particularly awful, but it's not isolated there. And it looks like INS will once again be raising the Naturalization fees, which will make it harder and less desirable for hard working, blue collar illegals to become legal, get non-skeevy jobs, pay taxes and vote. Which works out well for the current administration, in whose best interest it is to keep that segment of the population from voting. Argh.

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