Pun Salad

Space geeks Of A Certain Age might enjoy a look back at the (so far) last time humans were on the moon, with some awe-inspring pix at Ars Technica: Fifty years later, remastered images reveal Apollo 17 in stunning clarity.

For today's eye candy, I went "inspirational". But I recommend you click over to see "gritty": an absolutely filthy Gene Cernan "after a long day's work on the lunar surface."

Briefly noted:

• Is this good news or bad? I'll go with "mixed". At Reason, Emma Camp informs us that Real ID Requirement for Domestic Flights Pushed Back Again.

  The Real ID Act was passed in 2005. 17 years later, the law has yet to go into effect. On Monday, government officials announced that enforcement would be delayed another two years.

  What's taking so long? Rollout of the law, which would require travelers flying domestically in the United States to show a security-enhanced photo ID, has been plagued by confusion and state-level noncompliance. Despite years of warnings that enforcement was coming soon, it seems increasingly clear that Real IDs are far from actually becoming required at U.S. airports and federal buildings.

  Pun Salad's first post on Real ID was in April of 2006, well over 16 years ago. And the most recent was last year, where I urged Uncle Stupid to just repeal the RealID requirement. Because, true even more now than back then, the "long delay proves it isn't necessary for security."

• Rich Lowry is disappointed, but (I assume) unsurprised by Frisco's about-face on killer robots.

  San Francisco has reversed itself on letting cops use robots to take down threats in extreme circumstances, basically because people have seen movies with scary robots. Let’s hope the robots don’t hold this one against us when they inevitably achieve autonomy and strike out on their own.

  Lowry expands on his pro-Terminator argument at Politico: In Defense of Killer Robots.

  When the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last week to allow police to use robots to kill people in extreme circumstances, the critics predictably cited sci-fi movies.

  There is indeed a large and entertaining body of movies about creepy and dangerous robots, from “Metropolis” to “Ex Machina,” from “The Terminator” to “I, Robot,” but the key word in science fiction is “fiction.”

  Taking cues from these films about how about we should use robots is a little like trying to learn how to handle criminal gangs from “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”

  But there are plenty of folks on the other side. Tim Cushing is a reliably anti-cop voice at TechDirt: San Francisco Legislators Greenlight Killing Of Residents By Police Robots… And Then Kill It…. He waits until his subhed to confirm Lowry's prediction:

  from the Robocop-is-not-something-to-aspire-to dpt

  Note: Robocop was the good guy in that movie.

  Approaching the issue from a more moderate cop-skeptical viewpoint is Reason's Bonnie Kristian, who suggests We Should All Be Nervous About Killer Police Robots. And I don't think she cites sci-fi movies at all:

  SWAT teams are the obvious comparison here. They were created to address unusual, high-pressure situations, like the classic armed-bank-robber-with-hostages scenario. Now, fewer than one in 10 SWAT raids perform their original purpose. The rest—and there are more than 100 SWAT raids of private homes in America daily—take on far more mundane circumstances, many enforcing "laws against consensual crimes" like drug use and sales, as former Reason staffer Radley Balko has documented.

  In San Francisco, after the first vote, the police department assured the public it had "no plans to arm robots with guns," in the phrase of the Associated Press. That's better than the alternative, but it isn't actually a guardrail. It isn't even a promise of a guardrail. It's a status update on conditions that—absent some constraint of law—are subject to change.

  That kind of slippery language from officials on the verge of acquiring new power should always be a red flag, one on the scale car dealerships are wont to wave. It also popped up this week from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is in the process of rolling out facial recognition software as an alternative to a human checking your face against your photo ID at the airport.

  In my usual Schrödinger's-Cat conservative/libertarian coinflip, I tend to lean over to the cops' side. Especially in San Fran, home to Dirty Harry, Mike Stone and Steve Keller, Monk, … See, I can cite mass media too.

<voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone!</voice> This completes my reading mini-project of consuming all five of 2022's Edgar nominees for Best Novel. Only one semi-dud in the bunch; this one was excellent.

The narrator and protagonist is Daniel, a young man with a dread disease: Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). It is as bad as it sounds: debilitating, degenerative, and (in Daniel's case) eventually fatal. Getting around requires a motorized wheelchair; he can no longer speak or feed himself; his every moment contains the possibility that he'll be unable to take another breath. His survival depends on daily visits from dutiful health care aides.

But even with all that, Daniel is stoic, unsentimental, and accepting. (The book's title recalls Lou Gherig's Yankee Stadium farewell.) He loves living in Athens, home to the University of Georgia; he's especially fond of Saturdays when he and his best friend enjoy the hoopla surrounding Bulldogs football home games.

You may be wondering: wait a minute, aren't the Edgar nominees supposed to be mysteries? Well yes. The plot driver here is the disappearance of a female Chinese UGA student. And Daniel witnessed her getting into a tan Camaro, and saw the driver. His disease makes it difficult to communicate key facts to law enforcement. (Who, perhaps unfairly, aren't pictured here as particularly diligent in following up Daniel's report.) The suspense builds …