Border Control

Bear with me, I’m collecting thoughts:

  • President Bush wants to grant some level of amnesty to illegal foreign workers in the U.S. The logic being, they’d start paying taxes, which would grant them legitimacy… and IRS obligations, thereby limiting the appeal of illegal immigration to find tax-free work.
  • The Social Security Administration’s piloting a program to make online verification of SSN’s and names available via Internet to employers, to help cut down on illegal employment.
  • Yahoo News reports on a new tunnel discovery across the US-Mexico border.
  • Our southern border is a source of concern when it comes to foreign terrorists gaining access to American soil through a porous edge of the country
  • Vieques Island residents in the Carribbean are causing/have caused a lot of grief over the US Navy and Marines using it for target practice

I’ve got it.

The United States should announce a new program: Bomb our Border. BOB could serve many useful purposes:

  • To cope with shrinking territory amenable to use as target ranges
  • To discourage illegal alien traffic along the wastelands of our unprotected southern border
  • To actively seek to destroy stealth tunnels used to traffic narcotics or terrorists
  • To cut costs in amnesty program management
  • To encourage traffic to use only designated border crossings
  • And to ease demand on IT infrastructure maintained by the Social Security Administration

Yes, by introducing BOB in select areas of the border, we’ll address all of those problems and more: We’ll maintain a sustaining level of need for Made In The U.S.A. large munitions. We’ll tell the world, “Quit loitering around our back porch, Dammit.” We’ll re-arrange pricy southern California real-estate conditions. We’ll encourage private industry — both U.S. and Mexican — to develop new technologies in sound-deadening home and personal insulation for miles around. We’ll see a concentration of brand new “weekend warrior” demolition day-camps, where city-weary and explosive-happy men and women can come together and relieve stress through joint artillery exercises, large munitions training, cordite-perfumed meditation and relaxation by the pool.

But wait, there’s more! BOB will save the environment! “What the…!?” you say? Just listen! BOB’s nationally recognized and focused location for detonation of ridiculous amounts of explosives will provide a single national training ground for the environmentally harmful practice of military and industrial explosives training. No more messy target ranges for the kids to get into. No more local deforestation by napalm-bombing-run training. No more ruining choice mountain ranges that provide unmetered back-country skiing, hiking, hunting and kidnapping refuges.

Yes, with your support, passing BOB through congress should be a breeze, and next year, we’ll all be able to smile, watching San-Destructo, New Mexico’s nationally televised 4th of July fireworks. And 5th of July. And 6th. And…

So call your congressman today. Tell them, YOU want BOB.

Brightcove? Boring. Harry Potter-like staff pictures? Cool.

Brightcove is a confounding name. I think of coves as dark/dim secluded, pleasant things… dark for enjoyment… who would want it bright? But whatever. Until a deeper level of theming/branding appears, I’ll just guess it was picked because of domain availability. But since it’s from Jeremy Allaire and I used to use Cold Fusion quite a bit, I checked it out.

Not a great deal of details to it yet, but I gather it’s about broadcasting tv-quality, on-demand signals through an IP network, a’la podcasting. Whatever – I don’t even have tivo to use on my favorite professionally produced shows.

Not wild about the whole web interface being flash driven, but I didn’t really pick it apart, just browsed through a few tabs of the site… And then I noticed that staff pictures moved.

It’s right out of a Harry Potter book or movie — except not as active… Then again, who wants company representatives making silly faces or waving and winking at you?

Anyway… Quite cool, and on a web site that’s already high-bandwidth assuming, why not? It’s definitely an interesting hook.