Farmers in Kenya are having a hard time sharing their land with wild monkeys:
Running out of options, residents are harvesting their crops early in an attempt to salvage what they can of this year’s crop.
Unfortunately, this only invites the monkeys to break into their homes and steal the harvested crops out of their granaries.
Even the formation of a “monkey squad” to keep track of the monkeys’ movements and keep them out has failed.
The BBC points out in their report that the monkeys are accused of harassing women and children and making offensive gestures.
While it makes for a cute tangent to the story, I am more curious about specific methods are being used to secure the crops. Stealing the grain from their homes? Are monkey-proof granaries really that costly?
Similar to the problem with livestock and wolves/coyotes in America, I suspect there is a lot of myth and hype about the threats that interfere with finding more sensible and lasting control solutions. At least the Kenyan government forbids killing the monkeys.
The Courage Campaign has posted an interesting chart of productive time wasted due to traffic congestion in Los Angeles:
They contend that for every year of work a person does in the office, three weeks worth of time is wasted in a car.
Availability also must be a worry, especially in cases of regional disasters, as congestion can only get worse when everyone has to act at the same time (in response) rather than with the intent to keep their own schedule.
The BBC reports that the FT reports that the CIA is launching a site modeled after social networking sites:
A-Space, due to launch in December, will feature web-based email and software recommending issues of interest to the user said Mike Wertheimer, a senior official at the Department for National Intelligence (DNI).
He told the FT that the new infrastructures would help break down some of the physical communications problems in the intelligence community.
“I am unable to send email, and even make secure phone calls, to a good portion of the community from my desktop because of firewalls,” he said.
Firewalls blocking email and phone calls at the CIA? Somehow I doubt it.
Imagine what Cheney and Scooter could do to their political foes with this kind of database.
Mr Wertheimer added that while it had looked for collaboration from overseas, foreign intelligence agencies had been “the folks most virulently against” sharing information through an “intelligence library”.
I suspect they were opposed to having the US dictate the terms of the libarary and sharing, rather than opposed to the idea of sharing information. It is the habit of conservative US politicians to try and strong-arm allies in one-sided deals and then bash them for being “uncooperative”.
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
