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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
    With Obama? His administration has only one answer; government and more of it. The theater will continue and expand.

    Which is a pity; it's a government intrusion, it's useless, and it divert resources from useful pursuits.

    CR
    On the other hand we are now a government generation removed from 9/11, so perhaps the rushed out hysteria that was the Patriot Act can be revised by cooler heads. Even if those heads are pseudo-socialist.
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    Arena Senior Member Crazed Rabbit's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    On the other hand we are now a government generation removed from 9/11, so perhaps the rushed out hysteria that was the Patriot Act can be revised by cooler heads. Even if those heads are pseudo-socialist.
    I wish. But Obama isn't reversing the Patriot Act and pushes for more government power in court cases.

    Plus there's the 'Do it for the children!' brigade, the safety worriers, or those who would give up anything just to possibly save one person's life. Any risk is to much for these cretins.

    CR
    Ja Mata, Tosa.

    The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! - William Pitt the Elder

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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
    I wish. But Obama isn't reversing the Patriot Act and pushes for more government power in court cases.

    Plus there's the 'Do it for the children!' brigade, the safety worriers, or those who would give up anything just to possibly save one person's life. Any risk is to much for these cretins.

    CR
    I thought those were the ones that were being sent to Iraq?! Wasn't that the recruitment strategy?

    Sorry, couldn't help myself.

    However, there is another point there somewhere. The 'do it for the children' (from now referred to as the 'diftch') crowd should really be thinking about how all that cash would be better invested in their children: school buses, schools, books, healthcare. No?

    Is it possible to get Sarah Palin to push this? I understand she is currently jobless, and perhaps needs a new pants-suit. I'm positive the 'diftch' brigade would be at least split by such a turn of events.
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

    Pie is merely the power of the state intruding into the private lives of the working class. - Beirut

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    Arena Senior Member Crazed Rabbit's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Quote Originally Posted by SwordsMaster View Post
    However, there is another point there somewhere. The 'do it for the children' (from now referred to as the 'diftch') crowd should really be thinking about how all that cash would be better invested in their children: school buses, schools, books, healthcare. No?
    They've no concept of weighing risk - only of hysterical fear at the latest sensationalized risk.
    Is it possible to get Sarah Palin to push this? I understand she is currently jobless, and perhaps needs a new pants-suit. I'm positive the 'diftch' brigade would be at least split by such a turn of events.
    Heh, likely not flashly (or timely, in terms of current political happenings) for her.

    Here's something interesting:
    Apparently the TSA, in a bid to get some good press because everyone rightly hates their guts, has started a blog. Here, they respond to an XKCD cartoon that points out the ridiculousness of their existence.

    The cartoonist responds in the comments:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Hey! I'm the author of that cartoon, and was delighted to see your reply. Thanks!

    Certainly, a bottle of water is harmless, but I was actually assuming the water bottle was also an explosive.

    Laptop batteries have relatively high energy density. The two batteries I travel with (which I've never had anyone object to, contrary to your stated policy) combine to hold roughly the same energy in a 6-oz bottle of pure nitroglycerine. This energy cannot all be released quite as rapidly, but my friends have made laptop batteries explode with enough violence to, in one test, take the top off a small tree (when nestled in a fork of the trunk).

    I understand that practicality plays into the decision of what to ban, and the joke of the comic was mainly how silly it would be to explain to a security guard how you could make a bomb with the expectation that it would have a good outcome. The laptop battery is a borderline case at best.

    But I really do think there are some pretty serious problems with our approach to airport security, and that the rules we've come up with are more the result of a desire to do something than out of a practical assessment of what would make us safer. Articles like this one make the point better than I could: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security

    I mean, when liquids are confiscated, what happens to them? Are they destroyed with explosives, tested, or just thrown away? If they're just thrown away (or set aside until days later), what's the point of confiscating them at all? The terrorist can just try to sneak some through again the next day, since there are no consequences to failing.

    Yet if you don't put on the show, I suppose the airline industry might collapse. I really don't know what the solution is, but I get frustrated dealing with restrictive security procedures whose practical intentions are simply to reassure me.


    Here is a thorough essay proving that the TSA and airport security are completely useless;
    “The whole system is designed to catch stupid terrorists,” Schneier told me. A smart terrorist, he says, won’t try to bring a knife aboard a plane, as I had been doing; he’ll make his own, in the airplane bathroom. Schneier told me the recipe: “Get some steel epoxy glue at a hardware store. It comes in two tubes, one with steel dust and then a hardener. You make the mold by folding a piece of cardboard in two, and then you mix the two tubes together. You can use a metal spoon for the handle. It hardens in 15 minutes.”
    ...
    Those knotty, teeming security lines are the most dangerous places in airports: terrorists could paralyze U.S. aviation merely by detonating a bomb at any security checkpoint, all of which are, of course, entirely unsecured.
    ...
    (Later, Schneier would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.)
    ...
    To slip through the only check against the no-fly list, the terrorist uses a stolen credit card to buy a ticket under a fake name. “Then you print a fake boarding pass with your real name on it and go to the airport. You give your real ID, and the fake boarding pass with your real name on it, to security. They’re checking the documents against each other. They’re not checking your name against the no-fly list—that was done on the airline’s computers. Once you’re through security, you rip up the fake boarding pass, and use the real boarding pass that has the name from the stolen credit card. Then you board the plane, because they’re not checking your name against your ID at boarding.


    CR
    Ja Mata, Tosa.

    The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter – all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! - William Pitt the Elder

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    Nec Pluribus Impar Member SwordsMaster's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Here is a thorough essay proving that the TSA and airport security are completely useless;
    Well, if they weren't before that was published, they definitely are now!
    Managing perceptions goes hand in hand with managing expectations - Masamune

    Pie is merely the power of the state intruding into the private lives of the working class. - Beirut

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    L'Etranger Senior Member Banquo's Ghost's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Swordsmaster, I can assure you that in most places, answering "no" to the question about packing only begets another question or two about who did. One can then indicate one's valet standing in line at the economy class check-in.

    Unfortunately, this is not the case in the United States, where officialdom has allowed power to go to its head. As I have difficulty avoiding condescension when queried by jobsworths, whilst lacking a concomitant enjoyment of invasive procedures, I no longer travel to that country.
    "If there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this one."
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    Needs more flowers Moderator drone's Avatar
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    Default Re: Do gentlemen pack their bags?

    Quote Originally Posted by CR's article
    Those knotty, teeming security lines are the most dangerous places in airports: terrorists could paralyze U.S. aviation merely by detonating a bomb at any security checkpoint, all of which are, of course, entirely unsecured.

    I thought this exact same thing standing in a huge security line at SFO. Easily three hundred people, packed into a back-and-forth tensa-line maze. Reach the middle without any security checks, detonate, and chaos ensues. Are they going to put security checks on the security line? One instance, and the airline industry would cease to be. Security theater.
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