Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Got an opinion about the TSA?
Sure you do. And now you can post those comments on the TSA's own blog: Evolution of Security - with the motto "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part."
Well, at least some part of our government still believes in evolution.
So, what's the deal with this blog? From the 'about':
This blog is sponsored by the Transportation Security Administration to facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process.
They promise that they'll allow any comments that aren't profane, abusive or political. Depending on how they want to define those terms, that would keep out about 97% of what I would want to post there. But maybe that's just me.
And of course keep in mind that anything you say may be used against you. (Well, OF COURSE I'm kidding about that. I'm sure the fine people at the TSA would never abuse their power in any way, shape or form, and have nothing but our best interests and happiness at heart. Seriously.)
Check it out, if you're brave enough.
Jim Downey
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AH THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Dating myself, but when we were kids there was a restaurant at the airport called the Sky Chef. It was located in a tower ABOVE the observation decks, and had glass windows all around. We used to go to the airport on birthdays just to eat there (not going anywhere, the first time I ever flew anywhere was after I graduated from college!)
The special attraction was a sparkler instead of a candle in the free cupcake for someone celebrating a birthday.
We'd also go out occasionally just to watch the planes take off. Access to the observation deck was free!!
Later, when new terminals were built, we'd go out to the airport to do Christmas shopping.
Now, I get screened every time I go to the airport (I have a metal knee and hip). I'm under 5 ft tall, obviously middle aged, and so very dangerous.
I am not any safer now than I was then. Just more annoyed.
Come Fly With Me
Just for shits and grins, lemme take you on a little trip.
The year is, oh, 1959. I would have been eight at the time. Because my parents split the blanket during my first year of life, and because my father was granted custody of me for thirty days a year, I was trundled between New Hampshire and Wyoming every summer from age five to eighteen. So here is how the trip would proceed in that year of my youth.
Up early on a given morning. Eat hearty breakfast. Load baggage into the trunk of my step-dad's car. Drive an hour and some to Logan Airport in Boston. Check luggage, get ticket. Dad would help me go over the ticket to be sure I knew to change planes in, say Chicago and Denver. Shake his hand and promise to write at least once a week. Clutching ticket, board (usually) United Airlines aircraft. Probably a Douglas DC-6, a four engine plane equipped with massive Wright Cyclone radial engines turning four-bladed props spanning 12 feet. (I'll never forget the sound.) Greet stewardess and inform her of my destination, take seat. Look out window to see Dad and maybe a sib waving from the observation deck. (Put a dime in the turnstile, ascend stairs to roof of concourse and observe the action on the flight line. What a treat!)
At cruising altitude accept a cup of hot chocolate. An hour later, lunch. Deposit hearty breakfast, hot chocolate and lunch in puke bag, sweat for five minutes and assure concerned stew that "I'm feeling much better now. This always happens. (I fly a lot!)"
Look out window. Take photos (with Brownie Bullet camera, 126 roll film) of cloud formations. Gratefully accept "pilots" wings presented by stew. Eagerly accept invitation to "join the captain and second officer on the flight deck." Enter cockpit. Express gratitude for the opportunity. Sit in captain's seat. Take the control yoke in hand and survey the instrument panel with a practiced eye. Thank the cockpit crew for the neat visit and encourage them to watch the altimeter before resuming my seat.
Change planes in Chicago. Layover, about an hour. A full hour to explore the terminal and the displays that were ever changing. Answer an airline employee's query about my destination, flight number et cetera to their satisfaction and be dismissed with a smile and a gentle ruffing of my hair. Buy a grilled cheese sandwich and a coke. Walk the length of the concourse and back. Blow a dime on the observation deck. Check time. Que up for next flight, destination Denver.
Arrive Denver and head to the Frontier Airlines desk. Present ticket. Be directed to the proper gate (which I already knew). Check time. Explore. Board a twin engine DC-3, smaller predecessor of DC-6, strong and able. Land in Cheyenne, Laramie, Rock Spring, Casper and finally Riverton, Wyoming. As plane taxis to its parking space, pick father out of crowd standing on tarmac in front of terminal. Observe the expressions and gestures of those waiting to greet someone. Deplane. Hug Ol' Pap. Collect luggage. Drive and hour and a half to the ranch.
At no time at all was I required to do anything but be responsible for myself and to not miss my next flight. Gave a young man a very heady sense of self sufficiency. Impressed my elders. Got wide eyed stares from schoolmates.
Doesn't this sound like a dream? It was not. It was routine when people moved about at will, were not assumed to be up to no good by people who can't hold a job that requires actually producing something of value, and trust was the first benefit of the doubt granted when encountering a stranger. Mind you, Pearl Harbor was only eighteen years past in 1959.
As for the TSA? Hah! Their name should be abridged to merely A. They do not transport squat and they do not assure security. The only thing they have to cling to for justification is that they actually are an Agency. 'Nuff said!
Great post!
It sounds like we are about the same age. This brought back a lot of memories.
I never got to ride an airplane then but I remember watching DC6's, Constellations and Stratocruisers coming and going at PDX. My uncle worked for PanAm, and we went to the airport a lot. He even took us on a tour of one of the Stratocruisers between flights.
I was able to go to the Boy Scout Jamboree in valley Forge, Pa., and the NY World's Fair in '64. Lost my wallet and money there, and had to find my way back from Queens to downtown Manhattan by way of LIRR, alone. No one seemed to be worried about an out-of-town kid getting lost (least of all me).
My brother and I were given Western Field .22 rifles when we were 10, and no one bothered us when we bought ammo. We could carry them openly down the road, and were even stopped once by a cop who heard the shooting (we were in a city park). He said "It looks like you boys have a good backstop, have fun." and he left. Today, a kid gets threatened with a school suspension simply for having his dad's Glock PEN.
It does seem that our freedoms are fading faster than my memories of what things were like.
Unlike Hank, I do not think real "right wingers" so glibly give up freedom for security. In my experience, this mostly comes from the pragmatic middle. And those who think the 'great unwashed' need to be governed by the 'experts'. I think this is a far greater threat then either your fear of the religious, or our fear of the godless.
"I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion." -G.K. Chesterton
Freedom
When the Houston Intercontinental Airport was new, I worked for the parking company as a cashier and later a chauffeur. One of the things I liked to do on my lunch break was go up on the observation decks on the tops of the terminal buildings, and just watch the jets coming and going and the baggage handling activity. More than once, I went up into the control tower to watch the air traffic controllers at work.
There's a nastiness at work in the world today, and I don't think it's even paranoia about security. To me the motivation behind it all seems more like ... a free ticket to hurt somebody. The jackbooted thugs are loose among us, taking great joy in taking from us everything they can get away with. And masking their joyous pursuit in the guise of protecting us.
There's a question you often hear from right wingers in relation to security situations: "If you're not doing anything wrong, why are you worried about increased scrutiny?"
The flaw in that stupid attitude is this: You'd hope that being a responsible, honest, non-violent person would carry some sort of social reward with it. The REAL question is "If you're not doing anything wrong, why should you get treated exactly the same as the shitbags who are?"
The entire thing carries an underlying presumption of malign intent and guilt on your part. We're all killers and terrorists until we prove we're not ... by being good little cattle and moving docilely through the chutes. The least little "offensive" word, look, item, or article of clothing can get you punished, so we're required to fearfully pre-threaten ourselves to be certain we've eliminated all conceivable offense.
To me, there is an extremely clear conceptual connection between a large aggressive act -- murder, say -- carried out against you once, and an ongoing series of small agressive, humiliating acts carried out against you continuously into the future. In my estimation, the people in the White House who create these situations are little different from murderers — they only look different because they're doing it in slow motion. The people who carry them out at the lower end are the spiritual descendants of all of history's thugs, bullies and frighteners.
Your Last Paragraph, Hank
Like the Death of a Thousand Cuts.
No one notices the small indignities, the minor infractions of civil behavior. Only in seeing accumulative damage does anyone express concern. By that time, it is nearly (I say nearly) too late.
All I know is that flying used to be a special thing, a treat. People would put on their Sunday best clothes and manners in anticipation of soaring above the clouds and arriving far away in less than a day. Now it is worse than riding the dog (taking a Greyhound bus).
The very idea that the threats that exist today are worse than those that have always formed the background of daily life (as we are accustomed to live it) is not only ill-informed and the product of fear (the bastard son of ignorance) but is demonstrably productive of the exact opposite of its advertised intent! How can I feel secure when the "officials in authority" view ten ounces of shampoo as a threat????? (What they don't know is that I don't carry sham poo; I only carry real poo.) I probably shouldn't have let that slip.
Oh, my people
Well, pardner, I guess it's up to us and folks like us to poke a finger in the eye of the blind guardians in the hope that one day they will know sight. And be embarrassed in the light.
Fat chance or slim chance, take your pick.
By the way. I lived in Houston when HIA was opened. Flew out of there in '82 and '83. Might have passed within hailing distance of you. So here's a belated Hey, Man!
Metaphors
I see small patterns in the world and scale them up in my head to see how they apply in larger situations. Strangely enough, considering your mention of shampoo, it was shampoo that helped point me to the conclusions in that last paragraph.
Because I have a narrow strip of "Bozo Hair" around the back of my head, I don't use a lot of shampoo. Every time I open the bottle, I use a dollop only about the size of a quarter. There is never a day, or even a week, when the level of shampoo in the bottle is noticeably lower.
And yet, over time, I end up buying more shampoo. Which means, in the extended metaphor, that very tiny effects can add up over time to appreciable differences.
The funny thing is, out in the real world, every time I see the tiny effects, I also see the potential for the large differences ... but it's tough to convince others who can't make the same connection.
My entire view of environmentalism is, at base, the picture of "Matthew's Pasture" back in Houston. A big pasture next to where I lived when I was in high school, with a patch of trees in the middle. One day the bulldozers showed up, and pretty soon there were tract houses where the open land used to be. Pretty soon I was asking myself: If this small piece of open land vanished under houses and pavement, in a definite one-way progression away from wildlands, how could we possibly stop ourselves from doing that to all of it?
It's the tops and bottoms that go first. Middle stuff lasts.
Oh, yeah. About the Bozo Hair. Don't worry about it. That's what hats are for. Hey, Man, nice hat!
Again, You're Last Paragraph, Hank
One of the funniest things I ever saw was the operator of a large front loader bailing out of his machine without even taking it out of gear!
Place: Sarasota, Florida. Time: early winter,1972. Work in question: turning a "useless" tract of undeveloped land into cheap townhouses.
I was just breaking out in construction and had acquired a job as carpenter's helper on a cookie cutter land grab development. Cutting 2 X 4s into useful lengths one day, I was watching this artist of mechanical mayhem scooping up trees and soil in a four yard bucket. I only had a moment at a time to watch due to the fact that some other fool kept putting uncut timber in front of me. At some point I looked up to see the operator waving his hands about and acting as though he was besieged by an unseen enemy. He had his bucket up in the air and I can remember it contained a tree, its roots and a significant portion of soil. But what caught the eye was all the long, wriggling shapes depending from and falling out of his bucket. Snakes!
To be accurate, Eastern Diamondback Rattlers. He had scooped up dozens, maybe hundreds of the dozing denizens of a deep den within the roots of that tree. He bailed, the bucket remained up, he ran away beating his head like I used to run from swarms of hornets!
Of course, what with the cold season upon those tropical climes and all of us swaddled in Carharts and long handles, the reptiles were of no immediate threat, but still he ran, beating the air about him with spastic wavings.
He was not bitten and, being about 75 yards from him and his machine, neither were we. But the image of his reaction remains. Having met a supposed threat created by the ignorance of snakes in general and particularly this specie, without giving a moment to consider how their physiology would influence their behavior under the extant conditions or how they could possibly threaten him in his enclose cab, he still bailed. He could only think about all the horror stories told him by others with a similar degree of exposure to snakes. His reaction reminds me of the Fed's attempts to assure us that we could get blown to bits at any given moment.
Unless we all bail out together and not question authority. Hah!
I once took a dump in the woods within two feet of a six-foot rattler. I didn't mean to. I only knew he was there after I was already exposed and committed to the task at hand. Fortunately, I remembered that the rattle snake is a pit viper, so defined as having heat-sensing organs located near the nostrils. And I was smoking a Camel cigarette. Pulling hard on that tweed to make it hot, I blew smoke in his face. He unwound from his coil and vanished in the underbrush. I finished my job, buried my contribution to healthy plant life, and strode on through the woods with a new confidence.
Had I not known that bit of information about the snake's heat sensing organs I'd have either flailed about enough to get bitten or would still be there today, trying to stare down a reptile. I'd sooner tickle a black widow spider. But then, I've done that. No biggie.
What amazes me most is how few people actually feel at home on Earth. For most, comfort is a box, sometimes on wheels, that isolates them from their ancestral home. It leaves me feeling lonesome and angry. C'mon! Where are the survivors?
Does A Rattler Shit In The Woods?
Heh. Love this:
We camp and hunt a lot. Doing your business in the woods is just a small part of that experience, and after hundreds of camping and hunting trips, not even a noteworthy one.
However, one time we invited one of Mrs. Inscrutable's work friends, "Carol", along for a quick weekend trip one summer. Carol was NOT a camper in any sense of the word, but what she was was a kindhearted person who volunteered in the "Big Sister" program, and had her "Little Sister" with her that weekend, and permission to take her camping. Carol figured that if they went with us, experienced campers and hunters, they would have a good time and not get into much trouble.
It went well! Carol and her little Sister had a blast that first day, helping to gather firewood, set up the tents, hiking, and riding the ATVs a bit. That evening we had a nice little campfire and played the guitar and had a fun sing-along.
The next morning Carol asked Mrs. Inscrutable where the bathrooms were. She gestured to the dense pine forest west of camp and handed her a roll of quick-disolving biodegradeable toilet paper and a camp shovel. "Make sure you bury your business about 6 inches deep." Mrs. I explained. "That allows it to help the forest rather than harm it."
Carol blinked owlishly a few times, then packed up hers and her Little Sister's toiletries, got in their car, and drove about 15 miles to the closest gas station to use the restrooms there instead.
To their credit, they did come back and finish out the camping weekend with us - with occasional 30-mile round trips to use the bathroom. :)
Heh.
Hehehehehehehehehehehehe....
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Well said!
Excellent, CW - I woulda been about 1 during those flights of yours, but also remember a different era, a different attitude when people were not supposed to be afraid of their own shadow, and we did not need security theatre.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Kip Hawley is an idiot
Then there was the guy who was detained (and the police called) for writing Kip Hawley is an idiot on the bag you are supposed to put your 3 fl. oz. liquids in. Kip Hawley is the director of the TSA. The screener who detained the guy told him he did not have a right to express opinions in the security zone. I guess the First Amendment doesn't apply there. (Oh, I remember now, it only applies in "free speech zones".)
By the way, I entered a comment on the stupidity of the liquids restriction, pointing out that it's impossible to make a bomb by mixing liquids unless you spend the whole flight in an airplane lavatory which just happens to have a convenient bunsen burner and other paraphenalia. The comment appeared briefly and then was deleted. Now that they have my IP address, I'm looking forward to the "enhanced screening" I get when I go to board my next flight... :-(
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!
3 Fl.Oz.?
Last year, when I went through Heathrow, I bought a 6 FL (or was it 8 FL?) bottle of hydrogen peroxide in a chemist's shop in the airport. It rode in my carry-on backpack through Jo-berg, Maputo MZ, and back, all the way to PDX. Not once was it picked out - even by customs at O'Hare.
"I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion." -G.K. Chesterton
Peroxide
Regulations aside, why is this an issue?
What can you do with a small bottle of peroxide that's of any significance?
Peroxide
If I remember right, peroxide was one of the ingrediends used in making a liquid explosive. But at 3% I doubt anyone could make much, if anything at all. It's just that with the TSA screeners making such a big deal about 3 FL bottles and plastic zip-lock bags, I wonder why no one picked up on it. In 7 trips through 5 airports.
"I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion." -G.K. Chesterton
Hrumph.... More oversight
TSA... What can I say?
Did you hear about the guy who got arrested because he inadvertantly (and successfully) got through screening with his handgun? He was arrested when he voluntarily went back to tell them.
Have you tried to enter a Federal Office lately? I was threatened by the agent because I placed my 3" lockback pocket knife in the X-Ray tray. He said he could have had me arrested for it, and he wasn't even allowed to hold it for me to finish my business and leave.
What's next?
"I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion." -G.K. Chesterton
Heard that.
Yeah, rich, had heard about that incident. Insane.
The whole mindset of knife paranoia (and guns, too, but that is a different ball o' wax) astonishes. I love traveling in Britain, but have to be careful about what I even pack into my day bag these days.
Edited to add: perhaps I should just carry a shovel.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
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