Joseph Duemer after his wife's knitting needles are confiscated by the TSA screener:
But of course the point of the regulations is not, as in the nauseating cliché, to “keep us safe.” No, the TSA regulations are intended to keep us obedient. In the most recent entry in his NY Times weblog Jet Lagged, Patrick Smith comes as close as anyone in the media to laying this fact before the public. He does not quite draw the final political conclusion — that obeying the airport screeners is intended to be practice for obeying any absurd regulation — but he gets everything else exactly right. The purpose of having to take your shoes off & go through a search of your belongings is to teach you to swallow your rage. Try this thought experiment: Imagine the whole enterprise transfered to a psychology laboratory & all the passengers turned into rats.
Imagine a train and the TSA Agent asking you and your family to enter: "You will be safer where you are going." Hope is a virtue too. We hope this is not going to be too bad. We hope they will back off soon. We hope there will not be another crisis, followed by God knows what crackdown now being scoped out in some think tank, and kept in reserve, just in case. Well, there is nothing we can do about it. The pacification of the population is the new normal. Better to keep our heads down and mouths shut. A person could get hurt. Or on the wrong list. Things happen. Unless you have friends in high places it can be hard to get things straightened out. We all have heard stories of friends. It is better to just do as you are told. You know, Lucy, the biggest philanthropy buzzword of 2007? You know what is was? Silence.
Funny rat pictures in this.
And this.
Posted by: O Lucky Man | December 30, 2007 at 10:57 AM
Nothing we can do. Be of good cheer. Maybe it will turn out ok in the end.
Posted by: Phil | December 30, 2007 at 03:21 PM
FIFO - Fit In or (get) Frisked (in) Orifi
You will take that belt off, sir !
Madame, those bobby pins might be a new form of near-nuclear bomb when mixed with some sparkling water ..
Jeezus f*&^*(&^% Keerist .... when will people start to grow up ?
Posted by: JJ Commoner | December 30, 2007 at 03:52 PM
Meanwhile, apparently, the naro cartel is running tons of drugs in a special fleet of submarines. Clearly, our borders are not protected against incursion of illicit materials, whether drugs or weapons of mass destruction. But knitting needles are well controlled.
http://tinyurl.com/2nla2s
Posted by: Phil | December 30, 2007 at 03:57 PM
tinyurl link goes nowhere
Posted by: JJ Commoner | December 30, 2007 at 07:24 PM
Worked for me when cut and pasted into the browser. Just an article on a sub carrying tons of drugs, one of many such subs, apparently.
Posted by: Phil | December 30, 2007 at 07:34 PM
Yeah, worked for me too.
It makes me wonder how they got caught. Did the particular sub have a malfunction so it could not submerge maybe? Also, shouldn't it be painted yellow?
Posted by: Gerry | December 31, 2007 at 03:58 PM
Funny.
Posted by: phil | December 31, 2007 at 04:00 PM
I have another question. Why doesn't market fundamentalism apply to the drug war?
Posted by: Gerry | December 31, 2007 at 04:01 PM
Now you've got me curious. It appears that there are hobbyists who are quite a bit more advanced than the drug dealers.
As with UAVs, you will probably start seeing a lot more military development programs for this sort of thing, as well as defensive technologies. So far we don't have anyone talking about restricting the building of experimental craft on the theory they are munitions. It raises some interesting second amendment issues, doesn't it.
Posted by: Gerry | January 01, 2008 at 02:32 AM
Blackwater Underwater Services....
Posted by: Phil | January 01, 2008 at 09:30 AM