Skip to main content
Jerry Pournelle: Current View: "Feeling Safer
(Continued from last week)

I would really like to think I am suffering from paranoid delusions brought on by my cold; but on the radio today I hear they are going to throw the book at the kid who hid the box cutters on the airplanes.

Terrible. Dangerous. Etc.

Really? Well, yes, he was dangerous, but to the TSA and the Homeland Security Department and the entire establishment of 'security' people, all of whom are in mortal danger of having to find work suited to their talents and intelligence, which is to say of starvation. OK. That's extreme. OK. There are a few adults in TSA and Homeland Security.

There aren't many.

Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose they issued box cutters to every passenger. Get on an airplane, pick up your cardboard lunch, and get a box cutter. Get a good pocket knife while you are at it, a Buck with a 4 inch blade that locks open; a fighting knife.

Everyone in the airport can have one of those before they get on the airplane; why are they more dangerous on the airplane than in the airport lounge?

Why, Pournelle, you idiot, it's obvious, they are on an AIRPLANE! Think of the Twin Towers, think of 911!

Yeah, I am thinking of them. So what?

What can you do on an airplane with a box cutter that you can't do in the airport?

And of course the answer is nothing whatever. On an airplane I can start cutting throats until I am subdued by enraged passengers wielding seat cushions, using cameras as flails, and heavy laptops as bludgeons. What I can't do is get into the cockpit and take over the plane.

Well you can crash the plane!

With box cutters? Don't be ridiculous. And in fact that brings us to this point: I would suppose that fully 90% of my readers here could devise ways to bring down an airplane provided they don't mind being killed in the process, and do it with essentially zero chance of being detected. What would stop you or me from bringing down an airplane with ourselves aboard is (1) we don't want to, (2) there might be failure of will anyway, and (3) in my case at least I was brought up in Catholic schools and while not everything they taught stuck, the prohibition on suicide certainly did. But there is nothing the TSA can do to stop me.

And we all know this, and that lad has exposed the emperor's nakedness, and he's going to Federal prison for a good long time and will probably come out with AIDS since prison rape is very common and we are doing essentially nothing about it.

Meanwhile, we have made no progress whatever on finding out who really attacked the United States with anthrax (probably the 911 gang, but that hasn't been proven: not enough resources. They had enough resourced to put 60 agents on Tom Butler's case but that's another story).

The fact is we haven't caught bin Laden, we haven't got Saddam Hussein (who wasn't a lot of threat to us until we made him one; now he's getting a trooper a day); we haven't a clue as to who sent the anthrax; the airplanes are safer because we changed the rules of engagement, not because of the Airport Avoidance Conditioning Corps known s as TSA --

We have made sullen enemies of a lot of intellectuals who used to think the threat to liberty came from outside, but after the Butler case aren't so sure.

We have done to ourselves more than bin Laden ever did. And we are poised to do more."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Artist turns animals into everyday objects

Ananova - A Chilean artist is making a name for herself with an exhibition in which stuffed animals are transformed into household objects. Artworks on display include a chick turned into a lamp, and 'sheep bag' - a lamb carcass fitted with handles. Artist Caterina Purdy says her exhibition at the Experimental Arts Centre in Santiago is intended to be humorous but also makes a serious point. She told Las Ultimas Noticias online: 'It is possible to see my work as something scary, but I find it beautiful. 'There is also irony and humour in my objects as well as a criticism of the way animals are treated by society.'"

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings

Josh Nimoy @ ITP - BallDroppings : "BallDroppings is an addicting and noisy play-toy. It can also be seen as an emergence game. My brother Marc takes this software seriously as an audio-visual performance instrument. Balls fall from the top of the screen and bounce off the lines you are drawing with the mouse. The balls make a percussive and melodic sound, whose pitch depends on how fast the ball is moving when it hits the line."

W Ketchup™

W Ketchup™ : "You don’t support Democrats. Why should your ketchup? W Ketchup™ is made in America, from ingredients grown in the USA. In side-by-side taste tests of five leading brands, we found that W Ketchup is second to none. You'll never go back to Heinz again! W Ketchup is America’s Ketchup™"