Tagged: Andrew Bourke
Body scan boogie – (cont.)
Contrarian reader Andrew Bourke is reconsidering a trip to Disney World after seeing this video of Transportation Safety Agency screeners in Chattanooga Tennessee manhandling an upset three-year-old.
(If you can’t see the video, try this link.)
The San Francisco Chronicle explains:
A TSA employee gave Mandy the pat down and she started screaming and kicking her legs… Why was Mandy searched in the first place? She started crying when she was asked to put her teddy bear through the X-ray machine. This made it difficult for her to walk calmly through the metal detector and she set the machine off twice, which meant she “must be hand-searched.”
Homeopathic overdose – (cont.)
Contrarian reader Andrew Bourke points us to this trenchant sketch on the plausibility of homeopathy from the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb:
All we like sheep – training division
Contrarian reader Andrew Bourke flags the droll consumer reviews of the Playmobil Security Checkpoint on the Amazon website (scroll way down). Moneyquote:
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”. But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital. The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society.
Andrew also passes along this commentary from xkcd.com:
Contrarian’s friend Adrian, who has skirted more security checkpoints than Contrarian has boarded planes, wonders what improvements I would like to see in airport security.
The generally accepted view is that the El Al method of interviewing (‘profiling’) each passenger is the best, almost the only, sure method. Indeed, there were moves adopt it in the USA after 9/11, but objections from namby-pamby leftist self proclaimed libertarians [like me! - ed.] precluded this.
Finally, James Fallows has consolidated his many posts on this subject here.
