Wookin Pa Nub
November 18th, 2010 - 2:05 pm
Let’s play a game of “What’s Wrong With This Headline?” Ready? OK, here we go!
TSA: New Scanners Kept Many Illegal or Dangerous Items Off Planes This Year
How about keeping dangerous people off our airplanes? And how many people have we caught with porno scanners? Finding dangerous people, rather than “dangerous” objects, is far less time consuming, and far less intrusive, than what we’re doing now.
Folks, I spent much of the ’90s sans trou and on display, and yet I find these new scanners highly objectionable.
No data or stats given. It’s like we have to take their word for it since they are a government institution or some thing. If they’ve found these dangerous substances, do they even have an arrest report available for the people carrying out the nefarious crimes? I mean you do have to catch the terrorists, right carrying the bad, dangerous, evil, malignant materials, right? They were terrorists, right? I mean if you find bad materials the substances do have to belong to some one. Then again, based off their procedures they’re just trying to block substances, not criminals. I guess they support old, “if you don’t succeed the first time, try again.” Just trying to make terrorists feel good about their contributions.
Also, the number they gave is 130? I’d wager a single second-string airport keeps more than 130 prohibited items off planes in the average day.
Quite so–if those items are neither dangerous nor illegal, then why do we have to throw them out as we go in and then spend a bunch of money buying them again when we get to the mini-mall on the other side? Oh…right.
“I spent much of the ’90s sans trou and on display…”
In the common parlance, WTMI.
“Many Illegal or Dangerous Items”
Yeah. Like nail clippers, shampoo…
How many actual freakin’ bombs did they catch? How many guns? Zippo. Nada. Zilch. Squat.
“We have prevented 130 illegal or dangerous items off of planes this year.
Well, lets see, over 3,000,000 people fly every day X 365 days = 1,095,000,000 passengers a year and they claim that finding 130 illegal or dangerous items justifies groping a billion people?
There are data available; in 2008 (most recent year available) there were 809,611,003 airline passengers in the United States.
Still, your reasoning is sound. When we consider the number of passengers in a year compared to 130, to the inclusion of the terms “prohibited” & “illegal,” one has to wonder how many of those items could take down a plane, and who calculated the cost/benefit ratio here?
Just for laughs, I worked the math the other way as well. Using the above number, that works out to one item found for every 6,227,776 people who flew.
The country is in the greatest of hands…
These enhanced pat down techniques are just a plot by the “High Speed Rail” lobby.
You miss the genius of the plan. The program is designed to isolate those who would try to do harm to airplanes by making them the only people who still fly.
It’s like the Bush fight-them-in-Iraq-instead-of-here strategy, but on planes.
Genius!
Let’s play a game of “What’s Wrong With This Headline?” Ready? OK, here we go!
TSA: New Scanners Kept Many Illegal or Dangerous Items Off Planes This Year
What is really wrong with the headline, and the overall effect is that the “Dangerous Items” are those items defined by TSA as Dangerous Items, not necessarily what you think of when you hear the term Dangerous Items.
Among those “Dangerous Items” is my Leatherman Kick Multi Tool that I carry with me everywhere I go. It is such a part of my wardrobe that I don’t even think about wearing it, along with my Mini Mag Light (which apparently isn’t a Dangerous Item).
What I find curious is the fact that they do not put all of the Dangerous Items on display for the public to view (Most likely to keep laughter to a minimum) and judge for themselves the value of TSA’s contribution.
http://www.mytoolstore.com/leather/1kick.html for a look at the Dangerous Leatherman Kick Multi Tool. (Note the Blade… oooooohhhh)
I just have to comment on your Eddy Murphy Buckwheat reference – pure genius!