Some articles

[conuly]

The TSA doesn't want people to boycott being scanned. Well, bully for them!

"Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays," said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays resulting from the body-scanner boycott. "It doesn't take much to mess things up anyway — especially if someone purposely tries to mess it up."

Just more proof that all they're doing is shifting the danger (such as it is, planes are still pretty safe) from the plane to the airport. Sheesh.

Ireland is, of course, in major financial trouble. But you knew that.

A quickish video on gendered toy advertising, same old, same old.

Oh, and another article on the TSA and scanning and so on.

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

No, I hadn't heard about Ireland. Thanks for the link.

"I don't think any of us feel that the discomfort and the delay is something that we like, but most people understand that we've got to keep airplanes safe."

Isn't that begging the question of whether the procedures are necessary (or even suitable) for keeping aeroplanes safe?

[conuly]

Ya think?

[phoenixdreaming.livejournal.com]

No, I hadn't heard about Ireland.

Oh good :D My country's headline-hogging this week is quite distressing.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Heh. I wonder how they feel about people taking buses.

[leora.livejournal.com]

This is one of the tactics I find most offensive - blame shifting to the people who are opposing your cause.

I've seen it in many forms. For example, making any drug illegal creates a black market for it. Black markets encourage crime. However, some drugs have beneficial effects or are less harmful than some legal recreational drugs. But then you get people saying things like, when you buy marijuana, you help terrorists. Well, perhaps, but only because you force people to by making it illegal, when there is a simple, rational solution that you block people from using.

Or a more obvious example, during my IRC days we often had issues with ISPs that would not discipline their users. Because IRC users are identified by IP address and almost all users have variable IP addresses (dial-up being the norm, especially at that time period) you have to block whatever chunk of IP addresses the problem user might possibly use. Depending on the ISP this could be a small region of the country or a huge chunk of it. Some ISPs deliberately make their IP addresses nearly unblockable because they want to do the disciplining of users themselves and others simply work that way because it's how they work. So, when you have an ISP that refuses to do a single thing about a user who is causing serious problems, sometimes you have to block the entire ISP or very nearly all of it. This is unfortunate, but it can be necessary. What annoyed me was how often the ISPs would respond to emails from their users by blaming the IRC network for blocking them and ignore the fact that the abuse had been reported to them and they had refused to do anything. (On a side note, at one point pretty much the entire country of Israel was banned, because they only had two ISPs in popular use and the ISPs weren't being responsive, it had nothing to do with anti-semitism despite some users' theories *sighs*).

And now the TSA is saying blame the passengers and the people who care about their rights! They're the real problem here. And they refuse to acknowledge the many things they have done to contribute to the problems.

I also find it deeply worrisome that a small number of opt-outs is seen as an issue, when I do strongly feel that anyone with a significant skin cancer risk ought to opt out. And a few other categories as well. All radiation exposure is cumulative. Why would anyone with a significant cancer risk choose to increase their risk further when they have an alternative? Why would anyone expect that they ought to? Any decrease in exposure is helpful. And no exposure can ever be undone.