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Security...?
Security is something I take fairly seriously.
Some of it is almost intrinsic to my being. I was moved around a lot as a young child, and had new schools every couple of years. Since this wasn' the result of my being a military brat the new times were always a tad nervous making.
And I was slight, started wearing glasses at an early age, read books, knew too much, was a bit solitary (part and parcel of moving so much, I suppose) prone to speak my mind and in general, "not like other kids". When we moved to a largely hispanic area, with a moderately high level of small-time gangs; and a quiet background of understood violence, well I learned to check my six, and other such trivial aspects of not get pounded to a pulp (it doesn't matter how quick you are on your feet, nor how skilled with your hands or a weapon, the odds can be made too much to overcome... I spent six months slinking through alleys to avoid a friend's older brother. He felt he owed me because when we were playing one of the odd games we played [a sort of dodge-ball with scraps of tar-paper, and everyone armed at the same time. A piece flew over the fence and hit him. He took offense and decided I was the guilty party]. That will teach one situational awareness, to one's very bones).
Some of it is the result of the work I've done. Security guard, some of it at hospitals, which leads to odd confrontations, some of it in parking lots, all of it boring; until something exciting happens.
And my jobs in the Army, which deal with information flow, and who gets what, and when and how the pieces fit together, and what this, when combined with that means, or might mean.
And, because the Army worries about this, a lot of Worst Case planning. From the trivial (what happens if someone gets hurt on the rifle range; from skinned knees, to heat injuries, to shot. The last time we did a range, we had two minor burns from spent cases. The plans were in place and all went well) to the serious; what to do if an artillery shell lands in the middle of the sleeping tent?
So this TSA to limit passengers to two books in carry on luggage croggles me.
Not only is it silly, right now (when, it seems, there is a four book maximum) but it's getting sillier.
Me, I'd not heard of it, and I carry a lot of books with me. I'm gonna be gone for a couple of weeks (the usual time for one of my trips) I'll pack at least three books in the carry on. My moods change, and I'm usually reading three or four books at a time anyway (lessee... Collapse, The Art of Mediaeval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk, The Seventeenth Century Background, The Gathering Storm, and Shakespeare's Language, those are the reading material right now. The books I might want to take with me when I travel).
Looking at it I can't see any benefit. Are they afarid I'm going to peg someone with my copy of Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory>? I'd wager my camera (any one of the two, or three, in my other carry on bag) would make a farmore effective weapon. It has a strap, that I can retain it, as well as impart more energy, and it has greater density.
I just don't get it.
Some of it is almost intrinsic to my being. I was moved around a lot as a young child, and had new schools every couple of years. Since this wasn' the result of my being a military brat the new times were always a tad nervous making.
And I was slight, started wearing glasses at an early age, read books, knew too much, was a bit solitary (part and parcel of moving so much, I suppose) prone to speak my mind and in general, "not like other kids". When we moved to a largely hispanic area, with a moderately high level of small-time gangs; and a quiet background of understood violence, well I learned to check my six, and other such trivial aspects of not get pounded to a pulp (it doesn't matter how quick you are on your feet, nor how skilled with your hands or a weapon, the odds can be made too much to overcome... I spent six months slinking through alleys to avoid a friend's older brother. He felt he owed me because when we were playing one of the odd games we played [a sort of dodge-ball with scraps of tar-paper, and everyone armed at the same time. A piece flew over the fence and hit him. He took offense and decided I was the guilty party]. That will teach one situational awareness, to one's very bones).
Some of it is the result of the work I've done. Security guard, some of it at hospitals, which leads to odd confrontations, some of it in parking lots, all of it boring; until something exciting happens.
And my jobs in the Army, which deal with information flow, and who gets what, and when and how the pieces fit together, and what this, when combined with that means, or might mean.
And, because the Army worries about this, a lot of Worst Case planning. From the trivial (what happens if someone gets hurt on the rifle range; from skinned knees, to heat injuries, to shot. The last time we did a range, we had two minor burns from spent cases. The plans were in place and all went well) to the serious; what to do if an artillery shell lands in the middle of the sleeping tent?
So this TSA to limit passengers to two books in carry on luggage croggles me.
Not only is it silly, right now (when, it seems, there is a four book maximum) but it's getting sillier.
Me, I'd not heard of it, and I carry a lot of books with me. I'm gonna be gone for a couple of weeks (the usual time for one of my trips) I'll pack at least three books in the carry on. My moods change, and I'm usually reading three or four books at a time anyway (lessee... Collapse, The Art of Mediaeval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk, The Seventeenth Century Background, The Gathering Storm, and Shakespeare's Language, those are the reading material right now. The books I might want to take with me when I travel).
Looking at it I can't see any benefit. Are they afarid I'm going to peg someone with my copy of Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory>? I'd wager my camera (any one of the two, or three, in my other carry on bag) would make a farmore effective weapon. It has a strap, that I can retain it, as well as impart more energy, and it has greater density.
I just don't get it.
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I carry a shitload of books with me!!!
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These people are crazy.
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TK
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What, do they think we're going PAPERCUT everyone to death? Threaten to read aloud?
This makes no sense at all.
Ridiculous requirements
In fact, measures like these actually decrease security, IMHO. Because they are so blatantly incompetent and arbitrary that they just reduce faith in the system as a whole.
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I'd bet a buck 2.50 that the screener (or his/her supervisor) got books of matches confused with books.
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Still, with the way the interpretation of these rules devolves onto pinhead martinets... *rolls eyes* who knows what you'll be required to give up at the gate, or miss your plane?
Crazy(the only sane response)Soph
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Crazy(*blush*)Soph
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I clicked over to TSA before I read the comments on Ross's blog, since it'd been awhile since I'd read the TSA rules. I work in aviation training, so I have to read this poorly written and badly interpreted stuff quite often. I was just about to fire off an e-mail to work (I'm on medical leave until May), because, even though we don't do screener training, we have to be up on all the latest procedures for the entire industry.
Poor interpretation of the regulations by trainers and supervisors is usually the cause of people getting the wrong stuff taken away from them. And considering how ill-paid our security personnel are, there's very little incentive for them to go the extra mile to make sure they know the regs thoroughly on their own. I'm just sayin'.
Anyway, I was glad to note that knitting needles are okay, since I'd been under the the misapprehension that they were verboten.
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On the other hand, we all know those readers are likely to be Godless communists or secular humanists or something.
I hear some of 'em even want a Bible in the vernacular, so they can read it for themselves....
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I hope the previous commenters are correct and it's books of matches. Otherwise that just sucks. When I was little and flying from Toronto to Nairobi and back twice a year I had a LOT more than four books with me, let me tellya.
(I can see the headlines now... 8-Year-Old Arrested with 23 Books. Little Blonde Girl Was Security Risk, Say Screeners. Actually, that would be kind of cool.)
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Sheesh.
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You have to stop reading their recommendations; it's so much easier.
B
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Actually, I took my soft luggage (basically a duffel with some outside pockets), and built a layer of books in the bottom and around the sides, packed in my clothes, etc., and then a layer of books on top. I constructed hard-sided luggage out of books.
My luggage has not been a problem, but I have had some more detailed screenings when my six earrings set off the metal detectors. OTOH, the trick for going through the metal detector when wearing overall? Unfasten one strap and throw it over a shoulder. The TSA screeners grin when they see me doing this.
I don't travel anywhere nearly as widely as you, but the screeners at BWI, my local airport, seem both competent and efficient. Even when the line has been hundreds of yards long, I've gotten through security in 15 minutes or less.
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B
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B
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1: much of what we are told makes us safer doesn't (CAAPS, for example, routinely sets me aside for extra screening, but only when I'm travelling on military business. I wave my orders and am exempted. This counts as part of the "random" percentage of screened people. They don't add another person to the queue).
2: The incredible lack of consistency. Where was it, oh yeah, Raliegh-Durham, where they make people go through metal detectors and screening, AFTER they collect their checked bags.
What really bothers me about this is the subordination of good training to rote regulation. A trained screener might be able to make good use of the almost complete power he possesses to refuse or allow things onto the plane. But they don't get trained suspicious behavior. Hell, they don't even get good training on the things they are supposed to check.
I have known for quite some time of several ways to get a number of small weapons past the x-ray machine. What pisses me off is that, prior to the attacks of Sept. 11th, those ways were closed. But they changed the screening procedures and now they've created a loophole.
Worst, when I asked if they wanted to make the more thorough check they looked at me as if I were discussing Vogon Poetry, with quotations.
It boggles the mind that something, supposedly so important should be so poorly considered.
TK
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B
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You ought to have heard me when we had Guardmembers at airports.
Security theater pisses me off, because it both not only fails; twice (because the false security displaces any good security) but it diverts money that might be spent elsewhere. I'd be willing to accept no improvement in the security at airports, etc., but to have that lack of improvement come at the cost of things we might otherwise have (Calif. had to cut training because the Feds required us to have a battalion's worth of people at airports and bridges, but paid not a dime for it).
TK
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B
speaking of matches and lighters
Apparently Zippo gets a lot of sales from tourists who collect Zippos with different designs on them as souvenirs.