This is the piece of delicate thinking that I like to read in the morning..
'Security as Theatre' ... What a wonderful insight in our very dry and
very messy reality seperating it from the enforced ideology. Thank you
Steve, I really enjoyed this.. and now I can go for my coffee with a
smile.. goodmorning! :-)
C.
On 8/15/06, Steve Dropkin <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> To avoid this remote possibility of danger, though, we made people
> with illnesses board planes without medicine and tossed away _tons_
> of beverages, hair gel, and toothpaste _throughout the entire
> airline system in the U.S. and Britain_ to guard against the
> possibility that some 60-year-old from Miami in a bad polyester
> outfit might terrorize the plane with a her bottle of mineral water.
> (Actually, I've smelled some colognes which _could_ do that, but
> that's something else.)
>
> Almost every one of us gets into our cars every day and drives
> somewhere. We do so without the aid of four-point competition seat
> harnesses, huge rollbars, crash helmets, and HANS devices (cf. Dale
> Earnhardt) even though those things could save some of the driving
> public from a fatal injury. There are many more people driving than
> flying. So why are we so "lax" about driving? Could it be that there
> has been some reasonable assessment of risk versus benefit?
>
> I find it hard to go along with walking onto a plane without so much
> as a book (what kind of weapon is a book -- unless we're talking
> "War and Peace" or something critical of the war-mongers in
> Washington?) while hold luggage is given a quick once-over and air
> cargo is barely checked at all. I find it hard to take security
> seriously when the people hired work at a minimum wage (_there's_ a
> job with value!) and don't even know all of the rules they're
> supposed to enforce (how many discussions have we had on this list
> about our "right" to not send film though the X-ray machine?).
>
> No, this security as theater; it is (re)activity substituting for
> progress. Next time you're taking off your shoes, subjecting
> yourself to patdowns, and shipping laptops full of business
> information and your toiletries as baggage (hoping they get there
> with us), take the time to think about how "safe" we are and how the
> terrorists haven't won .... :-(
>
> Steve
>
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|