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Jennifer Abel tees off in this editorial on TSA apologetics.
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Now you know where to fly out of in Orlando. (If you can.)
Year: 2010
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Joe Flood contends the TSA's "Blogger Bob" is engaging in Orwellian doublespeak.
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Would be interesting to see what comes of this, if anything.
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Money quote all flyers should print out and take with them to the airport: Under 18 U.S. Code Section 2244, " 'sexual contact' means the intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh or buttocks of any person with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade."
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The anti-body scanner/groping Opt-Out Day site for The Privacy Coalition.
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Isaac Z. Schlueter stages a minor revolution at a TSA checkpoint armed only with radiation health information disseminated by UCSF.
A tip for fellow writers:
I use Michael Tsai’s outstanding SpamSieve on my Mac to control e-mail spam. Based on the training I give the program, it actively and automagically sorts spam into a designated folder, leaving my inbox pristine and filled only with the e-mail I want to receive.
Now, what to do with all that spam collecting in that aforementioned designated folder?
Most folks would simply delete it all, and too bad if something found its way there that shouldn’t be. Some folks, myself included, would give it a quick going-over, to make sure their spam-filtering software hadn’t flagged a false positive: a “good” e-mail inadvertently labeled “bad”.
And an enterprising fiction writer would tap this new-found wealth for character names.
I mean, where else are you going to discover “Abdul Travis”? What a great name for a fictional character! (When I first saw that one, it sounded like something one would read in a William Gibson novel.)
So I created a new text document in BBEdit, gave it the oh-so-original title of “character names.txt”, and starting dumping in names from my spam e-mails.
I’m not sure how many pieces of spam I went through, or how long I did this, but the current document has 456 different names in it. And by virtue of receiving upwards of 5,000-plus spam e-mails a week, I always have a ready source for more names if I need them.
So skip those fancy character-naming programs, fiction writers. You’ve got a wealth of names right there in your e-mail client.
“History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.” –Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
Below is the letter I sent to our Congressional representative, Michael C. Burgess. I totally ripped it off from my friend Tom, tweaking it slightly. You are welcome to copy either of ours if you feel similarly about the TSA’s new search policies.
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To The Honorable Michael C. Burgess
As Congress comes back into session, I encourage you to use your position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to change the policy enacted concerning the Transportation Safety Administration’s use of millimeter wave technology in the screening of passengers. These devices represent an unnecessary invasion of privacy as part of security procedures, and aren’t making anyone safer.
While I appreciate the need to try to make airports more secure, these scanners show images of a patron’s naked body to the TSA in order to do it. Worse, if you decide to opt out of the scanners for personal privacy reasons, or for concern over radiation exposure, you’re subject to a very intimate patdown that allows the TSA to touch the genital regions of a patron, out of nothing short of retaliation.
This is patently unacceptable. The choices you have to make if you take your family traveling is that you can have their genitals leered at by TSA officers (one such example of bad behavior includes a pilot’s 18 year old daughter: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/1147497-tso-saying-heads-up-got-cutie-you.html ) or you can have them fondled. Or you can refuse both, and, even if volunteering to go through the normal metal detector, be escorted from the airport: http://johnnyedge.blogspot.com/2010/11/these-events-took-place-roughly-between.html.
Which would you choose?
The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, which you have sworn to uphold and defend against powers foreign and domestic, says that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
A boarding pass is not probable cause to have my person searched in such a fashion.
This is a bridge too far. A functioning travel network is crucial to a free society, and to have to show one’s genitals to the TSA, or allow them to be groped, in order to travel is the sort of unnecessary restriction on one’s liberty, and in exchange for no increase in security (these devices, and these patdowns, do not show hidden packages that could be contained in body cavities, which is the next logical step in the progression of the terrorists) and only serve to inconvenience the travelers.
Please enact legislation to stop the retaliatory patdowns and remove these intrusions into our personal privacy.
Thank you,
Christopher Turner
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Simple wood, dark, and light wallpapers for your 27-, 24-, or 15-inch screen, as well as your iPhone or iPad.
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Free wallpapers for computer desktops and mobile devices, free PDF books, free PDFs of masks, coloring pages, and posters.
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While I'm not nearly the level of Star Trek fan as I am with Star Wars, these are intriguing. I like the "Boldly Go" one best.
Since LSU had a bye week this weekend, here’s a sight not many get to see:
The video was shot with a HD helmet cam attached to Seth Mannon, at the start of the game against West Virginia earlier this season.
As a closet typography nerd, it’s always fun to learn about a new typeface. Or, in this case, a new-to-me typeface. I’m enjoying the trend that’s shown up in book publishing the last few years where the reader is informed what type the book is set in.
Yesterday I finished Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel, Worth Dying For, and at the end we’re introduced to the type of Life:
“The text of this book was set in Life, a typeface designed by W. Bilz, and jointly developed by Ludwig & Mayer and Francesco Simoncini 1965. This contemporary design is in the transitional style of the eighteenth century. Life is a versatile text face and is a registered trademark of Simoncini S.A.”
Here is how it looks in the book:
A version of Life can be can be purchased from Veer.