a wet seed wild in the hot, blind earth.

"From an airplane-hijacking point of view, Schneier said, al-Qaeda had used up its luck. Passengers on the first three 9/11 flights didn’t resist their captors, because in the past the typical consequence of a plane seizure had been “a week in Havana.” When the people on the fourth hijacked plane learned by cell phone that the previous flights had been turned into airborne bombs, they attacked their attackers. The hijackers were forced to crash Flight 93 into a field. “No big plane will ever be taken that way again, because the passengers will fight back,” Schneier said. Events have borne him out. The instigators of the two most serious post-9/11 incidents involving airplanes— the “shoe bomber” in 2001 and the “underwear bomber” in 2009, both of whom managed to get onto an airplane with explosives—were subdued by angry passengers."

Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer?

Great article about how TSA is a joke.  Speaking from experience, it really doesn’t work.  By accident I’ve known folks to look in their bag on the plane only to realized their rather large pocket knife was in their bag.

Relevant to my life philosophies.

(via invincibeard)

This is absolutely right. The TSA does absolutely nothing but exploit civil issues thru political correctness, invade our privacy, traumatized our children (including accosting children with disabilities who do not like being touched, are particular about their clothing, etc.), produce power-hungry assholes, and throw away brand new bottles of popular and obviously safe beauty products (I seriously lost $50, when I’d taken it on the same flights about 6 times).

If a woman can’t pack a vibrator without receiving a snarky note in her bag from a TSA agent, children have to be held down screaming for the agent to stop touching them while they run their hands along their bodies, 95-year-old wheelchair bound women have to stand with their arms outstretched for 10 minutes, passengers with a stoma or similar device (drainage for feces and urine) have their sites disturbed and are treated cruelly and forced to walk around with bodily matter on them, refusing to go through a body scanner may get you privately examined for suspicious behavior…

…these things are exactly why something needs to change.

(via invincibeard)