[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> First, your hairbrush I can't comment on without seeing it,

Plastic with nylon bristles.  No different from a million others.

> but now that you have indicated that you carry flamable materials
> on passenger planes in a public forum,

Uh, yes.  It's alcohol and menthol based and in the cargo hold.  The
stewardesses carry plenty of equally flammable materials on board in the
cabin and serve them to the folks in first class.

> you can count on having that confiscated as well.

To the benefit of the public, no doubt.  Many of those search drones
have atrocious halitosis.

> Honestly, I just check my luggage and hand-carry my laptop and some
> magazines on the plane.

That's all I carried.   They took this stuff -out of my checked luggagge-.

> I think people need to get over this obsession of carrying everything
> with them in the plane...

Agreed 100%.

> As for the foreign policy, let's keep in mind that it was (most likely)
> shaped by events that occured against us first...

Tell you what.  I'd rather have a 9/11 occur every day than for us to
lose the core rights and beliefs in liberty and gonverment non-
intervention that makes us, as a society, worth preserving.  If, as a
result of "OMG! TEH TERROR!!!@!@!!11!" we become a nation of sheep
willing to do, say, or obey whatever someone in a suit and tie says will
make us "safer", even at the peril of our own freedoms, we, as a nation
collectively urinate on the graves of those fellow countrymen that lost
their lives in New York three years ago.

Keeping plastic hairbrushes off planes will not make us safer.  Arm the
pilots, and let the passengers carry knives if such is their wont.  No
one could overtake a plane without being overpowered by 200 angry,
fearful, and ARMED passengers.  Problem Solved.

But, no, we have PATRIOT act, we have the spy-on-your-neighbor program
whose name I cannot recall, we have nicely-paid adults sifting through
underwear in luggage and grabbing the breasts of female passengers.  We
have senseless and widespread paranoia over a bunch of jackasses several
thousand miles away coming over here and killing us, and we're SIFTING
THROUGH UNDERWEAR instead of closing our borders.

The terrorists very well may cause the collapse of the American way of
life, but they won't do it with guns and knives--they're doing it by
exploiting the fear of America's soccer moms who plead that we "think of
the children".

I mearly plead that we "think".

-- 
Jonathan Patschke ) "I've built my whole system with [-fomit-frame-pointer]
Elgin, TX        (   cause it was recomended...as I don't care if a program
USA               )  crashes, not interested in finding out why."
                  (                     --Tim, Another Satisfied Gentoo User