Did you know that they had full dose radiation-driven "shoe fitting" devices in over 10,000 shoe stores up until 1970?
They were eventually pulled when reports of burns and stunting of bone and cartilage began to emerge.
It's the little vignettes of history like this that remind me how many grand-experiments there are out there using us all as the unwitting test subjects.
Is the Pilot Union’s boycott a kneejerk reaction to the measured warning about potential radiation damage?
Maybe.
But never underestimate how quickly politicos helping to equip our airports with $100 - 200k a pop units will happily ask for forgiveness, not permission.
My dad worked in a shoe store with one of these devices. Many of his coworkers used to play with the fluoroscopes in their free time (thankfully Dad never did).
Years later a good portion of them lost their feet or portions of them because of the radiation burns and various cancers.
But this is different - they have done long term studies following the total life health of 1000s of pilots who have been exposed to these scanners 10x a day for their whole careers.
No, but they did use mouse pilots in a long term animal study of 3 years (20 years in human pilot equivalent years).
Most of the study subjects reported dizziness, headaches and the infamous restless paw syndrome, which made it pretty much impossible for them to continue flying safely.
Hmmm, my coffee must not have kicked in at that point. I skipped right over the "mouse pilots" part and just assumed "mice."
It seems entirely plausible that they have exposed mice to backscatter scanners for extended periods and studied the reactions/effects. That study I would be interested in, but it seems rdtsc was making a funny. I understand now.
There is an apparently dwindling minority of people who would consider this to be sarcasm and not irony. For these few, irony is never merely logical negation. It necessarily involves unintended and opposite consequences flowing from the protagonist's actions. A short internet search suggests I may be the last of this kind.
The only problem I have with caveats like this is that on all the hundreds of occasions when I've heard someone say, "Actually, that's not irony," the subsequent explanation of what does qualify as irony has been different every single time.
This is additionally confounded by the fact that British people really do mean "sarcasm" when they say "irony." (At least, most of the British people I've spoken with do.)
> This is additionally confounded by the fact that British people really do mean "sarcasm" when they say "irony."
I've never experienced this in actual conversation with British and/or other non-US English speakers. But the internet definitions I'm finding seem to all include 'sarcastic but somewhat subtle' in the definition of ironic. For me the definitions of sarcasm and irony do not intersect. Sarcasm is intentional whereas irony is at best random or more often a signifier of implied 'fate'.
Irony certainly can be random or a signifier of implied fate in the case of literary/dramatic irony.
Verbal irony, which is closely related to but not identical to sarcasm (though there is quite a lot of debate on exactly the relationship among psycholinguists) is most certainly intentional.
"I don't wear my seat belt because if I'm uncomfortable I'll drive more dangerously."
"Sounds like you've really thought that one through."
Verbal irony, possibly sarcasm depending on whose definition you buy, but definitely intentional in any case.
"-Synonyms
1, 2. Irony, sarcasm, satire indicate mockery of something or someone. The essential feature of irony is the indirect presentation of a contradiction between an action or expression and the context in which it occurs. In the figure of speech, emphasis is placed on the opposition between the literal and intended meaning of a statement; one thing is said and its opposite implied, as in the comment, 'Beautiful weather, isn't it?' made when it is raining or nasty."
Actually I think 'Unfortunate' would have been the appropriate word in that song. Most of the situations described don't involve any direct negation of the protagonists intentions. The only possible qualifier is
'Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well isn't this nice..."'
... but the last line is still sarcasm, not irony.
Take an example of irony--the story of Oedipus. Oedipus leaves his family specifically to avoid a prophecy that he would kill his father, and marry his mother. The action of leaving his home, by which he intends to stop the prophecy by removing himself from proximity to his parents, causes it to come true, because unknown to Oedipus he was adopted. Oedipus causes the prophecy to come true by accidentally returning to his biological parents.
So we have the action of a protagonist causing the opposite effect of what was intended--irony. The items Alanis lists are mainly really annoying.
Alanis is a regional manager, overseeing several stores. Her office is located in a specific store. Alanis decices to institute a 'no smoking' policy on breaks for all stores, but not her own store (where her office is located - she loves to smoke cigarettes).
Corporate agrees and it becomes company policy. Impressed by Alanis's HR policy, they transfer her to an ailing store, where smoking is banned and she cannot undo corporate policy.
Yes it is technically sarcasm - at least in common English usage. Since irony doesn't seem to exist in America I'm not sure if American-English makes the same distinctions.
@ARTICLE{oiuytgfyhujik:11,
author = {{oiuytgfyhujik}},
title = {{on: World's largest association of pilots boycotts body scanners}},
year = {2011},
journal = {{Journal of Ironic Internet Postings}},
note = {\url{http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1885309}}
}
It's the little vignettes of history like this that remind me how many grand-experiments there are out there using us all as the unwitting test subjects
Actually, they ran similar shoe devices in the uk in the 80's and 90's - i know, as i used one. I don't know if they were high-dose fluroscopes though.
The key is to make the pat-down as time consuming and embarrassing as possible for the TSA staff. Follow these steps:
1) Refuse the body scanner and request a manual pat-down.
2) Ask to have a supervisor, or a second TSA staff, present during the pat-down. Explain that this is to ensure that no sexual harassment occurs.
3) If you are a guy, ask to have a female TSA staff member perform the pat-down. If your request is denied, calmly explain to the TSA guy that you are homosexual and that a pat-down by another guy will turn you on and will make you sexually extremely uncomfortable.
4) During the pat-down, make comments such as "Oh yeah, I like it when you touch me there!", or "Can I get a happy ending?"
I think this would be great if the person performing the pat-down had great influence in setting security policy.
Unfortunately the people doing those jobs are extremely low on the chain of command that is setting the policies and paying the bills.
Disclaimer: I do not like the security theater. I'm just wondering if there is a better way to get more effective results without wasting your time and making the day frustrating for security people (who will most likely not be quitting their job or changing the policy).
Maybe if the TV news stations actually had an interest to bring it to people's attentions...
Maybe if a large percentage of people actually did it. Large enough of a percentage that it created huge delays, flight cancellations and caused huge amount of profit loss. Hurt them where they actually care about, their wallets/bank accounts.
They made their choices in their employment and in their implementation of policy, and they deserve what they get. They are quite directly "part of the problem".
But you are even further away. So actions like this might be more than what you would accomplish otherwise. If enough "executors" are annoyed and unhappy, maybe they will raise the issue to the next level. And so on.
No need to go that far. The easiest way to protest this is to DDoS the system - if a large enough proportion of the population consistent opts out of the backscatter, the system will collapse on itself.
There is no way TSA can clear a flight full of people using patdowns fast enough. All we need is enough people to refuse - no need to make special requests or other muck up the works.
Because when people (sheeple?) start missing their flights, they will lose their shit. Lots of rabble rabble (i.e. South Park) will follow, and TSA & the Feds absolutely will bend, as they have before.
Although a mass resistance would work, it's unlikely to happen, since it requires a large change in attitude and behaviour of a large percentage of the population.
> if a large enough proportion of the population consistent opts out of the backscatter, the system will collapse on itself.
>There is no way TSA can clear a flight full of people using patdowns fast enough
When you get to the airport and there is a 3-hour backlog for patdowns but no line for the ionizing radiation backscatter, are you going to miss your flight?
And what happens with people who go through the scanner, but get flagged for a patdown anyway...
> When you get to the airport and there is a 3-hour backlog for patdowns but no line for the ionizing radiation backscatter, are you going to miss your flight?
You should be at the airport a couple hours earlier...
Unfortunately for the heroic-hearted, the general populace will take the path of least resistance. What's a nude picture and extra radiation here and there when I have an important business deal to close in 4 hours?
I agree for points one and two, further points are the best way to go for a loooooooong journey in a little room.
They have way more time than you have and they know it.
The whole game is to make _you_ being embarrassed about the pat-down so you'll finally go through screening next time.
This whole game is totally unbalanced in a way, your ressources to make them retreat are absolutely insignificant in front of the whole machine (on spot that is). The only way out of this craziness is political so don't hesitate to give a call, send a mail to people representing you.
I will take some standard (t-shirts, shorts) clothing and metalize them, them I will sell them in airports, as a signal of protest. With your clothes metalized x-rays can't pass thought.
Great thinking. Let's just keep taking up the arse because otherwise we might be inconvenienced! I know that TSA has gotten worse literally every year but we wouldn't want to be inconvenienced. Far better to just hope that it works out on its own!
Hang on, do we know this is for real? I followed the link to news.com.au, and I can find one or two other blogs that are referring to this, but the APA site itself (http://public.alliedpilots.org/) makes no reference to anything like this, including in their "For the Media" section (press releases and such).
There was an interesting opinion piece in New Scientist about radiation safety levels recently (31 July 2010). It looked at health studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and studies of chemotherapy patients that suggest that the current recommended radiation limit (1 millisievert per year) is overly cautious. The article went on to suggest that the recommendation be raised to a lifetime total of 5 sieverts at no more than 0.1 sievert per month.
It seems that the debate in the comments here is on whether to give the TSA employees a hard time (with suggestions) or to try to pressure the politicians who let this happen (with no concrete suggestions).
I wonder if the pressure really should be applied to the airlines. Obviously they are in a tough spot, but once they start to really lose profits, they would be sure to run to DC screaming. Just a thought.
I went through SFO on the weekend and said I didn't want to go through the machine. You're made to feel pretty stigmatised, you have to stand there while the TSA officer repeatedly yells out "We got an opt-out. Male opt-out." across the hall.
The pat down itself was extremely thorough but considering how much the TSA gets bagged on Reddit, the officer was incredibly professional. It didn't feel lewd or dirty. Sure, it was violating and I resented having to be put through the experience, but the guy was just doing his job and it was obvious he'd been extensively trained. All up it took about 5 minutes of my time.
What worried me the most was that afterword he asked "The TSA is conducting a survey, why did you opt-out?" I replied that I didn't like my freedoms being taken away. However, thinking about this later, I realised that if in a year they release stats that say "only 1% of people opt-out, and only 5% of those people do so for medical or religious reasons" then it is going to be a hell of a lot easier for them to push for the scans to become mandatory.
"The TSA is conducting a survey, why did you opt-out?"
With a straight face:
"Because I get sexual gratification from having my genitles fondled. Your job is sort of like prostitution, but you get paid by the pimps rather than the customers."
Someone on Reddit got selected for the scanner, and after getting scanned the TSA proceeded to give him the invasive gope-search too. So it sounds like you might as well 'opt out' of the scanner since it won't save you from having your genitals felt up.
I refused last week. I got pat down pretty invasively. The TSA agent seemed rather embarrassed about it. The protocol says that when they touch private areas, they must point out that they're using the back of the hand, but being groped is being groped.
If everyone refuses, I hope, it will be simply too costly to continue ... but I'm still not sure if allowing myself to be literally manhandled is any less an invasion of my privacy except insofar as there's no photographic evidence that can be stored indefinitely.
There is a gay rights group who are planning to protest it by turning up at the airport in costume insisting on a special pat down and pretending (or not) to enjoy it very much.
Sounds like a great day out - especially if you are into uniforms!
Sexually harassing someone who makes $10 an hour to make a point to someone who makes $150,000 a year several thousand miles away and who has actual decisionmaking authority does not strike me as a justice-enhancing move.
This has already been done to death on HN.
1) "Doing your job" is never an excuse for doing what is wrong.
2) These pat-downs are wrong.
If you agree with the first 2 points, it seems to me that making the wrong-doer personally accountable is a reasonable response. Yes, their boss several thousand miles away also needs to be held to account, but so do the people physically executing the searches.
Of course there is. Consider a male patient who has a legitimate medical need to visit a female doctor and have his privates examined. That could possibly be a very uncomfortable situation for the male patient (speaking from personal experience). It is not license to make lewd comments.
The individuals working for minimum wage are not imposing, they're trying to do their jobs. Your beef is with a group of people who allocated millions of funds in a bill passed years ago. Harassing the people hired to implement the bill isn't going to convince many lawmakers of anything.
Their jobs are immoral and should be illegal and yet they still choose to do it. I have no respect nor mercy for such people. Stop using the idiotic "trying to do their job" as an excuse. The WWII war trials proved that you are responsible for what you do. "Just doing my job" is no excuse.
While I agree on the whole, the WWII is a very poor example. It proved that "trying to do their job" may not be a good excuse in some limited circumstance. On top of that, the whole things was on a shaky legal (although maybe not moral IMHO) ground: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Criticism
The trial itself may have had issues but the point remains that you are responsible for what you do. The only possible exception would be if your life or the life of your loved ones were on the line. Otherwise you are directly responsible for what you do.
It must be this way, otherwise "just doing my job" can be used to justify anything. How many bad things have happened because it was someone's job and it never occurred to the person to simply quit?
It doesn't matter that they are "just doing their jobs". They have choosen to work there, they have signed up for what their employer does. If they don't like it then they should quit. If a large percentage of their staff are unhappy and complain, then they might change it
All of the statements like "they're just doing their jobs" are missing the point. So do the rebuttals such as "their job is immoral!". The point is - you need to get as many people as possible to hate the situation, _including_ the TSA workers. The TSA workers should start hating their jobs, you should start hating flying, authorities should start hating dealing with this mess.
Will I contribute to the hate of the body scanners? You bet, I have a wife and planning to make a family. She's been going through medschool, I've been working nonstop for years, without a vacation. We were planning on going to a few places now that she finally has a break from all the studying, but this TSA situation is literally stopping us. This is crossing the line of invasiveness.
And one of these mall cops refuse to pat down the gay guy cos he'll get aids.
The airport is sued for $1.2Gazzillion discrimination lawsuit, it decides to have a quiet word with the politician and suddenly looking tough on terror with security theater doesn't get you as many campaign contributions
It's not about the TSA employees, it's more about making a spectacle of the whole thing to show all the other passengers in line that the whole security theater is stupid. The objective is to make everyone else opt out as well.
It could in turn have the employees boycott the methods, I guess it's tough with the unemployment rate in America, many may not want to make a stand because the job is more important to them at the moment.
TSA employees are pretty easily replaceable at present. Maybe that will change some day, but I really feel like pressure needs to be applied to the politicians, not the grunts.
They're the ones who came up with this. They're the ones who are able to keep themselves from being subjected to this. They're the ones who can put a stop to this.
Having looked at the TSA documents in the EPIC lawsuit, the TSA operational requirements are that the machines must be incapable of storing the images.
Not that this makes me any more OK with subjecting myself (and inflicting upon others) what is essentially a strip search.
The machines are capable of storing images. Straight from the mouth of Gale Rossides, the Deputy Administrator of the TSA [1]. The functionality is supposed to be disabled after an install, but such safeguards seem tenuous at best.
Yes, I agree. Maybe I was unclear above, but what I meant to say was that not being photographed was one of the main motivations I had for consenting to being patted down, despite the discomfort.
I wonder if it's worthwhile taking a video camera (like a Flip video) into the pat down booth and filming the whole thing, asking for their ID beforehand. That'll stop their abuse. Maybe setup a site for it too to submit videos.
I flew a few days ago and opted out of the body scanner. The pat down was definitely very thorough and a little uncomfortable, but I could tell the TSA officer administering it was just as uncomfortable as I was. It held up the line for about 5 minutes because they didn't let anyone through while I was being searched. I never felt intimidated and will continue to opt out, so if that was their intention, they failed.
They were eventually pulled when reports of burns and stunting of bone and cartilage began to emerge.
It's the little vignettes of history like this that remind me how many grand-experiments there are out there using us all as the unwitting test subjects.
Is the Pilot Union’s boycott a kneejerk reaction to the measured warning about potential radiation damage?
Maybe.
But never underestimate how quickly politicos helping to equip our airports with $100 - 200k a pop units will happily ask for forgiveness, not permission.
Citation for shoe stores - http://www.hemonctoday.com/article.aspx?rid=28218