(I'm most likely going to die sooner than you.) If you travel on a plane, you increase your chances of dying, even though (as we are always reminded) it's still - statistically speaking - the safest form of travel. So, I'll just say what I say to myself all the time: Look, you're going to die. (OK, that last one is a very distant second, but I see people getting all self-righteous about driving their low-emission vehicles and recycling their trash (as do I), then hypocritically jetting off for business and pleasure without a care for the consequences.) and then sits on the tarmac for minutes or hours) and 2) it's one of the biggest contributors to air pollution and global warming. I don't want to fly because: 1) all the waiting in line and suffocating on board and being treated like shit by the airline and its employees is so unpleasant (I don't care what the FAA says, a flight is not "on-time" when it leaves the gate or lands on the runway. I will do anything I can to avoid flying - not because I've ever been afraid of flying, or because I'm more concerned about the illusion of "security," or because I'm freaked that someone will feel my junk through my clothing (nobody's ever grabbed it, but it doesn't go halfway down my thigh, either - sorry, Clarence Thomas). I have to get the TSA putdown - aka the dreaded "male assist" - every time I fly. I'm even less tolerant of airline passengers' squeamishness now that I have a pacemaker/defibrillator running my heart. I'd forgotten I had read Schneier's book "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World" back in 2003, when I was doing a lot of reading about fear and risk during America's disgraceful (and evidently endlessly self-renewing) post-9/11 freakout. This isn't security it's security theater. If we get it wrong, we've wasted our money. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. It's that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. It's not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins. This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces - the level of magical thinking here is amazing - and they're going to do something else. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn't have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters.
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