Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

toshok:

Flying out of Logan was annoying yesterday. I was grumpy having to fly for a total of 6 hours with no water other than what I could squeeze out of the stewardesses, which wasn't much. I felt like asking the TSA people (and the people on the plane) what the point of tossing out water was - whether they thought it was actually making any of us safer. But I would imagine asking such a question would get me sent to a little room where men would come in and ask me why I hate America and/or ban me from flying.

In that case who are the terrorist? What you describe is a group of people with some power that makes you afraid of doing something you have rights about. America is often described as the country of freedom, but what you describe make it the country of fear.

I had wishes I was traveling more, but recent events made me not be willing to. I'm not afraid that a plane be blown up in the air. I'm afraid that my freedom and rights be violated in the name of a security theater, by a bunch of rent a cops to whom a lot of power have been given. And statistically, I have more chance to be involved in a deadly car accident while commuting to work than in an airplane crash.

A comic in Le Devoir, a newspaper in Québec, describe pretty well the paranoia in air transport.

Translation:

In an airport near you...

The security officer ask:

Have you eaten in the last 24 hrs?

I wished I was travelling more. But clearly what is happening, ie the terror, won't make me enjoy flying.