Friam

More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Classic

List

Threaded

10 messages Options

plissaman

More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity. Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective? It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner. But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment. In particular on two matters. It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners. I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.

If correct this is pretty awful news.

The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight. If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.

In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost. So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Russell Gonnering

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

<base href="x-msg://31/">Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

[hidden email]

www.emergenthealth.net

On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Pamela McCorduck

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

In reply to this post by plissaman

As a New Yorker, this has been an interesting thread to read. A well-timed subway bomb--conventional, firebomb, or poison bomb, as in Tokyo a decade or so ago--could wreak much more damage in terms of people it affects, than anything that you can do with a single plane. I do not notice anyone standing up for backscatter scanners (or any other kind) at every subway entrance.

This could imply that (a) no one cares how many New Yorkers go down in an attack; they're all left-leaning loudmouths anyway, or (b) it would be difficult to persuade New Yorkers that this was for their own safety, and anyway, the costs would be prohibitive, or (c) this is all about protecting airplanes, not the lives of human passengers, or (d) the airport stuff is the theater we all suspected and plays better for most of the country than a genuine program of protection in the subways, or (e) New York authorities, recognizing how lame HSA was from the beginning, put together their own intelligence unit (this is true) and we *are* being as well-protected as is reasonably possible without the theater.

I honestly don't know.

That we follow El Al's procedures seems to be a problem of scaling up--it works for a small country like Israel, not so well for a large, heterogeneous country like ours.

On Nov 21, 2010, at 3:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there....Squares after squares flame, set up and cut into the ether: Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will."

			Ezra Pound

Owen Densmore

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Administrator

In reply to this post by Russell Gonnering

I'd love to know what the risk-benifit trade off is. Do we harass 10^6 people at a cost of $10^9 for one discovery of note, one which would stop an air-bomb?

As I understand it, the best info is not scanners etc but community members reporting suspicious behavior. Maybe we should ask help from the Islamic community? I realize they feel victimized, but throw the same $$ at that sort of program would likely create better results.

The last "event", the package bomb, was not meant to destroy the aircraft was it? I think there were two packages sent to "enemy" land addresses.

To tell the truth, I think I'm willing to risk it by tossing the scanners etc, using sensible (and PC incorrect) social methods, and hope the odds are not as bad as people think.

-- Owen

On Nov 21, 2010, at 1:57 PM, Russell Gonnering wrote:

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3
Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ
[hidden email]
www.emergenthealth.net

<PastedGraphic-3.tiff>
On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Parks, Raymond

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Are we not scientists, engineers, mathematician, or interested inthose fields? What is the best measure of effectiveness here? How about bombs caught per billion dollars? Or bombs caught per billion passenger hours wasted? By either measure, TSA has a bIg fat zero. All of the bombs caught have come from passenger intervention or intelligence actions. With the exception of some early bomb plots stopped after enhanced interrogation, the remaining intelligence catches have been from walk-ins, my conclusion - train and arm passengers and buy walk-ins.

Ray Parks

P.S. The same logic applies to clearance investigations and the Box.

From: Owen Densmore [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 02:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

I'd love to know what the risk-benifit trade off is. Do we harass 10^6 people at a cost of $10^9 for one discovery of note, one which would stop an air-bomb?

The last "event", the package bomb, was not meant to destroy the aircraft was it? I think there were two packages sent to "enemy" land addresses.

To tell the truth, I think I'm willing to risk it by tossing the scanners etc, using sensible (and PC incorrect) social methods, and hope the odds are not as bad as people think.

-- Owen

On Nov 21, 2010, at 1:57 PM, Russell Gonnering wrote:

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3
Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ
[hidden email]
www.emergenthealth.net

<PastedGraphic-3.tiff>
On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Carl Tollander

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Do we harass 10^6 people at a cost of $10^9 for one discovery of note, one which would stop an air-bomb?

Isn't that the terrorist's victory condition? If so, they don't need to blow anything up anymore; it's way more cost-effective for them to just publicly fail periodically.

Carl

On 11/21/10 2:31 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

Are we not scientists, engineers, mathematician, or interested inthose fields? What is the best measure of effectiveness here? How about bombs caught per billion dollars? Or bombs caught per billion passenger hours wasted? By either measure, TSA has a bIg fat zero. All of the bombs caught have come from passenger intervention or intelligence actions. With the exception of some early bomb plots stopped after enhanced interrogation, the remaining intelligence catches have been from walk-ins, my conclusion - train and arm passengers and buy walk-ins.

Ray Parks

P.S. The same logic applies to clearance investigations and the Box.

From: Owen Densmore [[hidden email]]
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 02:16 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

I'd love to know what the risk-benifit trade off is. Do we harass 10^6 people at a cost of $10^9 for one discovery of note, one which would stop an air-bomb?

As I understand it, the best info is not scanners etc but community members reporting suspicious behavior. Maybe we should ask help from the Islamic community? I realize they feel victimized, but throw the same $$ at that sort of program would likely create better results.

The last "event", the package bomb, was not meant to destroy the aircraft was it? I think there were two packages sent to "enemy" land addresses.

To tell the truth, I think I'm willing to risk it by tossing the scanners etc, using sensible (and PC incorrect) social methods, and hope the odds are not as bad as people think.

   -- Owen

On Nov 21, 2010, at 1:57 PM, Russell Gonnering wrote:

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

[hidden email]

www.emergenthealth.net

<PastedGraphic-3.tiff>

On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.

If correct this is pretty awful news.

The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.

In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

In reply to this post by plissaman

Thanks, Peter.

I think you are right about this.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 1:34 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

If correct this is pretty awful news.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
<a href="tel:(505)983-7728">tel:(505)983-7728

Nick Thompson

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

In reply to this post by Russell Gonnering

Russell,

I don’t think profiling needs to be politically incorrect.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Gonnering
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 1:58 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

[hidden email]

www.emergenthealth.net

On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

If correct this is pretty awful news.

Eric Charles

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

In reply to this post by Russell Gonnering

Profiling, in the traditional sense is always politically incorrect, and should remain that way. Targeted searches, as in, a no-fly list, is not profiling, and makes perfect sense. Of course, given that we can't even get that right.

Frankly, if we were profiling, it would be based on whether or not someone is Muslim, not whether they are Semitic. (Don't forget, Muslim's and Jew's are both children of Shem, who descended off of the ark and settled in the desert lands.) But that is hard: How do you tell whether someone is Muslim? Alright, I guess we are back to skin color, the full beard, and nose structure. Oh wait, no we aren't! Given that several of the world's most wanted terrorists are White, American-born Muslims... well... any attempt at profiling should be sure to also focus on white people with facial hair. At the least, we will catch Evil William Shatner if he ever tries to board a plane. Though these days Evil Bill he seems more intent on stopping tourists from saving money than on taking over a airship.

The truth is that security of this type, cannot possibly stop a serious, professional terrorist threat. You can take away all the knives you want from people at the entry gate, and they can just pick up a new one at any of the full-service restaurants inside. And nobody but the Mythbusters would doubt that McGyver could make a perfectly good bomb out of ingredients easily obtained on the other side of the security gates, and the Mythbusters would only do it for the sake of argument. At best, the scanners act as idiot deterrence. Even that is pretty ironic, as all evidence shows the idiots can't blow up a plane anyway, and we really like the intel we get when they try, fail, and get caught.

The obviousness of the security's inefficiency should be the major point of discussion. We don't need investigations to prove it. Just walk through security, look around, and think of all the ways you could get bomb components if you had 3 years to set up the event and a few million dollars to spend getting it done. I would rather have personal freedom and a risk of terrorist threat than ridiculous restrictions on my freedom, absurd invasions of privacy, and the same exact risk of terrorist threat.

Everyone should go rent Brazil and watch it a few dozen times. That is where we are headed. While I often give that same advice regardless of the conversation, it is finally relevant advice this time!

Eric

P.S. Nick, I'm surprised you don't bring up the thousands of college students who willingly were photographed in the nude through the early part of the 20th century. They did it merely for the good of *Science!*. Good Harvard Men, among others. I imagine they would have agreed to a cavity search if they thought security was on the line.

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 05:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russell,

I don’t think profiling needs to be politically incorrect.

N

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Gonnering
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 1:58 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

rsgonnering1@...

<a href="http://www.emergenthealth.net" onclick="window.open('http://www.emergenthealth.net');return false;">www.emergenthealth.net

<img id="e294f4f0-e0a0-4631-8f64-0f1a2cc09cf1" src="x-msg://31/get_file.cgi?dir=attach&fname=image001.png" border="0" width="60" height="60">

On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, plissaman@... wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.

If correct this is pretty awful news.

The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.

In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at <a href="http://www.friam.org" onclick="window.open('http://www.friam.org');return false;">http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

Carl Tollander

Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

And what will be in that profile? The bemused smile, the desperate poker face, the jaded look of resignation, perhaps any attempt at humor? Perhaps you did not pay your credit card bill this month, or are behind in your party dues? Maybe you know too much about spiders, or developmental biology?

The cool thing, from the (imagined) terrorists perspective, is that the profile criteria must be kept secret, so no one will ever know why they have been more invasively searched. It will appear completely arbitrary to the average person and thus, in this climate, increasingly political.

You prevent terror by not being terrorized.

C

On 11/21/10 3:19 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

<base href="x-msg://31/">

Russell,

I don’t think profiling needs to be politically incorrect.

N

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Gonnering
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 1:58 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then? What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

[hidden email]

www.emergenthealth.net

On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.

If correct this is pretty awful news.

The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.

In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:%28505%29983-7728">tel:(505)983-7728

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org