Meant to publish this a while back - the "rooster tail" from the anniversary of construction at Lucky Peak Dam. The controllers don't let the display run so often these days, so it was as well to get the picture while it could be gotten.
30.7.05
Boise visit
Meant to publish this a while back - the "rooster tail" from the anniversary of construction at Lucky Peak Dam. The controllers don't let the display run so often these days, so it was as well to get the picture while it could be gotten.
Let 'em go
Word of a 30% cut in screeners at Portland airport PDX has thrown into a tizzy a lot of people who should know better. It may have the unfortunate effect, as the Oregonian notes, of slowing down traffic through the facility. But will it reduce security? Not significantly; and for that matter, you could scrap the whole passenger screening system as it is now, and not impair real security by much.
"Security" as it now exists is a hideous mishmash of idiocy. Grandmothers in their 80s are asked to remove their shoes to search for bombs. Screeners - not all certainly, but too many of them - are encouraged to act like little tin gods while getting little training on effective counter measures to smuggling. And the smugglers get more clever: You have a machine that searches for materials A and B - they'll switch to variety C. It becomes an elaborate game of hide and seek. And while time and money is wasted on passenger searches, little baggage gets seriously checked, even through x-rays.
There are better ways of doing things - many better ways. Four measures alone could provide security that would be more more than ample:
Secure the cockpit, and train personnel there in means of combatting an assault. (Some arms access might be a reasonable step, too.)
Put marshals on most or all commercial flights. A well-trained marshal could stop most or all incidents (including the non-terrorist kind, like air rage events) before they get out of hand.
Alter plane control systems so ground control can take them over in case of an emergency.
Make a serious effort to screen baggage by x-ray.
Those steps ought to be more than sufficient for reasonable security on plane flights. They are not intrusive and they would not turn our airports into the outlets of totalitarianism they have become.
"Security" as it now exists is a hideous mishmash of idiocy. Grandmothers in their 80s are asked to remove their shoes to search for bombs. Screeners - not all certainly, but too many of them - are encouraged to act like little tin gods while getting little training on effective counter measures to smuggling. And the smugglers get more clever: You have a machine that searches for materials A and B - they'll switch to variety C. It becomes an elaborate game of hide and seek. And while time and money is wasted on passenger searches, little baggage gets seriously checked, even through x-rays.
There are better ways of doing things - many better ways. Four measures alone could provide security that would be more more than ample:
Secure the cockpit, and train personnel there in means of combatting an assault. (Some arms access might be a reasonable step, too.)
Put marshals on most or all commercial flights. A well-trained marshal could stop most or all incidents (including the non-terrorist kind, like air rage events) before they get out of hand.
Alter plane control systems so ground control can take them over in case of an emergency.
Make a serious effort to screen baggage by x-ray.
Those steps ought to be more than sufficient for reasonable security on plane flights. They are not intrusive and they would not turn our airports into the outlets of totalitarianism they have become.
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