Last time I flew (Columbus OH to Chicago, a seething hotbed of terrorist activity), I almost had my tweezers confiscated. :rolleyes:
Tweezers. After all, I could have forced the plane to the ground with the threat of “I’ll give you UNFLATTERING EYEBROWS!”
I work for a very large corp. The headquarters of several divisions (all of which are household names) is across the freeway from my office.
I went there Friday to pickup some items. In the lobby is a desk with two people, a receptionist and a security guard. both are women who will never see 50 again. On the desk is a sign in register. As I am signing in I ask if anyone every reads this thing. No was the response. I told them that if anything ever did happen in the building, someone would go back through the log and find that they had signed in Osama bin Ladin. they both laughed and agreed with me. I felt so much safer after that.
During the last Code Orange, a police officer sat parked in a cruiser outside the Zion, Illinois nuclear power plant 24 hours a day. Because terrorists always take the front entrance, ignoring a half mile of unguarded fence line.
A couple of weeks have passed and I think this thread still has a little more juice in it. Here’s a bump!
My badging hell has gotten worse. Now I’m required to show may badge to the guard in the lobby. This is the same lobby that you get into by badging in the front door (where they can see you through the all glass entrance way). Three steps past the security desk and badge in through the turnstiles. Five more steps takes you to the elevator where there is another guard.
Now… How does me showing the guard my badge increase security? I just used the damn thing to get through two checkpoints. You were watching me the whole time and saw my badge then. Why must I stop and make a point to show it to you? Hell, it’s not like you’re actually looking at the damn thing when I present it. You just give it a glance. Why can’t you make up your minds on which freakin guard you want me to show it to? Is it the one behind the desk? Or the one by the elevators?
ARGHH!! You guys are driving me nuts with all this nonsense!
I went to a wedding at the Naval Academy a couple weeks ago. We walked onto Academy grounds. They required us to show ID’s, but they didn’t write down our names, didn’t search our bags, or anything. Admittedly, the only bag we had was my girlfriend’s giant purse, and she had shown a Defense Dept. ID (she’s a civilian employee), but it still seems silly. Like a terrorist would be unable to procure a driver’s license.
There is a catalog. I know its is sad, but true. They order the stuff in bulk.
My dorm and the dorm across the street are in an arrangement something like this:
D | D
Where D is a dorm and the horizontal/vertical lines are streets.
The university decided to close the vertical street In Order To Prevent Terrorism. They blocked the top end off with a security van. And the bottom end off with TRAFFIC CONES. The horizontal streets are still open.
Basically, it annoys the pizza people.
:rolleyes:
I’d say the “ludicrous” category has a strong contender in Chicago’s Mayor Daley – under cover of darkness, he sent in bulldozers to tear up the runway at Meigs Field (General Aviation airport that at one point he’d promised to keep open until at least 2006).
Naturally, he mentioned security as an important reason for this. Presumably, all those planes were just itching to have a go at the Chicago skyline, and now will have to use airports 20 to 30 miles away, which should deter them from anything improper.
Oh, gosh… do I say something? Do I not say something?
I am a pilot. I live next to one of those other airports 20 miles away. I work in the Loop.
YES IT’S FREAKING RIDICULOUS!!!
grumble grumble grumble… don’t get me started…
I take the ferry between Northern Ireland and Scotland a lot. Virtually always on a bus with about 50 other people. For a while after 9/11 the security folks on the Scotland side were apparently supposed to search about six people per bus. So they would get on the bus and ask for six volunteers to be searched.
I can’t decide whether :smack: or :rolleyes: is more appropriate here.
I can add one to the list of inane security checks at airports.
Palm Beach International (a hotbed of terrorism if ever there was one) is now doing random checks on cars. So naturally, my boyfriend and I get stopped and the geezer who’s in charge of the checks asks to look in the trunk. Now, this is a '79 Cadillac Sedan deVille (not a tiny car) and both the backseat and the truck are completely full of… stuff. The “security” guy peers into the trunk for about three seconds and sends us on our way. For all he knew, Osama bin Laden could’ve been hiding under all that shite.
McMaster!!!
One thing I know- I have 17 fused vertabrae- fused with titanuium rods, pins, hooks, etc. I’ve never once set off a detector, even when wanded. Yikes!
A few weeks ago I went to Harras Cherokee casino in the middle of bumfuck, NC (I mean, you gotta drive through the damned mountains to get there). All of the oldies coming in (and this was on a Wednesday afternoon) had to open up purses and bags so the security people could glance inside (in the darkness of the casino) and wave them in. You could park anywhere, though- apparently they were just worried about what grandma has in her pocketbook, not what you could carry in a car. Stupid.
They have two armed-to-the-teeth soldiers guarding the Hicksville LIRR station. I think they are there to spot the bad guys with the word “terrorist” tatooed on their foreheads who want to blow up the godforsaken parking lot of a community that is Hicksville.
Carnival Cruise Lines no longer lets you bring any beverages aboard, not even bottled water. I’m not sure if it’s for security reasons or a way to sell more drinks to the passengers.
Some people in my office have started wearing identification cards on a lanyard.
We’re in Montana, even in the capitol city, but WTF? A terrorist is going to infiltrate the Montana department of government and . . .? Increase bureacuracy?
BWAHAHAHAHA!
We have five doors on our building, all unlocked, with no security staff. The building is a maze of veal pens and hidden corners - I generally help 2-3 people find their way out of the building per week. We’re about as much of a terrorist target as the Two Dot bar. (Two Dot, Montana = 1 bar, 2 houses, 4 dogs.)
I’ve publicly announced that I’ll start wearing ID just as soon as someone wearing a gun and a uniform asks to see it.
And points the gun at me.
We get an email every week or so telling us about the measures the university is taking to prevent terrorism.
The latest one said that if we go to code red, we should still go to class. The only exception to this rule; however, is if the campus has been attacked with chemical or biological weapons. Then we’re supposed to go to the basketball arena.
Sorry, I missed this the first time around.
Basically there’s a mountain that supposedly has a point on it that forces matter away from it. The laws of gravity don’t apply, blah blah blah. It’s a neat little destination, cheap, and not too far out of town, but I think the average GQ/GD resident would be too skeptical to enjoy it. The tour guide was pleasantly cheesy, though. And really really cute.
Past threads on it.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=138137
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=82520
And, to keep with the OP, they do not yet send you through the metal detector at the Mystery Spot. Must be because of the mysterious force.
My school has no less than 20 (probably more) doors, 1600 students, several hundred teachers, three courtyards, 7-9 wings (depending on how you count), six stairways, and four different levels (built kind of into a hill). We’re a pretty big, rambling building. The halls are a mess between classes, especially in one intersection where, through a feat of astounding architectural talen, four wings intersect.
A while ago, the brilliant administrative minds said that they were going to keep the doors (other than the front door right by the main office) locked during the day. Thus, students and teachers could no longer get to class by walking outside. 1600 students, about 300 teachers/faculty members, in a very limited space.
Policy cancelled the next day.
There’s also the brilliant idea of having teachers need to wear photo ID at all times. Only: half the teachers just don’t, and it’s a high school. Because everyone can tell the difference between, say, a mature-looking senior in HS and an evil terrorist who, for some reason, wishes to wreck havoc within a suburban high school in New Jersey.