Yeah, he he. Some friends of mine thought of a few good pranks to play regarding the security measures, but they decided not to in the end. Someone in the administration might go berserk and demand punishment of some sort. However, as far as I know, there’s no policy regarding what to do with professors who play pranks. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I’m a foreign student attending college in the USA. When I was flying back for the beginning of the school year, there was some administrative snafu with the airline and they bumped me up from coach to business class. 
In coach, this airline which shall be unnamed, provides a plastic tray, plastic cups and plastic cutlery. In business class, however, the airline provides real glass, real china, and a metal fork.
What’s to stop a terrorist’s meal from “sliding” during a bout of turbulence? A shard of glass or porcelain, or even a metal fork, could do plenty of damage. :eek:
As for the breast milk fiasco… I dare the next nursing woman going through JFK to politely ask the guard to [censored] and drink it! 
Sorry if this has been mentioned already. In the comics several months ago, there was one (in Bizarro, or Pardon My Planet, maybe?) that showed a bunch of people on an airplane, who have presumably been there for a few hours. The stewardess comes down the aisle as an announcement is heard, saying “It’s been a good 40 minutes since we checked everyone’s IDs, so our flight attendants will be coming around to you now. Please have your ID ready when they come. Thank you.”
Ridiculous.
Since this has been bumped, I’ll share my favorite experience.
I worked at a company that decided to implement “security” by compelling visitors to wear badges that said “Visitor” while not compelling the employees to wear any ID. Day visitors (vendors, etc.) were issued little cardboard badges. Contractors were issued plastic badges (without photos).
The rule was that if an employee saw a visitor in a strange place, they were to check out the visitor.
Of course, the way to stop being a visitor was to take off the badge. Then one looked just like any other employee and were free from questioning. (This was especially true for contractors: several of us were former employees brought back for our expertise and several other contractors were brought on for long projects and eventually established more seniority than the people for whom they worked. We all looked so familiar, that I was actually asked in meetings on two occasions with “Why are you wearing a vistor’s badge? Aren’t you an employee?”)
I work at a Federal facility with a large circle drive in front. When we go to code orange security blocks off the circle drive with orange plastic traffic cones. 
My brother’s school decided the best way to combat terrorism and ensure security was to shut down all of the elevators on campus for a month after 11 Sept.
No biggie, except that he had busted both of the big bones between his knee and his ankle in a soccer accident the previous day, so had to stumble up and down the stairs to and from class with the bulky apparatus that held both ends of his leg in place and crutches, while doped up on prescription painkillers.
But at least terrorists didn’t gain control of the school’s elevators.
I have an office at a government facility. We have always had photo ID badges that had to be shown to the security guard upon entering the building for the first time each day and signing in. After 9/11, the badge policy was amended to require that you show your ID each and every time you walk into the building (e.g., after lunch or a coffee run), even though you’re already signed in and the guard knows you by name. If for some reason you forgot your badge when you went to lunch, you have to have someone else come and sign you in as if you were a visitor.
I will also note that the American Museum of Natural History requires all vehicles going into the underground parking lot to stop for an inspection of the trunk or cargo area. I’ve also occasionally seen the guards use those mirrors to check underneath cars as well. I never thought the dinosaurs were in danger of terrorist attack, but hey, what do I know?
For a while they put on extra security at the road entrance to Baltimore-Washington International airport (BWI). This security consisted of state police cars sitting at the kerb of the entry road and flagging down random motorists for car inspections.
I got pulled over at one of these checkpoints. The officer asked me why i was going to the airport. I said that i was going to catch a plane. He asked if i minded if he had a look in the car.
Now, as a general rule i firmly believe in denying access to my property to any officer who doesn’t have Reasonable Articulable Suspicion or Probable Cause, but i wasn’t sure if the new PATRIOT (ha ha) Act allowed the police to circumvent the old RAS/PC barriers. Also, having nothing to hide, and needing to get to the airport, i decided to just let him go ahead.
But here’s where it gets silly. They stop random people and ask if they can search your car, but having succeeded in delaying and annoying you, they then perform the most perfunctory and useless security check that i’ve ever seen.
He shone his torch in through the windows to look at the back seat of the car. Then he asked me to pop the trunk. Inside the trunk was my luggage, consisting of a large black suitcase. Seeing that there was nothing else in there, he shut the trunk and allowed me to proceed.
What the fuck? That suitcase is big enough to hold several dozen handguns, sawn-off shotguns, and small machine guns. If you’re choice of weapons were explosives, it could hold enough make a pretty damn big blast. And as for chemical or biological agents, you could probably fit enough in that suitcase to kill half the people on the globe.
Now, of course, all i carry when i travel is boring stuff like my clothes and my shaving kit and some books to read, so i was glad that he didn’t go through my luggage. But i really don’t understand the point of these security checkpoints if they just allow people with large, unopened bags to go through without a second thought. I think the checkpoints themselves are just to make the public feel better that something, anything, is being done.
We recently got picture ID badges with electronic strips on them at the office, and must wear them on lanyards around our necks at all times.
Of course, there are 8 workers in the office, and no card-secured doors. You gotta hand it to our manager, who leads by example by wearing his all the time.
In the mid-80s I worked in the building next door to the Soviet Embassy on 16th St. When President Gorbachev visited, they closed off the entire block to foot and vehicle traffic.
I was able to walk through the police lines with a driver’s license, the words, “I work in the building right there” and a finger-point. I know my name was submitted to the Secret Service for a background check by my company, but the cops on the perimeter had no list fto check me against, and there was no radio call to a higher authority. This happened every day for about a week.
A bomb dog did go through our building daily. I wonder if bomb dogs pick up firearms, cause if I’d had one and been willing to be captured or killed (oh yeah, and been a homicidal maniac, which I’m not), there was a brief moment where I had a pretty good shot at killing him. I was alone in a corner meeting room on the 3rd floor when he came out a door two a limo. I was maybe 30-40 feet from him, most of that distance vertical, and looking through a thixk tinted window. Fortunately for world history, I Just Said No to killing a head of state, 
HEY, DON’T YOU TOUCH MY MYSTERY SPOT!
But seriously,
My company checks picture ID cards. They did it before 9/11. I’m pretty sure it’s to prevent outsiders or former employees from walking randomly through the buildings. It’s a big company, nobody could possibly know everyone who works there.
The picture ID cards always had attached mag units. You swiped these against a reader outside the building so you could get in on the weekends.
After 9/11, they activated the security doors on each floor of the building so you can only get onto a floor if you have your card. This is mostly a pain in the hindquarters; if you forget your badge you can pass the entrance security (they use your employee number to look up your picture) but then you have to get past the doors on your floor! You have to (and I am not making this up) knock on the door and hope someone hears you.
A more recent and puzzling innovation: Now they have a mag reader right next to the ground floor security guard! You have to show your ID card to the guard and pass your card over the reader! Sometimes the guard checks your picture, sometimes doesn’t, depends on the guard.
Hmmm… :rolleyes:
Heh heh… you could set off a nuclear bomb at Casa de Fruita and the net result would be a cow somewhere near Salinas cocking it head for a second.
Damn, this thread is making me want to go to the Mystery Spot again. Wonder if that cute guide is still there…