of quartz we all still sulpher
Just going to play devils advocate for a bit here…I’m working atm and bored out of my skull…
Again I have to point out that it DOES sort of depend on what kind of rock we are talking about here. Perhaps you aren’t aware of this, but ‘rocks’ were used quite effectively as hunting weapons and to kill for, oh I don’t know…tens of thousands of years? Hundreds of thousands? Give me a good piece of flint or obsidian and then tell me how harmless a rock can be. A good piece of worked flint or obsidian can cut at least as well as a box cutter…and recall that some mopes used box cutters to take over planes on 9/11. I’m sure you would go back to your magazine if someone drew a knife on the plane as well…yes?
It probably WAS a stupid security nazi who just didn’t have ‘rock’ listed in his or her little black book of acceptable carry on items…or was just feeling their oats and wanting to fuck with the OP’s friend. But no need to go overboard with the ‘rocks is harmless’ gig…they aren’t. As a species we managed to keep ourselves clothed and fed with ‘rocks’ for a large percentage of our history…and we managed to wack each other too with the damn things for at least some of that history. Since we don’t know all the details of this, we can chalk it up as most probably those security nazi’s…I’m just saying lets not go overboard on how ‘stupid’ these guys may have been, or tell each other that ‘rocks’ are not dangerous in all cases.
Just saying (and as I said, I was bored 
)
-XT
So true. I rue being quartz up in it, but I’ll try asbestos I can not to forsterite any more.
The thread is metamorphing! The aggregate is abrasive, of coarse, but mohs of it settles out fine.
Tris
So do you have any concrete suggestions?
As usual, your “analysis,” such as it is, reflects a simplistic, ahistorical, and self-serving attitude.
No-one has complained about taking away the sort of things that might, for example, be used to construct bombs, a la the folks caught in the UK this week. No-one is complaining about security measures that might actually, you know, improve security.
What we are complaining about is stupid “security” policies that give morons like you a warm fuzzy feeling without doing anything to actually make us safer. Taking nail clippers and small rocks lets pinheads point to what a “great job” the administration and its agencies are doing on security, while ignoring the fact that much of this stuff isn’t a security risk in the first place.
Your claim that we are now complaining about the very policies we wanted instituted is disingenuous and stupid, because it assumes that the polices we are complaining about are the policies we called for. I think confiscating nail clippers is an idiotic, pointless exercise that does little except take time, attention, and money away from more important security risks.
Firstly, the chances of a September 11-style attack happening again are so small as to be virtually zero.
The fuckwads in the Bush administration, and their idiot lackeys, have spent the last five years telling us that 9/11 “changed everything.” Well, in once sense at least, they’re right.
9/11 changed forever the way that passengers and authorities will deal with airline hijackings. The former wisdom was that calm cooperation was the best course of action, and that passengers should sit back and do what the hijackers said, while authorities would generally negotiaite in the hopes of a peaceful outcome.
That is no longer an operational strategy. The likelihood of a 9/11-style suicide crash means that passengers no longer have any incentive to sit back and let the hijackers control the plane. Anyone who tries to take over a plane now will be crushed beneath a wave of passengers who know they have nothing to lose, and that they can at least save hundreds or thousands of lives by taking out the hijackers on the plane.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that terrorists won’t try other strategies. And, in fact, the latest plot uncovered in the UK shows precisely that the terrorists realize that 9/11 tactics won’t work again, and that they have to try something else if they want to blow up an airplane. But banning nail clippers or rocks weighing a couple of ounces won’t fix the problem, and pretending that it will is simply wishful thinking.
What has profiling got to do with anything? We’re talking about what people are and are not allowed to bring on planes.
Bravo.
If you can’t take things like shampoo, laptops, books, iPods, and the like on planes, then the terrorists win.
I’m glad I read this thread. I was just about to post a similar rant myself; now I can (mostly) just point to this post.
Happy fun fact, courtesty of this PDF file from the Cato institute:
“Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.”
I eagerly await the War On Deer.
I imagine you’re a moron. You get the latest Robert Jordan book, I get half a brick. Do you really want to trade shots? I’d even let you go first. A book might break your nose. A decent sized rock will break your skull.
Rocks have been used for weapons for a very long time, they are a vast improvement over bare hands. That doesn’t mean the security guy wasn’t a jackass, but don’t act like a rock can’t be a weapon.
annual event in November
What has it got in its pocketses, Precious?
Tris
It’s a man with a rock. I don’t care obsidian or flint. It’s a rock. You cannot take over a plane with a rock.
For that matter, you cannot take over a plane with a box cutter either. Or a machete or sabre if it comes to that.
What can you take over a plane with? With a plane full of people who’ve been trained to take no initiative and passively do whatever they’re told to, even follow ridiculous orders that go against their best interest, in the face of a single person who’s claiming to be in charge.
Three planes were hijacked on September 11. On two of them people did what they were told and the terrorists succeeded. On the third plane the passengers realized they had the power if they chose to use it and resisted and the terrorists failed.
So what happens when you enforce silly rules like the OP described? You’re once again training people to be the kind of sheep who’ll do what they’re told and who’ll sit quietly in their seats while a terrorist flies the plane into a building.
Ahem. Nitpick.
Four planes were hijacked; three succeeded (Trade Center Tower 1; Trade Center Tower 2; Pentagon), and one failed (Pennsylvania).
Probably not. Then again, you probably can’t take over a plane with a knife either. Do you want to allow knives on planes?
I agree…should we allow those things then as well? For that matter, you probably can’t take over a plane with a gun either…if people are willing to sacrifice themselves either for the good of others on the plane or on the ground. After all, only in Holywood do guns have unlimited ammo, right? So…should we allow guns on planes as well?
I agree with where you are going with this. I also don’t think it would work anymore as people with nothing to lose aren’t likely to go along sheeplike anymore.
My POINT was that all of you claiming a rock is universally harmless are, simply put, wrong. I’m not saying the security folks weren’t security nazi’s with a bug up their ass…obviously they were. But ‘rocks’ CAN be deadly weapons…at least as much as a knife. If they are the right kinds of rocks that is (as I pointed out). And a ‘rock’ you could put in your pocket COULD potentially be as deadly a weapon as a knife you could fit into your pocket. I never said that a knife (or rock) would be overly useful in todays attitude in taking over a plane.
-XT
Or who will placidly accept whatever the current Administration tells them is “for their own good.” Sheep are for shearing, what we need is to get back to a nation of lions.
Small quibble: There are no deadly weapons, only deadly people.
Nitpicker! Ok, conceeded. A razor sharp rock is just a razor sharp rock…unless its in the hands of someone who has the disposition of using said razor sharp rock on someone else with the intent to do harm.
Ok?
-XT
I have a great idea of how to smugle a deadly weapon into a plane; you board it with nothing at all, just plain clothes; in mid flight you go into the bathroom and proceed to rip off your own leg (left or right, that´s your choice), knaw out all the flesh and pick up your femur to wield it as a club and submit the passengers and crew to your evil purposes.
Granted, it may be messy, and have a little negative effect on your gait; but bones have been used since the beggining of time as weapons.
N.B: to the fine folks at the NSA, the paragraph above is intended as sarcasm.
Oh, this is just horseshit.
I like you, silenus, despite the fact that I often disagree with you. (Why does your name conjure up the vague image of a centaur for me? Was there a centaur named silenus, or is it the voices again…) But this old chestnut is just that. A fully loaded UZI can be a huge danger in the hands of a totally non-homicidal six-year-old.
What I *will * grant you is the reverse or adverse or converse or one of those -verse terms ( :smack: ), that some people are deadly no matter what weapons they have. Or don’t have.