I’m on the road with my daughter during spring break visiting colleges she might attend in the fall of ’12. We’re having a good time together, despite the non-spring weather we’re encountering (nothing makes a college campus seem more dreary than the wind whipping cold rain and snow into your face, particularly when we didn’t […]
Richard Dawkins on the stupidity of airport security screening, and the implacability of authorities who hew to the rulebook… I’m writing this on a plane, having just passed through Security at Heathrow airport. An obviously nice young mother was distraught because she wasn’t allowed to take on board a tub of ointment for her little […]
Thirteen months ago, I brought you my interview with James Randi about a military fraud that was costing human lives. It had to do with bogus bomb-detecting equipment sold to security forces in Iraq, to the tune of $85 million despite the fact that the devices were useless. They were in essence nothing more than […]
Garry Trudeau was giving a speech recently to promote the 40th-anniversary compilation of “Doonesbury” strips, and told a story about the difficulties his syndicator had in the early days getting some newspapers to carry the comic. It seemed that the older generation of editors and publishers couldn’t relate to what he was drawing and writing, […]
If you’ve flown anywhere in the last few years, you’ve seen the signs at the checkpoints that warn you against making jokes about security. Apparently, those rules don’t apply if you’re a TSA officer, in which case you can “prank” passengers by pretending to find a bag of cocaine in their luggage. Worse, other TSA […]
I’ve been going through security screening right here in this line for five years and never blown up an airplane, broken any laws, made any threats, or had a government agent call my boss in Houston. And you guys have never tried to touch me or see me naked that whole time. But, if that’s […]