Hijackers and Body Scanners

Whenever some goober gets the itch to blow up an airplane there is a small flare of public interest in keeping the public safe without much thought to the consequences.

After the attempted blowing up of a plane by a moron over Christmas via an explosive banana hammock, the news stations were all abuzz over ways to thwart terrorists in our planes. Nevermind that most of our security enhancements added to airport security amounted to little more than feel-good measures that added a ton of hassle for innocent people and very little actual effectiveness (ask Bruce Schneier) in preventing attacks.

The latest push I've seen in the news is for the deployment of full-body scanners. A quick Google turns up a number of articles on them, but this was the first time I heard our "local news" covering the idea in one of their typical short-attention-span-friendly broadcasts.

They seem like a wonderful solution. Basically using backscatter X-ray technology you can see through someone's clothes, highlighting hidden objects. They also let the TSA agents see breast and penis implants, your genitalia, and essentially remove anything that before resembled modesty or personal privacy.

More effective than pat-downs? Yes, probably they are.

Preferred over pat-downs? That's probably a personal question. Would you rather have a "freedom grope" or a minimum wage barely trained McGoober staring at your nubbins?

The TSA swears that the images aren't kept; they're erased in a short amount of time. Oddly enough, nipple slips and upskirt glances aren't visible after a short amount of time as well, but there's nonetheless a thrill from those who get to see these passing slips of modesty and for most of those who were on the slip-per side of the equation the embarrassment doesn't get conveniently erased so quickly.

Does the TSA promise that leering glances and/or smirks are going to be suppressed?  Does the TSA mind a nice fat lawsuit when some monkey behind the controls snaps a quick picture with a camera phone and circulates the picture online of the MILF that just went through the line? Or if another passenger gets the image on their camera? And what protection is there for the passenger's privacy? My doctor has seen my gross nudity (lose a lot of weight, you'll know what I mean). My wife's had doctors see her give birth, and she has doctors that explore her nether regions on a scheduled basis with a duck-billed device that I won't pretend to understand. But the doctors and nurses we rely on for care are trusted not to abuse their positions. I don't get that feeling from TSA agents that are hardly considered elite law enforcement personnel. I often worry they're one step above mall security guards in terms of training and professionalism or are recruited from Craigs List.

My parting thought to the news story...my daughter is underage and nearly legal. My son is DEFINITELY underage. What's to keep some pervert from leering at her nether regions as one of my kids go through security? It's that tantamount to child porn? Sounds to me like they're saying child pornography is okay for the government to produce but for everyone else it's wrong. I'd like to know how they're keeping perverts from going through their McTraining program just to get their jollies staring at young T&A in the airport, seeing as they have such fulfilling and upwardly mobile professional options working in those positions.

Hearing these arguments the government entities swore that they would be putting some software graphic-scrambling magic in so that you don't have your junk or nethers necessarily clear in the images. So...doesn't that defeat the purpose of the scan? Shove some of your magic exploding powder up the canal or tape it to your love stick and it'll just be part of a blurred algorithm on the screen (assuming this is actually done, or is actually effective).

I'm not entirely comfortable with this crap anymore. Air travel is becoming a bigger and bigger hassle, and now I have some half-trained halfwits staring at my wiener just to prove that I am allowed to get on a plane. I'm not innocent until proven guilty. I'm a cog at the mercy of a group of ineffectual thugs who get their jollies showing they have power over people who really are trying to get from point A to point B. The vast majority of people are innocent, but thanks to a few goobers that committed a heinous act, the innocent must suffer at the hands of knee-jerk reactions on behalf of the government trying to pretend they're actually making a difference with feel-good measures. The real question is how much more of this are we, the traveling public, going to accept before we give up on the idea that we are a country that values freedoms and privacy?

Reason for the Season

My wife and I, in a measure to help appease one (both?) of the traditions of the parents, make a trip to my parent's church one week near Christmas. Usually it's the week before the Christmas Eve service, but this year we went the year after.

I am not religious. This may shock you. As such, I don't normally dress up very fancy (clean clothes are fine, thank you...if a church has standards about who they let in, then they're not very Christian, are they?) and I usually keep to myself so as to not be driven nuts by the habits of other people around me and by listening to what I have concluded tend to be propaganda more than an educational sermon.

Yes, other people's habits. Chomping gum like a valley girl drives me nuts too. It's a wiring thing in my head.

The thing that really compelled me to write this was that the minister went over "what is the real reason for the season." Churches really lucked out on having "reason" and "season" rhyme. It helps make ignorance sound clever.

I refrained from saying anything, but Christ is not the "reason for the season". It's the reason for Christmas, but Christmas itself has other origins.

I have run into this time and time again, and every time the people spouting this stuff listen only to what they want to hear. Christmas is not the day Christ was born. Christmas, miraculously, happened to be placed in a pagan holiday to usurp the non-Christians.

Excerpted from Wikipedia: 
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Main article: Sol Invictus

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti means "the birthday of the unconquered Sun." The use of the title Sol Invictus allowed several solar deities to be worshipped collectively, including Elah-Gabal, a Syrian sun god; Sol, the god of Emperor Aurelian; and Mithras, a soldiers' god of Persian origin.^[53] Emperor Elagabalus (218–222^[ambiguous]) introduced the festival, and it reached the height of its popularity under Aurelian, who promoted it as an empire-wide holiday.^[54] This day had previously been dedicated to Bacchus, in the Brumalia festival. Bruma being Latin for "shortest day."^[55]
The festival was placed on the date of the solstice because this was on this day that the Sun reversed its southward retreat and proved itself to be "unconquered." Several early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus.^[6] "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born...Christ should be born", Cyprian wrote.^[6] John Chrysostom also commented on the connection: "They call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . .?"^[6] 
Winter festivals

Main article: List of winter festivals

A winter festival was the most popular festival of the year in many cultures. Reasons included the fact that less agricultural work needs to be done during the winter, as well as an expectation of better weather as spring approached.^[56] Modern Christmas customs include: gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; and Yule logs and various foods from Germanic feasts.^[57] Pagan Scandinavia celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held in the late December to early January period. As Northern Europe was the last part to Christianize, its pagan traditions had a major influence on Christmas. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. In English, the word Yule is synonymous with Christmas,^[58] a usage first recorded in 900.

In other words, Christmas was placed in a time when people had a winter celebration of Winter Solstice.

The "reason for the season" was to usurp popular pagan holidays into a Christian holiday.

And it'll happen again, now, too. Regardless of what people will spout about to (and in) the pews and on family specials on television, the custom of giving gifts is as strong as ever. Our US economy is based on you spending money, whether you need to or not. We get things that are sometimes useful, whimsical, wasteful, and/or sentimental for people otherwise may not even think to spend more than ten dollars on for their birthday. You get a gift from Aunt Janice and feel compelled to return the favor. Coworkers spend time and money baking and purchasing trinkets for other coworkers that otherwise they spend their time griping and bitching about (at least in our case it's true). Our retailers depend on the "season" to turn about a nice profit as kids get their shot at receiving usually undeserved uber-expensive toys that they'll play with for month or two before breaking it or losing the pieces.

Once you have stores involved, you get advertisers involved. You get advertisers involved, you get media involved. You get media involved, you get generations of kids slowly growing into teens and adults that will nod their heads at the whole religious side of the holiday and begrudgingly go to services and whatever else it takes...as long as they get the presents under the tree the next morning.

Which is highly ironic. I hear the same people giving holiday plays in churches about the shopping and greedy attitudes being the problem, needing to celebrate Jesus', the warm feeling of helping others...but then these people go home and indulge in an orgy of consumerism. Somewhere the doublethink eludes them.

Now, I'm not against this. I don't have a lot of loose money to throw around, and I'd love to have the spare coin to do these wonderfully generous things like tossing money off the balcony at the mall to watch people claw each other fist into foreheads to grab the money and I will have the fuzzy feeling of knowing I brightened someone's day. I certainly won't turn down free gift cards to bookstores. I enjoy the consumer habits. What I wish is that people knew and acknowledged that today's "season" is NOT a Christian holiday.

It's a celebration of consumerism for stores.

It's a celebration of greed and selfishness for kids, often. We see acts of kindness and selflessness, but when it comes right down to it, I still see the majority of kids looking out for numero uno.

It's a holiday meant to ingrain Christianity into the culture by removing the pagan holiday and inserting a Christian holiday.

It's a conglomeration of secular and non-secular myths and traditions (do you really think Frosty is religious? Rudolph? Yule logs? Even Santa has a mixed origin; the current image of the "jolly elf" is very much an American invention, and apparently America as America is very post-Christian in origin. There are strands of the origin story that go back further, but please, I'm talking about what your average celebrant of Christmas knows and thinks they know about the holiday they're celebrating. If you're going to get worked up about "atheists stilling Christ from Christmas, at least know what you're arguing about.)

Another thing that bothers me is the continued refrain of the Christian being under attack during the holidays. The minister went on to say that it's considered wrong for you to say Merry Christmas and instead have to say Happy Holidays. Personally I don't care. Christmas gets me gift cards. I'm happy as a clam. But there are some people who think it's rather silly to tell someone who is Jewish that they should have a merry Christmas. And now we have Kwanzaa, another made up holiday that will in another few years probably get a decent number of Hallmark cards on the shelf for it.

As consumerism and other holidays and hopefully recognition that our melting pot of a country has people that don't care one way or the other about Christmas (or celebrate it as a means to an end consisting of toys, money, and an excuse to gossip about family at buffet dinners), advertisers are growing wise to the idea of just saying Happy Holidays so they don't tick off their customers. Apparently if you make customers happy, they buy more crap. In the end a lot of people just aren't pissed off at the change from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays, as long as they're getting a bargain in the electronics department.

You're not under attack. You're simply getting a number of apathetic people who don't care, and a small but growing number of people who prefer not hearing about Christmas every ten minutes while not in their home. Probably it's a side effect of being exposed to Christmas lights and Christmas ornaments and Christmas movies and Christmas specials and Christmas displays starting a week before Thanksgiving! We're tired of it before it gets here! And we have more important things to worry about than whether some dillhole tells us Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas while assaulting us with ringing bells, like what in the !@#$ we're going to find to give Grandma Bessie and whether the cards were mailed on time and whether we remembered everyone on the list and oh crap Aunt Mimi just got us a gift (why? Don't know! Haven't heard from her in ages but now we need to find a cocoa set for her at the ConsumoMart...)

Next time you want to push the "reason for the season", just don't ask me about it. The reason is that it was meant to push a religion on to the masses by stealing their food orgy to the Solstice gods.

I'll leave you with this note, also from the same Wikipedia article:
There is no evidence scripturally or secularly that early Christians in the first century commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ. In fact, in keeping with early Jewish law and tradition, it is likely that birthdays were not commemorated at all. According to The World Book Encyclopedia: "early Christians considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." (Vol. 3, page 416) Rather than commemorating his birth, the only command Jesus gave concerning any sort of commemoration of his life actually had only to do with his death (Luke 22:19). It was not until several hundred years after the death of Jesus Christ that the first instances of the celebration of Christmas begin to appear in the historical record. According to the new Encyclopedia Britannica, some who later claimed to be Christian likely "wished the date to coincide with the pagan Roman festival marking the 'birthday of the unconquered sun'." The festival was celebrated with similar customs (gift giving, feasting) that are done to celebrate Christmas today.

Are there any holiday irks that get to you? Feel free to share...

Teen Marriage

I had written about my daughter's friend, Sara. She is the pregnant teen that is going to get married ("sometime")...I wrote more about it here. Read that to get a better idea of the person I'm referring to.

My household of course has people on Facebook. If you're unfamiliar with Facebook then you must not have been using the Internet for more than a month...I'm not saying you need an account on Facebook or actively use it, since I've found it to be useful only in that I've found people I lost track of years ago thanks to Facebook, only to lose them again in a deluge of worthless invites to play some farming game or joining a mafia group and spammed with happy messages that filled time I'll never get back. But I digress.

The point is that Sara has a Facebook account and apparently has her status updates posted online that members of this household see. She recently postponed (cancelled?) her wedding plans. Her mother, also apparently online with Facebook, said that the wedding was being postponed indefinitely (I got this all second-hand, so I'm paraphrasing). They got into some argument and called it off.

That was a few days ago. I asked yesterday whatever became of their canceled wedding plans, wondering what could possibly have caused Mr. and Mrs. All-You-Need-Is-Love to call off their plans.

"Oh, they're getting married now. They think near Valentine's day."
"Huh?"
"Yeah. They made up and they're going to get married again."

Quick time for slow thinkers...if your idea of resolving an argument with your fiance' is to threaten to call off your wedding for a reason short of finding him or her hammering another person in a clear act of infidelity or discovering that he or she will be out of the country or in jail for a stretch of time, and perhaps a few other extenuating circumstances that lead you to a revelation that this person is not the person you thought they were at a deep and fundamental level, you're probably about as emotionally mature as a ten year old and should not be getting married in the first place.

Threatening to call off the marriage because of a spat is pretty much the equivalent to the playground "I won't be your friend anymore!" ploy.

I shudder to think how common this type of idiocy is in our society. It makes me more depressed than I already am having to face the holiday stress.