here’s an odd topic, the air-travel ban on liquids and creams and gels.
in the states(and in many parts of the world)you can no longer bring liquids or creams or gels onto an airplane, ostensibly because liquids/creams/gels could be explosives.
there’s a big problem here, and that is that liquids/creams/gels are not metallic.
so a would-be terrorist could just put plastic explosives in his pockets and walk right through a metal detector while the rest of us are throwing away our toothpaste and peanut-butter.
another problem: liquids/creams/gels aren’t allowed on flights, but food is. energy bars(clif bars, etc)are allowed on flights. so a terrorist could take semtex or c4 and wrap it in an energy bar rapper and no one at security would stop him/her.
and problem three: the terrorist doesn’t need to bring the semtex or c4 onto the plane, they could just put it in their checked baggage and detonate it via a cell-phone or blackberry.
so the ban on liquids/creams/gels is pointless, as any terrorist with an i.q higher than 60 could easily get around it.
it’s yet another protective measure that actually serves no purpose other than to annoy air-travelers(similar to the pointless exercise of ‘put your shoes through the x-ray’).
oh, it also probably helps business for the airport shops, as people then need to buy beauty products and toothpaste after theirs has been thrown away at security.
the terrorists may be awful and evil, but time and time again they’ve proven that they’re not stupid(except for the ‘shoe-bomber’ guy, who actually looked like jeff spicoli from ‘fast times at ridgemont high’).
one of the other problems with airport security is that they implement security measures AFTER the terrorists try something and get caught.
for example: a terrorist tries to sneak explosives onto the plane in his shoes, so henceforth we have to put our shoes through the x-ray.
does anyone really think that the terrorists are dumb enough to try something a second time when it didn’t work the first time?
so now we have tens of millions of people being annoyed at airport security because
the tsa wants to be seen as doing something.
i’m all in favor of anything that protects people from terrorism, but it’s an insult to everyone’s intelligence to make people throw away their toothpaste when they get to security at the airport.
-moby
p.s-i’m not trying to scare anyone, i’m just saying that the terrorists are not stupid and any security measures that are predicated on the idea that the terrorists are stupid aren’t going to work, and will just annoy air-travellers and waste security officials/employees time.