As IF Times

link Pilot Refuses Full-Body Scan, Says TSA Doesn’t Make Travel Safer « CBS New York – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and the Best of NY.

Changes in society always happens at the margins.  I don’t know where I was first exposed to this maxim, but I think the notion has proved valid in my experience.    This guy Michael Roberts, a pilot no less, has somehow drawn attention to the overreaching tactics at airports for screening passengers.  As time goes on, this guy could be the hero to the populace if he starts some changes to the system. It’s a wonder that the travelling public still submits to the invasive and unproductive screening techniques practiced at all airports.  In the real world outside of airports, any and all unwanted contact of any kind is viewed as infringements on one’s personal space.  We all know that teachers are prohibited to even hug small children at school for fear of triggering lawsuits and risking dismissal.  We are made aware of strict protocols in the office working environment as far as touching or remarks made.

If you think about it, it’s the government of the people treating mostly their own citizens as potential terrorists.  In other words, if like this guy Roberts, we don’t complain about the way we are treated by clerks, we are tacitly supporting such treatment. 

TSA 1: Hey have you seen the new security gizmo we’re getting for the airport?

TSA 2: No, what is it this time? Another X-ray machine?

TSA1: Nope, even better and more effective.

TSA2: Do tell

TSA1: Well you know how all we get is bitch, bitch, bitch  about our strip and feel procedures, we’re too invasive, you can’t touch me there without buying me dinner first etc etc?  Well now they have a new device which is perfect for detecting metal on passengers.  The best part is, we don’t have to feel up fat people any more.  It’s a plate upon which people have to stand which then sends 5000 volts through them for about a second.  If they have any metal parts on their body, the electricity will close a loop and zap them into unconsciousness.

TSA2: Yikes! Isn’t that dangerous?

TSA1: Well it’s still in the experimental stages but I guess we’ll see how many fatalities we get on the first run here.  But it will speed up the process so people can’t complain about how long the lines are. 

TSA2: Hmm, sounds iffy.  What if some human rights guy complains?

TSA1: Wake up man, we are the Transportation Safety Authority!  We can do what we want.  National Security and all that stuff.  They wouldn’t dare complain.  Has anyone complained up to now besides that troublesome pilot? We’ll show him. No, people will do what we tell them to do.  Besides, where else are they going  to go?

TSA2: Is it really necessary to zap kids and old people?

TSA1: Of course, we can’t be seen to be discriminatory.  Everyone’s a possible perp.  Why it would be just like those diabolical terrorists to pack some weapons on a 2 year old just because he looks innocent.  Cunning, very cunning.  Nobody is above scrutiny.

TSA2: Uh, what about people with metal prostheses or skull plates?  Won’t they be hurt or at least object? 

TSA1:  Maybe, but you know the old saying, can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs.  Besides they can get notes from their doctors or something and we’ll feel them up the old fashioned way.

TSA2:  Ok.  Well when do we get training on the new gizmo?

TSA1:  Training?! Haha, you are a card.

link My Way News – French students up protests over retirement reform.

As if.  So the cameras are trained onto ‘students’ who are allegedly all steamed about the French Government’s proposal to raise the mandatory retirement age from 60, all the way to 62.  Sacre Bleu! Students are doing this….because…??  This is obviously absurd since these earnest ‘students’ are missing something reasonably important in order to protest against job conditions, namely a job. 

If all they’ve ever done is to read Tolstoy, play les video games and drink beer for 2 or 3 years, they’re hardly in a position to protest about their latter working years.  Heck, most students I know would be happy to have any job after graduation, never mind worry about  retirement issues.  This would be as valid as me  getting upset upon learning that Charlize Theron was going to stop dating men. 

More likely, some union thugs came by campus and offered free beer to any students who would show up for the chance to be protesting on TV.  Actually, from the looks of the crowd, they don’t even have to be students, being young and ethnic looking was enough.   Even if they were bona fide students captured on TV passionately tossing Molotov cocktails at the police,  it’s unlikely they were studying anything useful.  Probably law or philosophy students of which Entitlement 101 was a prerequisite.   Certainly not economics or any hard science.  As a side note, their education is also likely heavily subsidized by the state. 

If  they had some basic grounding in any kind of education which had links to reality, they would know about the concept of limited resources.  The theory goes that a female pig, or sow, has only so many nipples.  If you’re the 7th pig in a six nipple litter, well then you get less.  If you’re the 35th piglet, then your share is going to be even smaller.  The only logical things that can happen are the following:  a: get more nipples, b: have fewer piglets, or c: get more production from present nipples. 

France has finally come to face the consequences of generations of the entitlement mentality in their social system.  For the longest time, their 35 hour workweeks, lavish (by western standards) vacation allotments which can be 6 to 8 weeks per year, were the envy of liberal western politicians and union leaders.  In addition, the vast cradle to grave social net created what appeared to be the idyllic social system. So compelling was this system that naturally people from outside France all clamored to get in to get a ahare of the Gallic nipple.

Until now, when all of a sudden, there are, a: not enough nipples, b: more piglets and c: not enough production from present nipples.  But the entitlements that have been offered to society up until now are so entrenched that they are viewed as basic human rights for most in this fairy land.  To move the retirement age from 60 to 62?  Well, you may as well outlaw huffiness from French culture.

Look what’s happening in the U.K.  http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.187f08033fe68c98d16032a3c93790a9.501&show_article=1  Not quite the entitlements of France, but the same issue, that is, not enough money to fund civil service obligations. 

This is all very amusing perhaps and abstract to most people.  The fact is, this very same scenario will be repeated in north america very soon.  As federal, state and municipal budgets collapse from entitlements, the process to cull some retirement expenses will begin imminently.  We can expect ‘students’ and perhaps the odd union member to mount vocal and perhaps violent protests against the reduction of entitlements. The great nipple battle, coming here soon.