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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#951

Post by nickthemagicman »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #944
nickthemagicman wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to gym is barely an inconvenience. Mortality would have been minimal if fat people would jump on a treadmill occasionally and keep the cheeseburgers out of their face. "What is inconvenient" is subjective and that's the ultimate slippery slope argument. Your argument and thinking is so so bad, I feel like I'm being trolled.

What is your problem? Obesity is not a communicable disease. I regret feeding the troll.

It absolutely is.

Fat food directly causes obesity.

Obesity is communicable from fat foods.

By your strange logic we need to ban fat foods because they hurt people.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#952

Post by nickthemagicman »

bqmjjx0kac wrote: post #946
nickthemagicman wrote: post #936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me summarize your argument. "Your haz mat argument is silly because I say it is. My argument is not silly because I say it's not." This absolute state of critical thinking in America... I can't wait till the media stops covering covid and everyone forgets that covid exists because they're on to the next thing the medium easily manipulates them over.

My point is that your attempt at a logical argument misses a number of externalities. My refusal to engage is because you're acting like a jerk, not because I can't construct a proof. While you marvel at the "state of critical thinking" I am astounded by your lack of empathy.

I literally pointed out externalities you were missing.

Its hopeless conversation.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#953

Post by devilbunny »

908B64B197 wrote: post #786
Teknoman117 wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is probably why the US stopped reporting on the percentage of gun crime committed with legally versus illegally obtained firearms in 2004. I bet the data is available, but you'd have to comb through court records yourself. Even at that point, "legally obtained" still included borrowing one from a friend or family member.

> Which is probably why the US stopped reporting on the percentage of gun crime committed with legally versus illegally obtained firearms in 2004 That's interesting! Why would they hide such stats?

Because it runs counter to the narrative of gun control advocates. Almost no gun crime is committed with legally obtained guns by previously law-abiding people.

The pro-2A response to gun control requests based on crime is often to say "don't ban my guns - just make 'felon in possession of a gun' a life-without-parole offense".

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#954

Post by chenning »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

It's about preventing deaths and making people feel safe traveling.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#955

Post by seph-reed »

abnipl wrote: post #877
seph-reed wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good thing. Having a giant political flamewar about how critical thinking should work has good potential to result in mutual destruction. If you really play it out in your head, critical thinking is pretty hard to abuse because it tends to lean away from blind trust. Every trick that could be taught to get people not to trust your enemy, is one less way you can take advantage of them yourself.

I have my doubts. People can learn “critical thinking skills” all they want, it’s the failure to apply them fairly that breaks political discourse at all levels of education. People don’t investigate statements that conform to their biases. And if the statement is something they don’t want to believe, people will deploy the full force of their “critical thinking” toolkit to fight it, while allowing themselves to beco…

But compare that to someone who has no critical thinking skills at all.

Further, at least some people will be clever enough to use critical thinking on their own beliefs. Maybe some will only use it to further entrench, but not all. And it only takes a few amazing people to push society forwards; that's all we've ever really had.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#956

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

maxwell wrote: post #941
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States Constitution was not "the first constitution in history". For earlier, famous, instances of actual "constitutions" rather than codes of law (such as that of Urukagina of Lagash) see for example Solon's constitution of ancient Athens: The Solonian Constitution was created by Solon in the early 6th century BC.[1] At the time of Solon the Athenian State was almost falling to pieces in consequence of di…

Right, I should have said "first codified Constitution that's still in use today". Sort by "date ratified": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions

That's more accurate :)

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#958

Post by chrismcb »

tootie wrote: post #821
bedhead wrote: post #40

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

I was thinking the opposite. If taking off my shoes results in a 0.0001% decrease in the chance of a plane blowing up, then why not? It's not really inconvenient. Same with masking. It's not inconvenient so why not? Even if it's all theater, theater has some value.

Theater didn't have any value, in fact it has negative vale. How much time, energy, and money is spent waiting in TSA line, and for what? Taking your shoes off does not decrease the chance of the plane blowing up by 0.0001%. it decreases it by 0%. I am willing to bet that more people have been injured, removing their shoes in the airport than from a shoe bomb. Injuries from falling over while driving shoes to picking up a fungal disease from the dirty floor. An airport is a sieve, yet we treat it like a secure fortress, due to theater

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#959

Post by thereddaikon »

lexapro wrote: post #478
thereddaikon wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's still an agenda. Nobody becomes a terrorist just because. There is always a motivation and goal. You say retaliation makes it an end to itself but I give as a counter Timothy McVeigh. He was seeking revenge and sending a message. Terrorism is a tactic used to achieve a specific goal.

But then no human behavior is and end to itself. All behavior can be described as a "tactic used to achieve a specific goal".

No that's an oversimplification. I can ride a bike because I want to ride a bike. But terrorism by definition describes a type of tactic used to reach a stated goal. It is not simply killing people. That's called murder. And murder can be an end to itself. There have certainly been murderers who had a compulsion to just kill.

Terrorism is killing a lot of innocent civilians in order to incite terror in a population to bend to your demands. They have an agenda and feel they are justified.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#960

Post by BizarroLand »

salawat wrote: post #939
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> improve mental health I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues? https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation. How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you he…

>How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? Not having your media contributing to hyper-polarization of your populace through algorithm enforced bubbling, or riling them up through fear mongering helps. Lack of public works may also be a contributing factor. One thing I will say for the Great Depression/New Deal generation: they didn't have anywhere near the isolation issues our generation seems to grapple…

A very simple step in the right direction would be to create more places where the exchange of money for goods and services is not a requirement for attendance. It sucks to be too poor to go to the library 8 miles away because you can't afford the bus pass.
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