191–200 of 243 posts
Regardless of your view on Matthew's story - has the site been working well for everyone? Is my little FreeBSD VPS (with photos on cloudfront) setup performing well? I can see the stats from my side, just wondering how it loaded for you. Thanks!
The weaker people in positions of authority are, the less you're allowed to laugh in their faces, and the more you should.
This sort of attitude is childish and pathetic. And it will get you absolutely nowhere in life. Nowhere.
You know that crappy little country, just off the north coast of mainland Europe, its where I live, its called the UK? Well, that's why we have far too much influence for our size.
We rip on our powerful people something rotten. It helps to keep the powerful on their toes and makes the rest of us feel a little bit better. Its a British tradition. And for us, it works quite well.
Meh. Passenger demonstrates willingness to a) revisit the incident later and b) use the word 'terrorist' on the plane. They don't have to actually think he'll blow up the plane; it only takes one closet nut case to overhear this and cause a ruckus mid flight. In a small confined space at 30k feet that's a very real safety issue. Consider that an irrational fear of flying isn't that uncommon, and this is a route where…
> this is a route where there isn't much of an alternative
You make a case that people shouldn't be allowed to fly while black/muslim/wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a gun on it/etc in case some "sensitive soul" kicks up a fuss, and that it is not that sensitive soul's fault. I disagree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can draw attention to the issue without impugning the character of the person in the way. Even saying "that's not true" is better, since it doesn't unambiguously assign a negative motive.
Of course it would have been better to say it differently; that doesn't make what he said instead a justification for what happened, or that it would have changed anything.
Yes, it's unfortunate that the flight attendant lied in this situation. However, it would have been impossible for the pilot to verify this - even if the author showed him the camera. Since the author was willing to 'prove' it, it had to be a digital camera - which the author could have very easily used the built-in delete function to remove all photos but one (or be a sneaky terrorist and swap SD cards). In addition…
The only reason people are talking about terroist and airplanes is because the airport continue to remind people of it each and every minute on the speakers. If someone say "don't think of the red elephant", its not odd for people to say "what red elephant?". That's normal behavior. In same way, if you stop someone at the airport, the first thought people will think is "I am not a terrorist!". You right however that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really terrible attitude. Apparently, airplanes are this magical place where you're not supposed to be treated like a human being. By "acting entitled", you seem to mean "acting like he's entitled to fly on the plane he bought a ticket for". And of course he argued with the captain; he was being kicked off the plane for taking a picture! It's not arrogant to expect to be treated well. This thing where every…
>"It's like people value obedience of arbitrary impositions of authority as the highest virtue." // That is just about the greatest virtue in the context of being in a confined space with someone in a relatively flimsy metal tube jetting over the ocean (or wherever). One is already trusting the captain + crew with your life to a large extent. >"he blames the FA exclusively, as if it would be reasonable to kick someon…
Actually showing the photos would have been a stronger argument than saying "That is a lie." Also, he could have volunteered to delete the one photo that he took.
Someone in the comments suggested that this is a "he said, she said" situation. Not really, because there was a camera involved. The camera is the authority on the subject of whether he took photos that he should not have taken.
I recently was at the Port Authority, in New York City. I was amazed at how busy it was at rush hour, so I pulled out my iPhone and took some pictures. I did not realize this was forbidden. A policeman approached me immediately and asked me what I was doing. I showed him the photos I had just taken and I explained I wanted to send them to some friends who had never visited New York. He suggested that I delete the photos but he walked away without making me do anything, so I was able to keep the photos.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except, as others have pointed out, it wasn't odd at all. It's actually an idiom and an absolutely common response in a photographic context. http://goo.gl/CnV1s Moreover, it was probably just so incredulous to the blogger that there would be any chance at all that anyone would imagine he'd be a terrorist because he was taking pictures of the little monitor in the seat in front of him that it didn't even cross his mi…
I can't say that I agree with you that it's an idiom (well, because I've certainly never heard of it). It's a flat out socially weird thing to declare that you're not a terrorist. Social customs are hard to pin down, but if a passenger sitting next to me told the flight attendant that he wasn't a terrorist after the attendant told him to stop taking pictures (or to put away his cellphone), I would think of him as ver…
That's awkward, and it's entirely natural to want to deny the accusation. And sure that denial will also be awkward... but the problem is the assumption in the first place, not the denial. Everybody knows that the airport is a place of everlasting mistrust, no matter that it's not reasonable - and that you'll be treated unfairly because you're implicitly assumed to be a terrorist threat.
Everybodies thinking it (or trying to avoid thinking it) whenever the security is being particularly annoying, yet nobody is allowed to mention this thoughtcrime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You were not kicked off for taking pictures. You were kicked off for acting odd." Not even odd, slightly odd which is now apparently grounds for getting kicked off an airliner. The terrorists have won a great victory if acting slightly odd is enough to terrify an airline company into kicking a passenger off a plane.
The terrorists have won a great victory if acting slightly odd is enough to terrify an airline company into kicking a passenger off a plane. This isn't about terrorism. It's about a flight attendant taking exception to a passenger, and owing to what he later said and how he behaved, believing that he could develop into a problem on a long-haul flight. Was it a good call? Probably not, given the author's flight histor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You were not kicked off for taking pictures. You were kicked off for acting odd." Not even odd, slightly odd which is now apparently grounds for getting kicked off an airliner. The terrorists have won a great victory if acting slightly odd is enough to terrify an airline company into kicking a passenger off a plane.
"The terrorists have won if [something silly happens in America]" Not really. It is political and military pressure on certain countries with high birth rates and weak economies that radicalizes young men - lift the foot from their neck and see them be as indifferent/slightly dismissive towards our lifestyle/religion like we are to theirs. Airport/aircraft security seems to be part of a trend of law enforcement in th…
The billions of travellers since the attacks are now constantly nervous - not of an attack anymore because the odds of that are so vanishingly small you don't seriously consider it - but of saying or doing something that some over-eager security policy has irrationally branded dangerous. It's like passing a pack of dangerous animals: you never know what's going to set em off, but whatever you do don't draw attention.
So yeah, they have won. It's not hypothetical; it's a fact of everyday travelling life.