I have now decided that the initials TSA does not really stand for the Transportation Safety Authority, but rather \u201cThe Stupid Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
All out efforts to solve a problem based on an assumption that is clearly not true always leads to disaster.\u00a0 This has been repeated many times throughout human history.\u00a0 Perhaps the most devastating example was with yellow fever.\u00a0 For many years, doctors firmly believed in the miasma theory of disease.\u00a0 Basically this theory was that disease was spread by bad air.\u00a0 The theory was that decaying materials would contaminate the air and make people sick.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Since people living near swamps frequently got yellow fever, the bad swamp vapors were often blamed.\u00a0 But, the miasma theory was wrong.<\/p>\n
In 1850 an American doctor, Josiah Nott wrote a medical article proposing that yellow fever was probably spread by mosquitoes.\u00a0 His work was ignored.\u00a0 In 1881, a Cuban doctor, Carlos Finley not only verified that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, he figured out which specific mosquito was the culprit.\u00a0 He was also ignored.\u00a0 \u00a0Yellow fever had killed thousands of French workers trying to build the canal.\u00a0 It also killed a lot of American troops during the Spanish-American War.\u00a0 An Army doctor, Walter Reed, was sent to CUBA to find out what caused yellow fever.\u00a0 He read the works of Carlos Finley.\u00a0 He did not believe him, but after nothing else worked, he decided to conduct an experiment to find out for sure.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He paid people $100 to allow themselves to get bitten by mosquitoes that had previously bitten a yellow fever patient.\u00a0 Obviously, they didn\u2019t buy the mosquito theory either.\u00a0 One of the people bitten was a doctor, Jesse William Lazear.\u00a0 He may or may not have allowed himself to be deliberately bitten by a mosquito. \u00a0Soon, just about everyone bitten by the mosquitoes died a horrible death.\u00a0 \u00a0It became obvious that Nott and Finley were right, mosquitoes did spread yellow fever.\u00a0 Dr. Reed published his findings and Dr. William Gorgas read them and believed in the results.\u00a0 Dr. Gorgas was assigned to manage the medical situation at the Panama Canal, and he went to war against the mosquitoes.\u00a0 \u00a0It worked, which is why the Panama Canal exists today.<\/p>\n
Today we have another example of people making decision based on assumptions that are clearly not true.\u00a0 \u00a0We have a serious problem with suicide bombers who dream of going to paradise along with a plane load of innocent people.\u00a0 So far, all of the recent attempts have been made by young Muslim males.\u00a0 There seems to be a severe shortage of other people willing to blow themselves up. \u00a0I have met some really stupid people who could be talked into doing some dumb things, but I don\u2019t know of anyone who could have been convinced to setting off a bomb built into his underwear.\u00a0 If one did believe in the 100 virgin theory, it would still seem logical to want to arrive in paradise with critical equipment still functioning.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0At some point in the future we may face some unexpected risk from families on vacation, \u00a0outraged nuns or white grandmothers on a mission, but so far it\u2019s pretty much been a jihad thing.\u00a0 So it would seem obvious that focusing on a Muslim male, traveling on a one way ticket, paid in cash by someone else and having no baggage would have some merit.\u00a0\u00a0 That is exactly what happened with the \u201cChristmas bomber\u201d but the airport screeners were too busy patting down everyone else on the flight to notice.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t even notice that this guy was on a no-fly list until just before the plane landed.\u00a0 Nice!\u00a0 The only thing that prevented disaster was an alert passenger who became suspicious when this guy set his underpants on fire. \u00a0\u00a0Once again the disaster was only avoided by the good fortune of being attacked by an\u00a0incompetence\u00a0terrorist.<\/p>\n
The new TSA regulation are more than annoying, they are downright evasive.\u00a0 But that is not the biggest problem.\u00a0 The real concern is that trying to search everyone distracts the airport screeners from paying enough attention to those people who clearly are a threat.\u00a0 It is like the French at the Panama Canal.\u00a0 They spent a lot of time trying to deal with swamp vapors, when they should have concentrated on killing mosquitoes.\u00a0 The French even put little saucers of water under the legs of their beds, providing a very convenient place for mosquitoes to breed in close proximity to their preferred food source.\u00a0 In fact, they didn\u2019t even need to kill all the mosquitoes, just the one specific breed that likes to carry around the yellow fever virus.\u00a0 \u00a0Until they figured that out they spend a lot of money, killed a lot of innocent people and made zero progress toward fixing the problem.\u00a0 Actually, the French never figured it out, which is why the Panama Canal zone was built by the U.S.\u00a0 Remarkably similar to what is happening at the TSA today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Any policy, based on an assumption that is not true, is doomed to failure. \u00a0That is why the TSA is really \u201cThe Stupid Agency.\u201d\u00a0 What makes this worse is that if someone other than a Muslim male is likely to be a serious threat, it is likely to be a Muslim female coerced into doing it by a Muslim male.\u00a0 Yet the TSA has already adapted rules to avoid offending Muslim females wearing a head scarf by letting them \u201cpat themselves down.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0That may seem like a dumb idea to some people who do not understand the importance of political correctness.\u00a0<\/p>\n
TDM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have now decided that the initials TSA does not really stand for the Transportation Safety Authority, but rather \u201cThe Stupid Agency.\u201d All out efforts to solve a problem based on an assumption that is clearly not true always leads … Continue reading