Terminal: How the airport came to embody our national psychosis
slate.com
slate.com
The incredible rarity of these events should have shut down most spending from the beginning, and a new government department should never have been allowed to form around it (any more than we should have allowed a “Department of Lightning Safety” to be created). Then they compound the problem by allowing rare events within rare events (such as “shoes may kill us!!!”) to drive entire policies and waste even more time and money.
Heck, if we understood statistics we’d be marching in the streets demanding a far larger number of representatives, since having approximately one million people “represented” by a member of the house means they could never possibly know what their constituents want even if they spent every free hour trying to find out.
What I want is for people to be educated enough about statistics to not be fooled, and not to overreact to things based on what a few poor samples tell them.
In general I agree with you though.
But there aren't a lot of international flights getting there, which helps.
Which ones have that been, and when?
The most hilarious things are the lithium ion conundrum. 1) People being required to hand over their mobile electronic devices, to have Customs logging in and 2) the thing where they were illegal to be carried in hand bagage forcing them to non-hand bagage where its arguably less safe.
The other funny hysteria (for a non-NT) I remember is the liquid/water hysteria. But that one was active in EU as well!
I feel like EU isn't that far behind US in these matters.
However, I'm unsure if the VWP for US people coming to EU also asks whether the person was an enemy combatant in WWII. The questionnaires on the VWP are... peculiar, to say the least.
Just in the past year alone for me: TPE, BKK, NRT, HND, FRA, CTS. All have much better layouts, more clever controls of in-terminal foot traffic, and better amenities than most US airports.
The international airports that were closest to US airports in terms of quality were DUB, WAW and ITM.
One of the worst things about living in NYC is getting to JFK, which can take 90m+ by train or 60m+ w/ traffic by taxi. Even w/o traffic it's very expensive to take an Uber/taxi to/from JFK into Manhattan (at least ~$55-$70 one way).
Especially painful after just coming back from a trip to Austin, where you can take a clean public bus from the airport to downtown for $1.25 each way arriving in about 20 minutes!
Personally, I find Zurich and Munich do a great job of isolating the slog of security from the rest of the airport experience. Yes, you still have to deal with much of the same security theater as in US airports, but once you're past that you can relax in a nicely apportioned environment.
As for overall feel, though, I like Turkish airports the best. Unlike the US and EU, the security there is more than theater. They actually scan your bags before you enter the terminal (and, you know, stand in crowded queues with everyone else and their bags). Ataturk's domestic terminal is something straight out of the 80s, and its age shows, but somehow it's still more relaxed and better laid out than most US airports. The Ataturk international airport, on the other hand, and especially the Star Alliance lounge, is a stunning environment.
Side note: Pre-check is getting more popular and hear Clear might be even faster now.
If anything you’re agreeing to speedier service in exchange for reduced privacy through greater surveillance on your travels.
I don't think it's necessarily intended to discriminate by income, but I do think the intent is to avoid political pressure to back off on general screening procedures.
If you are rich you're flying in business/first class or have elite airline status as it is, so you'll get priority screening regardless of whether you have precheck or not. If anything the biggest cheerleaders for TSA precheck are the airlines because speedier security means fewer people missing their flight due to long security lines.
Queueing theory says that if you dedicate the 2nd line back to the single line, then you can process more people more quickly.
Priority lines exist because the airport, rather than the TSA controls the lines. The airport tries to do what the airlines want, and the airlines want people who pay them extra to have a better experience. This is arguably broken, but it's not really the TSA's fault.
The big airport crybabies are usually those who expect weather or mechanical problems to vanish by voice command. Unless you fly Spirit, I've seen minimal problems with airline staff or TSA agents. Most are fairly friendly.. of course this may vary by airport. I usually fly in and out of the same handful.
To give just one example, in Europe, passengers are not routinely required to remove shoes.
That means either someone was not following protocol, they were running an experiment or you were in business class. Shoes need to come off in standard screening (1). Such anecdotal evidence means nothing. I for one had to take off my shoes a month ago (a long with all other passengers) but I never had to remove my shoes when flying inside the EU.
That's just a website of things they recommend you do. It doesn't look like any kind of official policy document or protocol. I mean it also says 'give yourself enough time to arrive at the airport early' but that's an official protocol is it?
In my experience, the TSA experience is consistently inefficient, with (occasionally severe) bottlenecks. But more frustrating than inefficiency is a sense of apathy radiated by many TSA agents.
Whereas the airlines compete to serve us, the TSA feels vaguely like a slaughterhouse, in which we are the livestock.
Disallowing passengers access to the cockpit is likely the most meaningful post-9/11 change to preventing aircraft hijackings.
No one will ever hand the plane over again, even if the attacker claims to have a bomb.
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
It's also a perfect example of where this "psychosis" is leading us and how its a much bigger problem than an extra hour at the airport spent playing pretend.
People don’t hate them for believing in their religion, the problem is that they believe in a religion that openly calls for the death of cartoonists, gays and jews or anyone that insults it. If you are one religion that interferes with other people’s ability to practice their faith then that one religion is the problem.
You're talking about Christians, right?
That's true of Christianity too, yet there are no serious calls for a Christian ban.
Not to mention the unwillingness to acknowledge, much less address the huge domestic right wing, white supremacist and Christian terrorism movements here.
The harmonious western society, in the US in particular but not alone, is still pretty discordant for black people, poor people, and immigrants. It goes far beyond women and sexuality, and shifting blame onto other religions and immigrants who can check some anti-diversity boxes is a great way to avoid the essence of the problem that has existed at home for a really long time.
More generally, it's an abuse of HN to use it for ideological or political battle and we ban accounts that primarily do that. I wouldn't say your history is primarily doing that, but having taken a quick look, there have been clear stretches of it, plus some evidence that you've abused the site quite badly with throwaway accounts. Would you please not do those things? We're trying to have a place for thoughtful conversation and intellectual curiosity. That means everyone here has to exercise some discipline in response to divisive topics and not head straight for the bottoms of the barrel.
Which class of people was banned?
class = citizenship of a country ?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-b...
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-muslim-ban-sta...
I think you are using some sort of slippery slope argument, "banning class of people" is not true today, we should just be assuming that is true based on intent? Intent is truth?
Its like me saying "America has achieved complete energy independence" today because trump campaign promised it.
Intent and words are crucial to determining the legality of the order. The Trump campaign ran on the specific idea of trying to ban Muslims from entering the country, despite their gaslighting attempts to argue otherwise.
You can split the hair of identifying them by nationality, religion, race, hair color, or shoe size all day long but it doesn't change the argument.
Once its normalized it won't be such a big deal when it really happens.