You guys are both "that guy" right now. Pretty weird to see it coming from you.
We live in an era where a few brown-skinned men praying on an airplane is enough to trigger passenger panic and the involvement of the FBI. Do you really think that, if the above happened and the passenger was unfortunately of the wrong race, that passengers would not immediately jump to the "terrorism" conclusion? In the last few years passengers have jumped to that conclusion for way less.
[edit] I'm not saying this would've meant throwing someone into Gitmo and throwing away the key. But you have to admit, if this happened to anyone of Middle Eastern descent, there's not a chance he wouldn't have been detained and subject to a barrage of investigations.
Do I think racism is alive and well all around this country? How about, just guess, and then we can keep the discussion off HN. A few years ago, this might have been a thread about battery chemistry. Now it's about the TSA. I have to believe you think that's sad too.
[1] http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2011/11/locked-in-la...
These kind of events can and routinely escalate just due to fear alone.
It is also often at the expense of specific colored individuals.
Is it really any surprise that the bulk of the discussion is applying to meatier, more interesting/controversial tangents?
In any case, my OP is not really meant to be a lightning rod for Yet Another TSA Bash(tm), but rather just an exasperated, cynical quip.
Anyways, I'm not trying to bag on you. My problem is with the whole site.
My time is valuable and the comment scores, albeit a flawed metric, served a good purpose to filter out some of the less useful/insightful comments, I wish there was a toggle in the preferences that would allow people to turn it on per user.
With the karma removed from comments, though, "witty joke with 7 upvotes" is now completely indistinguishable at a glance from "extreme insight with 100 upvotes".
I don't think it's realistic to expect people to stop joking about topic X, or making short quips about things... logically it makes sense to bring back some kind of way to differentiate these posts.
Don't be surprised though when the intelligent, compassionate people you're conversing with start noticing and commenting on the big bad police state that's been descending upon them.
I mean, sure you can offer the odd complaint now and then and hope others are with you or you can organize others around a complaint to see where that gets you. You could go directly to the controllers of the board and complain.
The path of least resistance is always there though. If you don't like where you're at and you have no effective way of dealing with it, the best thing to do is to relocate.
Anyway, I should not have been gruff about it earlier. It could have been said more politely. So I do apologize for that.