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ironymaidenall the media i consume seems to be sending me the same messages. i'm working on watching the fifth season of b5. i finished Red Lightning last night. i tried listening to portable radio on the bus for the first time this morning, just in time for the terrorist plot news.
Red Lightning includes a sequence of future Homeland Security screening that involves being separated by gender and stripped naked, and getting your clothes and belongings back wrapped in plastic. handing over belongings and casing things in plastic was the order of the day today in airports across the US and Britain. for anyone familiar with SeaTac, the security lines this morning ran all the way across the skybridge and into the parking garage. (the book was a total disappointment, BTW. it's full of interesting ideas, but lacks focus. there's nothing to replace the energy and verve of the first book, and the commentary on natural disasters and Where America's Going doesn't live up to a Heinlein comparison. there were at least three possible novels in there and none of them got written. bummer.) the thought of making a transatlantic flight without a book to read makes my skin crawl.
if i understand correctly, the people who were arrested were caught via policework and some cooperation from the government of Pakistan, not because they were picked up in a security screening. yay for talented cops, boo for shutting the barn door after the horse is gone. i would lay money on the "red alert" staying in place until the elections are over here. it's bothering me that the news coverage sounds so much like ISN...during the war. i want my skepticism to be misplaced, and i'm glad that something appears to be working (unlike, say, randomly invading Iraq.) it would help if Bush and Blair weren't such nasty liars.
i'm also finishing up The Long Tail, which is meant to be economic, but i think is a full-blown cultural force, where we are running out of common experiences and reasons to engage with people unlike ourselves. what binds people into a nation without some baseline? tangentially, i had a conversation recently about breaking the news of 9/11/01 to small children (and how my friend had done it slowly); i would have had to talk about it right away since C and i did a lot of crying while listening to NPR. (i especially remember the stories of volunteers hiding in the rubble for the rescue dogs to find at the end of the day so that the animals didn't go crazy because they'd failed. choking sobs and lots of ropy snot...) it caused me to wonder if people who didn't know New York or New Yorkers experienced the same emotional hit. it's a definite shared experience but i'm not sure that it was the common one that i thought it was.
Red Lightning includes a sequence of future Homeland Security screening that involves being separated by gender and stripped naked, and getting your clothes and belongings back wrapped in plastic. handing over belongings and casing things in plastic was the order of the day today in airports across the US and Britain. for anyone familiar with SeaTac, the security lines this morning ran all the way across the skybridge and into the parking garage. (the book was a total disappointment, BTW. it's full of interesting ideas, but lacks focus. there's nothing to replace the energy and verve of the first book, and the commentary on natural disasters and Where America's Going doesn't live up to a Heinlein comparison. there were at least three possible novels in there and none of them got written. bummer.) the thought of making a transatlantic flight without a book to read makes my skin crawl.
if i understand correctly, the people who were arrested were caught via policework and some cooperation from the government of Pakistan, not because they were picked up in a security screening. yay for talented cops, boo for shutting the barn door after the horse is gone. i would lay money on the "red alert" staying in place until the elections are over here. it's bothering me that the news coverage sounds so much like ISN...during the war. i want my skepticism to be misplaced, and i'm glad that something appears to be working (unlike, say, randomly invading Iraq.) it would help if Bush and Blair weren't such nasty liars.
i'm also finishing up The Long Tail, which is meant to be economic, but i think is a full-blown cultural force, where we are running out of common experiences and reasons to engage with people unlike ourselves. what binds people into a nation without some baseline? tangentially, i had a conversation recently about breaking the news of 9/11/01 to small children (and how my friend had done it slowly); i would have had to talk about it right away since C and i did a lot of crying while listening to NPR. (i especially remember the stories of volunteers hiding in the rubble for the rescue dogs to find at the end of the day so that the animals didn't go crazy because they'd failed. choking sobs and lots of ropy snot...) it caused me to wonder if people who didn't know New York or New Yorkers experienced the same emotional hit. it's a definite shared experience but i'm not sure that it was the common one that i thought it was.
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Date: 2006-08-11 09:36 am (UTC)As of this morning in the UK they're not allowing newspapers, or magazines, or books, or electronics, or writing utensils; I fear I would go mad. Llyne suggests they're creating a captive market for the awful $6 in-flight movies.
At least in the US (so far) the restriction only extends to toothpaste and beverages. "Only".
(I stopped checking luggage after a run-in with a TSA inspector two autumns ago. Terry Pratchett has an excellent piece he does about traveling for months on end out of a small carry-on. I wonder what he'll do now?)
I'd cheer for a resurgence in train travel, except that it will take so much capital to fix the passenger rail system at this point.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 03:12 pm (UTC)i heard a report about what this event, combined with the increasing fuel prices is doing to the flying industry, and all i could think was that great, before we know it carriers will be folding right and left. i wonder if someone will be smart enough to take good care of amtrak again, or if we'll start throwing tax money at flying. i'd rather sink the money in a real passenger rail system. anything to get us out of cars...and trains are neat. i love train travel. unfortunately improving the infrastructure would be so slow that people would forget why it was a good idea.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 07:35 pm (UTC)...and next to nothing to blow it up.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 02:35 pm (UTC)the politics of b5 make an unpleasantly prescient accompaniment to much of the goings on of the last several years. :-(
no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-11 07:23 pm (UTC)Well, ya know, engaging with those unlike ourselves (http://www.bunnyballoon.com/) can be dangerous...