December 20, 2006

• I dunno. If you are an inexperienced traveler, which the linked article said the grandmother was, I can see how one might make this mistake. Toting babies through airport security is no easy task, especially if you are traveling alone. My wife, who is not a native English speaker, became flustered and confused when TSA agents in a South Carolina airport (nuff said) began yelling loudly at her to NOT go through the metal detector while holding the baby! (apparently, they wanted me to hold the baby while she walked through). My wife stood there like a deer in headlights not knowing what to do. I think calling someone stupid is a bit unfair. The problem seems more so with the existing security process setup in airports across the United States - it can be intimidating if you are not familar with it...
• I'm sure it was an accident. What parent hasn't put a newborn down in an x-ray dish while trying to do something else?
• RTFA. Not a parent. Rather, not an immediate parent.
• It is getting to the point where there are so many people on the planet that no matter how stupid or statistically unlikely something is, there is going to be someone who does it or has it happen to them. Even if something is "a one in a billion chance" it is going to happen to 5 people on Earth.
• The sign said "carry-on items". A baby is an item which is carried on. What's the problem?
• I just got an idea for an amusement park ride.
• "Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest x-rays a year. They ought to have them, too." - J. Frank Parnell in Repo Man.
• Just saw this on digg, where the mob was predictably foaming at the mouth about how stupid people shouldn't be allowed to have babies. The story says the woman didn't understand English. It's not every country whose citizens have the natural gift for foreign languages that we Americans have, you know... Also: my mom was telling me the other day that, for a while when she was a kid, it was commonplace for shoestores to have little x-ray machines which you could use to x-ray your feet. These presumably helped them fit your shoes... wow.
• little x-ray machines which you could use to x-ray your feet Fackskinatin' read StB! Thanks!
• Yeah, ain't that the weirdest? Gives you kind of a creepy feeling wondering what the modern-day equivalent is... you know, in fifty years are people going to be chuckling about how folks used to walk around holding CELL PHONES to their HEADS!!111! "'Course, that was before the big Wireless Die-Off of twenty-seventeen..."
• Having just been through an MRI machine on Monday, I found this funny. But that said, one of the things that I thought was good after 9/11 was that there were now some airline security people who spoke English. Now we see the down side!
• "In the several seconds the baby spent in the machine, the doctor added, he was exposed to as much radiation as he would naturally get from cosmic rays — or high energy from outer space — in a day." We fear what we do not understand.
• Erm... in rereading my post, it seems I failed to get across that I felt that the lady and the TSA agent were equally to blame. While it is understandable (though that's stretching IMHO), that someone might mistakenly place a baby in the bin along with their keys and stuff, it is NOT understandable that the person doling out the trays did not realize that someone put a freakin' baby in the bin.
• The really important question which you've overlooked is whether exposure to x-rays in an airport- like cosmic rays in space- can give you superpowers. We're just lucky those airport scanners don't use gamma rays.
• You may all mock, but you can get the best part of a pound of plastigue in the gut of even quite a small baby.
• "The screeners are still reporting that they're being pushed," said Brian Sullivan, a retired Federal Aviation Administration security agent. "If a baby can get through, what the hell else can get through?" But... the baby didn't get through.
• The train is late, but, the horsecrap level is a fair bit lower. Tradeoff.
• Listen ya'll, I'm thinkin' the stupid isn't hangin' so much with granny as it is with all this terrerrist watch crap. Good thing she wasn't carrying boob milk.
• In 1988, an infant in a car seat went through an X-ray machine at LAX Terminal 4. Also that year, officials at Winnipeg International Airport in Canada accidentally sent a 2-month-old wrapped in blankets through an X-ray machine. I'm thinkin' this problem could be international.
• Brooks Stevens, a noted industrial designer whose works included the the Milwaukee Road Olympian and an Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, designed this [foot x-ray] machine. Clearly this man was a misunderstood genius.
• They laughed at my Wienermobile. They think I'm mad... MAD... but I'll show them ALL!