KISS

This Times editorial blithely proceeds from bitching about onerous airport security theater and bureaucracies that are both inefficient and ineffectual to agititating for the quick confirmation of "the heads of the T.S.A. and the customs agency, both of which have been under interim management for a year [because there] is no excuse for more politicking or delay with the nation’s security." The food at this restaurant is so terrible. And the portions! So small!

They also get in their quick shot at Yemen, our nemesis du jour, the new, new, new Afghanistan, wherein we are now doing . . . well, something, and in the future we definitely need to . . . do . . . more . . . of it. Probably.

Now I cannot be the only one to note that the vast and historic catastrophe that was Northwest Flight 253 was neither vast nor historic nor indeed a catastrophe. It was in fact an unspectacular failure. What it objectively demonstrates is that it is very difficult to blow up an airplane, that even if a terrorist mastermind manages to sew C-4 into his cloak of invisibility and smuggle himself into the luggage hold, it is very difficult to blow up an airplane. And obviously most yahoos never get as far as getting the bomb, let alone getting onto the plane with it, and even when they do, it is very difficult to blow up an airplane. Unlike the movies, in which every ricocheting bullet finds its way directly into the nearest fuel tank which immediately and for no reason explodes, explosive chemical agents here in our matrix world-line are finicky and difficult; detonation is not assured; minor variances in temperature and pressure, in the ratios within the explosive mixture, in the application of heat or electrical current, all of these make a difference, and any of them can doom the experiment. Dear America, I know that you are watching Mythbusters. Pay. More. Attention.

It is very difficult to blow up an airplane, and that, more than any other reason, is why it is so motherfucking rare for airplanes to get blown up.

In attempting to construct a rational security process, one could begin with a set of factually accurate premises, actuarial probabilities, and some general principle of parsimony. Or, one could demand that we add x-ray specs along the snaking lines at airport security checkpoints, because why not?

The machines have been criticized by privacy advocates. We’ve had some qualms, too, especially with early versions that showed the outlines of a naked body too clearly. But security officials have managed to blur the images and adopted other procedures that should allay those concerns. What is needed is a rigorous and independent process of evaluation for whole body scanners and other equipment — the Transportation Security Administration has 10 at some stage of development — to figure out what provides the best security at the most rational cost.

The problem is not that the scanners traduce the prudish boundaries of the American moral self-bubble. I, for one, would be perfectly content to stroll naked through Pittsburgh International, especially in the winter, when I lack a poolside at which to make a show of my ass and abs. The problem is that there will always be a clever means of evading the scanners. Just as "lethal chemicals, plastic explosives and ceramic knives" evolved in part to evade the metal detectors, so too will new substances and materials be created to evade body scanners. Thus ever does the wheel of progress turn. When the Federal Government mans every checkpoint with a levitating ascended master whose great googly third eye pierces all the etherial layers of the transdimensional mutliverse, you can be sure that some clever bomber will find a loophole in the eighteenth dimension to scurry through. And it will still be very difficult to blow up an airplane.

Notice, meanwhile in mundane reality, that the editorial demand for "a rigorous and independent process of evaluation . . . to figure out what provides the best security at the most rational cost" is in fact firmly precomitted to the application of "whole body scanners and other equipment." In other words, the rigorous and independent process is not a process of inquiry at all, but rather a purchasing process seeking a low bidder. It's not an experiment, it's a fucking RFP!