Virtuous Trash: Of TSA and Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
TSA screening at the Denver Airport. Photo by Danpaluska, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
I am at the airport in the early morning flying to attend a business meeting across the country. While waiting to go through the TSA Pre-check line, my thoughts wandered to Richard Reid, that “Shoe Bomber” guy who is solely responsible for the 3.4 oz rule.
My random musings were interrupted as I observed the branding on the instrumentation scanner thingies (technical term) that all the carry-on luggage passes through. You know, to see if anyone is carrying a gun or 4 oz. of toothpaste. The side of all the machines had a graphic logo that read “analogic.” Analogic. It’s probably a mash up of “analysis” or “analyze” plus “logic,” but it really looked like “anal” + “logic.” That’s pretty shitty branding if you ask me. Or is it genius because weirdos like me will amplify it online? No publicity is bad, I suppose. Those Analogic people sure are indebted to Richard Reid. I wonder if they know that?
As I stood in line waiting for the Analogic machine to crap out my bags which definitely had less than 3.4 oz of individual toiletries in them (but collectively had at least 34 oz), I started counting masks around me. We are still taking our shoes off and separating our toiletries twenty-something years after Richard Reid’s infamous transatlantic flight. As such, masks and travel may be not only the present, but the future of airline travel. In the age of Omicron most people are wearing disposable masks. Disposable masks like the discarded one I stepped over on my walk from the parking lot.
Is it possible to consider the virtues of trash? How many disposable masks have ended up as refuse? What about all those plastic straws we quit using? Have they been offset by disposable masks? Maybe the sea turtles prefer wearing the masks rather than the plastic straws through their noses? Can sea turtles get Covid? Which is more important: saving the planet or preventing Covid? What if we all die of Covid but the landfills are empty, is that good? Maybe we’re supposed to survive Covid but live in landfills full of disposable masks after sea turtles are extinct? Can someone find the crying Native American from a 70s commercial so I can ask about this? The sea turtles are definitely laughing: society is a funny, funny thing.
I guess I don’t pandemic properly: I’m wearing a mask I sewed myself in March of 2020. It’s triple layer cotton, made from scraps of American flag print material that I already owned with ties made from one of my husband’s old t-shirts. I thought we were supposed to “reduce, reuse, recycle?” We launder our masks regularly, and I had been feeling proud to put my skill-set for post-apocalyptic living to good use. At this point, it occurs to me that it is entirely possible my American flag material is micro-aggressing someone in a disposable mask. Good thing I’m not wearing a red hat. My hat today is blue. Keep everyone guessing!!
I make my way to the Delta Sky Lounge. The breakfast buffet is out, and I order a mimosa which I can casually sip—mask free!!—until my flight boards because everyone knows Delta SkyMiles are the second-best way to prevent Covid transmission behind disposable masks. I wonder if they have plastic straws in here. I’m tempted to ask for a straw, just to see. But I can’t bring myself to defile the bubbly with a straw, paper, plastic or otherwise.
I Google Richard Reid. He’s serving three life sentences in the Supermax prison in Colorado. I guess we are all serving one too–shoeless and masked for perpetuity–but the moral of the story is: alcohol appears to make everything a bit more tolerable.
Cheers.
I enjoyed this, thanks for sharing it!Report
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Worth noting that for about 17 bucks a year, you can keep your shoes and belt on, leave all your stuff in your backpack, carry whatever size bottle you want, and waltz through quickly.
The cost? A fingerprinting and a “Does this person have a felony record” background check. You don’t even have to go to the airport for an interview, there’s five places within 10 miles of me that’ll do it.
For 3 more bucks a year, you can do that with customs as well — but that one you DO have to go to a big airport for, and they’ll run your background check right there, probably get you confused with someone else with a similar name and birthday, and then get corrected by a supervisor who points out that “Texas” and “Alabama” are, in fact, two different states to be born in.
Security theater you can skip for about 17 bucks a year. A decision I made after having to fly twice in the same calendar year. I’ll pay 20ish bucks a year just on the off chance I have to fly to avoid that crap.
I cannot fathom how many wasted hours are spent in that mess.Report
Yeah i’ve had TSA Pre for years now. Good deal to avoid the silliness. Getting rid of the 3.4 oz thing would be best but there are ways to get around it.Report
Fortunately, I do have TSA Pre-Check. When I travel for work, sometimes Im wearing steel-toed boots. I’m always asked to remove them. To say nothing of all my creams, potions and powders…A working, traveling mom runs primarily on under-eye cream and dry shampoo. And mimosas, apparently.Report
Congrats on your first piece here. Welcome aboard.Report
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You know that those finger print records stay in AFIS and anytime a set of unknown prints are run, your records are bounced against them as well with all the other records? Don’t try and tell me that there’s the “legal” and “criminal” side of the search. You really believe that?
You expect me to give up “stuff” so I can get on a plane faster? Far better to give up “security theatre” first.Report
Read this while waiting for check-in kiosks to activate at four in the morning at PDX. My mask is already smelly inside from a lingering runny nose that checked off negative for COVID but leaves me self conscious anyway. A long day of inconveniences laden atop the miracle of continent-spanning jet travel is already of me; your column reminds me that I am far from alone in appreciating the ridiculousness that’s settled on this most modern of transit vectors.
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There was a time when I had to fly a lot for work and all of this stuff was annoying. The big issue is that the cost for keeping these measures is minimal and just a bunch of grumbling. The cost for for ditching them and having it lead to a terrorist or near terrorist incident would be politically astronomical fallout even if the chances of such a thing happening are astronomically rare. Add in that most people do not fly often.
Let this be another example that the overwhelming majority of humans are not and will never be libertarian and all the blog posts in the world will not change that.Report
I flew back in the 90’s and, believe it or not, they still had security measures. You just didn’t have to take off your shoes.
If your belt buckle set off the metal detector (and it would), they’d either wand you or ask you to take it off and go through again.
But you could do stuff like “meet friends at the gate” and “leave your shoes on”.
How many attacks have been prevented by the shoes thing or the gate thing? Any? Even one?Report
My understanding is that the only actual improvements in security are reinforced cockpit doors and the fact that passengers now assume they need to defend themselves instead of cooperating until they’re ransomed.Report
This comment makes me laugh, but kindly and with gratitude. My first plane tickets were for the non-smoking section in the late 70s, and I became a business traveler in the 90s. I remember the simplicity of mere metal detectors and meeting friends and family at the gate. Simpler times.Report
It doesn’t strike me as nuts that they were finally able to say “hey, Pearl Harbor was awful… an infamous day indeed! But, you know, we can lighten up.”
I hope that we figure out that we can lighten up.Report
Good one. Me too!Report
“How many attacks have been prevented by the shoes thing or the gate thing?”
The important thing to remember in discussions like this is that if it hadn’t rained that day, Flight 63 would not have made it to Miami.Report
See also too, “OuttaControlCrime!” versus police and penal reform.Report
You are very correct on the last point. Although I think libertarian minded folk would like to assume that everyone could make their own risk adjusted decisions, many people wildly overstate some risks while drastically minimizing others. Shoe bombs being a bigger threat than, say, car accidents. I just prefer finding humor in it.Report
Most people are not trained in making those kind of judgements, and even the ones who are don’t have access to the information needed to make them effectively. even well meaning libertarians can’t do this effectively in most cases.Report
I am probably guilty of miswording the libertarian ideal. Not that Libertarians are somehow better equipped to conduct accurate risk assessments, but that libertarians content to let people live with their own decisions (however they are made).Report
To preserve our freedoms, I surrendered to TSA a bottle of Schwartzkoff’s Super Moisturizing Shampoo, the only shampoo that made my hair shiny – and I never found a replacement. You’re welcome, flying public. I’m still a tad bitter.Report
COVID is preventable by using HEPA filters. 99.97% filtration … per air change (try ten an hour).
At best, a mask gives you two chances — once on exit, and once on entry. Pretty poor odds for an airborne virus.
Particularly one that comes out your butt.
Check out the CDC website for the evidence on the above (or read the Nature article).
Masks are an egregious form of waste, and one that could be entirely prevented by asking public areas to prevent spreading of illness.Report
We’re going to have to mask our butts now, aren’t we? For the greater good.Report