In A Barrel

I just came back from doing a little traveling, and flew to Seattle from Chicago O'Hare airport. And was reminded of something that first occurred to me in 2004, when I was flying out of London Heathrow. Namely that airport security is, in a lot of cases, set up to protect airplanes and, to a lesser degree, airports, more that it is to protect travelers. And, in so dong, shows that terrorism might not be the threat that it's been made out to be.

Whether it was due to the layout of the terminal, to renovation or something else, I don't know, but the lines for the security checkpoint wound up cramming a lot of people into a fairly small space.

The line continues around the corner to the right...

The point behind terrorism is to bring about some sort political change. Violence is a means to that end. Accordingly, it doesn't necessarily matter what sort of violence is used. If the goal is to protect people from acts of mass violence, packing them into a relatively enclosed space like this seems to defeat that purpose, because anyone who can show that they have a boarding pass can get to this point in the airport. The security checkpoint, the destination of these snaking lines, is out of the frame to the right. So it wouldn't be particularly difficult for someone to enter this space with the bomb or a gun.

So the fact that no-one has chosen to attack the security lines of airports can be said to demonstrate that terrorism is pretty difficult to pull off in many societies where the tools of terrorism are decently controlled, and/or that there isn't a lot of motivation for such attacks.

Because while the security apparatus of the airport would prevent a person with a gun or a bomb from getting to one of the gates or on to an aircraft, this setup does little to protect the people actually flying. This is morbid, but a person with a weapon, standing at the point where I took this picture, would be capable of doing a lot of damage, pretty quickly. A few people could coordinate even more mayhem.

And I suspect that I'm not the first person that this has occurred to. It's possible that for most airports, there simply isn't anything to be done about it; the design and layouts of spaces that pre-date the War on Terror weren't put in place with this consideration in mind. So I'm not contending that this is proof that The Powers That Be are prosecuting the War on Terror in bad faith, or that it's indicative of deliberate Security Theater. But this sort of bottleneck, one that places a lot of people into a small area, seems counterproductive if the goal is to protect those people, rather than the travel infrastructure.

Lock, Lock. Who’s There?

I am, I guess you could say, a small-government moderate. I don’t have a philosophical issue with the existence of government, or any special gripes about the legitimacy of state power, but rather I tend to think that everyone is better off when people play to their strong suits. And there are some things that governments are placed to do very well, and some that they are always going to be terrible at. And the more we remove from government the responsibility for things that it doesn’t do well, the better off we are overall. Because we can give those jobs to people who will do them well.

When I have a gripe with government, it’s when they do something poorly, yet won’t allow anyone else to do it, regardless of the fact that they could do it better. An illustration of this is the Transportation Security Administration and travel locks. If you’re going to fly, and you want to lock your luggage, you have to use TSA-approved locks for the job, because the TSA wants to be able to get into a suspicious bad without having to cut the lock off. As if someone who is going to try to smuggle a bomb or other dangerous item onto a plane via checked luggage is going to merrily use an approved lock. These locks are approved by the TSA, because the TSA has skeleton keys that will allow them to open the locks, and thus the bags, and then lock them back.

The problem now is that people other than the TSA can have access to these keys. In fact, you can print them out for yourself with a 3D printer and the right plastic. Not, it seems that you need to; the locks are said to not be very secure. And therein lies the issue. TSA spokesperson Mike England says, in response to the news that keys for its locks can be printed by the public:

“The reported ability to create keys for TSA-approved suitcase locks from a digital image does not create a threat to aviation security.”

“These consumer products are ‘peace of mind’ devices, not part of TSA’s aviation security regime.”

“Carried and checked bags are subject to the TSA’s electronic screening and manual inspection. In addition, the reported availability of keys to unauthorized persons causes no loss of physical security to bags while they are under TSA control. In fact, the vast majority of bags are not locked when checked in prior to flight.”

But here’s the point. If I’m using a TSA-approved lock, I’m clearly not worried about the security of a bag when the TSA has it - otherwise, I’d have taken steps to keep them out of it, too. The point behind a TSA-approved lock is to keep people out when the TSA doesn’t have control of the bag. It’s unclear how one can have “peace of mind,” when the only luggage locks available on the market that can be taken on aircraft are so publicly compromised. Now, to be sure, I understand that luggage locks are not the end all and be all. I think of them in much the same way I do the lock on my apartment door. Not really much of a deterrent to a determined thief, who could likely simply bash the door in, but enough to prompt a casual burglar to move on to the next unit, in the hope of finding an unlocked door. And given that, as Mr. England points out, that most suitcases aren’t locked anyway, that small amount of deterrence might help. Granted, it’s still easier to open an unlocked bag than to use the TSA’s keys, but the bar is simply that much lower.

A number of people online had expressed some dismay over Mr. England’s attitude towards the security of traveler’s belongings, which has charitably been described as “not our problem,” but in a sense, that’s kind of the point. The TSA doesn’t concern itself with the security regimes of travelers. And in that regard, it doesn’t have to care that it compromises those in the course of what it does concern itself with - namely telling everyone how terrorists would be blowing up planes left, right and center if they weren’t there to rifle through random people’s luggage.

The TSA’s chance of every stopping an airplane bombing through physically searching luggage are slim. Given what I understand of their processes, the device would have to show up on whatever scanners they use, but not be so obvious that it would be clear what it was without a physical search. And again, if I were going to put a bomb into a piece of checked luggage, I wouldn’t care about the locks on it. But I guess this is the way security theater works. One would hope however, that they’d aim for better than a one-star performance.

Mass Intelligence‏

Sometimes, efficiencies are obvious, yet difficult to realize. Case in point: one of the things that I've noticed about King County Metro and Sound Transit is that they seem to move a LOT of empty buses, even during rush hour. And while buses are an efficient means of transporting a large number of people, a single-occupancy bus is significantly less efficient than a single-occupancy car. I'm going to contrast this with Chicago for a moment. There, when I rode the bus, I would often find myself changing buses at a bus barn, where the bus that I was riding would be taken out of service. Now, I suspect that the Chicago Transit Authority had a good deal more flexibility then Metro or Sound Transit as to where to put their bus barns. I've seen a couple of the Metro bases, and they're not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but they manage to be off the beaten track, even though they're in fairly built-up areas.

But no matter how they came to that point, the fact remains that moving empty buses around is likely a fairly expensive proposition, even when gasoline prices are fairly tame. After all, it's not as if an articulated bus could manage 30 miles to the gallon in city driving. And even setting that aside, the more miles driven the higher the risk of an accident, and the more wear-and-tear on the vehicles. These add costs that aren't being offset by paying riders. And when it's only the driver, I don't see the buses in the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, so what you end up with is a really big single-occupancy vehicle crawling along in stop-and-go traffic along with everyone else. To my mind, this calls for a contest. Let people know where the Bus Barns are, give them the lowdown on what areas need to be served, offer up a bit of cash as a prize and let the magic of crowdsourcing do the brainstorming for you.

This isn't to say that Metro and Sound Transit haven't put quite a bit of effort into keeping the simple shuffling of buses around the metropolitan area to a minimum. But it doesn't require a lot of looking to find a bus that's out of service, even during times when you'd think that the buses would be full. I'm curious to see if they can wring some more efficiency out of the system. A few thousand heads working that problem could be just the ticket.

A Matter of Trust

Videos, like this one featured in Megan McArdle's webblog, are problematic as evidence of anything. Because of the lack of sound, you don't really know what is going on - there's nothing that you can use to verify what the captions tell you is happening.

But in a lot of ways, that's completely beside the point. This video points to a bigger problem - the idea that Transportation Security Administration workers can quickly become tin-plated tyrants, willing to punish people for simply standing up for the rights and privileges that they are supposed to have. Even if you assume that this video is more a less a complete fabrication, and/or deliberately taken out of context by some rabble-rousing terrorist sympathizer, the fact that the media is taking it seriously, and wanting more information is indicative of the greater issue that we're having with our security apparatus.

Security works on trust. That's just the nature of the beast. So, the TSA, unsurprisingly says, "Trust us." But there are segments of the population that are wary of doing so for its own sake. They ask, "How do we know we can trust you?" The problem arises when the perceived answer is "I don't recall phrasing that as a request."

Choices

"If you have two planes getting ready to depart and one, you say, everybody has been thoroughly screened on this plane, and you can either go on that plane or another plane where we have not done a thorough screening because people did not feel comfortable with that, I think most if not all of the traveling public will say, 'I want to go on that plane that has been thoroughly screened.' "
TSA Administrator John Pistole

I think I'll take the unscreened plane. If Pistole is wrong, I get to be on a plane full of people who don't go for the whole "security theater" thing. If he's right, I get a plane all to myself. Either way, however, I doubt it does much for my chances of being killed in a terrorist incident.

Productivity

Evidently, time was a wastin'

The woman in the Lexus SUV behind me kept looking down at something while we were on the one ramp this morning. It was rush hour, so the ramp was metered. We'd sit, roll forward a car or truck length, sit, roll forward, wash, rinse, repeat. And when I'd stop, I'd glance in my rear-view mirror. The woman behind me was dividing her time between watching where she was going, and whatever it was she was fiddling with - texting, reading e-mail, whatever. If she'd only looked down when stopped, it would have been better, but she'd let her car roll up behind mine, while her attention was seemingly fixed on her lap.

I know that I seemed obsessive about it, but I'd once been stopped been stopped at a red light, and the person behind me had better things to do than keep his mind on what he was doing, he'd rolled into me, putting a football-sized dent in the back of my car, and consigning me to several weeks of being folded into Origami by a sadistic chiropractor. So I was very attentive to her. But no so much that I didn't realize the irony that on the radio, at that same time, was this story: Government Eyes Crackdown On Texting And Driving.

I understand bans on Texting and Driving are becoming more popular, but I don't think that it's really the way to go. Mainly because I don't think that it really hits the target. Think of the last time you heard or read someone saying that the time you spend in a car, going from one place to another, as "wasted," "unproductive" or an "under-utilized resource to be reclaimed" - even when YOU'RE the one doing the driving? Not that long ago, was it? Why do we deride time used watching where we're going on the the road as misspent? The woman behind me was clearly of the opinion that whatever it was she was doing was too important to wait. So, she divided her time and attention between driving, and the other activity - much to my consternation. (By the way, she didn't wind up rear-ending me.) But she was doing something that garners a lot of respect in today's world - "multitasking." She was doing something "constructive" in time that we currently have little respect for.

In an earlier story on Texting and Driving (which I commented on at NPRs site), one David Strayer, a psychologist at the University of Utah, is quoted as saying: "When it becomes stigmatized and you have the legislation and education and science all together as a package, you'll change people's behavior. And until you have that package in place, you're not going to see systematic changes in driver behavior." This is helpful, but it might miss the greater point. To make the roads safer, perhaps we should stigmatize the entire idea that time devoted to nothing other than controlling a moving motor vehicle is somehow wasted - a "gap" in which other, more important things can be done.

I know that I'll spend less time looking in my rear-view mirror.

The Friendly Skies

The problem:

Airline passengers not paying attention to the safety video at the beginning of their flight.

The solution:

Have the flight attendants wearing body paint that mimics their uniforms.

Of course, the video is careful to maintain a "G" rating, making sure that objects more substantial than paint are hiding any naughty bits that might scandalize little eyes. (Or keep the older kids paying more attention than perhaps they should...) But I have a feeling that we'll be seeing more of this idea, as online pranksters and parodists get a hold of it.

Fly the Scaredy Skies

While [the FAA's former director of flight standards, Nick] Lacey says there was no immediate danger, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Eyeshum Cory says any noncompliance — no matter how small — is a safety issue, and the alternative is unthinkable.

"You may be inconvenienced for a few hours, you may be inconvenienced for a day. But you'll have that day. And you'll have another day," Cory says.
Airlines Scramble as Grounded Planes Cause Chaos - NPR

American Airlines has canceled thousands of flights to check the spacing of fasteners securing sleeves on bundles of wires in the wheelwells of MD-80 airliners. Cory's statement is a scare tactic, pure and simple, and relies on two basic premises, both of which are likely false:

1. Improper fastening of the bundles in the sleeves creates a significant likelihood of a fatal airplane crash.
2. Inspecting for proper fastening of the bundles in the sleeves eliminates the likelihood of a fatal airplane crash.

The job of the FAA isn't to be apologists for the airline industry. And I think that they really have no business attempting to frighten people into thinking that a massive disruption of the domestic travel industry is the only thing that stands between the flying public and a fiery death in an airplane disaster. I find it difficult to fathom that there wasn't a less disruptive means of accomplishing the same ends. But if nothing else, this is pretty much impossible to miss, and so the FAA and American are certainly seen to be doing something - even though it's something that they should have been doing behind the scenes for years.

Green or Nothing

I was at an interesting forum a few years ago, where people were asked hypothetical questions, and then there was some time to compare and debate the answers people gave. One question that came around to me was: “What would you do with a $300,000,000.00 lottery jackpot?” I’d been thinking about the manufacturing sector at around that time, and was wondering if it would be possible to create a super high-tech manufacturing facility that would allow for domestic production, without a reliance on blue-collar labor that comes at a premium in the American market. Given 300 million USD, I answered that I’d experiment with the concept by trying to build a car company that would be both completely domestic and financially viable in the long term.

Everyone else who answered the question had their own ideas of what they’d do with that sort of money, except one guy – who decided that he’d spend the entire amount solely to sink my new car company. Turns out he thought that cars were such an environmental disaster that private ownership of motor vehicles should be banned. (Frankly I had been unprepared for the hostility with which this guy reacted to my idea. “Welcome to the Left Coast,” I thought to myself. What else can you say?) Something tells me this same guy is currently having conniptions over this new offering from India’s Tata Motors, billed as the world’s cheapest automobile. (Any bets on how soon you’ll be able to buy one from Wal-Mart, or a three-pack from Costco?)

Part of the problem with environmentalist concern over this car is that it in effect condemns people in the developing world to remain undeveloped until their entire development can be effected with “green” technologies. Which requires that said technologies become fully mature. And while this might (and allow me to stress might) be a laudable goal, what do people in India get out of it? They wait twenty years for über-green technology to become perfectly viable, with nothing in it for them in the meantime? Good luck with that. I mean you can talk about long term environmental goals all you want, but why should Indians be any more inclined to think about the Earth their grandchildren will inhabit than Americans are?

If the environmental community wants to head off this sort of thing, then the onus is on them to produce an alternative that is attractive to both them, and the people whom they're trying to talk out of buying affordable cars. Simple hostility to cars (or privately-owned personal transportation in general) isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems. Simply declaring a lifestyle inappropriate because it is deemed unsustainable isn’t feasible.

The Security Show

You know, I could pontificate on aviation "security theater," or, I could let someone much better at it do it for me.

"DHS is another example of that old political standby: Don't just stand there; do something that will keep people from noticing that you're just standing there." Bruce Reed ("The Has Been - My Kingdom for a Department" Slate Magazine, 13 July, 2005)

But I suppose that part of the issue is that there's really nothing wrong with just standing there, if someone else is effectively handling the problem elsewhere. But we, as the general public, want to SEE action being taken. So the guy on the scene, even if there's nothing he can do, has to go through the motions of trying to make a difference. We see this public performance, and decide that things are being handled. So... where's the incentive to have someone working their tail off to do the heavy lifting, if no one is going to know, or care? Hence the public perception of something being done becomes more useful than something actually being done - so nothing is actually done.

Confused yet?

Blame It On The Rain

Today, we were served with a reminder that it only rarely ever really rains in Seattle. Typically, what the locals normally describe as rain is, to an out-of-towner, simply a lingering drizzle. Which is why people in Seattle are dying for bit of sunshine in place that gets less annual rainfall than, say, New York City.

But today, it rained. For real. And half the Puget Sound region is flooded out. Entire apartment complexes in low-lying areas are dealing with feet of standing water. And because of the haphazard (at best) planning that went into the region's explosive growth, two or three flooded intersections can result in detours 10 miles, and a couple hours, long.

I always find it odd how little water it really takes to bring this place to a standstill. Despite the fact that we allegedly live in a temperate rain forest, this area is very water intolerant, and when more than an inch or two falls in a short span of time, everything goes crazy. And there seems to be little, if any, real official response to the changing conditions. Despite the fact that roads were closed all over the place, you couldn't find a police officer, or anyone else who could tell you what was going on, or which roads were still open. Traffic reports on the radio weren't much help, either. This general lack of preparation seems to be common in these sorts of situations, and consistently makes matters worse, as you wind up with people wandering around, not knowing where they should be attempting to go. This situation needs to change, so that people can make better judgments as to what they should be doing, and avoid making themselves into part of the problem.

Feel the Power of the Wind

It's rarely very windy here in Western Washington. You can't go kite flying very often, and if you go down for a sailboat ride on the Sound, you'll usually wind up tooling around with the motor. But, on occasion, it does get really windy around here. And that can make riding the ferry an adventure. I don't know who took this; my sister forwarded it to me in e-mail, along with some other shots.

The photographer's original e-mail ended as follows:

"Someone either PM'd me or posted that I should send these to the W[ashington] S[tate] Ferry System. I tried to sell them a much tamer, but similar shot and they told me these kind of shots don't promote rider ship. I couldn't argue that one."

I don't know. Seems to me like it would be a blast.

You Can See It On Foot

There is a teriyaki place not very far from my new apartment. This should come as a surprise to exactly no-one. After all, I live near Seattle, and you can't swing a dead cat anywhere in the vicinity without breaking the windows of at least half a dozen teriyaki places, two Chinese restaurants, a sushi joint and a Thai place.

But I digress. The point isn't that there's a teriyaki place within walking distance. It's that I never knew it was there before. In fact, despite the fact that I've driven by the place time and again while I've lived out here, I've never noticed the entire strip mall that it sits in. I happened to notice it today simply because I walked over to the gas station for a quick bite to eat that didn't require me to cook anything. When I'm driving, I've found, I'm oblivious to everything that isn't right there on or next to the roadway. When I'm not driving, it's like a whole new world. There are all sorts of places, that have been there for years, and that I've driven past a million times, that I'm suddenly noticing for the first time. I suppose, do a degree, that sort of single-mindedness is helpful. After all, my driving record has no accidents that are more recent than twenty years ago. But something tells me that it might be worthwhile to do a little less driving, and give myself a chance to become better acquainted with this other world that seems to exist only when I'm not behind the wheel.

Bussing It

On Sunday, both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had stories about the changes that Seattle city government would like to make to reduce the number of cars in the city, and improve the utilization rates for public transportation.

The general plan seems to go something like this: reduce the city's overall "carrying capacity" for cars. Allow for more housing to be constructed without dedicated parking, make paid street parking 24-7, extend the reach of the zones where only local residents may use street parking, and similar measures. While not explicitly part of this plan, the idea of removing highway 99 where it travels along the downtown waterfront, and integrating into the present surface street (which would dramatically reduce capacity), seems to be a good fit with the rest of the ideas.

The formulation appears to be simple enough. Make driving into, in, and perhaps through Seattle more painful than using mass transit, thus making mass transit the better option by comparison. Assumed is the idea that greater ridership would mean increased revenues that would then be re-invested in the transit system. Supporters of this plan are fairly convinced that people we realize that they're better off in the long run. There will be less pollution, people will be healthier (since many of them will take up walking or bicycling to get around), and the situation will be better for those people who must still drive on occasion, et cetera.

I wonder about this logic. The goal here seems to be precisely creating a very specific pain point with limited resources. Pushing people to drive less, rather than drive elsewhere, seems like a very fine line to walk. If people don't drive less, there will simply be a general dissatisfaction with the whole thing. Life in Seattle will have become less convenient and more expensive, with no real benefit realized. If people simply drive elsewhere, it makes the suburbs better suited to both live and do business. This would come at the expense of the city and those businesses and people who can't afford to move. And, more importantly, without the increased revenue (and maybe with a decreased tax base), there won't be any money to improve transit services. I'd like to see the risk analysis that went into this.