Katie and I are back in San Francisco, back home. My mom, too, is back home at her apartment in New Jersey. She was discharged from the hospital this morning. She came home, showered, and ate some porridge. All in all, she’s doing very well, considering that a section of her intestine was removed from her body less than a week ago.
Here are a few pictures to back up my encouraging words. This first one was taken when we visited her yesterday, and the one on the right is from this morning, just before we took her home:
We woke up at around 9 AM or so New York time and our flight arrived into SFO at around 9 PM or so San Francisco time, so it’s been a rather long day. I managed to finish Watchmen on the plane. I also won a contest with my Pokemon. He bedazzled the judge Dexter with his acting skills.
I’m not an airport security expert either, but I am one of those (many?) people that think the entire routine when entering the gate area at US airports is mainly theatrics. The shoes, the liquids – it all seems to be there to reinforce the notion that we’re being secured against the types of attacks that have been identified in the past. I suppose it does prevent me from using large amounts of liquids or my shoes as potential weapons, but that seems like fixing a potentially leaky dam by plugging two specific small holes.
Not only that, these procedures does more to punish the innocent than the guilty. Security lines now take longer to process for all travelers because of the time it takes for everyone to take off and put on their shoes; additionally, the liquids policy makes it much more inconvenient for any legitimate traveler to bring their usual makeup or personal care items.
Lastly, in the big picture view of things, it’s hard to imagine that these policies will stop determined terrorists from achieving their objectives; that’s what frightens me most. Before September 11, it was somewhat inconceivable that less than a dozen men could commandeer multiple planes with their objective being to crash the planes into large structures. This wasn’t because plane hijacking was unheard of; it was because previous hijackings hadn’t been kamikaze missions.
Terrorists aren’t necessarily smarter than our security teams are, but they have the advantage because they can afford to react. Our government is in a tough spot because they need to be able to outthink and predict events and actions that haven’t yet happened. The security policies that I see at our airports don’t convince me. Perhaps there’s more than meets the eye, but it feels more like theater than actual protection to me.
