Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • September 1, 2018 10:21 AM

@ Tatütata,

I feel dizzy. Can’t say I like flying (in all, boarded 4 different aircrafts in the last decade), and I would feel bad about the carbon footprint.

Whilst carbon footprint is a “my place in society” concern, have you considered the “my personal risk” concern?

There is the travel to and from the airport, in some parts of the world that can include the extra risk of a free injection of lead (US, Brazil being two that have made repeated front page news).

Then there are the “flamen bomba” types crashing into the airport pedestrian area in a four by four with a bonfire in the back with a couple of barbeque gas cylinders. They picked the wrong airport and got a ball crushing defeat from a couple of itate would be travelers who had obviously worked out they were going to be delayed thus were trying to lower their stress induced high blood preasure. And who can blaim them high blood preasure is after all a “silent killer” as the idiots driving the bonfire would have known being medical types.

But airport strees comes out in other ways, no matter how innocent you are the checkin security process is going to cause a major hormone imbalence in the best of us. Apparently lowering your stress by black balling those brown shirts is very much verboten, so thats an extra stressor right there. How’s a person supposed to survive body, heart and soul that kind of dictitorial abuse.

Then of course there are the “body scanners” they claim the machines are safe, but they won’t let you or me adjust one and lock them in it for a year to prove they are not just fantasizing for all that profit they think they are going to make… But the simple fact is they are pumping radiant energy into you where there are no know safe limits just heating effect guesses…

But then there is the increased “space weather” particles/radiation you get “flying high” which is very likely to be cumulative for each air mile traveled, will you end up having had more stray than a lifetime of being medically imaged (hey those knee buckling lead aprons they all wear in cathlabs should give you cause to pause and think).

But you also have to worry about people with crotch or foot itch, are they another Captin Underpants or LCpl sabot with that little extra you realy don’t need. But they are by no means the worst, you need to ensure you are fully upto date on your all locations shots. Those tight fisted airlines want not just to poison you with increased levels of carbon dioxide and engine exhaust carcinogens, but a whole range of unknown virulent pathogens from your fellow travelers by turning the air extraction / replacment down to the absolute minimum they can get away with…

But there is also the problem of “straight and level” it’s no great secret that bits drop of aircraft, from door strips, through cargo doors to whole tail sails, and the odd jet engine. Mostly when the aircraft is not “straight and level”. So take off, landing, course correction, foul weather avoidence, oh and anti-collision avoidence. But when things do drop this often necessitates other quite sudden corrections to flight attitude, you can see where this is going, a kind of “chain reaction of doom” that techies prefer to call a “cascade failure” to try and make it sound safer and singular not a major “cluster f4ck” of rapid events caused by lax maintenence, poor design and friday afternoon and monday morning inattention.

But then there are cleaning staff blocking up pitot openings, causing all sorts of strange avionics effects…

Oh then there are meteorological effects, you should note they only give figures for “straight and level” not on the ground or near the ground such as take off and landing. You might also have heard of the “turkey tests” more formally “bird strike appraisal” take one frozen fowl, put it in the largest air gun you are ever likely to clap eyes on and fire it at places you think “might be vulnerable”. With the engines if you nip round the back you might get lucky and get freshly cooked turkey mince with considerable fortification of iron and other minerals, but not in a particularly soluble or edible for that matter form.

But you also have another stressor, the bus driver up front, the chances are they are on less than minimum wages, and indebt up to the eyeballs after self funding their training. They will of course start of at the bottom of the pile with all the stressful routes and times. It’s enough to drive a person to drink and drugs, and lets be honest quite a few do go down that route whilst others, well they just crack and go down and you with them…

But some are near “zero flight hours” trained in simulators, where you know your can just hit the replay button if you land inside a Spanish Mountain or some such. Speaking of which who actually flies the plane, the under trained lump of flesh up front or a bunch of software engineers with pizza and cola related ill health and never enough hours to be sure those little near invisable quote marks commas, semi colons, and colons are in the right places. Managment say you don’t have time for that, we pay you to cut code, we’ve software to test for crud in test… Run of course by those who can not make the lines cut count to be a programmer, even with the help of the Stackoverflow brains trust.

Then of course what’s under your seat? It might be incorrectly labled spare parts like oxygen makers or those whiz bank lithium batteries cooking down in the hold, burning through those “fly by wire” cables running just under the cabin floor.

I could go on, but is it any wonder that people take not just travel meds, but anti-anxiety and sleeping tablets… Have you ever wondered if various drug combinations and alcohol have ever been tested together? And what Jekyll and Hide effects they might have on the thin tails?

But do you dare sleep!!!, we all have heard about economy / cattle class DVT’s and other nasties. But even if you can sleep what about those who are fractious beyond normal, madening as they sometimes are, babies and children are disturbing/annoying more than they are dangerous but grown adults with a skinful or some mental disorder now they can hurt you with ease if you are asleep. Do you want to wake up with a plastic eating utensil ramed into an ear, nose, eye, or worse? Do you want to have your ear bitten off or your face scratched open, how about not waking up because you’ve been brained by the corner of a laptop some junior manager has lost it with and has had a major mental fritz out with? Hey don’t complain, it was only your head, not the window next to it they were actually aiming for. Your a hero your self sacrifice has stopped the rest of your fellow passengers getting dead by explosive decompression and it’s side effects like the Icarus one way effect, of dropping thirty thousand feet into mother earth.

How about those statistical oddities that say you are more likely to die a horrible death because there is a rock star on the same flight?

But then are you on a connecting flight, did the person who had your seat leave a can of shaving lotion behind? And will you drop through the floor because of it? How about a laser printer in the hold being shipped for repair but with a realy wrong part in the tonner compartment?

That list just keeps on comming like the old films with stockmarket ticker tape machines…

@ Mike,

So nothing to worry or complain about at confrences then just hyperbole?

Clive Robinson • September 1, 2018 7:12 PM

@ echo,

Wear an extra cardiagan instead of a blanket.

I was told when growing up (by the matriarch[1]) that “Cardigans are for those who need carers” meaning “children and the infirm” who could not get the buttons undone, thus did not annoy said carers.

[1] I should mention that she was quite happy spliting pigs heads in half with a meat cleaver, whilst leaving such wussy things as fowl decapitation to her youngest… To her a family pet would have been only for Christmas, and curry on new years day.

Clive Robinson • September 2, 2018 6:59 AM

@ echo,

A cardigan avoids sexist arguing over what temperature the thermostat should be set too

Ahhh you remember that’s nice 😀

As for the SAS wearing them, remind me to tell you the story of a very burly Met Police Special Branch / MI5 person wearing one whilst pushing a pram down the road on a surveilance job…

Clive Robinson • September 3, 2018 2:41 AM

@ echo,

I remember your “Russian beard” story.

I also have an “office air con” story that involves cardigans, which I think I’ve told here a while ago, and I thought it was that you were remembering.

But with regards the great temprature divide, I’m one who likes it on what others describe as “Bl@@dy freezing 14” whilst I have worked in 50C when in the oil industry and when droping in on the Middle East for a stroll in the deasert I would not recommend it.

The worst temprature change I’ve had to put up with was from doing a job near the south pole in winter to being in the hotest part of the Middle East in summer for another job a few days later. It realy did feal like I’d become that proverbial “snow ball in hell”. I also got “Hotel Amnesia” which made the whole thing even more surreal.

Clive Robinson • September 3, 2018 7:03 AM

@ CallMeLate…,

Visiting AU and NZ has been a dream since the 70’s. Not likely to happen.

I’ve been and would love to go again if it were not for the “No Fly” put on me by the Drs (Ill health can be more than “just a pain” 🙁

One of the things I like about the Antipodes is the way politicians and even their PR people says things.

For instance, when the Zephyrometer got hit by lightning, leaving the tip of the sculpture shreded. A “Windy Wellington” Coincil spokesman confirmed the damage with,

The needle is “completely stuffed”

It’s just nicely down to earth unlike the load of old cods Orwellian newspeak spin we get in the UK and other Northern Hemisphere WASP nations SWAM politicos.

Clive Robinson • September 3, 2018 12:14 PM

@ CallMeLate,

In the worfs of the song,

You say potato I say Patarto,

You say tamato I say Tomarto,

Potato, Patarto

Tamato, Tomarto

Let’ call the whole thing off.

Clive Robinson • September 3, 2018 7:04 PM

@ echo,

I’m eclectic so different clothes for different seasons and places keeps me entertained.

Speaking of clothes, you might be old enough to remember Blakes7 with it’s wonky wobbly sets and Leeds Poly buildings. Well the highlight of each show for many was what piece of glamour was the BBC costume Dept going to find for Servalan to wear. Clothes just loved her figure and her almost elfin face large brown eyes and short dark hair, and her ability to walk in a way that had an easy grace and poise. It was a form of “Power Dressing” befor the term was coined.

Sadly Jacqueline Pearce who so exquisitely played Servalan died yesterday.

Brought up in a convent school in West Byfleet near Woking in Surrey, she developed a sense of humour that her friends called “fun and filthy”. She once shocked a journalist interviewing her about her Blakes7 role by bluntly stating how she thought many had used images of her charecter for their fantasies.