Some weeks after terrorists turned several of our airliners into guided missiles, I flew — and got to experience our greatly “improved” security. My experiences were recorded here earlier.
Rant
Airline Insecurity — a Symptom of a Worse Disease
Author’s Note: This is the original version of my “Airline Insecurity” essay, published shortly after 9/11, originally found at this URL, which now has a newer version. As I’m putting this version back online in 2026, I actually no longer remember why I replaced and re-dated that page: it’s been too long ago now. But for various reasons I think it is a good idea to put this version online again, in pretty much the same style as I wrote them back then. [Offsite links have been repointed to the Internet Archive.]
Fundamentally Wrong
Written 21 September 2001. Also see the 2005 Update
ZT Madness is Spreading!
You might think “Zero Tolerance” is a playground issue — just a way for school administrators to deal with violent kids. If you did, you would be wrong.
Grasp Of The Obvious
Email makes it easy to complain. Too easy. I find people will literally complain about anything they see online.
Religious Freedom in the USA
It’s not a big controversy like some This is True stories have generated, but there has been considerable confusion generated by two stories from the 13 August 2000 issue.
Unclear on the Concept
One of my pet peeves is Public Relations Flacks. These are not to be confused with Public Relations Professionals — PR people who do a good job getting The Word out about their clients. They hate the word “flack,” but when they make their clients look bad — well, they’re inviting the derision.
Losing my Tolerance for “Zero Tolerance”
Don’t Say I Didn’t Tell You So
I had spoken about spam here and there in True, but in this issue I published the first installment of what would become my Spam Primer — a warning that unsolicited email advertising was now officially a serious problem on the net.