Scan or Grope?
 

Scan
Grope


I will be going to NY in Feb and I will fly out of Chicago. If any of you were flying which option would you choose and why? TIA :)

grope. as long as it's female. haven't been laid in a minute so any rise will do.

scan. I'm a nudist at heart and couldn't give a shit who sees what, but don't be touching me.... I don't so huggy kissy stuff, never mind strangers in my crotch...

Scan, then grope ;)

I'd take the train or drive. Fuck them.

The train is 16 hrs and they do not allow dogs unless they are service dogs. I don't think my Chihuahua qualifies. Parking in NY is non existent[ see Seinfeld] Soooooooo I have to make a scan or grope choice >sigh<

if you really are ambivalent, scan is the way -much faster.

This might sound weird but I don't care either way except I have to remove my dog from the carrier to have her carrier x rayed and I am not sure of airport procedure now but I don't want them holding or touching my dog. That would be just what I need for them to drop her. :eek:

B4 I used to take the dog out our stuff got x rayed and we both walked thru the metal detector and I put her in her bag. I dunno when the scan or grope takes place.

That is weird :) But I'm a cat person and
(a) they can be dropped without harm
(b) it would be so funny watching the fuckers hunt down and recapture the cat

I don't want to say what I paid to go on this trip, not to mention the motel costs in NY but my dog will be showing at 3 dog shows there and dropped dogs don't show well! :eyebrow:

I don't have a problem with being one of a thousand naked bodies some bored dude looks at for half a second. But personally, I would still choose grope, because I'm in no way convinced the scanners are safe. If you don't want the dog out of the crate though, go with the scanner. It's a big box thing you step into, and you and the dog can go through together. Is the little guy actually getting his own seat, or is he going underneath the plane in cargo?

wait a minute. what am I missing here? a dog crate minus dog = empty dog crate. they have to x-ray that? are they that fucking stupid? or have i had one to many beers?

She is going under the seat in front of me and yah they x ray all bags/crates. I don't want to take her thru the scanner. If the rumors are right and they scramble DNA I don't want to be the first on my block with a new kind of designer human/dog puppies down the road. . :3_eyes:

I don't worry so much about my DNA scrambling I don't plan to pass it on.

This is exactly my position too, although I'd add that I'm opposed to the gradual and ever increasing erosion of our rights as spelled out in the Bill of Rights, so I'm in the footfootfoot camp too.

Y'know, I don't think they would scan a dog with the backscatter machine. I think if you are singled out for scanning, they will probably x-ray the crate and then you could put the dog back in the crate while you get scanned.

They may examine the dog by hand, though it would be kind of obvious that the dog is not carrying a bomb. The idea of the backscatter machine is to see under your clothes to see if you're hiding liquid explosives. The dog can't do that unless s/he's dressed. And the Chi is too small to hide enough plastic explosives up its butt.

I don't care if they probe me, so long as Loughner or the like isn't sitting next to me plotting to rule the world. ;)

Probably grope. I just don't necessarily trust the safety of those machines. The fewer x-rays the better, I say.

I haggis'd, the made sure to do my background reading.
http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/Radiati.../BodyScanners/

I am a radiation safety professional, you're getting more radiation on the flight, than going through the scanner.

But it doesn't say it doesn't scramble your DNA......... it just says it's low dose radiation. Those aliens are sneaky that way, making it look all safe and shit.....

he says that to all the chicks......

:lol:

What I have read elsewhere is that it's comparing apples to oranges when it comes to radiation dosage. A typical x-ray machine in a doctor's office will give you a set amount of radiation and that's averaged out over your whole body to come up with the exposure number. The backscatter machines use a certain amount of radiation, and when they publish that number, they average it out over your whole body as well. But what I've read is that this is a bad comparison because the backscatter machine only penetrates a couple of millimeters. So when you average out the total radiation over the actual tissue that's being radiated, it's orders of magnitude higher for that tissue. The published numbers are simply wrong, according to what I've read. And for men, especially boys with smaller ones, the vital tissue that's being radiated at these high levels are the testicles.

I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about this, I only know what I've read. So I could be wrong, but what I've read about this leaves me with unsettled questions. I'm not confident that they have been proven safe, but based on what I know now, I would not let my son go through one.

Once some trusted entity other than the TSA shows them to be safe, I'll change my tune. But I don't trust the TSA at all to tell the truth.

I will be visiting my Mom again this Spring, and if I decide to fly instead of drive, I will go through the scan. They won, because I really don't want to be groped.

I guess I would go scan, but the screen is, like...hidden right? I mean, I have this fear of my nekkid self on some airport jumbotron or something. Sure would clear the flight. :vomit:

.

If the TSA agents look like that, go for the grope! :p:

Daaaammmmnnnnnnnnn...thats Beest?

hubba hubba

:rotflol: maybe I won't get into trouble after all

Some better comments on the safety issue than I can make: http://boingboing.net/2010/11/27/mol...biologist.html

And also a letter of concern about the safety of the devices sent by a bunch of UCSF PhDs to the Obama administration.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/defa...jph-letter.pdf

Basically if a handful of PhDs in the field have reviewed the public information on the scanners and are not convinced that they are safe, then what am I supposed to think?

And if I could hear his accent at the same time? Oh Lordy...

I bet he's blushing......

Nyeah nyeah nyeah...been there done that!

'Course, monster ain't nothin' to sneeze at either. In fact, when we (monster et al) met for dinner some time ago my cousin was there and she remarked to me later "what a good-looking family!" :)

RE: Glatts link in post # 32 above
Point (B) would be a difficult issue for TSA to prove the negative,
especially to a politically powerful group in the population.

You would think that if a woman is told to never get an xray, she's not going to go walking into one of these machines. Of course, that's assuming she is aware she has the condition.

Well supposedly Deepak Chopra is a key shareholder or owner fo one of the companies that makes the machines so it's gotta be safe. Am I right?

My wife tells me the former head of Home Land Security, Michael Chertoff,
is invested in these scanners too, but this may just be a rumor from earlier times.

In light of Point (B) above, this quote from Chopra's Center's web page
could be read with quite a bit of irony.

Patently?

Yah if Beest was a screener I would definitely go for the grope but this will probably be my screener and have the seat next to me on the plane...

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...ee/fat_guy.jpg

That's Richlevy!

I agree with Clod and Glatt.

If you;d have asked me last year I'd have said scan for sure. But all that stuff about it potentially fucking with people's dna sounds well dodgy to me.

Additionally, a guy being groped can turn his head to the side and cough to get a free hernia test.

The source I linked was the UK Health and Safety Authority (OSHA equivalent), I tried to lookup the NRPB (national Radiological Protection Board) where I did my training but it looks like it's been absorbed into the HSA.

It's the same stuff about exposure at altitiude.

This is the FDAs response to the letter from the PhDs concerning 'skin dose', it's a point by point smackdown.

The testing by the FDA and NIST calculates very carefully how much skin exposure you get and it's a lot less than by natural sources. One fun thing to do is to turn on my Geiger counter, which makes a beep every time some radiation passes, it will beep away merrilly every few seconds just about anywhere, cosmic rays pass thorugh us all the time

One teensy caveat, the whole field of relating radiation exposure to health risk is based on studying accidental exposures, you can't just irradiate a bunch of people and see who gets cancer (well not any more, see the military personell at early bomb tests). The biggest study group is Japanese victims of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima detonations, also early bomb test where a lot of military perosnell were exposed. A couple of years ago they halved all the exposure limits when they figured out the humidty of the air over Hiroshima was different to what had been previously thought so the basic exposure data was wrong.

Thanks Beest. I appreciate your pulling this information together. I didn't understand that the term "effective" dose meant that they were already taking into consideration the different tissues being irradiated vs. the entire body.

I'm more receptive to information from the FDA than the TSA, although they still aren't my ideal of a trusted authority. But I skimmed the report you linked and saw that Johns Hopkins had also reviewed one of these scanners, and I went to their report too:
http://www.tsa.gov/assets/pdf/jh_apl_v2.pdf

It says basically the same thing. So I guess I trust that these are basically safe. It's better to limit exposure to radiation where you can, but at the same time, the scanner is a lot more convenient than getting groped. I think after skimming the FDA report and the John's Hopkins report, I'd probably choose the scanner after all.

I'm lucky to get away with scanning, these days, even with my dark glasses on.
Groping is out after what the judge said last time.

As long as they let me grope all the girls over 18, they can scan to their heart content

The reports are based on theoretical exposure. There is no calibration mechanism in place to check them. And the TSA employees are not allowed to wear dosimeters.

Exactly. And why should they wear dosimeters, comrade? Are you suggesting that the people's backscatter machines are anything less than safe, if not health enhancing? Perhaps you need some re-education?