Re: What are the little things that would give ETs amongst us away?

:: Part of being a free country is that you don't need to have a
:: constructive reason to do something. Everything which is not
:: explicitly forbidden is allowed.

: But it also means that you have to take the responsibility of dealing
: with the consequences of your choice.

Sure, but in some cases, the consequences are supposed to be nil.
"Driving while Black" is supposed to have no particular consequences
in and of itself. Now, whether making jokes about bombs is one of
these circumstances is unclear to me, but I note that, if you are in a
crowded theater, and make a joke that involves shouting "fire! fire!"
(or "bomb! bomb!") just to get a chuckle out of all the people running
around in panic... well, that's traditionally given as an example of what
free speech doesn't cover. And I submit to you that joking about bombs at
a security checkpoint is much like shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Neither are even funny once, one might argue.

And finally, in a practical sense, Michael wants *security*
*checkcritters* to parse, recognize, and appropriately ignore jokes,
in conversations they aren't even listening to in detail, but react
to inadvertent slips of the tongue? Yeesh. I mean, there's a reason
for the "no ma'am, we have no sense of humor that we are aware of" bit.
It's even a nice recursion, since that statement is itself must be said
deadpan for effect... but I digress. Consider that on usenet, flame
prevention dictates the use of ":-)" a distressing fraction of the time,
and you see how reliable people's parsing of jokes is. And that's
usenetters, which even with the "infinite september" effect, are
arguably less prone to misinterpret humor than checkcritters.

The point is, the "we're not going to get your joke"
signs seem perfectly straightforward, reasonable, and justified, IMO.


Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.

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