Flying is still the safest mode of transportation, and I can't believe people who are now soooo scared of airplanes. It would help if the TSA and Homeland Security stopped treating passengers like children--I can't get over the recent (hopefully short-lived) regulations. (Jeez, order us into adult diapers while you're at it--or not, because we might hide bombs in them. JFC.)
Planes are quite safe, but here's what kills me: Human determination is stronger than pretty much everything. If a human being wants something badly enough, nothing is going to stop them from obtaining it. We can amp up security measures both exponentially and infinitely, and still, someone who wants it badly enough will find a way around them, and at a certain point they are only serving as torture for other people. Security measures only work for regular crimes or crimes of opportunity. Like, if some random burglar wants to steal just anything he can sell, and he tries your door one night, but it's locked, he'll move on to the next house. But if a serial killer is fixated on you and has been stalking you for months, a goddamn door is not going to stop him. And it won't stop him even if it's three feet thick, made of solid iron, and surrounded by lasers and motion-triggered explosives. Adding all that extra shit would really just inconvenience you when you got up in the morning and realized you aren't strong enough to open your 5,000 pound door and even if you were, you've forgotten the code number to shut off the lasers. Not that you will wake up in the morning, because you'll have been killed or captured by that serial killer, whose human determination can and will outlast any security measure.
Exactly. (Love your point about the 5000 pound door and lasers, btw.)
We'll never be able to stop ALL attacks carried out on airplanes. But what we can change is our response to terrorism. Mourn the victims and hunt down the culprits--but don't use it as an excuse to take even more freedom away from ordinary people.
I keep forgetting to come back and add some actual commentary. After looking at the image again, a familiar quote came to mind:
There are three kinds of lies: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. -Mark Twain
I get the idea that's being presented, but the fact that the creator manipulates the idea of time, such as mentioning how the total time spent in the air would take us back to ancient Egypt, is just ridiculous. I did the math one time to figure out that if you took one second from every living person's lifespan, you would have about 130 years, which sounds like a lot until you realize that that one second is still only one second; we're all living that one second at the same exact moment, and it will never be more than one second of time no matter how you twist the idea. The creator also purposely chose to list only the passengers who were killed on the planes while ignoring the deaths caused by the attacks, such as, of course, the people in the Twin Towers who were killed as a result of the attacks. Abusing the numbers like this to support one's own point strikes me as nothing short of propaganda, and I find that rather ironic because people today are so obsessed with revolting against our governments and decrying the actions of our leaders for their own propaganda; it's hypocrisy in the most blatant form, and I have no respect for the creator because of it. It would be more straightforward and truthful to just say "Look, there are X planes in the air right god damned now, and they aren't being attacked".
I'm pretty comfortable with propaganda myself, but that's mostly because it's everywhere, and because I have no faith in humanity. Of the Jungian personality types, I think that extrovert intuitive is the most common, i.e., I think that most people have set worldviews and that no matter the tone or lack of tone with which information is presented to them, their worldview is extremely unlikely to change. If presented with unadulterated facts, the average person will shuffle those facts until they mean whatever he or she wants them to mean. People do it all the time with their own observations. First-hand observation is generally regarded as the most accurate way of taking in information, but people distort even it all the time; they read an event in their own lives as evidence of god's will or Sally's incurable bitchiness or karma or whatever. Propaganda can be used as a tool to attempt to overcome that human tendency, but I think it's largely unsuccessful. Take this macro for example. It presents true facts in a sensational and memorable way, and will probably get a ton of reblogging because of it. But it won't make the TSA change the rules, and it won't make the country relax about terrorism or anything like that. I doubt it will even offer any comfort to any individual person who is scared of flying.
I guess I'm saying that while I don't think it was wrong of me to post this, it was indeed pointless. I've been attempting to post more meaningful things, but I've also been attempting to post more frequently, and I'm finding that those two goals run contrary to one another more often than not.
Saying you were wrong in posting the image would be just silly, and it wasn't entirely pointless because it did get some comments and this discussion going.
Between my original DeadJournal and my current LiveJournal, I've changed my posting in even the smallest ways more times than I can count; the general obvious changes are in the fact that I used to post about my daily life, like an actual "Dear Journal" style setup, and now I don't. It's impossible to post often and post things that are meaningful to everyone else, things that will get them to read and comment more often, so the trick is to post things that are meaningful to you specifically. Considering how I jump from rants on this or that to bits and pieces of how my week has gone to video game trailers and such, it's obvious I hold true to the idea, and, should anyone be interested in reading through all my randomness, they'll learn more about me than if I simply posted about my daily life.
I enjoy the novelty of propaganda from the past; old WWII posters that are just so blatant, but very cool because they're stylized with catchy phrases. Propaganda today is just a bunch of regular mudslinging turned up to eleven, with people calling you making a point to be as offensive as possible to anyone who doesn't agree with them, and large corporations creating commercials devoted entirely to talking about what their competition doesn't have.
I'm tired of people in general thinking they can protest and piss and moan in order to change the world, and people in general think the more obnoxious or outrageous or different they are, the less likely they are to fall into their proper place as a cog in the machine. Everyone has a proper place in it, and nobody in particular, especially within the general populace of the internet, is worthy of any special treatment or recognition because they can take their moaning and groaning and wrap it up in a pretty propaganda bow.
I've ranted about it before, so you know the context behind when I say: people who obsess over karma can shove it up their asses.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 07:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 08:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 06:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-29 11:13 pm (UTC)Flying is still the safest mode of transportation, and I can't believe people who are now soooo scared of airplanes. It would help if the TSA and Homeland Security stopped treating passengers like children--I can't get over the recent (hopefully short-lived) regulations. (Jeez, order us into adult diapers while you're at it--or not, because we might hide bombs in them. JFC.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-30 01:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-30 01:24 am (UTC)We'll never be able to stop ALL attacks carried out on airplanes. But what we can change is our response to terrorism. Mourn the victims and hunt down the culprits--but don't use it as an excuse to take even more freedom away from ordinary people.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 05:10 am (UTC)There are three kinds of lies: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-Mark Twain
I get the idea that's being presented, but the fact that the creator manipulates the idea of time, such as mentioning how the total time spent in the air would take us back to ancient Egypt, is just ridiculous. I did the math one time to figure out that if you took one second from every living person's lifespan, you would have about 130 years, which sounds like a lot until you realize that that one second is still only one second; we're all living that one second at the same exact moment, and it will never be more than one second of time no matter how you twist the idea. The creator also purposely chose to list only the passengers who were killed on the planes while ignoring the deaths caused by the attacks, such as, of course, the people in the Twin Towers who were killed as a result of the attacks. Abusing the numbers like this to support one's own point strikes me as nothing short of propaganda, and I find that rather ironic because people today are so obsessed with revolting against our governments and decrying the actions of our leaders for their own propaganda; it's hypocrisy in the most blatant form, and I have no respect for the creator because of it. It would be more straightforward and truthful to just say "Look, there are X planes in the air right god damned now, and they aren't being attacked".
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:27 am (UTC)I guess I'm saying that while I don't think it was wrong of me to post this, it was indeed pointless. I've been attempting to post more meaningful things, but I've also been attempting to post more frequently, and I'm finding that those two goals run contrary to one another more often than not.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 02:58 pm (UTC)Between my original DeadJournal and my current LiveJournal, I've changed my posting in even the smallest ways more times than I can count; the general obvious changes are in the fact that I used to post about my daily life, like an actual "Dear Journal" style setup, and now I don't. It's impossible to post often and post things that are meaningful to everyone else, things that will get them to read and comment more often, so the trick is to post things that are meaningful to you specifically. Considering how I jump from rants on this or that to bits and pieces of how my week has gone to video game trailers and such, it's obvious I hold true to the idea, and, should anyone be interested in reading through all my randomness, they'll learn more about me than if I simply posted about my daily life.
I enjoy the novelty of propaganda from the past; old WWII posters that are just so blatant, but very cool because they're stylized with catchy phrases. Propaganda today is just a bunch of regular mudslinging turned up to eleven, with people calling you making a point to be as offensive as possible to anyone who doesn't agree with them, and large corporations creating commercials devoted entirely to talking about what their competition doesn't have.
I'm tired of people in general thinking they can protest and piss and moan in order to change the world, and people in general think the more obnoxious or outrageous or different they are, the less likely they are to fall into their proper place as a cog in the machine. Everyone has a proper place in it, and nobody in particular, especially within the general populace of the internet, is worthy of any special treatment or recognition because they can take their moaning and groaning and wrap it up in a pretty propaganda bow.
I've ranted about it before, so you know the context behind when I say: people who obsess over karma can shove it up their asses.