Intimate But Not Personal

Conditions: Warm, Stuffy

Fly The Too-Friendly Skies

Who would have thought that we'd get to the point where in order to travel on a plane you would either have to get a full naked picture of yourself taken, or get an extremely intimate frisking from security personnel? At least we're still allowed to choose which type of humiliation we will be subjected to.

So the focus naturally turns to: are these scanners safe to use? The answer from a medical website may surprise you.

It shouldn't, though.

Being scanned at an airport by a body scanner emits such a tiny amount of radiation, that there is no threat to health, as long as the machine is working properly, Peter Rez, Professor of Physics, Arizona State University says.

The chances of receiving a life-threatening cancer are approximately 1 in 30 million, Rez added. Compare that to a 1 in 5 million risk of being struck by lightning. Manufacturers say the radiation dose is one-thousandth of what one would receive during a dental x-ray.

These figures only refer to devices that are working properly and do not jam. Jamming is possible, during which a radiation dose can shoot up, Prof. Rez explained.

Even though body scanners have a safety mechanism that should shut off the machine if anything goes wrong, there is no guarantee that mechanism won't fail.

- medicalnewstoday.com/

Okay, 1 in 30 million chance of getting cancer from Dr Rez there. Sounds like fairly low odds, thanks Doctor. Assuming the machines don't malfunction (and we all know how safe and reliable mass-transit mechanical devices are, right?) then it would seem fairly safe. But wait there's more:

CONTROVERSIAL full-body airport scanners are just as likely to kill you as a terrorist's bomb exploding on your plane, a leading scientist says.

Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State University, US, said the probability of dying from cancer caused by radiation from a body scanner and that of being killed in a terror attack are both approximately one in 30 million.

The risk is less than that of being killed by a lightning strike.

Dr Rez argues that it doesn’t make sense to deploy the scanners based on such low odds.

“The probability is about the same as the thing you are trying to prevent," Dr Rez said.

"So my view is there is not a case to be made for deploying them to prevent such a low probability event."

Dr Rez said that what most concerns him about the machines is that a potential malfunction could increase the radiation dose.

- news.com.au/

Oho, so the good doctor had more to say on the subject. Since the odds of a terrorist attack are roughly the same as the odds of getting cancer, then exactly why are we going to all this expense and trouble?

I'm glad you asked. People are sheep, and sheep panic easily. Therefore anything that can be done that will be seen to be making things safer, will therefore be done. And to hell with logic. Happy flying.




Film Review: Gamer

In the genre I like to call The Twisted Mirror, there are many contenders to the throne. The king of them all is of course The Running Man, a brilliant piece of entertaining satire starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. But every few years a new knock-off comes along, trotting out the old setup and invariably including a new twist of some kind. Gamer is the latest contestant, starring Gerard Butler it portrays a world in which video games as we know them have changed to the point where people sit on their couches and control other people. Michael C Hall, playing a brilliant fruit-loop of a tycoon, has created a technology that allows the brain of a person to be taken over by a controller. You know, for fun. At first he creates a game where people just run around maniacally, sort of like Facebook but with a lot more groping. Eventually however the Government is persuaded to allow the technology to be used on convicted killers on death row, and Slayers is born. A game where real people are piloted around like drones, shooting the crap out of each other. If you survive 30 games you get a pardon.

Gerard Butler plays Kable, the toughest, meanest one of 'em all. Because he's up to game 28 he's also become very famous around the world, and something of a problem for Hall, who does not want to let him go free. Because once Kable had a life, and a family, and was setup in order to get Slayers working in the first place, and the last thing Hall wants is for Kable to get out and tell his story. So it's up to a rag tag bunch of hackers, and the kid who 'controls' him, to try and get him out of the game. The setup of the film is a bit weak, focusing just on the fighters and the one actual gamer we see, and lacking any social perspective crucial for this kind of film. The real problem with this though is in the execution. A lot of it looks like it was shot with hand held cameras, and the picture shakes around something terrible. This is annoying enough, but when the action that is going on behind the shaking seems totally random, not to mention disconnected from society (we never really know if anyone not in the games even cares about all this), the film has not really exploited the idea far enough.

Of course there's a lot of violence and death, and a maniacal plan to take over the world, and even a happy ending. But it all seems too easy, too simple, too restricted. Gerard is trying his best, but when you're cast as a monosyllabic killing machine who's controlled by some 15 year old from a couch, what can you really do except variations on anger, rage, frustration, more anger. It's not a smart film - perhaps because Gaming isn't really all that interesting as a spectator sport, or intellectual as a subject. Perhaps it'd work if we were controlling the characters ourselves, but we're not, so we need them to be more than puppets. The subtle yet glaring differences between stories and games. One Gib out of Five.


- Peace out