Crazy guy who did this here. Before I made the video, I spent the last 18 months manipulating the court system against the TSA. The TSA does not want to add me to any no-fly list (or more realistically, the "selectee list") because every time a legal battle starts, I'm entitled to more and more discovery in court, and more and more of their lies come out.

--Jon

While it's encouraging to see such a thorough debunking of the latest security theater technology, it's always been security theater... Allow me a few quick anecdotes:

My family is friends with a gentleman who was a green beret medic during Viet Nam, and later worked for the CIA. Once, when I was younger (and metal detectors were the norm), we had the opportunity to fly with him. He entered the metal detector before me, and was waved along. Once we were past the detectors, he turned to me and said, "Guess how many blades I have on me?" He then proceded to produce seven blades. They were a combination of ceramic blades (undetectable by the metal detector and sharper than most metal as well) and traditional blades held or placed on him so that they would not set off the detector. It was part of his CIA training to be able to do that.

I went to college at Stevens Institute of Technology. The Chemical Engineering department there has a lab known as the Highly Filled Materials Institute. When I was an undergraduate, I got a tour of the lab. They informed me that they had been working on an extruder that they were selling simultaneously to Picatinny Arsenal and Hersey. It turns out that C4 and Chocolate are both colloidal suspensions with nearly identical properties. A consequence of this is that in the X-ray machines used in airports, plastic explosives are indistinguishable from chocolate.

Shortly after 9/11 my father, a very frequent traveler, had forgotten his nail clippers in his carry-on luggage. Predictably, they were confiscated. When I greeted him at the airport, he remarked on how ridiculous that was, as he produced his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. "They let me on with this," he said. "I could have stabbed anyone in the eye with this and they'd be dead. What was I going to do with nail clippers?"

...I could go on, but why?

Bootstrap gives us a sane, standard look and feel for the web, which is a good thing. The design community generally doesn't like the idea of standards because they are a creative community, and there is no more damning phrase in the creative communities of the modern era than "unoriginal". But unoriginal is exactly what most people want with most of their web applications: they want to know how to work the things instinctively and not learn another UI for this or that task.

As a small example: with bootstrap, buttons look the same, so users instinctively recognize them without additional mental effort. Developers can focus on developing applications that are functional and usable, rather than tweaking CSS to make things "look right".

I think bootstrap, and the non-coercive standardization of web applications it is fostering, is one of the most important developments of 2011-2012.

I do think means there will be less need for straight-up aesthetic designers, with UX and information architecture becoming more important.

My advice is to stop trying to optimize every event in life, and live more serendipitously. Pick places at random, have low expectations, and spend your life constantly being pleasantly surprised.

I cannot speak to the CIA training but I've received some concealed weapon scenario training mostly developed from lessons learned at penitentiaries. It is a terrible thing to be impressed by but inmate ingenuity staggers the mind. You've likely had several items in your carry on that could do much worse than the pen to eye (which I don't think would be fatal). In the attack tree, a shiv smuggled past the checkpoint would need to have the potential to coerce the cockpit before it would factor in to a risk matrix for the plane.

I served in Special Forces before and after 9/11. The 'security theater' points that many of you make are valid. I don't, however, believe the reactionary measures were to calm the fears of the American people. The severe restriction placed on travelers is similar to a trend of restrictions placed upon soldiers following 9/11. The reaction is CYA for senior leadership/command.

Accountability became a tremendous focus following the early campaigns following 9/11. A single casualty was regarded as a devastating loss. Clearing buildings early in the bloodshed of Iraq taught many commanders that the peacetime tactics largely learned from SWAT were not as effective in combat. The procedure was too slow for such a dynamic and hostile environment. Too many soldiers died because the common procedure for clearing a building broke down in structures of irregular layout and in cities crawling with hostiles. Before commanders and NCOs were prepared to blame the procedures, however, they were taking accountability for the loss.

An after action review (AAR) follows every mission and leaders are encouraged to highlight their mistakes before someone else must do it for them. An atmosphere of blame settled in while civilians back CONUS were tiring of the involvement. Casualties were frequent enough that many ODAs had suffered through a few. For most, it was their first time facing a grieving widow with a young child hugging her leg. Those stories, coupled with the blame, changed the landscape of command. CONOPS that were once routinely approved were rejected for increasingly vague reasons. Ultimately, the tone was that the risk was too great compared with the operational gain- almost like the soldier was too valuable to put in harm's way. But we signed up for that. The truth, I suspect, was that the appetite for risk taking at the senior levels was shrinking. If an ODA lost a man, the mission's CONOP would be scrutinized for evidence that all of the risks were accounted for, that the courses of action reflected sound decision making when assuming risk, that the operational gain justified the risk, and that good faith efforts were made to mitigate perceived risks. The AAR became a trial. While I was working through these challenges during deployments, I believe something similar was happening with security measures and leadership back home.

Creating an illusion of safety seems less likely the hope than creating an exemption from accountability. Negligence would be too likely the charge if tight restrictions were not put in place.

I really loved playing SWG - not so much for the game, but for the ‘business’ aspects of it. Whilst not as successful as the OP, I made thousands of $US from the game by being part of a oligopoly.

One of the game mechanics was the concept of ‘buffs’ - basically chemical stimulants your character could consume to temporarily boost critical stats which aided in combat. They were an essential item in PvP (player vs player) combat if you wanted to have that edge and so were in high demand. Buffs could only be made by the ‘doctor’ class and only by the top level doctors. Another critical game mechanic was that the quality of the buff affected how much of a boost you could receive to your stats, and the quality of the buffs was affected by the quality of the raw materials you sourced to make the buff (every resource had a variety of stats - this game was a real minmax-ers delight). The highest quality buffs were the only one that people were interested in buying.

Most of the resources required for the buffs were reasonably easy to find - but there was one which was rare - avian meat. The highest quality avian meat, harvested by killing particular birds, only appeared (real-time) once a month for a few days. Without this avian meat, you could not produce the highest quality buffs.

The first time I made buffs - I happened to time it during the HQ (high quality) avian meat period. I spent hours killing the birds to collect meat. I made my buffs, had a shop near Coronet (the main trading city in the game) and sold out within a few days. And I noticed that all the doctors sold out within days too - and that the last few that had some stock could request extortion prices for their stock. That gave me an idea …

The next month when the avian meat spawned, I parked my character in the main spaceport and keyed up a macro (the game had an in-game macro system). All my macro did was cause my character to shout out every minute “Buying avian meat @ Z credits/piece - sell to my vendor at coords X,Y”. I basically bankrupted myself buying up as much avian meat as I could whilst it was available.

I made up a batch of buffs and started selling them - I ran out after 20 days - but I was now substantially more wealthy! I figured - heck I’m on a good thing - let’s do that the next month. Of course, no good thing goes unnoticed …

The next month, there were three other doctors in the spaceport shouting out that they were buying avian meat. Well this simply would not do! So I basically upped the price I was offering to purchase avian meat above theirs - heck - I was flush with funds from last month so I figured I could out buy them. It turns out I was right - I was able to purchase even more avian meat than the last month and I was able to produce enough HQ buffs to just last the month. Then the third month - this is when the market dynamics got interesting …

By now, several people had noticed that avian meat was in hot demand once a month. In the third month, there were several ‘shouters’ when the HQ avian meat started spawning. Like last month, I upped the price I was willing to offer to price them out of the market - a bidding war erupted, but with my bankroll, I could outbid anyone (although I was cringing how fast I was going through my credits). Like any market, with the prices rising so quick, it changed behaviours - suddenly many of the ‘hunters’ in the game were out killing birds to collect meat. I effectively had my own contractor workforce out hunting avian meat!

By the end of the third HQ avian meat season, I had more meat than I ever had before. I realised I almost had complete control of the buff market on my server so I changed my selling tactics. I made my batch of buffs and started selling them, but I jacked the price up (100% increase) - this time I wanted to be able to continuously sell my buffs to last the full month. Other buff sellers kept selling them at the going rate … so I did the rounds of the cities each night and bought up any HQ buffs which were under my price and added them to my stockpile. By the end of the first week, I was bankrupt although I had a huge stockpile of HQ buffs - but most importantly, virtually every buff vendor was empty … except mine. I jacked my price up even further and did a roaring trade.

Over the next few cycles I cemented my reputation as one of the few reliable buff vendors who could consistently offer the highest quality buffs month-round. With the constant trade and monopoly prices, I was able to further entrench my dominant position each month by continuing to out bid any other doctor who tried to purchase avian meat. There were two other doctors on the server who managed to offer buffs for most of the month, and whilst I never talked to them, I noticed that they never went below whatever price I set. Our little oligopoly had a total lock on the buff market - it was a golden age!

When I quit the game a couple of months later, I had millions in credits which I sold for a few thousand $US. SWG let me play out my monopolistic capitalistic fantasies - how I loved that game :D