Big Surprise

Link:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. is at great risk for more terrorist attacks because Congress and the White House have failed to enact several strong security measures, members of the former Sept. 11 commission said Sunday.

"It's not a priority for the government right now," said the former chairman, Thomas Kean, ahead of the group's release of a report Monday assessing how well its recommendations have been followed.

"More than four years after 9/11 ... people are not paying attention," the former Republican governor of New Jersey said. "God help us if we have another attack."

There should be a poll. Anyone that didn't already think this 1 year ago shouldn't get to vote in 2006 and 2008. Just KIDDING.

Occasional Logic - Appeal to Authority

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy that follows a form similar to such:

• Person A is proposed to be an authority on Subject X.
  
• Person A makes a statment (Claim Z) that is about Subject X.
  
• Therefore, Claim Z is true.
  

The fallacy occurs when, in fact, Person A is not an authority on Subject X at all.

For example:

Joe: "As far as mechanical design goes, Ford is was better than Chevy."
Bill: "Why do you say that?"
Joe: "Phil Smith said so in an article I saw, and he's a lead engineer at NASA."
Bill: "But does he even know anything about cars?"
Joe: "No idea.. but he's an engineer at NASA and I believe him."

Phil Smith is proposed to be an authority on the subject of automotive engineering. In reality, Phil Smith is an engineer that specializes in fluid dynamics. He drives a Lexus and has nothing to do with mechanical design or the auto industry. As a matter of fact, he's never even performed his own oil change. He's far from an authority on automotive design.

Of course, there are many instances where a real authority on a subject matter can be taken seriously. In the example I stated above, if Phil Smith was actually a mechanical engineer and a veteran of the automotive industry, his claims might be taken much more seriously. Either way, the fact of the matter is that Joe's argument didn't rely on Phil Smith's background at all--it relied solely on his title as a "lead engineer at NASA". And that's an Appeal to Authority.

Common appeals to authority happen every day on television. For example, the "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV..." line. In this classic example of an Appeal to Authority, an actor that knows nothing about medicine sponsors a product. The producers of the commercial hope that you will confuse the famous face from TV with a real medical expert.

As long as you don't run with scissors....

Now I can once again feel free to clip my nails on a Boeing. Hooray!

But seriously, I think the ridiculously paranoid practice of not allowing things like screwdrivers and nail clippers on airplanes needed to be changed. As well put by one of the union representatives in the article, "A ballpoint pen in the hands of a terrorist is a weapon."

At the same time, critics of the revised security plan are unhappy:

"I have not spoken to a flight attendant at any airline that isn't outraged by this," said Thom McDaniel, president of Southwest Airlines flight attendants' union, Transport Workers Local 556. "They want to focus more on explosives, but they're not even mentioning that the biggest threat to commercial aviation right now is still the fact that most cargo is not screened."

He's got a good point.