Is it me or...

[bunn]

is this a bit horrible?

http://www.breastcancercare.org.uk/breast-cancer-breast-health/treatment-side-effects/surgery/breast-prostheses/uk-airport-body-scanners/

"The purpose of the scanners is to be able to identify concealed weapons and prohibited items, but they will also reveal external breast prostheses, the type worn after a mastectomy operation.

The Department for Transport advises people wearing an external breast prosthesis to notify security staff before being scanned.

Although this may be awkward or embarrassing, it will mean you are less likely to be searched than if you have not declared it. It may also be helpful for you to carry a letter from the GP or breast specialist, confirming your situation, to help ease transit through security.

Upon seeing the external prosthesis on the scan, it is an individual decision by the member of security staff as to whether they conduct a body search. This means that wearing a breast prosthesis does not inevitably lead to a body search, but may do so."

 Are prostheses REALLY such a major security threat that this undignified and unsavory approach is justified...?     Very dubious about the body scanning thing in general, but this is an extra level of intrusive ick!

Can't help thinking of the foil wrapped cucumber scene in Spinal Tap tho...

Comments

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but free speech is far, far, far more important than not insulting some bloke who's been dead for 1400 years. Wanting to preserve free speech is not uniquely American, it is liberal and enlightened.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

I was specifically thinking about the USA's Free Speech constitutional amendment, rather than the more its more general place in liberal beliefs (etc.).

Thinking about the point regarding my example about insulting the Prophet Mohammed, it's not the insult to him as a person that't the problem, but the fact that when he is insulted every Muslim is also insulted.

I'm not saying that Free Speech isn't important, it is vitally important. What I am saying is that my Free Speech shouldn't cause your Free Speech to be restricted, and via versa.

That other point I was trying to make is that Free Speech is more about free thought, that empowering free insults, which is how it seems, to me at least, some people in the USA appear to think it means.

Free Speech is also about exercising restraint. Specifically restraint in how one exercises the modes of one's outward behaviour that are enabled through Free Speech. As an example, you and I might think the other is a moron, but provided each of us don't make a big issue of that belief in the face of the other then it isn't a particular problem. But if we don't exercise that restraint then things can get unpleasant.

[firin.livejournal.com]

I've heard it said before, here in the US, that freedom of speech should not constitute a freedom to insult.