In the Times Square subway station yesterday I passed two cops who seemed to be warily eyeing my backpack. I felt like going over and volunteering to have them inspect it. Not only wouldn't I mind, it would have made me feel more comfortable about my journey.
The civil libertarians who are complaining about the NYPD's new strategy are doing their job, eyeing the slippery slope and being properly mindful of racial profiling. If they are concerned about the latter problem, let them organize teams of volunteers to discreetly monitor cops who are doing the searches and see if there is a problem.
My strong guess is that people carrying large, suspicious packages, or perhaps wearing heavy coats in the middle of summer, will draw the most scrutiny, not simply men who appear to be Arabs. Not only are the NYPD professional about threat-assessment, they have no interest in being sidetracked by bad publicity and/or lawsuits.
As to whether the searches are effective, I believe they are because suicide bombers are bascially cowards who shun any kind of conflict or engagement, preferring to blend into an unsuspecting crowd and detonate. The idea of being arrested and failing to accomplish their task probably scares the hell out of them.
Any subway rider should accept that even the worst inconvenience of being stopped, questioned and searched -- even as a matter of routine rather than at random -- is far better than the alternative of being less safe. Better to miss 10 trains than for the cops to miss one bomb.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Why I Love New York
Tonight I listened to a Jamaican man on a subway platform play "Hava Nagila" on his steel drum. Show me another place in the world where that can happen and I'll move there.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Bloomberg's Phone Number
Much was made last week about New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg's revelation that he has retained a publicly listed phone number since he was elected, and seems to have had it published in the white pages since he was CEO of his eponynous media company.
This is supposed to show that he's just a down to earth guy who, as he puts it, hasn't forgotten that he works for the people.
I haven't tried dialing up Mayor Mike at 10 p.m. to complain that my streetlight is out or to ask for an interview (although the latter notion is tempting.) But I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's likely 99.5 percent or more of the people who call his home number -- particularly since its listing has been publicized -- will get either a busy signal or a staff member of his East Side mansion picking up the phone. And if you think he doesn't have several other phone numbers unlisted, you're nuts. (If he wants to really show how accessible he is, let's see him give out his cell phone number.)
There's no shame in having an unlisted number when you're a celebrity or a public official or anyone in the public eye who cannot reasonably accomodate all those seeking a conversation with you. Go to any public event that the mayor attends and you will see how many people swamp him with questions, complaints and photo requests as he tries to get into his car. There are, after all, 8 million of us and one mayor.
Having met Bloomberg a few times I can say he is not a pretentious person and can be quite gracious and personable.
But it's ridiculous to pretend that he's somehow just another everyman because he rides the subway and has his number listed. Who wouldn't ride the subway when you have NYPD bodyguards surrounding you? And who wouldn't have his number listed when you have a staff to take messages? The vast majority of us 8 million don't have those amenities.
When rich people try to act like regular people, whether it's Bloomberg buying the $600 bicycle before a possible transit strike or President George H.W. Bush checking out the price code scanner in a supermarket, more often than not it's just a clumsy way of reminding us how irregular they are.
This is supposed to show that he's just a down to earth guy who, as he puts it, hasn't forgotten that he works for the people.
I haven't tried dialing up Mayor Mike at 10 p.m. to complain that my streetlight is out or to ask for an interview (although the latter notion is tempting.) But I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's likely 99.5 percent or more of the people who call his home number -- particularly since its listing has been publicized -- will get either a busy signal or a staff member of his East Side mansion picking up the phone. And if you think he doesn't have several other phone numbers unlisted, you're nuts. (If he wants to really show how accessible he is, let's see him give out his cell phone number.)
There's no shame in having an unlisted number when you're a celebrity or a public official or anyone in the public eye who cannot reasonably accomodate all those seeking a conversation with you. Go to any public event that the mayor attends and you will see how many people swamp him with questions, complaints and photo requests as he tries to get into his car. There are, after all, 8 million of us and one mayor.
Having met Bloomberg a few times I can say he is not a pretentious person and can be quite gracious and personable.
But it's ridiculous to pretend that he's somehow just another everyman because he rides the subway and has his number listed. Who wouldn't ride the subway when you have NYPD bodyguards surrounding you? And who wouldn't have his number listed when you have a staff to take messages? The vast majority of us 8 million don't have those amenities.
When rich people try to act like regular people, whether it's Bloomberg buying the $600 bicycle before a possible transit strike or President George H.W. Bush checking out the price code scanner in a supermarket, more often than not it's just a clumsy way of reminding us how irregular they are.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Scrap The Shuttles
The government this week will resume spending billions of dollars launching people into space for not better reason then, well, launching people into space.
NASA and its shuttle program are the ultimate examples of self-perpetuating bureaucracy. We design and build spacecraft so we can test them and learn how to build better spacecraft. We carry out experiments in space to learn how well we can live in space to carry out more experiments.
Sure, it would be lovely to get to the point where we can travel to other planets and explore them, but the proponderance of scientific evidence is that, regardless of what you see on Star Trek, it will never be possible. Just getting to the closest planet, Mars would take months, and years to get anywhere else, and human beings probably couldn't survive very well in space for all that time, especially when we're prone to mishaps like Apollo 13 and the two shuttle disasters. Real astronauts know, and have said, that the faster-than-light-speed travel you see in the movies is a scientific joke.
Sure I'd like to know if there might be microbes on Mars or evidence of earlier life. I'd also like to see cancer, AIDS and other plagues cured in my lifetime, needless famine eliminated from the planet and the world weaned off the narcotic of oil for cleaner and more effective energy sources. Strip NASA down to watching the skies for perilous meteorites and launching a few robot probes a year to gather some space data and you've got billions to make a dent in some of those causes.
In 2003, seven Americans and an Israeli gave their lives aboard an aging spaceship (I wouldn't take a 22-year-old car on a long highway trip; how do we fly 22-year old shuttles into space?) for the cause of conducting a few meager experiments in space and testing out some new equipment. Unless there is a more classified purpose of the mission we haven't heard, the toll simply wasn't worth the potential gain.
The real reason we're so interested in space is hubris. It's the rocket's red glare of our days, those flaming behemoths soaring into the clouds that tell the rest of the world how mighty and impressive we are. Reaching for other planets has superpower written all over it.
But if we tried, we might find that eliminating a disease or two, making a dent in global warming (even acknowledging it!) and taking better care of the planet we're on might also win us an admirer or two.
NASA and its shuttle program are the ultimate examples of self-perpetuating bureaucracy. We design and build spacecraft so we can test them and learn how to build better spacecraft. We carry out experiments in space to learn how well we can live in space to carry out more experiments.
Sure, it would be lovely to get to the point where we can travel to other planets and explore them, but the proponderance of scientific evidence is that, regardless of what you see on Star Trek, it will never be possible. Just getting to the closest planet, Mars would take months, and years to get anywhere else, and human beings probably couldn't survive very well in space for all that time, especially when we're prone to mishaps like Apollo 13 and the two shuttle disasters. Real astronauts know, and have said, that the faster-than-light-speed travel you see in the movies is a scientific joke.
Sure I'd like to know if there might be microbes on Mars or evidence of earlier life. I'd also like to see cancer, AIDS and other plagues cured in my lifetime, needless famine eliminated from the planet and the world weaned off the narcotic of oil for cleaner and more effective energy sources. Strip NASA down to watching the skies for perilous meteorites and launching a few robot probes a year to gather some space data and you've got billions to make a dent in some of those causes.
In 2003, seven Americans and an Israeli gave their lives aboard an aging spaceship (I wouldn't take a 22-year-old car on a long highway trip; how do we fly 22-year old shuttles into space?) for the cause of conducting a few meager experiments in space and testing out some new equipment. Unless there is a more classified purpose of the mission we haven't heard, the toll simply wasn't worth the potential gain.
The real reason we're so interested in space is hubris. It's the rocket's red glare of our days, those flaming behemoths soaring into the clouds that tell the rest of the world how mighty and impressive we are. Reaching for other planets has superpower written all over it.
But if we tried, we might find that eliminating a disease or two, making a dent in global warming (even acknowledging it!) and taking better care of the planet we're on might also win us an admirer or two.
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