{"id":154,"date":"2004-01-13T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-13T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/2004\/01\/154.html"},"modified":"2004-01-13T07:59:00","modified_gmt":"2004-01-13T12:59:00","slug":"government-is-now-seriously-studying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2004\/01\/government-is-now-seriously-studying.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<br \/>\n<br \/>The government is now seriously studying how to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/Stories\/0,1413,36~417~1886849,00.html\">protect<\/a> airliners from shoulder fired missiles.  While it&#8217;s hard to argue with the intent of the investment, you have to wonder if this is really worth it don&#8217;t you?  I fly more than the average American, and I&#8217;ve never once thought how much safer I&#8217;d feel if the plane had a missile defense system.  In general, I&#8217;m content if the pilots are sober and there isn&#8217;t a really wide person sitting in the next seat.<\/p>\n<p>Now granted, on that one day a missile is fired at my plane, I&#8217;m gonna wish I had the system.  But then on the day I&#8217;m shot, I&#8217;m gonna wish I&#8217;d worn the kevlar vest.  But in reality, I don&#8217;t own one.  I&#8217;m not in a position where I&#8217;m personally a high profile assassination target.  I&#8217;m not in a job where I routinely encounter armed people.  If I&#8217;m shot, it&#8217;s likely a random event.  And the chances are low enough that I really don&#8217;t take precautionary measures to avoid being shot.<\/p>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t adding missile defense to passenger planes the same deal on a larger scale?  Having such systems on Air Force One makes sense.  It&#8217;s a high profile target.  Having such systems on military planes make sense.  People shoot at them.  But if an airliner is shot down, while a tragedy, it would be a random event.  Now it&#8217;s true that the terrorism level in the world makes such an event more likely, but planes are still more likely to crash because of mechanical failure than missile attack.  You&#8217;re more likely to die in an automobile accident than a plane crash of any kind.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the government should take all the money ear-marked for airline missile defense and spend it teaching all those &#8220;other people&#8221; out there how to drive&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\">Brought to you by Tim&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/\">-Read the whole blog here-<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;- The government is now seriously studying how to protect airliners from shoulder fired missiles. While it&#8217;s hard to argue<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2004\/01\/government-is-now-seriously-studying.html\" title=\"Read \">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}