arib: (Default)
arib ([personal profile] arib) wrote2010-07-16 08:25 am

Notes from an airport

Dear TSA employee, "luggage" is its own plural, please stop saying "luggages."

Pedantically,
A


Dear TSA employee, after hearing you say the word "luggages" over and over again, please excuse me if I don't believe you when you say it's "absolutely, perfectly safe" for my pregnant wife to go through the X-ray backscatter device. Furthermore, after she opts to get patted down, the pat-downer really ought not keep trying to convince her to go through the X-ray.

-A
sethg: a petunia flower (Default)

[personal profile] sethg 2010-07-16 12:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I believe the term you are searching for is mass noun.

[identity profile] gnomi.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 01:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Is not "Host" a Mass noun?

How about "Tobin"?

(g, d, rlh)

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2010-07-16 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
As far as the backscatter X-ray goes: one thing I'd point out is that I think we BOTH know a fellow who's got cancer of his entire abdomen, as does every single person who worked with him doing X-rays for the TSA.

All six people who worked on that X-ray machine have ovarian, uterine, or stomach cancer.

So I don't really trust the TSA's ideas of X-ray safety. Now, yeah, that particular X-ray machine was for luggage, not people, and it turned out that the shielding on it was broken, but if the TSA could injure and possibly kill six people by not paying attention to shielding on an X-ray machine THEN, I don't trust that they won't do it with OTHER X-ray machines.

[identity profile] arib.livejournal.com 2010-08-17 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not sure I know who you're referring to, but I can't say I'm surprised. :-/

(sorry the reply's so late, I'm playing catch-up)

[identity profile] xiphias.livejournal.com 2010-08-18 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
I don't think you know him WELL, nor do I even know if you'd recognize him if you saw him, but you've been in the same sorts of clumps of talking people at cons once or twice.