{"id":72,"date":"2005-12-03T07:58:58","date_gmt":"2005-12-03T14:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=72"},"modified":"2007-07-08T19:11:29","modified_gmt":"2007-07-09T02:11:29","slug":"pay-to-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=72","title":{"rendered":"Pay to Comment?"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, not here . . . I’m talking about Metafilter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Metafilter’s a community weblog, where members post comments on various topics, including obscure news items. Occasionally, a Metafilter entry will catch my interest and I’ll blog about it here. Like this one, which I saw this morning:<\/p>\n

NewsFilter: UFO (missle) exhaust seen by pilot<\/a> Have the aliens landed, and are shooting at planes with unidentified flying objects? Or is it the ‘terrorists’?<\/p>\n

Don’t worry citizens: FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During the 1980s, we supported the Afghanistani mujahedin in their fight against Soviet occupation by giving them Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which they used with great effect against USSR fighter-bombers, transports, and helicopters. Ever since, we’ve been trying to round up the missiles that were never used<\/a>, and there’s a very real threat that some Stingers\u00a0– along with black market surface-to-air missiles from other countries\u00a0– are falling into the hands of terrorists, who will certainly find airliners a tempting target. Is it a real threat? Yes<\/a>, and one that scares the bejeezus out of airline and government executives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So when an American Airlines pilot reports a contrail whizzing by his cockpit shortly after takeoff from Los Angeles International, he’s talking about an unidentified surface-to-air missile, not a UFO, and no matter how badly the FBI screwed up prior to 9\/11, or how useless and politicized the Department of Homeland Security has turned out to be, I would certainly hope both agencies are investigating the pilot’s report, and I suspect the “FBI agents believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket” nonsense they’re putting out is meant to soothe the public and cover over the seriousness of this incident.<\/p>\n

But back to Metafilter . . . I was irritated by the snide tone of the entry and even more irritated by the comments<\/a>, all of which focused on the word “UFO,” offering various smart-ass cracks about space aliens. Neither the original poster nor any of the commenters seemed to be aware of the actual threat of terrorist surface-to-air missile attacks against airliners in the USA.<\/p>\n

You know, I almost understand why the people who could have done something to prevent it blew off pre-9\/11 intel about Al Qaeda terrorists enrolling in flight training schools in the USA<\/a>. Had some bozo stopped me on the street on September 10, 2001, and told me what was going to happen the very next morning, I would have blown him off too (even though we had learned, way back in 1995, that Al Qaeda was planning just such an attack<\/a>)\u00a0– it would have been too outrageous to believe. So it is with surface-to-air missile attacks against American airliners\u00a0– too outrageous to believe. Until it happens.<\/p>\n

So anyway (remember, this entry is about Metafilter), I wanted to leave a comment. Turns out you can’t comment unless you’re a Metafilter member. So I tried to set up a member account. Turns out you have to pay $5.00 to be a member. Pay? What is this “pay” you speak of? When did they start this<\/em> shit?<\/p>\n

All of which is to explain why I no longer patronize Metafilter.<\/p>\n

Yeah. That’ll teach the bastards!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not here . . . I’m talking about Metafilter. Metafilter’s a community weblog, where members post comments on various topics, including obscure news items. Occasionally, a Metafilter entry will catch my interest and I’ll blog about it here. Like this one, which I saw this morning: NewsFilter: UFO (missle) exhaust seen by pilot Have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-flying","category-a-series-of-tubes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}