Inaugublog

The idea for this blog comes from my friend Chris, who, I suspect, got tired of hearing me blab all the time about my misadventures in small-scale activism. The name of the blog was coined by my brother Burt. Seeing how this is the first post, I might as well tell the story.

After the Christmas 2009 underwear-bombing attempt, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA... our version of the TSA) instituted ridiculous security measures for all flights from Canada to the USA. Essentially it was a no-carry-on-baggage policy with few exceptions. Apparently if you want to defeat the terrorists you have to figure out what they want and then give it to them before they can ask for it in their hey-let's-blow-something-up kind of way. Here's an excerpt from the policy:

Carry-on bag means items to which a passenger has access to during a flight, but does NOT include personal items such as medication or medical devices, small purses, cameras, coats, items for care of infants, laptop computers, crutches, canes, walkers, containers carrying life sustaining items, a special needs item, musical instruments, or diplomatic or consular bags.

Fed up with stupid, reactive security stunts, I shot a letter off to John Baird, Canada's Transport Minister, who is ultimately responsible for CATSA. I'll post that later, but the long and the short of it was that a ban on harmless items (such as backpacks or crayons for kids) posed more danger than a terrorist ever could. Three days later CATSA issued a new list of exceptions to the policy and Burt congratulated me on winning the 'Crayon Wars'.

So I told Chris, in my long-winded and incoherent sort of way. He noticed that this was one of many times I've elicited change (or at least seemed to... Johnny 'The Scowler' Baird never called to thank me for my insights) simply by writing a letter or making a phone call. He suggested this blog, so here we are. Thanks Burt! Thanks Chris! Thanks stupid underwear terrorist!