I'll put Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wife's Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There? by Nicholas Monahan in the "user centered design" category, because I don't have a "how to be a human being" category. But our first job is always to remember we are humans, interacting with other humans. Like the stanford prison experiment and the milgram expirament, this made me cry.

See also learned helplessness. Chad writes about it in computing terms, but the principle is the same.

Children are often seen as bothersome when they ask "why?" all the time. We give them an answer, and expect them to be satisfied, and stop pestering us for a deeper explanation. Sometimes it's hard to see the rules that shape our daily lives, because they have become so ingrained. They become ingrained when we stop asking "why?" and start accepting the answers we get from people in authority as "just because."

Isn't it odd how it's the innocent who ask the questions, but it's the cynical who question the answers? "Authority" wants us to do neither; but only by doing both do we become free.

I hate to use profanity on your blog C but this is just f**ked up.

I don't know how to respond to this except I just hope the people at the airport read it and grew.

Where's this "land of the free" I keep hearing about?

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