The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: arkabee on November 24, 2004, 02:40:04 pm
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so if you have the same first initial and last name as someone who might be on a list (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html),
and you go to an airport they might pull your ##### down. (http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/02/feature3.shtml)
i especially like that the list is being given to rental car companies. because they are obviously going to be efficient with it.
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this is beginning to make my head hurt.
milwaukee anecdote (http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc042702.html)
so, they have a list. a list of names. names that, perhaps (benefit of the doubt), are used by known terrorists who want to blow shit up.
so, someone with that name gets an airline ticket.
ok, it makes _sense_ to check out that person. i mean, maybe the terrorist whose name it is is the one who got the reservation for the ticket. i definitely wouldn't want them on the plane with me, blowing shit up and all.
in fact, i guess i wouldn't want them at the airport with me, blowing shit up and all.
i mean, here's a terrorist, wanting to blow shit up and all, and they reserve an airline ticket. in advance.
in advance.
they reserver an airline ticket, in advance, under a name that is on a list that airports and airlines and casinos and rental car companies and the TSA has and supports.
they reserve this ticket, in advance, with a name that is on a list that is held by the company that the ticket was reserved with.
and the company doesn't do anything until the person SHOWS UP?!
i think that's the part that makes my brain hurt.
they don't want to tell a potential terrorist, "i'm sorry sir/madam, your reservation has been flagged byt he computer, you'll need to come in at least 3 hours early for checkin" because then the terrorist will be"clued in" that they are "on to them"??? and go somewhere else??
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Names and their associations are interesting. When still working for Mastercard, I had the wife of a cardholder call in to order the form he needed to add her to his account. His name? Osama Bin Ladin. Both the first and last name are fairly common, but take on powerful meaning now. I'm sure this poor guy's life has not been easy over the past couple years. Can you imagine?
If you take my middle name and last name (both very rare, both with unusual spellings) you get the name of a distant relative of mine (everyone with my last name is related to me - we have a very, very small family tree), you get the name of a woman in France who is one of the leaders in the field of embryonic stem cell research. I know we're fairly polarized here on the issue of abortion, so I won't get into the politics here, but with a name connection like that, perhap I'll need a bullet-proof vest when/if I visit Europe again. Name conections are scary. I also have a dead relative with my exact name from several centuries ago that we traced through geneological records, she was a nun and one of the few of my female relatives that we can trace back to the late 1700. The only records are the date of her birth, death, and a single sentence fragment in French, which traslates into " lived a good and chaste life."
If my life gets reduced down to a sentence fragment, I hope it's "shit disturber" or maybe "fuck this bitch."
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Vanity googling has revealed to me that the only other person with my exact name (uncommon variant of uncommon last name, dirt-common first name) in the world is a real-estate agent in South Africa. I feel sort of bad for her, as the Internet is so strewn with the wreckage of my teenage years* that she must get the weirdest shit when she googles herself.
* I say, from the lofty mountain on 21, as if I will never again put anything stupid on the Internet, ever
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I have an arabic last name.
I'm as white as white can be.
I've only been singled out for special search one time, and that time I was flying on a ticket PURCHASED BY THE GOVERNMENT, and I was flying with a three year old.
I would have thought my name would get hits a lot more often then someone named Kennedy. Go figure.
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I share a name with an Australian jazz guitarist.
I have never been confused for him. Nor, I suspect, he for me.
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My brother has the same name as the guy who held the NFL longest field goal record for many years.
Some guy with my name is in a band in New Mexico. Also there was a fictional priest with my name.
Google is a wonderful thing.
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Man, no one has my friggin' name, so if I'm ever on a no-fly list it'll be because I'm exactly who I am.
However, my greatest flying offenses will be a slight and silent petulance when my mimosa is a few seconds later in arriving than my internal beverage-service clock believes it should be.
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I think I am essentially ungoogleable. My name is Virginia Warren. There is a Warren County in the state of Virginia. That about does it. There is something that actually refers to me on the second page of results, but it provides very little information. My name was much more uncommon before I got married.
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The first hit for my name on google is some digital illustrator on "ArtWanted.com," which kind of sucks, since that's close enough to what I might be doing in 4 years that we'll probably both start having a hell of a time getting jobs. Then there's a link to an article about me, then some dude who works in a baseball academy in Seattle, then a Mark Popham from a few counties over in Kentucky who, as a senior at Murray State, participated in the rodeo (riding bareback), a car dealership in England, some commentary on theForce.net, etc. For having a (supposedly) rare last name, there sure are a lot of me. The worst thing is how easily the digital illustrator, the rodeo guy and the star wars guy could be mistaken for me.
NOOOOOO.
However, I'm still the first result on Image Search! (http://scs.indiana.edu/images/pictures/popham.jpg)
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Putting my name in quotes brings up only me. I was named for my great grandfather but he wasn't exactly burning up the interweb.
Most of the result are from a ZDNet story I was quoted in that was translated into like 17 different languages.
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I think I am essentially ungoogleable. My name is Virginia Warren. There is a Warren County in the state of Virginia.
I spent my freshman and sophomore years of high school there.
does that mean we're related?
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I think I am essentially ungoogleable. My name is Virginia Warren. There is a Warren County in the state of Virginia.
I spent my freshman and sophomore years of high school there.
does that mean we're related?
Hmmmmm, you gotta draw the line somewhere so I'm going to say...no.
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I actually got an email a while ago from someone who was googling a name they'd chosen for their yet-to-be-born child, wherein the first name was my first name and the middle name was my last name. Man, do I ever pity that kid in advance.
I think there are one or two other people with my name kicking around, which is fairly surprising, since both my names are relatively odd (particularly in combination), but mostly googling turns up hits for a Noel Coward character with my name.
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My old name kicked back all sorts of people. The one I especially remember directed a video for Stephen Malkmus. My new name, which sounds (to me) more common, only returns one guy - a famous polar explorer.
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Oh, I probably should mention that, when I flew the other day, my checked bag was removed for searching; at least at JFK, they took the bag and let me proceed to my gate. Usually, they make me take it to the security people and stand there, while I watch people paw through my belongings. I'm totally putting a giant black dildo in there when I fly back to New York.
I suppose that, sometime in the '70's, some crazy Irish guy named Popham blew a car up in Northern Ireland, which is why I always get searched. Either that, or it's only a matter of time until we catch Mohammed Al-Popham.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.