airport x-ray machines: can they damage 8" floppies?

[Doc Shipley]

William Donzelli wrote:
>>    Even before 11/2001, airport security made me do the explosives swab
>> test *every time* I went through, and searched my bags about 1 in 3
>> times.  I finally asked one of the local security guys - who knew me by
>> name by then - why I kept getting tagged.  He grinned and thumped that
>> stack of transparencies and said "I dunno what this stuff is made of,
>> but under the scope it looks JUST LIKE plastic explosive.  You're giving
>> us all heart attacks."
> 
> You may also fit the profile. I ran into the same treatment ten years
> ago, with my black case with a Thinkpad in it (and not much else). The
> other engineers would go thru xray fine, but I was always, and I do
> mean ALWAYS, pulled over to get my bag swabbed. When I asked my it
> happens this way, the security guys always had some different excuse
> that said a whole bunch of nothing.

   What, with my shaved head, earringed, early-forties, 
jeans-and-tshirted, Enron-badged backpacked self?  After the guy told me 
that I started paying attention, and sure enough, when I didn't carry 
those transparencies, I didn't get hassled.

   "Besides, don't you know they don't do searches based on profiling?"


	Doc