Airports // Current TV

Authorities reviewing alleged UFO sighting

Police in Liberty County, Texas, say they are working with the FBI and the Federal... more

retro_Syl
added this
2 years ago
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3 comments

Survey: Airport Wi-Fi More Important Than Food

For the business traveler (and the traveler in general, really), Wi-Fi is important --... more

Anyother
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

The New Nuke Porn (There was an old one?)

Ron Rosenbaum writes, "I love airport best-sellers because I see them as our Nostradamuses, the literary canaries in the dark coal mines of our paranoia. They sniff out and serve up fictionalized but "realistic" prophecies of coming doom of one sort or another. Perhaps it's that in their visions of total world immolation they diminish in the mind of said traveler the possibility of something so trivial as a 757 engine malfunction.

The nature of the doom these books threaten us with has recently undergone a subtle shift, especially in the realm of what I've called in the past "nuke porn." I coined the term (in a Harper's article) at the height of the Cold War to characterize the way nuclear war novels and films from Fail-Safe to Strangelove and the like adapted or imitated the techniques one could find in conventional porn: the excitement of arousal and buildup, the finger on the trigger as the world was brought to the trembling brink of a consciousness-obliterating climax. And the post-coital tristesse of "survivor novels" like On the Beach, where the onrushing end of the species licensed a doom-inflected licentiousness.

The new nuke porn is hard-core, more graphic and full-frontal than the Cold War version of the genre. Instead of the anticipatory excitement (Fail-Safe, Strangelove) or the post-coital tristesse (On the Beach) of First Era nuke porn, we get real-time blast-burns and melting flesh. There was always an erotic component to apocalyptic literature—those end-of-the-world sects were notorious for their doom-fueled orgiastic behavior—but I always wondered why most nuke porn was about looking forward to the approaching act or looking back on its consummation but rarely about looking directly at it. Yes, Strangelove ended with a suite of stock footage of mushroom clouds exploding (to the strains of "We'll Meet Again"), but while we saw the explosions there, we never confronted face to face—in the way film and fiction can—the actual experience of being inside a nuclear blast. (The most notable exception being, of course, the few seconds of—did it happen or was it averted?—nuking footage in Terminator 2. Remember the playground scene where the nuke turns the frolicking moms and kids into scary X-rays?* It's a key transition between the old nuke porn and the new.)

But now the genre has entered a new era—an era of looking "directly at it"—a fact that didn't really register with me until I read Whitley Strieber's airport novel, Critical Mass, in which we get the nuke porn equivalent of the "money shot." You know Strieber, right? Mr. Airport Extreme. He's the auteur of what some might see as another strange form of porn, those alien-abduction fantasies that feature anal probes. He was among the first to bring UFO abductions complete with probes into the airport "bookstore.""Ron Rosenbaum writes, "I love airport best-sellers because I see them as our... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

Where did Twitterers just land in?

We can't get enough of infoporn Twitter mashups, can we? Canadian artist Jer... more

saverio
added this
3 years ago
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3 comments

Heathrow Passengers Drop - Third Runway Prospects Fade

The Spanish-owned BAA which runs most UK airports announced a 6.4 per cent fall in the... more

petermarshall
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

Someone has your underpants...

A London based collector has started buying lost luggage from airports. But, rather... more

catchiecoo
added this
3 years ago
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4 comments

Man has to take crap on plane, gets arrested.

Heres what happened to Joao Correa on his Delta airlines flight. "The coach... more

Get_Cape
added this
3 years ago
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21 comments

Airport Body Scans Reveal All!! Are they watching you?

New airport security scanners could become a popular alternative to body searches, but... more

ClipsFC
added this
3 years ago
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4 comments

Three months living at Berlin's airports - that's weird

A Finnish woman has been living in two Berlin airports for three months in a bizarre... more

theolond
added this
3 years ago
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1 comment

United Kingdom Talk Video Thursday 12th March 2009

Thursday's edition of my three times a week talk show.Watch the show here on... more

ChrisReardon
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

Mandelson gunged on live TV

A activist from the anti Heathrow airport expansion group Plane Stupid threw a load of... more

AnnieMole
added this
3 years ago
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4 comments

Birdman of JFK [video]

A single bird can take out a jet engine with potentially catastrophic results. There... more

GrrlScientist
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

ANA passenger plane returns to Narita airport due to engine trouble

NARITA, Japan, Feb. 16 (AP) - (Kyodo)—An All Nippon Airways plane returned to... more

gooma2
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

Woman Goes Crazy At Hong Kong Airport

Woman goes crazy after missing her flight.

gooma2
added this
3 years ago
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8 comments

Woman screaming and writhing on the floor after missing her flight.

HaHaHa... I have seen three year olds behave better than this woman. When she did not... more

bcass22
added this
3 years ago
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23 comments

Heart Association Official Saved By Defibrillator

Gary Terry collapsed just 18 feet from an automated external defibrillator AED that he... more

islek
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

A Horse of a Different Color Divides Denver

"The mustang rears on splayed hind legs -- his nostrils flaring, his eyes glowing... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
3 years ago
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4 comments

Grave mistake

Red faced officials at Malpensa airport in northern Italy had to apologise to the... more

newsfreak
added this
3 years ago
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1 comment

Warning over taxi drivers' airport protest

Taxi customers face possible disruption at Dublin airport tomorrow morning as drivers... more

TravG73
added this
3 years ago
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0 comments

Man arrested at airport with 21 guns

The man arrested at Los Angeles International Airport with a trunk full of guns and... more

AwesomeJosh
added this
3 years ago
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2 comments

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