John Walsh: Make my day, punk: don't touch my junk

Today is Thanksgiving in the US, but there's been a distinct absence of gratitude from American travellers about the increasingly rude tactics of the Transportation Security Administration, the federal body which oversees the scanning at airports. It's not just the new X-ray machinery that's causing the indignation. It's the alternative – the so-called "pat-down."

You and I have endured the British version of this physical inspection many times, and probably found it perfectly bearable, like an awkward hug. In the States, though, it's become quite different. Since the TSA, earlier this month, instructed its operatives to be more intrusive, the "pat-down" has become a full-squeeze, a poke-around and a rummage-inside.

There have been some shocking stories. The retired teacher Thomas Sawyer, whose urostomy bag was burst during an "enhanced pat-down" leaving him soaked in his own wee as he boarded the plane. The lady cancer patient who explained to a female security guard that the lump in her blouse was a prosthetic breast, and was told, "I'll have to see that."

Or the experience of John Tyner who, when a security guard was about to rummage in his groin, said, "If you touch my junk, I'm going to have you arrested." He wasn't allowed to fly, but was instead threatened with a civil suit and a fine of $10,000. His face (and his curiously-worded threat) were now all over T-shirts worn by protesters who held a mass National Opt-Out Day yesterday.

The phrase "pat-down" reminds me of a time when, for reasons too delicate to explain here, I was standing in front of the Baton Rouge Women's Correctional Facility in Louisiana, when a large and threatening warden approached and told me to hop it. He pointed to a sign warning that "trespassers" would be subjected to an "enhanced pat-down procedure, not excluding bodily cavity search." I fled. Hang around too long outside this prison, it bluntly promised, and we'll shove a brawny fist up your butt.

And now that's exactly what may happen to you if you don't behave and allow yourself to be full-body X-rayed at US airports.

How did it come to this, the choice between being bombarded with harmful rays or having your genitalia prodded by a stranger? It's so that you don't have a choice. Passengers are being forced by the threat of horrible alternatives to submit to the scanning devices. There is, you see, such a lot of money riding on their deployment all over the US, if not the world.

According to a watchdog group, Rapiscan Systems and L-3 Communications, who handle the machines, have sold more than $80m-worth of them to the government. They've also spent $4.5m on trying to persuade Congress they're a brilliant idea. They've also signed up George W Bush's former Homeland Security boss, Michael Chertoff, whose company advises about security issues.

They're powerful people, these X-ray salesmen. They managed to stifle a bill that, had it become law, would have limited the scanners to "back-up" status, for extreme security cases. It passed through the House of Representatives, but mysteriously stalled.

Will the same syndrome happen over here? I suspect security checks could well increase, until we'll have the equivalent of a colonoscopy performed on our hapless bodies if we don't co-operate with full-on X-rays.

I'm tempted to think, like many people, that all the fuss and flap about what you're carrying in your luggage, computer or underwear is little more than "security theatre" – and of course if that bogus performance deters any air-bound terrorists from their dread intent, that's fine with me.

But I draw the line at being poked, prodded and rummaged-about-in, as a government-sanctioned punishment for not doing as I'm told at Gatwick airport.

Bending over backwards to make an impression

The secret of appealing to the opposite sex is out at last. It's not about possessing good looks, fame, a colossal fortune or an AC Cobra. It not about having a confident manly stride or a seductive wiggle.

It has surprisingly little to do with revealing a La Senza bra strap or a few inches of D&G undercrackers. No, it's all about tilting your head the right way.

Researchers into evolutionary psychology at the University of Newcastle, Australia, have decided it's all about the different perspectives we have of each other's faces. Women are more alluring, apparently, "if they angle their head forwards so they have to look slightly upwards." Men, meanwhile, "become more masculine if they tilt their head back and look slightly down their nose."

I tried it with my colleague, Marge. "Okay," she said, "I'm angling my head forward and looking up at you. Is this alluring?"

"It's quite alluring," I conceded. "You look like a tortoise hoping to spot some lettuce."

I tilted my head back as far as I could and looked down my nose. "How...?"

"Don't look down your nose at me like that," she snapped, "you supercilious git."

Ah well. Back to the (peculiarly angled) drawing-board.

Sarko, the burden of proof is on you

President Sarkozy's bizarre outburst against a journalist, who asked about allegations that he'd accepted money from the sale of French submarines to Pakistan, was all over the front page of Liberation yesterday.

"You talk rubbish," he thundered to hacks at the Lisbon summit last week, "You can't prove anything." Then, singling out one surprised chap, he said, "It seems that you are a paedophile. I am personally convinced of that fact. I've spoken to the secret services, but I won't tell you which ones..."

Political rivals will say he has both an ungovernable temper and a guilty conscience – but I can understand why he said it. He was simply mocking the journalistic sin of mistaking a personal conviction for a fact. Perfectly understandable. But shouldn't we worry about a president who, on being asked about shady dealings, replies, "You can't prove anything?"

j.walsh@independent.co.uk