This summer on the Last Comic Standing TV show, one of the jokes was that because she has no health insurance the woman goes to the airport so she can get a free mammogram from the TSA.

As the new more-detailed body scanners show up at more airports around the country, people are raising more objections to them. They can see under your clothes, so basically it's like you're naked. TSA claims the images are 'limited resolution' and can't be/aren't saved, but nobody believes that.

Think about it: they would want to save the images for evidence in case they need to prove there was a good reason for thinking someone was smuggling something improper onto an airplane.

There is a story going around about a TSA employee in Miami who attacked one of his co-workers for laughing at the size of his penis, so the scans are becoming a sensitive issue for men who might be a little defensive about size.

We don't hear so much about fears women have about being ogled by some minimum-wage employee in a back room, maybe that's a given, or maybe it's another example of everything is fine as long it's the girls who are upset, but don't make jokes about the size of a guy's package.

The alternative to the scan is the pat-down. But these aren't those pat-downs of the past, these are more touchy-grabby, with closer contact made with 'the crotchtal region' as one TSA employee phrased it. It requires TSA agents to grasp the body of the subject more firmly when running hands over limbs and also requires probing up to the genital areas of the body.

You've probably heard about that guy in California who told a TSA agent who was patting him down "If you touch my junk I'll have you arrested." He was escorted from the airport and is now being investigated by the feds with a likely $11,000 fine for leaving the security area.

The American Airlines pilots union has told its member pilots to refuse the new scans, opting for the pat down searches instead, and since the pat-downs are now more humiliating, the pilots are instructed to request they be done in a private room so as to maintain their dignity as professionals.

Part of the motivation behind this is to pressure the TSA into making pilots exempt from scans/patdowns or at least have their own private security screening areas.

The pilots are also saying the scans expose them to unnecessary ionic radiation. Flying a cross-Atlantic route during a solar flare can expose the pilots to the equivalent of 100 chest x-rays an hour, so they need to limit their other exposure as much as possible. I assume the passengers are also getting zapped, but this isn't about that.

I think for most of us who don't fly very often the scans aren't as big a deal, but I can see that frequent flyers and airline employees in particular who have to see the same TSA employees on a constant basis might not want what are basically their co-workers checking them out 'naked.'

For example, what if there was something interesting about Pilot Smith, and the next time he goes through security he sees the TSA employees crowding into the room where the imaging output monitor is to check it out.

For myself, I would rather endure a few seconds of a scan (while I think pleasant thoughts not related to airport security) than being groped in public.

Opt Out Day is a movement which is calling on air travelers to choose not to undergo the full-body scans on Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving and traditionally one of the year’s top travel days. The idea being that this will snarl up the security process and disrupt air travel, but I don't know that this hurts anyone as much as it hurts the passengers themselves.