I have a folding knife that I sometimes carry around, but I haven't been able to find it recently. Today I was rooting around in my laptop bag and there it was. The blade is about 3" long and the entire thing, handle and all, is made of steel (it's this one). My laptop bag was my carry-on for my flight last week.

The lady who scanned my bag did put it through for a second scan, but decided it wasn't worth inspection. How do you miss that?? I'm glad she did, since I didn't know it was in there and probably would have had to forfeit it, but still... damn. I know that a lot of what the TSA does is for spectacle and not really a win for physical security, but the X-ray machines do actually work. And its not like the lady just spaced out while my bag went through; she thought she saw something, and put the bag through a second time to confirm. So what happened?