Category: Things that matter

Prohibited and allowed items for flying

(via LifeHacker)

If you will be flying in the near future, you should probably check the TSA guidelines for permitted and prohibitted items on flights.

Due to enhanced security measures liquids, gels, lotions and other items of similar consistency will not be permitted in carry-on baggage. These types of items must be packed in your checked baggage.

Additionally, liquids, gels and lotions purchased beyond the checkpoint but must be disposed of before boarding the aircraft.

To ensure the health and welfare of certain air travelers the following items are permitted.

  • Small amounts of Baby formula and breast milk if a baby or small child is traveling
  • Liquid prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger’s ticket
  • Up to 5 oz. (148ml) of liquid or gel low blood sugar treatment
  • Up to 4 oz. of essential non-prescription liquid medications including saline solution, eye care products and KY jelly
  • Gel-filled bras and similar prostethics
  • Gel-filled wheelchair cushions
  • Life support and life sustaining liquids such as bone marrow, blood products, and transplant organs carried for medical reasons

You are permitted to bring solid cosmetics and personal hygiene items as such lipstick, lip balm and similar solids. Please remember these items must be solid and not liquid, gel or aerosol.

Please keep in mind, that while we can not provide an exhaustive list of items covering all eventualities, all liquids, gels, or aerosols of any kind are prohibited at security checkpoints, in airport sterile areas, and aboard aircraft. You can pack these items in your checked baggage.

I think my stance on this is well known.  I will leave it at my request for balance in spending and restrictions.  You can read my other posts for more details.  This is just something of a public service message, providing you information on how to find out more.
Note that the TSA page does not directly address the question of snakes on this page.  So if you have some snakes you want to have travel with you, it might be wise to call ahead and see if you are allowed to have them on the plane.

[tags]TSA permitted and prohibited liquids guide, Snakes on a plane[/tags]

Nation of fear

Salon has a good article about how the country has changed since 9/11. I’ve commented many times to many people that I think we have too much fear-based policy since the attacks, and not enough thought-based policy which is needed. The folks at Salon have said that and so much more in their article titled “Cityscape of Fear.”

Aug. 22, 2006 | Within a week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts set up a half dozen massive concrete freeway separators in a stately line across Josie Robertson Plaza, the complex’s main outdoor entryway. The security barricades, unsightly white slabs known as Jersey barriers, were intended to protect the center’s performance halls from a speeding truck bomb. Perhaps only the most unusually cultured of terrorists would want to hit Lincoln Center, which sits five miles north of ground zero on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — but in the tense aftermath of the attacks, no precaution seemed too much. Lincoln Center groundskeepers thoughtfully topped the Jersey barriers with colorful potted plants, a rehabilitation technique along the lines of pinning a tiara on Medusa. Almost five years have passed since the attacks. The barriers remain in place.

To appreciate how America has changed since 9/11, walk slowly through any major city. What you’ll see dotting the landscape is the physical embodiment of fear. Security installations put up after the attacks continue to block public access and wrangle pedestrian traffic. Outside Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, garish purple planters menace rush-hour pedestrian traffic. The gigantic planters have abandoned all horticultural ambition, many of them blooming with nothing more than trash and untilled dirt. “French barriers,” steel-grate barricades meant for controlling crowds, ring many landmark sites — including San Francisco’s Transamerica Building — like beefy bodyguards protecting starlets. Then there are the bollards, the cylindrical vehicle-blocking posts that are so pervasive you wonder if they’ve mastered asexual reproduction. In Washington, bollards surround everything. Not since Confederate Gen. Jubal Early attacked the city in 1864 has the nation’s capital felt so under siege.

Read more about what we are losing by letting fear run our lives and determine how we act. It’s a long article, but well worth the time it takes to read it. Terrorists win by spreading terror. They don’t win because they destroy some buildings or kill some people. They win because they change how we live and make us scared to live well. Don’t let the terrorists win. Stop fearing what they might do.

[tags]Cityscape of fear, How fear affects the nation[/tags]

Court ruling on Bush’s secret NSA wiretap program

This is practically ancient news, in Internet terms, but I wanted to make a comment here on the latest ruling on Bush’s secret NSA wiretap program. I haven’t read the ruling yet, so I’m a bit surprised by what I’ve seen of it so far. The ruling in short is that the wiretap program is unconstitutional *and* is illegal under the 1978 FISA act (see also Wikipedia’s entry for a more understandable guide to FISA).

Continue reading “Court ruling on Bush’s secret NSA wiretap program”

On the great importance of commas

(via Tingilinde)

After mistakenly putting an extra comma in a contract, Rogers Communications, Inc. of Canada may be spending $2+ million extra for use of utility poles in Canada.

It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.

A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal’s cancellation.

The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation.

Rogers thought it had a five-year deal with Aliant Inc. to string Rogers’ cable lines across thousands of utility poles in the Maritimes for an annual fee of $9.60 per pole. But early last year, Rogers was informed that the contract was being cancelled and the rates were going up. Impossible, Rogers thought, since its contract was iron-clad until the spring of 2007 and could potentially be renewed for another five years.

Armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation, Aliant disagreed. The construction of a single sentence in the 14-page contract allowed the entire deal to be scrapped with only one-year’s notice, the company argued.

Language buffs take note — Page 7 of the contract states: The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Slightly more information on the story in the full article.  Folks that think grammar and punctuation don’t matter can learn something here.  If you would like to try to get a better grip on this, perhaps you’d benefit from either Lynne Truss’ original book or her latest release?

[tags]On the importance of grammar and punctuation, Watch that comma, Comma costs millions[/tags]

Improving security via watching people?

(via Stupid Security)
Here is a security move that I want to praise.  Rather than the other senseless screening precautions we’ve seen, such as by name (which resulted in Sen. Ted Kennedy having difficulty flying), we now have preliminary work being done to identify people for greater inspection based on how they are acting.  I know that this is one thing customs agents do to help pick out which travellers need to be screened more carefully.  And this is a smart way to work on improving security.  Yes, these will be times when the wrong people get picked out due to issues like race or attire, but in general, this is a good way to increase efficiency of inspection.  But it was an important part of the identification and capture of Ahmed Ressam in the attempted millenium bombing of LAX.  Much like insurers use actuarial tables, identifying people by suspicious behavior generally works if the identifiers are well trained, and incorrect identifications tend to be minimally intrusive.

This is a good move by the government, and I hope more of this kind of thing is used in the war on terror (which, by the way, is a term I don’t like even though I get why it is used).

[tags]Behavior assessment profiling, Intelligent airline security procedures[/tags]

The latest casualty in the war on terror

(via boingboing)

The terrorists continue to win in the war that isn’t really a war. The latest casualty is liquids. Well, liquids and common sense. I get that this is a real threat. I get that terrorism is a real problem. But this liquid explosive thing was done over 10 years ago. So for over 10 years the governments of the US and the UK have not felt the need to protect citizens on airplanes from the potential threat. Now the British police arrest a score or so folks who planned on trying the liquid explosive thing again. Only they tracked the suspects for nearly a year. So at the very least, the British government has known since December (and quite possibly longer) about this but felt no need to protect the British flying population (nor tourists, I suppose, for that matter)? And of course, there’s the constant kicker that the attack had not even been attempted yet, nor was it supposed to occur on the day of the arrests.

So we have a foiled attack using a threat over a decade old that was known about for somewhere around a year in advance and that was disrupted before any attempts at attacking were made, and we have to stop bringing liquids and gels on board? And the end result of these kinds of failed attacks result in people getting grilled for accidentally dropping any electronic devices they are carrying?

I’m just tired of hearing all these restrictions going on everywhere. In the end, they do little to protect us (some say they do nothing), but they certainly inconvenience us, and make people everywhere scared. Oddly enough, that’s all the terrorists are trying to do. Body count doesn’t actually matter – fear does. So our government is feeding the fear, giving more victories to the terrorists, and in return we get reduced freedoms and greater intrusions into our lives. I just want someone who will fight the war on terrorism, not feed it. I’m tired of saying this over and over and knowing no one will listen to me because I’m a nobody, so I’ll let Bruce Schneier say his peace, which is the same as mine:

Hours-long waits in the security line. Ridiculous prohibitions on what you can carry onboard. Last week’s foiling of a major terrorist plot and the subsequent airport security graphically illustrates the difference between effective security and security theater.

None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 — no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews — had anything to do with last week’s arrests. And they wouldn’t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn’t have made a difference, either.

Instead, the arrests are a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and investigation. Details are still secret, but police in at least two countries were watching the terrorists for a long time. They followed leads, figured out who was talking to whom, and slowly pieced together both the network and the plot.

The new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved. It’s reasonable to assume that a few lone plotters, knowing their compatriots are in jail and fearing their own arrest, would try to finish the job on their own. The authorities are not being public with the details — much of the “explosive liquid” story doesn’t hang together — but the excessive security measures seem prudent.

But only temporarily. Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won’t make us safer, either. It’s not just that there are ways around the rules, it’s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.

It’s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it’s shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we’ve wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we’ve wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets — stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security — and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don’t work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It’s not security, it’s security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

[tags]The latest casualty in the war on terror, Our government’s ongoing feeding of the fear the terrorists are trying to spread[/tags]

Focus at work

(via LifeHacker)

Attention all ADD sufferers!

Damn it – I said attention.  Focus!!!  Eyes on me.

Now, go to David Cheong’s weblog and learn 18 ways to focus better at work.  This is good information for everyone, but especially for people like me who have the attention span of a rabid monkey after eating a bag of sugar, 29 packs of kool-aid, and 2 pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.  Here are a couple to whet your appetite.

1. Write out a daily task list and plan your day. There’s nothing like a task list sitting next to you to keep you focused. When you have a list of the things you need to accomplish in a day, having that close to you constantly reminding you of what needs to be done is a great way of keeping on track.

5. Do not check personal email in the morning. Checking personal emails can be very distracting even with filters setup. This is especially true when your friends send you links to interesting articles, jokes or videos on YouTube. If you’re not careful, you can get side tracked for hours. Instead of checking your personal email as soon as you get in, try starting work straight away. This will build up some momentum as you ease into your work day. You should check your personal email only after you have a few tasks completed or underway. Also, if you don’t want to perpetuate a particular distracting email thread, just don’t reply to it until after work.

[tags]Focus at work, Limit interruptions and distractions at work[/tags]

Air terrorism – don’t be scared

I know I just don’t let this drop.  It’s a matter I find very important.  If you are scared to live a normal life, the terrorists have succeeded in terrorizing you.  That’s all those people are trying to do.  They are more concerned about the terror than the body count.  Here’s a write-up from Kung Fu Monkey saying that in more depth and with more style than I have been able to say it.

No false bravado and it’s not that I don’t take terrorism seriously. I do, which I why I voted for the guy who believed in securing our ports and fighting terrorism with criminal investigation methods — which is, if we may remind everybody, how this particular plot was busted.

I am just not going to wet my pants every time some guys get arrested in a terror plot. I will do my best to stay informed. I will support the necessary law enforcement agencies. I will take whatever reasonable precautions seem, um, reasonable. But I will not be terrorized. I assume that the terror-ists would like me to be terror-ized, as that is what is says on their nametag, rather than, say, wanting me to surrender to ennui or negative body image, and they’re just coming the long way around.

[tags]Aren’t you afraid?, Terrorists seek to terrorize – duh![/tags]

The benefits of stupid air travel restrictions

Some of you may have picked up on my dislike for the new, moronic, worthless air travel restrictions imposed by the idiots that supposedly run the country.  Given how I feel about this, I tend to keep my eyes open for what is being said online about the whole fiasco.  So when I saw this post on upgradetravel touting the benefits of the new travel restrictions, I felt I had to share with my visitors a few of the positive aspects of all the changes.

The foiled terrorist plot may have made air travel more inconvenient on the surface, thanks to the new restrictions at airport security checks, but hey, it’s not all bad. After all, there are people on CNN hawking peace of mind (“It’s probably the safest day to fly!”). There you go! Let’s look on the bright side of the 2006 War on JuicyJuice:

– No liquids means less drinking. Less drinking means… Shorter bathroom lines! Fewer stag parties, or at least tamer ones. (Hmm… Maybe it’s time to short Ryanair stock?) And less unwanted groping by drunken passengers.

I’ll admit, I agree with this.  Given the restrictions on liquids, there should be fewer folks going to the bathroom.  This gives you more time to work on your mile-high club membership!

– No laptop or paper means no working. If you’re traveling for business, that’s time on the clock. Time that you’re not doing anything but stickin’ it to the Man. Ka-ching.

That’s right – you can’t take books or laptops, but you’re on company time!  W00t for using your time productively.

Anyway, at least someone can take a light-hearted look at the latest round of government stupidity.

[tags]Air travel restrictions, The upside to the terrorism downside[/tags]

The wisdom of charlatans

Bravo to Christopher Wanjek at LiveScience.com for taking the time to write about just how much is wrong in Kevin Trudeau’s book More Natural Cures Revealed (no link provided to avoid endorsing this hackery).

Kevin Trudeau wants to save your life, and the Nazis at the FDA and FTC will stop at nothing to bring him down. They have made it clear to him that their intent is to imprison him, confiscate his latest book, and burn it.

So begins Trudeau’s self-published “More Natural Cures Revealed,” a fascinating cross between a health book, fictitious novel, and a paranoid, hate-filled rant along the lines of “Mein Kampf.”

Normally I wouldn’t highlight such lunacy for risk of advertising it. And at first glance, one would think that this book could only attract a fringe audience, like those websites advocating to drink your own urine. But “More Natural Cures” is a follow-up to the self-published “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You To Know About,” which sold several million copies and reached the New York Times best-seller list.

Continue reading “The wisdom of charlatans”