#travel

A friend once said that if you’ve ever tried to meditate and failed to quiet your jumbled mind, you should take a trip instead.

The background: the US is currently in the midst of its longest-ever federal government shutdown. Trump and the Republican Party will only agree to a deal to reopen the place if Democrats agree to drastic, inhumane budget cuts to Obamacare. Democrats said no, and so Trump said, OK, well we’ll just fuck everyone until you say yes.

When you connect to an airplane wi-fi network, you’re usually met with a payment page where you can purchase access to the internet. The page also usually gives you the same flight information that you’d find in the back of your headrest, like speed, direction, and estimated flight length. Perhaps it would have a map as well, I thought.

It could well be that future generations spend a fraction of the time we do today in transit but see far more of the world. Like preindustrial humans, they may work mostly in their homes

So, I fired off an email to Randy and asked him if he could use his algorithmic talents to plot the optimum road trip route across the United States.

The world’s best airline experience, from Singapore to New York.

The point is, Congress’s decision to lift the sequester was even more self-serving than you probably imagined. After casting their votes on Friday, most members raced to the airport and went home.

Those brief stints in which we must turn off our machines—the few minutes between push back from the gate and the extinguishing of the seatbelt sign, and the corresponding blackout at landing time—are something almost unique in modern life. Those rare moments in which our entertainment must come from within, not without. This is a perfect time to reflect on the journey ahead or the trip just taken. An all-too infrequent opportunity to quietly contemplate the world we live in and our place in the universe. A brief calm juncture in our otherwise hectic lives.

The best memorial to the victims of 9/11, in Schneier’s view, would be to forget most of the “lessons” of 9/11. “It’s infuriating,” he said, waving my fraudulent boarding pass to indicate the mass of waiting passengers, the humming X-ray machines, the piles of unloaded computers and cell phones on the conveyor belts, the uniformed T.S.A. officers instructing people to remove their shoes and take loose change from their pockets. “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

New details are emerging about the rowdy behaviour of two Research In Motion executives who were fired for disrupting an intercontinental flight — including that they managed to chew their way out of restraints after being handcuffed by crew members.

The passenger, who wrote of his troubles to consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, says that on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Anchorage, the airline seated him next to a passenger who weighed more than 400 pounds. "His size required both armrests to be raised up and allowed for his body to cover half of my seat," the passenger tells Elliott.

A ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation of how this decision was made shows that in post-9/11 America, security issues can trump even long-established medical conventions. The final call to deploy the X-ray machines was made not by the FDA, which regulates drugs and medical devices, but by the TSA, an agency whose primary mission is to prevent terrorist attacks.

"If you aren’t familiar with MultiBasing you can read more about it on my wiki. It’s a term I coined a few years back to try and describe a lifestyle that a few friends and I were increasingly inching towards where rather than living in one single place, we frequently traveled between several global locations, all of which were home in one way or another. In an essence we had multiple bases. Initially there was a lot of discussion about how to enable more of this but over the years it’s become more of a descriptive term for things we were already doing. Some more than others of course."

"This now familiar ritual distracts us from the real lesson, which is that we are not helpless. And since regular people will always be first on the scene of terrorist attacks, we should perhaps prioritize the public's antiterrorism capability — above and beyond the fancy technology that will never be foolproof. By definition, terrorism succeeds by making us feel powerless. It is more often a psychological threat than an existential one"

""Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable"

"1. Live in San Francisco. 2. Jump in the water. 3. Eat the food .4. Get a bike 5. Make real friends 6. Be real yourself"

"This is a simple stand made from an standard business card. It allows you to watch videos on your device (iPhone, iPod, PMP, other) without having to hold it up at a comfortable angle. It folds flat and can be keep it in your wallet. It is easy to make and replace."

Managed to do quite a few of these things while I was out in California. "Summer is the time for family and friends to come and visit, so I took a little while and tried to think about things to do and places to eat."

"I like to think I'm resistant to neophilia, the fetishistic embrace of new technology endemic to Silicon Valley. And yet I felt a rush when I logged on to Gogo's inflight Wi-Fi service on the American Airlines flight I'm currently taking from San Francisco to New York. "

"America 2006, summed up in five words: Pie is not a liquid."

"I love travelling. I love travelling alone. It is a Zen process. Even in these days of airport bullshit. It’s a method to be followed, details to be absorbed in."

"CONGRATULATIONS ON SELECTING SEAT 21C! This manual is intended to familiarize you with the many options available to you."

"Could it be that the FAA ban on liquids is really a plot to rid the country of homeless people, through the use of explosive liquids?"

"A very strange trip in which I personally visited all 50 states in a week's vacation"

"...we are suddenly more interested in flying AirTran for the no psychotic toddler policy. There are other people on the plane, and if you can't control your kid you need to be removed rather than ruin/delay the flight for everyone else."

There's tolerance and sensitivity, and then there's me squashed into the middle seat. "Let's be objective. This man is fat ... He barely fits on the courtroom chair. How could he sit in an airplane?"

"This is what's going to feed our tribe."

"Isn't it strange to think that the million-miler sitting next to you in first class got there solely by buying chocolate pudding?"

"One interesting property of the Gravity Express is that its transit time would always be very, very close to forty-two minutes regardless of the distance travelled."

"The 49-seat restaurant offers a menu highly influenced by the bounty of the local land and sea."

"All day Thursday, from the New York Post to several popular blogs, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice came under attack and ridicule for having fun in Manhattan while New Orleans sank and exploded in violence."

"The next ass that touches my shoulder will be the last!"

' "Well, sir, that's a switchblade style, and that's a prohibited item,'' Mr. Rau said he was told. ''We're going to have to confiscate that.'' ' The terrorists have succeeded in making us look like morons, yet again.

"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'." All for a blunt bread knife. Yeah, I feel safer.