airport security

description: procedures to protect passengers, staff, and planes

290 results

pages: 326 words: 84,180

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
by Simone Browne
Published 1 Oct 2015

Also in this section, I identify a pattern in the ways that black women have been caricatured in representations of aviation security by looking first to an episode of the Comedy Central channel’s popular animated television series South Park. I argue that while the representations of black women as airport security workers often depict them as rude, aggressive, uninterested, or only interested in groping travelers, with these representations black women come to symbolize state power at airport security checkpoints in the domestic War on Terror. In this way, an apparent paradox is revealed. Black women are, at once, a site of power at the airport, and, as the GAO report revealed, untrusted and therefore searchable.

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He first laser cuts messages into 13 × 10-inch sheets of stainless steel, which are then placed in carry-on luggage so that when the bags go through X-ray screening, the messages can be read by TSA workers and other airport security personnel. Messages such as “Mind your business” or “I am the frontline of defense, drawing on my imagination to creatively protect America from harm” are displayed on the baggage X-ray monitor, all the while concealing the contents of the carry-on luggage (figure 4.2). Also, TSA Communication consists of video secretly recorded by Roth as he takes his stenciled metal plates through X-ray baggage screenings at various airport security checkpoints and is questioned by security workers. Roth’s TSA Communication caught the attention of the TSA and became part of the TSA’s own communication when, in 2008, it was featured on the TSA’s official blog, which warned travelers that “many folks who might think it’s funny to ‘talk back’ to TSA won’t be too happy when they find themselves spending extra time in the security line,” if they were to make use of something like Roth’s design.74 The TSA’s response to TSA Communication, as well as Roth’s interactions with airport security workers, points to a dialogic relationship between art and airport security, where the art is not merely staged in airports but also affects TSA communications with the public.

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Roth’s TSA Communication caught the attention of the TSA and became part of the TSA’s own communication when, in 2008, it was featured on the TSA’s official blog, which warned travelers that “many folks who might think it’s funny to ‘talk back’ to TSA won’t be too happy when they find themselves spending extra time in the security line,” if they were to make use of something like Roth’s design.74 The TSA’s response to TSA Communication, as well as Roth’s interactions with airport security workers, points to a dialogic relationship between art and airport security, where the art is not merely staged in airports but also affects TSA communications with the public. Conclusion: N’oublie pas One of this chapter’s broad concerns has been how black women’s experiences at airports can contribute to a different understanding of post-9/11 security practices, performances, and politics.

pages: 309 words: 100,573

Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers, and Reflections
by Patrick Smith
Published 6 May 2013

The second flaw is our lingering preoccupation with the tactics used by the terrorists on September 11—the huge and tragic irony being that the success of the 2001 attacks had almost nothing to do with airport security in the first place. As conventional wisdom has it, the 9/11 terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box cutters. But conventional wisdom is wrong. It was not a failure of airport security that allowed those men to hatch their takeover scheme. It was, instead, a failure of national security—a breakdown of communication and oversight at the FBI and CIA levels. What the men actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset—a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings and how they were expected to unfold.

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• The glorious glory • Dogs and cats below • The story on cell phones and PEDs • Those damn dings • Listening in on cockpit chatter • Public address madness and the babble of the safety briefing • Class struggles: first, business, economy, and beyond • The trials and tribulations of boarding, and how to make it better • A round of applause Looking Out: Memorable Views from Aloft 6. …Must Come Down: Disasters, Mishaps, and Fatuous Flights of Fancy Terminal Madness: What Is Airport Security? The Ten Deadliest Air Disasters of All Time Terrorism perspective: the golden age of air crimes • Fear and reason: encouragement for nervous flyers • What pilots dread • Emergencies, real and imagined • Where airlines fear to tread • The ten worst disasters of all time • Foreign airline safety • The myth of the Immaculate Qantas • Budget carrier safety • Flight and punishment • Exploding tires and other nightmares • Could a nonpilot land a jetliner?

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I had to laugh at the notion of there being a tacit agreement among pilots over anything, let alone flying saucers. And although plenty of things in aviation are tantamount to career suicide, withholding information about UFOs isn’t one of them. 6 …MUST COME DOWN Disasters, Mishaps, and Fatuous Flights of Fancy TERMINAL MADNESS: WHAT IS AIRPORT SECURITY? In America and across much of the world, the security enhancements put in place following the catastrophe of September 11, 2001, have been drastic and of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational and pointless. The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes.

pages: 217 words: 152

Why Airplanes Crash: Aviation Safety in a Changing World
by Clinton V. Oster , John S. Strong and C. Kurt Zorn
Published 28 May 1992

PROFILE OF A FLIGHT To understand these conclusions and to place them in the proper context, it is helpful to examine the nature of risk in air travel by following a typical flight to see both the potential dangers in various portions of the flight and how the U.S. air traffic control system operates. From the passengers' perspective, the flight begins with a walk down the jetway to the aircraft. Precautions already have been taken to enhance passenger safety. Passengers and their carry-on luggage have been screened by airport security 8 WHY AIRPLANES CRASH: AVIATION SAFETY IN A CHANGING WORLD in an attempt to detect any weapons, explosives, or other hazardous materials. Checked luggage may have also been examined for explosives. In some cases, passengers may have been checked against profiles thought to reflect the characteristics of terrorists or those likely to be the unwitting carriers of terrorist bombs.

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Further reductions in the threat of hijacking, both in the United States and worldwide, may prove difficult to achieve. First, advances in plastics and composite materials make it increasingly likely that prospective hijackers will be able to obtain weapons that are not easily detected by conventional metal detectors and X-ray equipment. Second, even conventional weapons are not always detected by airport security personnel. In the United States, FA A tests indicate X-ray based screening systems identify Aviation Security 145 test weapons only about 90 percent of the time, albeit an improvement over 1987 when a GAO study found an average detection rate of only 80 percent. For metal detectors, the FAA's regulatory standard requires an alarm two of three times a test weapon is passed through the screening device.

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Under current law, X-ray or other screening of mail "sealed against inspection" cannot be undertaken by the airlines without first obtaining a search warrant, except in extraordinary circumstances. Typically, carriers receive mail in bound bags from the Postal Service and simply load it on the aircraft. Pan Am Flight 103 carried 43 bags of mail. A fifth concern is a bomb placed on the aircraft while it is on the ground at the airport. Securing airport and aircraft operating areas is a major problem. Bombs can be placed in the aircraft directly or in baggage or cargo containers by an airline employee, an airport employee, the employee of companies providing such services as catering, or someone masquerading as such an employee. SECURITY Government regulations are the foundation for security policies and procedures, mandating that airports and airlines provide such services.

pages: 649 words: 172,080

Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al Qa'ida Since 9/11: The Pursuit of Al Qa'ida Since 9/11
by Seth G. Jones
Published 29 Apr 2012

The flight carried 279 passengers and 11 crew members.60 Figure 15: Abdulmutallab’s Journey from Yemen to the United States Abdulmutallab’s bomb maker in Yemen, who used the name Ibrahim as-Siri, among other aliases, had an ingenious solution to the problem of airport security. Since the September 11 attacks and the failed 2006 transatlantic airlines plot, airport security had significantly improved. Airports around the world had banned a growing list of items, from box cutters to liquids, aerosols, and gels. In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration established a 3-1-1 rule that permitted each passenger to carry one 3.4 ounce (100 ml) bottle of liquid or less; one quart-sized, clear, ziplock bag; and one carry-on bag to be placed in a screening bin.61 Al Qa’ida’s challenge, then, was to circumvent these improved security measures.

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American Concerns By 2006 government officials on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean had become increasingly concerned about a terrorist attack against one or more airplanes in Europe or the United States. The FBI had sent MI5 a 2003 bulletin titled “Possible Hijacking Tactic for Using Aircraft as Weapons,” which warned that suicide terrorists might be plotting to hijack transatlantic aircraft by smuggling explosives past airport security and assembling the bombs on board. It concluded that “components of improvised explosive devices can be smuggled onto an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items like shampoo and medicine bottles, and assembled on board. In many cases of suspicious passenger activity, incidents have taken place in the aircraft’s forward lavatory.”17 The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies helped track the cell’s support network in Pakistan, and the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security focused on links to the United States.

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They then injected food coloring into each bottle, restoring the appearance of a sports drink, and filled the hole in the bottom so that the seal on the cap remained unbroken. The homemade bomb was ingenious, though anyone carrying it onto a plane would have to partially assemble it after going through airport security. To set off the bomb, each terrorist was supposed to heat up a low-voltage bulb that was sitting in either HMTD or TATP, using power from a disposable camera. The explosion would then initiate the main charge—the hydrogen peroxide mix—and bring down the airplane. The terrorists also mixed Tang with hydrogen peroxide and other ingredients to color the liquid and create a more powerful explosion.

pages: 249 words: 79,740

The Next Decade: Where We've Been . . . And Where We're Going
by George Friedman
Published 25 Jan 2011

Once again, in the face of terror, the president must convince the public that he shares their sentiments while taking actions that appear to satisfy their cravings both for security and for revenge. One such largely symbolic action taken since September 11 has been the attempt to bolster the airport security system. Despite billions of dollars and untold measures of passenger frustration, a terrorist with training can still devise any number of ways to get explosives or other devices through the system. Some terrorists might be deterred, and the system will find others. But while increased airport security can decrease the threat, it cannot stop it. There is simply no security system that is both granular enough to detect terrorists reliably and efficient enough to allow the air transport system to function.

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A second option was for the United States to move into a purely defensive mode, relying on Homeland Security while hoping that the Afghan operation had disrupted al Qaeda’s command structure enough to prevent new attacks. Theoretically, the FBI could round up sleeper cells while the borders were protected from infiltration and airports secured against terrorists. Attractive on paper, this plan was impossible in practice. The FBI could never guarantee that there were no more sleeper cells in the country, and points of entry into the United States could never be completely secured. Any illusion of safety this effort gave the American public, and any support it might buy the president for a job well done, would last only until the next terrorist attack, the timing and nature of which were completely unknown.

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These are staggering numbers. What the limitations of airport screening tell us is that if al Qaeda failed to strike the United States again during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was not because of security precautions per se. It is even doubtful that the people who design the airport security system expect it to work. Their real objective is to calm the public by ostentatiously demonstrating that steps are being taken. The greater the ostentation and inconvenience, the more comforting the system appears. But the increasing sophistication of explosives makes it possible to kill dozens of people with a device carried by an individual, hundreds of people with a device hidden in a car or truck, and thousands of people with an aircraft that acts as an explosive.

pages: 640 words: 177,786

Against All Enemies
by Tom Clancy and Peter Telep
Published 13 Jun 2011

If that process yielded more results, then the intelligence would be passed on to the Terrorist Screening Center, also in Virginia, for more analysis. Each day more than three hundred names were sent to the center. If, at that point, a suspect’s information caused a “reasonable suspicion,” he might wind up on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist used by airport security personnel to add extra screening for some travelers, but yes, he could still fly. The Taliban had discovered that in order for someone to get on the actual no-fly list, authorities had to have their full names, their ages, and information that they were a threat to aviation or national security.

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A male French voice finally ordered all passengers to remain at their gates. Ahead lay a bank of glass doors, but beyond was a maintenance area with baggage trucks lined up in neat rows. The sign said something about restricted access. He didn’t care. Outside. He needed to get outside. But then he nearly ran head-on into an airport security officer. He tried to shift around the portly man, but the guy tackled him, and Ahmad dropped to the ground, his hands fumbling for and finding the man’s pistol. He got it, wrenched himself away, and fired two shots into the man’s chest. He sprang to his feet, and people screamed around him and cleared away, the shots still echoing, the Americans behind him hollering—and then a crackling like fireworks … Sharp, stabbing pain woke in his back and drove him down to the tile once more.

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Equipping all commercial airliners with military-style countermeasures, such as white-hot flares (chaff) and/or infrared jammers, high-powered lasers to burn out the seeker heads on missiles, or using fighter planes to escort jets in and out of the highest-risk areas, were all extremely cost-prohibitive in view of what government officials called a “lack of actionable intelligence.” The Federal Aviation Administration did state that the government provided some “war risk” insurance to the airlines, but they were unclear if the program accounted for surface-to-air missile strikes. Samad could only chuckle to himself. While five-year-olds were being patted down at airport security checkpoints, nothing—absolutely nothing—was being done to secure planes against such missile strikes. Allahu Akbar! The Israelis had not allowed themselves to be caught in the legal and political quagmire concerning this subject, in part because they knew they would forever have targets on their backs.

pages: 310 words: 91,151

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children
by John Wood
Published 28 Aug 2006

These values are so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that no terrorist could ever hope to wipe them out. The positive and proactive forces in this universe will always defeat the dark and nihilistic ones. We simply must create the spaces in which concerned citizens are offered a way to take action. THE ENHANCED AIRPORT SECURITY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11 MADE IT ALL the more difficult to be a road warrior. Two weeks after the Chicago event I was in New York’s JFK Airport feeling bleary-eyed. The airlines were recommending that travelers show up two hours before their scheduled departure. To assure that I could catch my 7:30 a.m. flight, I had been awake since 5 a.m. and at the airport since 5:30.

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I shook my head in disbelief. My intention in helping Brent was not to gain a funder, but as a result of our chance encounter we had just gained half of what was needed to set up a school library serving several hundred children. If only those kids could know the story of how a random meet-up, combined with heightened airport security, had been turned from a negative into a positive. Brent’s donation, combined with the success of our Chicago event, convinced me that we could continue to grow, even in the post–September 11 era. People seemed more eager than ever to find ways to bring some positive energy back to the world.

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Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World
by Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom
Published 3 Aug 2020

Even without the giveaway signs of a poor photoshopping job, the answers to these three questions should be enough to make us question the authenticity of such a shocking and unexpected picture. 2. BEWARE OF UNFAIR COMPARISONS “Airport Security Trays Carry More Germs Than Toilets!” Media outlets around the world ran some version of this headline after a research study was published in September 2018, confirming the fears of every germophobe who has ever suffered through the airport security screening process. But the claim is somewhat disingenuous. The scientists who did this study looked only at respiratory viruses, the kind transmitted through the air or through droplets on people’s hands when they cough or sneeze.

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Without any other leads, the police ran the fingerprint through the FBI’s massive new fingerprint database until they found a match: your client. (He had provided his fingerprints to the Transportation Safety Administration in exchange for the convenience of leaving his shoes on when passing through airport security.) Upon questioning, your client was discovered to have no alibi: He claimed that he had been cut off from human contact for two weeks, tracking radio-collared grouse through the High Sierras as part of a research project. Lack of alibi notwithstanding, you are convinced that your client could not be the culprit.

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February 10, 2017. http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/15085294.How_many_people_in_the_UK_share_your_name_/. Koblin, John. “After Racist Tweet, Roseanne Barr’s Show Is Canceled by ABC.” The New York Times. May 29, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/business/media/roseanne-barr-offensive-tweets.html. Lee, Bruce Y. “This Is How Disgusting Airport Security Trays Are.” Forbes. September 5, 2018. Parker, Laura. “We Made Plastic. We Depend On It. Now We’re Drowning in It.” National Geographic. June 2018. Pages 40–69. Postman, N. “Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection.” Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, Washington, D.C., November 28, 1969.

Frommer's London 2009
by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince
Published 25 Aug 2008

If you’re planning to fly from the United States or Canada to the United Kingdom and then on to a country that requires a visa (India, 07_285596-ch03.qxp 7/22/08 5:31 PM Page 37 E N T RY R E Q U I R E M E N T S 37 Cut to the Front of the Airport Security Line as a Registered Traveler In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA; www.tsa.gov) approved a pilot program to help ease the time spent in line for airport security screenings. In exchange for information and a fee, persons can be pre-screened as registered travelers, granting them a front-of-the-line position when they fly. The program is run through private firms—the largest and most well-known is Steven Brill’s Clear (www.flyclear.com), and it works like this: Travelers complete an online application providing specific points of personal information including name, addresses for the previous 5 years, birth date, social security number, driver’s license number, and a valid credit card (you’re not charged the $99 fee until your application is approved).

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Manufactured in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 02_285596-ftoc.qxp 7/22/08 5:26 PM Page iii Contents 1 List of Maps vi What’s New in London 1 The Best of London 4 1 The Most Unforgettable Travel Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 2 The Best Splurge Hotels . . . . . . . . . . .6 3 The Best Moderately Priced Hotels . . .7 4 The Most Unforgettable Dining Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 2 London in Depth 1 London Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 2 Looking Back at London . . . . . . . . . .12 Dateline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 3 Art & Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 3 Planning Your Trip to London 1 Visitor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 2 Entry Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Cut to the Front of the Airport Security Line as a Registered Traveler . . . . . .37 3 When to Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 London Calendar of Events . . . . . . . .39 4 Getting There & Getting Around . . . .44 5 Money & Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 The British Pound vs. the U.S. Dollar, the Euro & the Canadian Dollar . . . .56 What Things Cost in London . . . . . .57 6 Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 7 Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 5 The Best Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 6 The Best Activities for Families . . . . . .9 7 The Best Things to Do for Free (or Almost) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 11 4 London in Popular Culture: Books, Film, TV & Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 5 Eating & Drinking in London . . . . . . .31 35 8 Specialized Travel Resources . . . . . . .60 9 Sustainable Tourism . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 It’s Easy Being Green . . . . . . . . . . . .65 10 Packages for the Independent Traveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Frommers.com: The Complete Travel Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 11 Escorted General-Interest Tours . . . . .67 12 Staying Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Online Traveler’s Toolbox . . . . . . . . .70 13 Tips on Accommodations . . . . . . . . .70 14 Tips on Dining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 02_285596-ftoc.qxp iv 7/22/08 5:26 PM Page iv CONTENTS 4 5 Suggested London Itineraries 73 1 Neighborhoods in Brief . . . . . . . . . . .73 2 The Best of London in 1 Day . . . . . . .88 3 The Best of London in 2 Days . . . . . .90 4 The Best of London in 3 Days . . . . . .92 Where to Stay 1 Best Hotel Bets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98 2 In & Around the City . . . . . . . . . . . .99 3 The West End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Family-Friendly Hotels . . . . . . . . . . .106 4 Westminster & Victoria . . . . . . . . . .115 6 Where to Dine 1 2 3 4 Some Dining Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . .140 Best Dining Bets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141 Restaurants by Cuisine . . . . . . . . . .143 In & Around the City . . . . . . . . . . .146 Family-Friendly Restaurants . . . . . .155 5 The West End . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .156 7 Exploring London 1 Sights & Attractions by Neighborhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .202 2 The Top Attractions . . . . . . . . . . . . .204 Trafalgar: London’s Most Famous Square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 3 More Central London Attractions . . .220 A Neighborhood of One’s Own: The Homes of Virginia Woolf . . . . .236 8 Shopping 1 Shopping London . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265 How to Get Your VAT Refund . . . . .266 2 Central London Shopping . . . . . . . .267 GST: Greenwich Shopping Time . . .268 3 The Department Stores . . . . . . . . . .270 95 5 Hotels from Knightsbridge to South Kensington . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 6 Hotels from Marylebone to Holland Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .127 7 The South Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 8 Near the Airports . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138 140 6 Westminster & Victoria . . . . . . . . . .176 7 Knightsbridge to South Kensington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178 8 Marylebone to Notting Hill Gate . . .188 9 A Bit Farther Afield . . . . . . . . . . . . .196 10 Teatime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .197 202 A Money-Saving Pass . . . . . . . . . . .238 4 Exploring London by Boat . . . . . . . .249 Bird’s-”Eye” View of London . . . . .251 5 Attractions on the Outskirts . . . . . .252 6 Especially for Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259 7 Organized Tours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .262 8 Spectator Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .263 265 4 Goods A to Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271 Go East, Art Lover . . . . . . . . . . . . .273 The Comeback of Carnaby Street . . .279 5 Street & Flea Markets . . . . . . . . . . .286 02_285596-ftoc.qxp 7/22/08 5:26 PM Page v CONTENTS 9 London After Dark 1 The Play’s the Thing: London’s Theater Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288 New Venues for London Opera Lovers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .290 2 Classical Music, Dance & Opera . . .292 288 3 4 5 6 The Club & Music Scene . . . . . . . . .295 Dance, Disco & Eclectic . . . . . . . . . .297 Bars & Cocktail Lounges . . . . . . . . .303 The Best of London’s Pubs: The World’s Greatest Pub Crawl . . . . . .305 10 Side Trips from London 1 Windsor & Eton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313 2 Oxford: The City of Dreaming Spires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .319 3 The Pursuit of Science: Cambridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .327 313 4 Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon . . . . . . . . . . . .335 5 Salisbury & Stonehenge . . . . . . . . .347 Appendix: Fast Facts, Toll-Free Numbers & Websites 1 Fast Facts: London . . . . . . . . . . . . .350 Index General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358 Accommodations Index . . . . . . . . .368 v 350 2 Toll-Free Numbers & Websites . . . .354 358 Restaurant Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . .369 Tearooms Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370 02_285596-ftoc.qxp 7/22/08 5:26 PM Page vi List of Maps Central London Neighborhoods 74 Greater London Area 86 Where to Stay in the West End 102 Where to Stay in Westminster & Victoria 117 Where to Stay from Knightsbridge to South Kensington 120 Where to Stay from Marylebone to Holland Park 128 Where to Stay & Dine In & Around “the City” 147 Where to Dine in the West End & Theatre District 158 Where to Dine in Westminster & Victoria 177 Where to Dine from Knightsbridge to South Kensington 180 Where to Dine from Marylebone to Notting Hill Gate 190 Teatime in London 199 The Top Attractions 206 St.

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Get up, walk around, and stretch every 60 to 90 minutes to keep your blood flowing. This helps avoid deep vein thrombosis, or “economy-class syndrome.” Drink water before, during, and after your flight to combat the lack of humidity in airplane cabins. Avoid caffeine and alcohol, which will dehydrate you. GETTING THROUGH THE AIRPORT With the federalization of airport security, security procedures at U.S. airports are more stable and consistent than ever. Generally, you’ll be fine if you arrive at the airport 1 hour before a domestic flight and 2 hours before an international flight; if you show up late, tell an airline 47 employee and he or she will probably whisk you to the front of the line.

pages: 325 words: 107,099

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You
by Dina Nayeri
Published 14 Sep 2020

PART FIVE CULTURAL REPATRIATION (on being claimed, gratitude and the return home) In 2009, my younger brother Daniel and I were travelling together in Texas. In the airport security line, an officer waved us through while choosing the old white woman behind us for a random check. I breathed a sigh of relief, since the ‘born in Tehran’ in our American passports always got us a pat-down, at least. As we passed, Daniel said to the officer in a jokey American tone, ‘I don’t feel safe on this flight.’ The officer looked up. I thought, What the hell is happening right now? This was the Daniel who, as a toddler, watched airport security disembowel his toy sheep, the person whose dark face and unpronounceable first name still on his passport routinely invite second and third glances from border control.

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The name on his ID matched my mother’s. His hair was tinted red like mine. Maybe the officer was bad at birthday math (Reza was far too young to be my father), or maybe he just didn’t bother. He gave us a jump and escorted us to the airport. Minutes later, Baba’s friend (or classmate or patient), now an airport security agent, snuck us onto a cargo plane that had stopped only to refuel. We sat beside the merchandise and we flew to Tehran undetected. For decades, I believed our escape was divined. In Karaj, we hid in my great-grandmother Aziz’s house. There, Maman and Baba rushed to get us out of the country and Maman’s ‘Three Miracles’, the foundation of our escape story and therefore our future identities, came to pass.

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To say ‘Hey, I may be dark and foreign, but I get you. I’m not scary. I love God and America and pumpkin pie.’ Maybe the officer had eyed him and he wanted to respond by displaying his American accent. Regardless, I doubt he’d make that joke today. He was young and idealistic and, even though it was post-9/11, airport security wasn’t as fraught for Iranians as it is in Trump’s America. Daniel is a good immigrant – hard-working and talented and grateful, the kind that makes America better. He thanks his new country with his every move. And yes, the United States and England and Holland and Germany would be better if all immigrants were like him.

pages: 249 words: 77,027

Glock: The Rise of America's Gun
by Paul M. Barrett
Published 10 Jan 2012

His syndicated column ran in the Post and scores of other major newspapers. On January 15, 1986, Anderson’s headline declared: GADDAFI BUYING AUSTRIAN PLASTIC PISTOLS. Cowritten with his assistant and leg man, Dale Van Atta, the column reported that “Gaddafi is in the process of buying more than 100 plastic handguns that would be difficult for airport security forces to detect.” An unnamed “top” US official told Anderson and Van Atta: “ ‘This is crazy. To let a madman like Gaddafi have access to such a pistol! Once it is in his hands, he’ll give it to terrorists throughout the Middle East.’ ” The official was none other than Noel Koch, the Pentagon’s counterterrorism chief.

…

“The handgun in question is the Glock 17, a 9mm pistol invented and manufactured by Gaston Glock in the village of Deutsch-Wagram, just outside Vienna,” the column continued. “It is accurate, reliable, and made almost entirely of hardened plastic. Only the barrel, slide, and one spring are metal. Dismantled, it is frighteningly easy to smuggle past airport security.” Cloaking Koch’s identity, the column described his experiment at Washington National: “One Pentagon security expert decided to demonstrate just how easy it would be to sneak a Glock 17 aboard an airliner.” The Anderson column created havoc in the Glock world. Everyone who had anything to do with the sale of firearms was desperate to know about the Glock 17.

…

Civilian orders continued to pour in, as thousands of gun buyers decided to see what all the commotion was about. Karl Walter also tallied more than one thousand requests for free samples from law enforcement agencies in 1986 alone. Some came from small municipal police departments; others, from large state prisons and international airport-security offices. The US Capitol Police obtained a Glock and passed it along to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia. Soon Walter was holding seminars with representatives from the Customs Service, the Border Patrol, the Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
by Ben Mezrich
Published 2 Dec 2002

My fingers shook as I reached into my coat and fumbled for my Nokia. I could feel the woman’s eyes on me. If she asked me to take off my jacket, I was dead. She’d see the bulges and all hell would break loose. I’d spent the past six months researching stories involving attempts at sneaking undeclared fortunes through airport-security checkpoints, and I knew all about customs law. The security agents can detain you for forty-eight hours. They drag you to a windowless room, sometimes handcuff you to a chair. They call in agents from the DEA and the FBI. They confiscate your stake, sometimes without even giving you a receipt.

…

Kevin’s heart thumped as he saw the roll of bills. At least four inches thick, twice as large as the roll Martinez had shown him back at their apartment. And again, the visible bills were hundreds. As much as twenty grand taped inside his shirt. Had Martinez worn the money on him the whole trip from Boston? Through airport security, through the metal detector—shit, the kid hadn’t even raised a sweat. By now, Kevin was beginning to realize that Fisher and Martinez were, at the very least, serious gamblers. Was it possible that they had made all their cash playing casino games? He knew there were people who made a living at cards—hell, there’d been movies about it, books, even newspaper articles.

…

The logistics of bringing twelve people to Vegas who weren’t supposed to know one another, along with over a million dollars in cash and chips, was a problem challenging enough for any engineering major. As the newest—and largest—member on the team, Andrew Tay became the “donkey boy,” carrying most of the stash taped to his body. In this role, his paranoia came in handy; he carried the bags of money as if they were filled with unstable explosives, and worked his way through airport security with a drug smuggler’s intensity. Fisher took over for Micky from the moment they arrived in Vegas; he gave a shortened version of Micky’s speech, then made out the assignments that he and Martinez had prepared the night before. Kevin stuck with his squad—Tay, Dylan, and Jill—and usually rotated among the Mirage, the Stardust, and the MGM Grand.

pages: 118 words: 37,928

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved
by Kate Bowler
Published 6 Feb 2018

I wake up at 4:00 A.M. and drive to the airport listening to a radio program about the wonders of the periodic table of elements, and I find myself telling Toban later: “Next week it’s boron!” By 6:00 A.M. I have parked, gone through airport security, answered most of my emails, and boarded the plane to Atlanta. The same plane that will bring me back at midnight, always to the soundtrack of people coughing and a nearby baby screaming herself unconscious. There are some interruptions to this ritual. Once I got into a lively discussion with airport security about whether their slogan should be “The customer is always wrong!” Another time a pair of crutches fell from the overhead luggage bin onto my head and, in the dark of the plane, I spent an inappropriately long time trying to figure out if I was bleeding.

pages: 317 words: 84,400

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World
by Christopher Steiner
Published 29 Aug 2012

“High-Speed Stock Tickers to Call for Rise in Rental,” New York Times, March 2, 1930. CHAPTER 5: GAMING THE SYSTEM 1. IBM corporate Web site: http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/meet/html/d.3.html. 2. Scott Patterson, The Quants (New York: Crown, 2010). 3. Sean D. Hamill, “Research on Poker a Good Deal for Airport Security,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 2, 2010. 4. Michael Kaplan, “Wall Street Firm Uses Algorithms to Make Sports Betting Like Stock Trading,” Wired, November 1, 2010. 5. Bueno de Mesquita’s Mubarak prediction was fact-checked with multiple sources. The name of the Wall Street firm is not disclosed to honor nondisclosure agreements. 6.

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Simpson jurors evaluated, 177 see also litigation Lawrence, Peter, 1–2 least squares method, 62–63 Le Corbusier, 56 Lee, Spike, 87 Lehman Brothers, 191, 192 Leibniz, Gottfried, 26, 57–61, 68, 72 binary language of, 57–58, 60–61, 71, 73 Leipzig, 58 Lennon, John, 104, 107–8 “In My Life” claimed by, 110–11 as math savant, 103 “Let It Be,” 103 Levchin, Max, 188 leverage, trading on margin with, 51 Lewis, Michael, 141, 202 Li, David X., 65 Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculation) (Fibonacci), 56–57 Library of Congress, 193 Lin, Jeremy, 142–43 linguistics, 187 liquidity crisis, potential, 51–52 Lisp, 12, 93, 94 lit fiber, 114, 120 lithium hydroxide, 166 Lithuania, 69 litigation: health insurers and, 181 stock prices and potential, 27 Walgreens and, 156 logic: algorithms and, 71 broken down into mechanical operations, 58–59 logic theory, 73 logic trees, 171 London, 59, 66–67, 68, 121, 198 Los Angeles International Airport, security algorithm at, 135 Los Angeles Lakers, 143 loudness, 93, 106 Lovelace, Ada, 73 Lovell, James, 165–67 Lulea, Sweden, 204 lunar module, 166 lung cancer, 154 McAfee, Andrew P., 217–18 McCartney, Paul, 104, 105, 107 “In My Life” claimed by, 110–11 as math savant, 103 McCready, Mike, 78–83, 85–89 McGuire, Terry, 145, 168–72, 174–76 machine-learning algorithms, 79, 100 Magnetar Capital, 3–4, 10 Mahler, Gustav, 98 Major Market Index, 40, 41 Making of a Fly, The (Lawrence), prices of, 1–2 Malyshev, Mikhail, 190 management consultants, 189 margin, trading with, 51 market cap, price swings and, 49 market makers: bids and offers by, 35–36 Peterffy as, 31, 35–36, 38, 51 market risk, 66 Maroon 5, 85 Marseille, 147, 149 Marshall, Andrew, 140 Martin, George, 108–10 Martin, Max (Martin Sandberg), 88–89 math: behind algorithms, 6, 53 education in, 218–20 mathematicians: algorithms and, 6, 71 online, 53 on Wall Street, 13, 23, 24, 27, 71, 179, 185, 201–3 Mattingly, Ken, 167 MBAs: eLoyalty’s experience with, 187 Peterffy’s refusal to hire, 47 MDCT scans, 154 measurement errors, distribution of, 63 medical algorithms, 54, 146 in diagnosis and testing, 151–56, 216 in organ sharing, 147–51 patient data and home monitoring in, 158–59 physicians’ practice and, 156–62 medical residencies, game theory and matching for, 147 medicine, evidence-based, 156 Mehta, Puneet, 200, 201 melodies, 82, 87, 93 Mercer, Robert, 178–80 Merrill Lynch, 191, 192, 200 Messiah, 68 metal: trading of, 27 volatility of, 22 MGM, 135 Miami University, 91 Michigan, 201 Michigan, University of, 136 Microsoft, 67, 124, 209 microwaves, 124 Midas (algorithm), 134 Miller, Andre, 143 mind-reading bots, 178, 181–83 Minneapolis, Minn., 192–93 minor-league statistics, baseball, 141 MIT, 24, 73, 128, 160, 179, 188, 217 Mocatta & Goldsmid, 20 Mocatta Group, 20, 21–25, 31 model building, predictive, 63 modifiers, 71 Boolean, 72–73 Mojo magazine, 110 Moneyball (Lewis), 141 money markets, 214 money streams, present value of future, 57 Montalenti, Andrew, 200–201 Morgan Stanley, 116, 128, 186, 191, 200–201, 204 mortgage-backed securities, 203 mortgages, 57 defaults on, 65 quantitative, 202 subprime, 65, 202, 216 Mosaic, 116 movies, algorithms and, 75–76 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 77, 89, 90, 91, 96 MP3 sharing, 83 M Resort Spa, sports betting at, 133–35 Mubarak, Hosni, 140 Muller, Peter, 128 music, 214 algorithms in creation of, 76–77, 89–103 decoding Beatles’, 70, 103–11 disruptors in, 102–3 homogenization or variety in, 88–89 outliers in, 102 predictive algorithms for success of, 77–89 Music X-Ray, 86–87 Musikalisches Würfelspiel, 91 mutual funds, 50 MyCityWay, 200 Najarian, John A., 119 Naples, 121 Napoleon I, emperor of France, 121 Napster, 81 Narrative Science, 218 NASA: Houston mission control of, 166, 175 predictive science at, 61, 164, 165–72, 174–77, 180, 194 Nasdaq, 177 algorithm dominance of, 49 Peterffy and, 11–17, 32, 42, 47–48, 185 terminals of, 14–17, 42 trading method at, 14 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 159 Nationsbank, Chicago Research and Trading Group bought by, 46 NBA, 142–43 Neanderthals, human crossbreeding with, 161 Nebraska, 79–80, 85 Netflix, 112, 207 Netherlands, 121 Netscape, 116, 188 Nevermind, 102 New England Patriots, 134 New Jersey, 115, 116 Newsweek, 126 Newton, Isaac, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65 New York, N.Y., 122, 130, 192, 201–2, 206 communication between markets in Chicago and, 42, 113–18, 123–24 financial markets in, 20, 198 high school matching algorithm in, 147–48 McCready’s move to, 85 Mocatta’s headquarters in, 26 Peterffy’s arrival in, 19 tech startups in, 210 New York Commodities Exchange (NYCE), 26 New Yorker, 156 New York Giants, 134 New York Knicks, 143 New York magazine, 34 New York State, health department of, 160 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 3, 38–40, 44–45, 49, 83, 123, 184–85 New York Times, 123, 158 New York University, 37, 132, 136, 201, 202 New Zealand, 77, 100, 191 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 69 Nirvana, 102 Nixon, Richard M., 140, 165 Nobel Prize, 23, 106 North Carolina, 48, 204 Northwestern University, 145, 186 Kellogg School of Management at, 10 Novak, Ben, 77–79, 83, 85, 86 NSA, 137 NuclearPhynance, 124 nuclear power, 139 nuclear weapons, in Iran, 137, 138–39 number theory, 65 numerals: Arabic-Indian, 56 Roman, 56 NYSE composite index, 40, 41 Oakland Athletics, 141 Obama, Barack, 46, 218–19 Occupy Wall Street, 210 O’Connor & Associates, 40, 46 OEX, see S&P 100 index Ohio, 91 oil prices, 54 OkCupid, 144–45 Olivetti home computers, 27 opera, 92, 93, 95 Operation Match, 144 opinions-driven people, 173, 174, 175 OptionMonster, 119 option prices, probability and statistics in, 27 options: Black-Scholes formula and, 23 call, 21–22 commodities, 22 definition of, 21 pricing of, 22 put, 22 options contracts, 30 options trading, 36 algorithms in, 22–23, 24, 114–15 Oregon, University of, 96–97 organ donor networks: algorithms in, 149–51, 152, 214 game theory in, 147–49 oscilloscopes, 32 Outkast, 102 outliers, 63 musical, 102 outputs, algorithmic, 54 Pacific Exchange, 40 Page, Larry, 213 PageRank, 213–14 pairs matching, 148–51 pairs trading, 31 Pakistan, 191 Pandora, 6–7, 83 Papanikolaou, Georgios, 153 Pap tests, 152, 153–54 Parham, Peter, 161 Paris, 56, 59, 121 Paris Stock Exchange, 122 Parse.ly, 201 partial differential equations, 23 Pascal, Blaise, 59, 66–67 pathologists, 153 patient data, real-time, 158–59 patterns, in music, 89, 93, 96 Patterson, Nick, 160–61 PayPal, 188 PCs, Quotron data for, 33, 37, 39 pecking orders, social, 212–14 Pennsylvania, 115, 116 Pennsylvania, University of, 49 pension funds, 202 Pentagon, 168 Perfectmatch.com, 144 Perry, Katy, 89 Persia, 54 Peru, 91 Peterffy, Thomas: ambitions of, 27 on AMEX, 28–38 automated trading by, 41–42, 47–48, 113, 116 background and early career of, 18–20 Correlator algorithm of, 42–45 early handheld computers developed by, 36–39, 41, 44–45 earnings of, 17, 37, 46, 48, 51 fear that algorithms have gone too far by, 51 hackers hired by, 24–27 independence retained by, 46–47 on index funds, 41–46 at Interactive Brokers, 47–48 as market maker, 31, 35–36, 38, 51 at Mocatta, 20–28, 31 Nasdaq and, 11–18, 32, 42, 47–48, 185 new technology innovated by, 15–16 options trading algorithm of, 22–23, 24 as outsider, 31–32 profit guidelines of, 29 as programmer, 12, 15–16, 17, 20–21, 26–27, 38, 48, 62 Quotron hack of, 32–35 stock options algorithm as goal of, 27 Timber Hill trading operation of, see Timber Hill traders eliminated by, 12–18 trading floor methods of, 28–34 trading instincts of, 18, 26 World Trade Center offices of, 11, 39, 42, 43, 44 Petty, Tom, 84 pharmaceutical companies, 146, 155, 186 pharmacists, automation and, 154–56 Philips, 159 philosophy, Leibniz on, 57 phone lines: cross-country, 41 dedicated, 39, 42 phones, cell, 124–25 phosphate levels, 162 Physicians’ Desk Reference (PDR), 146 physicists, 62, 157 algorithms and, 6 on Wall Street, 14, 37, 119, 185, 190, 207 pianos, 108–9 Pincus, Mark, 206 Pisa, 56 pitch, 82, 93, 106 Pittsburgh International Airport, security algorithm at, 136 Pittsburgh Pirates, 141 Pius II, Pope, 69 Plimpton, George, 141–42 pneumonia, 158 poetry, composed by algorithm, 100–101 poker, 127–28 algorithms for, 129–35, 147, 150 Poland, 69, 91 Polyphonic HMI, 77–79, 82–83, 85 predictive algorithms, 54, 61, 62–65 prescriptions, mistakes with, 151, 155–56 present value, of future money streams, 57 pressure, thriving under, 169–70 prime numbers, general distribution pattern of, 65 probability theory, 66–68 in option prices, 27 problem solving, cooperative, 145 Procter & Gamble, 3 programmers: Cope as, 92–93 at eLoyalty, 182–83 Peterffy as, 12, 15–16, 17, 20–21, 26–27, 38, 48, 62 on Wall Street, 13, 14, 24, 46, 47, 53, 188, 191, 203, 207 programming, 188 education for, 218–20 learning, 9–10 simple algorithms in, 54 Progress Energy, 48 Project TACT (Technical Automated Compatibility Testing), 144 proprietary code, 190 proprietary trading, algorithmic, 184 Prussia, 69, 121 PSE, 40 pseudocholinesterase deficiency, 160 psychiatry, 163, 171 psychology, 178 Pu, Yihao, 190 Pulitzer Prize, 97 Purdue University, 170, 172 put options, 22, 43–45 Pythagorean algorithm, 64 quadratic equations, 63, 65 quants (quantitative analysts), 6, 46, 124, 133, 198, 200, 202–3, 204, 205 Leibniz as, 60 Wall Street’s monopoly on, 183, 190, 191, 192 Queen’s College, 72 quizzes, and OkCupid’s algorithms, 145 Quotron machine, 32–35, 37 Rachmaninoff, Sergei, 91, 96 Radiohead, 86 radiologists, 154 radio transmitters, in trading, 39, 41 railroad rights-of-way, 115–17 reactions-based people, 173–74, 195 ReadyForZero, 207 real estate, 192 on Redfin, 207 recruitment, of math and engineering students, 24 Redfin, 192, 206–7, 210 reflections-driven people, 173, 174, 182 refraction, indexes of, 15 regression analysis, 62 Relativity Technologies, 189 Renaissance Technologies, 160, 179–80, 207–8 Medallion Fund of, 207–8 retirement, 50, 214 Reuter, Paul Julius, 122 Rhode Island hold ‘em poker, 131 rhythms, 82, 86, 87, 89 Richmond, Va., 95 Richmond Times-Dispatch, 95 rickets, 162 ride sharing, algorithm for, 130 riffs, 86 Riker, William H., 136 Ritchie, Joe, 40, 46 Rochester, N.Y., 154 Rolling Stones, 86 Rondo, Rajon, 143 Ross, Robert, 143–44 Roth, Al, 147–49 Rothschild, Nathan, 121–22 Royal Society, London, 59 RSB40, 143 runners, 39, 122 Russia, 69, 193 intelligence of, 136 Russian debt default of 1998, 64 Rutgers University, 144 Ryan, Lee, 79 Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, 69 Sam Goody, 83 Sandberg, Martin (Max Martin), 88–89 Sandholm, Tuomas: organ donor matching algorithm of, 147–51 poker algorithm of, 128–33, 147, 150 S&P 100 index, 40–41 S&P 500 index, 40–41, 51, 114–15, 218 Santa Cruz, Calif., 90, 95, 99 satellites, 60 Savage Beast, 83 Saverin, Eduardo, 199 Scholes, Myron, 23, 62, 105–6 schools, matching algorithm for, 147–48 Schubert, Franz, 98 Schwartz, Pepper, 144 science, education in, 139–40, 218–20 scientists, on Wall Street, 46, 186 Scott, Riley, 9 scripts, algorithms for writing, 76 Seattle, Wash., 192, 207 securities, 113, 114–15 mortgage-backed, 203 options on, 21 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 185 semiconductors, 60, 186 sentence structure, 62 Sequoia Capital, 158 Seven Bridges of Königsberg, 69, 111 Shannon, Claude, 73–74 Shuruppak, 55 Silicon Valley, 53, 81, 90, 116, 188, 189, 215 hackers in, 8 resurgence of, 198–211, 216 Y Combinator program in, 9, 207 silver, 27 Simons, James, 179–80, 208, 219 Simpson, O.

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pages: 302 words: 83,116

SuperFreakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 19 Oct 2009

Think about the last time you went through an airport security line and were forced to remove your shoes, shuffle through the metal detector in stocking feet, and then hobble about while gathering up your belongings. The beauty of terrorism—if you’re a terrorist—is that you can succeed even by failing. We perform this shoe routine thanks to a bumbling British national named Richard Reid, who, even though he couldn’t ignite his shoe bomb, exacted a huge price. Let’s say it takes an average of one minute to remove and replace your shoes in the airport security line. In the United States alone, this procedure happens roughly 560 million times per year.

…

The Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Statistical Area includes the district itself and surrounding counties in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. For more on the impact of the Washington sniper attacks, see Jeffrey Schulden et al., “Psychological Responses to the Sniper Attacks: Washington D.C., Area, October 2002,” American Journal of Preventative Medicine 31, no. 4 (October 2006). / 65 Figures for airport security screenings come from the Federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. / 65 Financial impact of 9/11: see Dick K. Nanto, “9/11 Terrorism: Global Economic Costs,” Congressional Research Service, 2004. / 65–66 Extra driving deaths after 9/11: see Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali, and Daniel Simon, “Driving Fatalities after 9/11: A Hidden Cost of Terrorism,” Cornell University Department of Applied Economics and Management working paper, 2005; Gerd Gigerenzer, “Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents,” Psychological Science 15, no. 4 (2004); Michael Sivak and Michael J.

pages: 306 words: 85,836

When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 4 May 2015

People do things in cars they would never do in other settings. Honking. Swearing. Cutting to the front of the line. And that is just my sister. The other drivers are far meaner. One obvious reason is that you don’t have to live with the consequences for any length of time. If you cut in line at airport security, you will be in close proximity for quite some time to the people you insulted. With a car, you make a quick getaway. Making that getaway also means you are unlikely to be physically beaten, whereas giving someone the finger as you walk down the sidewalk has no such safety. When I used to commute, there was one particular interchange where incivility ruled.

…

I Almost Got Sent to Guantanamo (SDL) I arrived at the West Palm Beach Airport yesterday, trying to make my way back to Chicago, only to see my flight time listed on the departure board as simply DELAYED. They weren’t even pretending it was leaving in the foreseeable future. With a little detective work, I found another flight that could get me home on a different airline. I bought a one-way ticket and headed for airport security. Of course, the last-minute purchase of a one-way ticket sets off the lights and buzzers for the TSA. So I’m pulled out of the line and searched. First the full-body search. Then the luggage. It didn’t occur to me that my latest research was going to get me into trouble. I’ve been thinking a lot about terrorism lately.

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abortion, 65–66, 288 Absolute Poker website, 154–58 academia: bribing kids, 337–40 school open house, 219–20 teacher cheating, 103–4, 160–61 tenure, 16–19 Adams, Brandon, 193–94 addictions, rational, 92–94 advice, best, 347–50 African women, survey of, 237 airports, shutting down, 21–23 airport security, 5–6, 11, 108–9, 251–53 Akerlof, George, 162 Allie (high-end call girl), 261–67 altruism, 324–28 Altucher, James, 196–98 anchoring, 309 animated films, voices in, 305–7 animus, discrimination theory, 321–22 anti-fraud measures, 106 aptonyms, 43–47 Armstrong, Lance, 153 Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, 29 Arum, Bob, 72–73 Asian tsunami, 325–26 assets, non-fungible, 68 athletes: gambling on, 73 income taxes of, 72–74 aviation congestion, 21–23 baby formula, 303–5 backgammon, 195–98 Badenhausen, Kurt, 74 Baltimore Sun, The, 233 bank robberies, 223–26 baseball, steroids, 152–53 baseballs, autographed, 80–81 Becker, Gary, 9–10, 92–94 behavioral economics, 120, 122, 308–9 Belichick, Bill, 149–50, 208–9 Berlin brothel, 173 Bertrand, Marianne, 347 Betjeman, John, 282 Bing, Stanley, 277 bin Laden, Osama, 57–59 bird-watching, 286–87 blackjack, 189–91 bling, 184 blogs, 1–4, 37 as kaleidoscopes, 271 “blood injuries,” 148–49 Bloomberg, Michael, 240 Blount, Roy Jr., 217 Bolt, Usain, 74 books, 14–16 about business, 283–87 bullshit in titles, 276–77, 285 diet, 117 fake memoirs, 146–48 God in titles, 285–87 on iPad, 124–25 bowling, 204–6 Boxer, Barbara, 51 boxing, 72–73 Boxwell Brothers, 46 Braga, Anthony, 246 Bratton, Bill, 163 Broderick, Matthew, 101–2 “broken windows” theory of crime, 163 Brooks, Arthur, 329–31 Brown, Philip H., 326 bullshit, in book titles, 276–77, 285 Bunning, Jim, 58 Burress, Plaxico, 216, 239, 240–41 bus, boarding, 143–46 Bush, George W., 51, 108, 136 Caesars Entertainment, 126–27 Caesar’s Palace, 189–91 “Captain Steve,” 82–86 Carnegie, Andrew, 16 carnivores, 179–84 cars: child safety seats, 103–6 conspicuous consumption, 184–85 incivility in driving, 161–64 prices of, 54–57 Carson, Rachel, 181 Case, Justin, 46 Castro, Jesus “Manny” Jr., 248–49 chain letters, 141–42 Champagne, Dom Perignon, 40 charitable giving: disasters, 324–28 street handouts, 328–37 cheating: to be hot, 135–37 and “blood injuries,” 148–49 fake memoirs, 146–48 how not to cheat, 153–55 as human nature, 135 Mumbai train system, 140–41 at poker, 153–58 in self-reporting, 137–40 in sports, 148–50 on taxes, 11–14, 72–74, 122, 158–60 by teachers, 103–4, 160–61 chess, 196–98 Chicago Tribune, poll, 279 chicken, rancid, 307–11 chicken wings, prices of, 75–77 child abduction, 133 children, bribing, 337–40 child safety seats, 103–6 China: crime in, 226–28 earthquake in, 324–28 infant formula in, 303–5 Clemens, Roger, 149, 150 climate change, 179–84 Clinton, Hillary, 51 Coca-Cola, formula of, 59–60 Cohn, Alain, 228–29 Coinstar, 64 Collins, Jim, 283–84 Congress, U.S.: and bin Laden bounty, 57–59 and IRS, 12–14 tax code written by, 158–60 conspicuous consumption, 184–85 contests, 91 addictions, 92–94 motto for U.S., 96–99 rigged, 136 Twitter, 94–96 Cook, Phil, 246 Cope, Myron, 215, 216 corporate sponsorships, 81 cover-ups, 121, 157 Cowen, Tyler, 329, 331–33 Cowher, Bill, 218 Craig, Larry, 45 crime: and abortion, 288 bank robberies, 223–26 “broken windows” theory of, 163 burglary, 242 child abduction, 133 in China, 226–28 gun deaths, 245–51 and gun laws, 243–45 intruders, 241–43 priming criminals, 228–29 prison sentences, 128, 224, 242, 245, 248, 260 street gangs, 229–36, 246–47, 248–49 and The Wire, 229–33 volatile rates of, 244 Cuban, Mark, 329, 333 cyclists, Tour de France, 151–53 Cyrus, Miley, 306 Daily Show, The, 273–74 Dal Bó, Ernesto, 33–34 Daly, John, 277 dangerous activities: horseback riding, 101–3 obesity as result of, 116–19 walking drunk, 101 Daschle, Tom, 158, 160 Dawkins, Richard, 286 decision making, 120–21, 208–9 democracy, alternative to, 29–31 Dennett, Daniel, 286 dental wisdom, 275–76 diapers, cloth vs. disposable, 167 diminishing marginal returns, 203 disasters, and charitable giving, 324–28 discrimination, statistical, 321–22 divorce, statistics on, 345 Dohmen, Thomas, 212 Doleac, Jennifer, 320–21 Donohue, John, 288 doomsday prophets, 109–10 doping, in Tour de France, 151–53 driving: and the environment, 166–67 incivility in, 161–64 drugs, prescription, prices of, 51–54 Duke, Annie, 188 Duncan, Arne, 103–4 Duskiewicz, Bernie, 348–49 ecological invalidity, 335 economics: behavioral, 120, 122, 206, 308–9 invisible hand in, 315 morality vs., 288 visible hand in, 319–22 writing about, 287–88 Edlin, Aaron, 88 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 329, 333–34 Ehrlich, Paul, 109, 114 Eikenberry (funeral director), 46 Endangered Species Act, 165–66 Engelberger, Perfect, 40 environment: cloth vs. disposable diapers, 167 and conspicuous consumption, 184–85 and driving, 166–67 eating meat, 179–84 Endangered Species Act, 165–66 global warming, 87–89, 179–84 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 171–72, 177, 180 locavores, 168–72 and packaging, 175–78 paper vs. plastic bags, 167 petroleum extraction, 109–16 Prius “green halo,” 185 and profitability, 172–74 saving the rain forest, 174–75 veganism, 179–84 Ericsson, Anders, 199, 201 escort (high-end call girl), 261–67 evaluation function (EV), 197 experts, ten thousand hours of practice, 199, 201–2 Fanning, Dakota, 305 fear of strangers, 130–33 Feinstein, Dianne, 53 Feldman, Paul, 69 feminist movement, 346–47 Ferraz, Claudio, 33 films, animated, 305–7 Finan, Frederico, 33 first-grade data hound, 219–20 fishing, 348–49 flight attendants, 19–20 food: chicken wings, 75–77 decayed, 177 deliciousness of, 170 kiwifruits, 77–80 locavores, 168–72 nutritional value of, 170 and obesity, 116–18 packaging of, 175–78 poor service, 272–73 rancid chicken, 307–11 shrimp, 341–44 transportation inefficiencies of, 170–72 wasting, 177–78 football: Immaculate Reception, 216 loss aversion, 206–9 Pittsburgh Steelers, 212–19 rookie symposium, 239–41 Fox, Kevin, 253 Frakes, Michael, 117 Frankfurt, Harry, 276 Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner), 1–2, 37, 40, 54, 69, 101, 105, 135, 160, 223, 253–4, 261, 274, 277, 280, 297–98, 305, 322, 351 Freakonomics.com, 1–4, 8, 233 Freakonomics radio, 268–69 Frederick, Shane, 341–43 Freed, Pam, 342 Friedman, Milton, 23 Frost, Robert, 218 Fryar, Irving, 239–40 Fryer, Roland, 228, 288, 328–29, 337, 339 Fuller, Thomas, 194–95 Gacy, John Wayne Jr., 39 Gagné, Éric, 149 gambling: on athletes, 73 backgammon, 195–98 blackjack, 189–91 on horse racing, 191, 220–22 how not to cheat, 153–55 Internet poker, 127–30, 157 on newspaper circulation, 233 one card away from final table, 192–95 Rochambeau (Rock, Paper, Scissors), 188–89 on teams, 125–26 unbreakable record, 192 World Series of Poker, 187–88, 192–95 GAME (Gang Awareness Through Mentoring and Education), 248–49 gas, moratorium on, 311–14 gas prices, 86–90 Gates, Bill, 16 Geiger, Bernice, 224 Geithner, Tim, 158 gender identity, 228 Gladstone, Bernard, 258, 259 global warming, 88–89, 179–84 Gly-Oxide, 275–76 God, in book titles, 285–87 Goeree, Jacob, 31 Goldstein, Dan, 335 golf, 198–206 Goodall, Chris, 167 Good to Great (Collins), 283–84, 285 Goolsbee, Austan, 160 Gordon, Phil, 187–89, 192, 193 Goss, Pat, 200–201 government: and gambling income, 129 paying politicians, 32–36 voting mechanisms, 29–31 Greatest Good, 28, 300–301 Greene, Mean Joe, 216 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 171–72, 177 Grossman, Michael, 116 Gruber, Jonathan, 117 Grzelak, Mandi, 268–69 guns: anonymous tips about, 247 athletes carrying concealed weapons, 240–41 concealed weapons laws, 242 D.C. ban on, 243–45 deaths from, 245–51 illegal use of, 245 ownership of, 245 shooting intruders with, 241–43 Hagen, Ryan, 314–19 happiness, 122–23, 344–47 Harold’s Chicken Shack, 75–77 Harris, Franco, 216 Hatcher, Teri, 305 hate mail, cost of, 49–51 health care: British National Health Service, 26–29 decisions in, 122 Hemenway, David, 249–50 Henderson, Kaya, 160 herd mentality, 143–46 Hitchens, Christopher, 286 hoaxes, 282–83 Holmes, Santonio, 214–16 home, building your own, 170 home field advantage, 209–12 homelessness, 330–31 horseback riding, 101–3 horse racing, 220–22 housing prices, 67–69 Hurricane Katrina, 42–43, 325–28 Hussein, Saddam, 58 identity, concept of, 162–63 Immaculate Reception, 216 impure altruism, 328 incentives, 17, 32–36, 65, 95–96, 110, 113, 122, 136, 166, 337–40 inefficiencies, transportation, 170–72 INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Form N-400, 237–38 In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman), 284 Internet poker, 127–30, 157 iPad, 124–25 Irfan, Atif, 130–32 irrational decisions, 120–21 IRS, 11–14, 159–60, 257 Jackson, Vincent, 215 Jacob, Brian, 160 Jagger, Mick, 74 Jarden Zinc, 63 J.F.K. airport, 21–22 Jines, Linda Levitt: brother’s eulogy for, 297–301 father’s interventions, 289–97 and Freakonomics, 277, 297–98 Jingjing Zhang, 31 Johnson, Larry, 207 Johnston, David Cay, 11–12 Kaczynski, Ted (Unabomber), 287 Kahneman, Daniel, 3, 119–24, 206 Katrina (popular name), 42–43 Kennedy, Bobby, 279 Kentucky Derby, 220–22 Keyes, Alan, 279 KFC, 272–73 Killefer, Nancy, 158 kiwifruits, 77–80 Kormendy, Amy, 169 Kranton, Rachel, 162 Kulkarni, Ganesh, 140–41 Laffer curve, 72 LaGuardia Airport, 21–23 LaHood, Ray, 21, 103–6 Lake George, boat accident on, 118–19 Lancaster, Barbara, 219 Landsburg, Steven, 259 Lane, Mary MacPherson, 173 Las Vegas: blackjack, 189–91 poker, 127–30, 153–58, 187–89, 192–95 risk aversion in, 126–27 Lee, Jennifer 8., 41 Lee Hsien Loong, 32 Leeson, Peter, 314–19 Levitt, Michael, “When a Daughter Dies,” 289–97 libraries, public, 14–16 lies of reputation, 137–40 Limberhand (masturbator), 45–46 List, John, 125, 165, 228, 327–28, 338 lobbyists, 62–63 locavores, 168–72 loss aversion, 206–9 Loveman, Gary, 127 ludicity (ludic fallacy), 335 Ludwig, Jens, 246–48 Maass, Peter, 109, 114 Madoff, Bernie, 133 Malthus, Rev.

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World
by Jeffrey Tucker
Published 7 Jan 2015

What awaits is a new awareness, one that reclaims the old liberal insight, that society can manage itself without a monopolist of power and coercion. Generations ago, people misidentified violence as a source of love; it is up to this generation to correct the error and embrace the real thing. What do standing in line at the post office and doing the same at the airport security have in common? Both are rare times when average citizens are forced to deal with government directly. Admit it: we all hate it. But why do we put up with it? Service according to the State: It means unpredictable wait times. You aren’t really a customer; you are a bother—at best. Objecting to any aspect of the service is mostly pointless.

…

They don’t inhabit the same world as I do. For when I look around, I see the opposite. In every sector, commerce is the thing that brings beauty, ebullience, liberation, and true community—indeed happiness itself! It is the State that drains us of all those things. The most terrifying dystopia is already here. It is airport security, in which bureaucrats manage our comings and goings and stuff us into a system that is ruled entirely by edicts, and we are 77 robbed completely of our agency and volition. Our job is only to obey. Our personalities, preferences, and ideals must all disappear. But our utopia is also already here.

Frommer's Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs
by Eric Peterson
Published 1 Jan 2005

Manufactured in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 01_382288-ffirs.indd ii 1 12/19/08 11:37:48 PM CONTENTS LIST OF MAPS vi WHAT’S NEW IN DENVER, BOULDER & COLORADO SPRINGS 1 1 THE BEST OF DENVER, BOULDER & COLORADO SPRINGS 1 Frommer’s Favorite Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs Experiences. . . .3 2 Best Hotel Bets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 3 Best Dining Bets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 2 DENVER, BOULDER & COLORADO SPRINGS IN DEPTH 1 Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs Today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 2 Looking Back at Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs. . . . . . .12 Dateline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 02_382288-ftoc.indd iii 11 3 The Lay of the Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 4 Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs in Popular Culture: Books, Film, TV, Music . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 5 Eating & Drinking in Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs. . . . . . .20 3 PLANNING YOUR TRIP TO DENVER, BOULDER & COLORADO SPRINGS 1 Visitor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 2 Entry Requirements & Customs . . . .21 Destination: Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs—Predeparture Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Cut to the Front of the Airport Security Line as a Registered Traveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3 When to Go. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Calendar of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4 Getting There & Getting Around . . . .29 3 21 5 6 7 8 9 Money & Costs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Specialized Travel Resources . . . . . .36 Sustainable Tourism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 It’s Easy Being Green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Frommers.com: The Complete Travel Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 10 Packages for the Independent Traveler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 12/19/08 11:38:19 PM CO N T E N T S D E N V E R , B O U L D E R & C O LO R A D O S P R I N G S iv 11 Escorted General-Interest Tours . . . .41 12 Special-Interest Trips . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 13 Staying Connected. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Online Traveler’s Toolbox. . . . . . . . . . . . 42 14 Tips on Accommodations . . . . . . . . .43 4 SUGGESTED ITINERARIES IN DENVER, BOULDER & COLORADO SPRINGS 1 Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs in 1 Week. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 2 Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs in 2 Weeks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 3 Denver, Boulder & Colorado Springs for Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 4 A Beer-Lover’s Trip to Colorado’s FrontRange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 5 SETTLING INTO DENVER 1 Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Neighborhoods in Brief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2 Getting Around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Fast Facts: Denver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3 Where to Stay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 49 Family-Friendly Hotels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 4 Where to Dine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Family-Friendly Restaurants. . . . . . . . . 69 A Good City for Green Chile Fiends . . . 76 6 WHAT TO SEE & DO IN DENVER 1 The Top Attractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Robbery at the Mint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 2 More Attractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84 3 Amusement Parks & Places Especially for Kids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90 The Big Blue Bear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Walking Tour: Downtown Denver. . . 92 4 Organized Tours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94 7 BOULDER 1 Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 2 Getting Around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Fast Facts: Boulder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125 3 Where to Stay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Family-Friendly Hotels. . . . . . . . . . . . . .131 4 Where to Dine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Family-Friendly Restaurants. . . . . . . .135 5 Attractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 02_382288-ftoc.indd iv 45 79 5 6 7 8 Outdoor Activities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96 Spectator Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Shopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Denver After Dark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Brewery Tours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110 9 A Side Trip to Colorado’s Gold Circle Towns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 122 6 Sports & Outdoor Activities . . . . . 145 7 Shopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 8 Boulder After Dark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Lyons: On the Beaten Path . . . . . . . . .153 9 A Side Trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 One Gutsy Lady!.

…

Lighten Up Denver has more days of sunshine each year than San Diego or Miami Beach. 07_382288-ch03.indd 23 12/19/08 11:40:11 PM 24 P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P Cut to the F ront of the A irport Security Line as a Registered Traveler ENTRY REQUIREMENTS & CUSTOMS 3 In 2003, the Transportation S ecurity A dministration (TSA; www.tsa.gov) approved a pilot program to help ease the time spent in line for airport security screenings. In exchange for information and a fee, persons can be pre-screened as registered travelers, granting them a front-of-the-line position when they fly. The program is run through private firms—the largest and most well-known is Steven Brill’s Clear (www.flyclear.com), and it works like this: travelers complete an online application providing specific points of personal information including name, addresses for the previous 5 years, birth date, social security number, driver’s license number, and a valid credit card (you’re not charged the $99 fee until your application is approved).

…

WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET SICK AWAY FROM HOME 3 SAFETY We list hospitals and emergency numbers in the “Fast Facts” section of the appendix. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels— otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable health-care plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs up front and be reimbursed later. P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P for their first few days in the mountains, cutting down on cigarettes and alcohol, and avoiding sleeping pills and other drugs.

pages: 503 words: 131,064

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together
by Bruce Schneier
Published 14 Feb 2012

Fraud detection would be unnecessary: the parts of our welfare and healthcare system that make sure people fairly benefit from those services and don't abuse them; and all of the anti-shoplifting systems in retail stores. Entire industries would be unnecessary, like private security guards, security cameras, locksmithing, burglar alarms, automobile anti-theft, computer security, corporate security, airport security, and so on. And those are just the obvious ones; financial auditing, document authentication, and many other things would also be unnecessary. Not being angels is expensive. We don't pay a lot of these costs directly. The vast majority of them are hidden in the price of the things we buy. Groceries cost more because some people shoplift.

…

After the September 11 attacks, people became much more scared of airplane terrorism. The data didn't back up their increased fears—airplane terrorism was actually a much larger risk in the 1980s—but 9/11 was a huge emotional event and it really knocked people's feeling of security out of whack. So society, in the form of the government, tried to improve airport security. George W. Bush signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001, creating the Transportation Security Administration. Societal Dilemma: Airplane terrorism. Society: Society as a whole. Group interest: Safe air travel. Competing interest: Blowing up airplanes is believed to be an effective way to make a political point or advance a political agenda.3 Group norm: Not to blow up airplanes.

…

These institutions have been delegated responsibility for implementing institutional pressure on behalf of society as a whole, but because their interests are different, they end up implementing security at a greater or lesser level than society would have. Exaggerating the threat, and oversecuring—or at least overspending—as a result of that exaggeration, is by far the most common outcome. The TSA, for instance, would never suggest returning airport security to pre-9/11 levels and giving the rest of its budget back so it could be spent on broader anti-terrorism measures that might make more sense, such as intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. It's a solution that goes against the interests of the TSA as an institution. This dynamic is hardly limited to government institutions.

pages: 190 words: 53,970

Eastern standard tribe
by Cory Doctorow
Published 17 Feb 2004

Art's vision throbbed with his pulse as he jammed his clothes back into his backpack with one hand while he booked a ticket to London on his comm with the other. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he ordered the taxi while scribbling a note to Gran on the smart-surface of her fridge. He was verging on berserk by the time he hit airport security. The guard played the ultrasound flashlight over him and looked him up and down with his goggles, then had him walk through the chromatograph twice. Art tried to breathe calmly, but it wasn't happening. He'd take two deep breaths, think about how he was yup, calming down, pretty good, especially since he was going to London to confront Fede about the fact that his friend had screwed him stabbed him in the back using his girlfriend to distract him and meanwhile she was in Los Angeles sleeping with her fucking ex who was going to steal his idea and sell it as his own that fucking prick boning his girl right then almost certainly laughing about poor old Art, dumbfuck stuck in Toronto with his thumb up his ass, oh Fede was going to pay, that's right, he was -- and then he'd be huffing down his nose, hyperventilating, really losing his shit right there.

…

He jittered in the private interview room until another Customs officer showed up, overrode his comm and read in his ID and credentials, then stared at them for a long moment. "Are you quite all right, sir?" "Just a little wound up," Art said, trying desperately to sound normal. He thought about telling the dead friend story again, but unlike a lowly airport security drone, the Customs man had the ability and inclination to actually verify it. "Too much coffee on the plane. Need to have a slash like you wouldn't believe." The Customs man grimaced slightly, then chewed a corner of his little moustache. "Everything else is all right, though?" "Everything's fine.

pages: 184 words: 53,625

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age
by Steven Johnson
Published 14 Jul 2012

The centuries-long acceleration of travel speeds—from ever-faster sailing ships in the 16th through 18th centuries, to the advent of ever-faster railroads in the 19th century, and ever-faster cars and airplanes in the 20th century—reversed with the decommissioning of the Concorde in 2003, to say nothing of the nightmarish delays caused by strikingly low-tech post-9/11 airport-security systems. Today’s advocates of space jets, lunar vacations, and the manned exploration of the solar system appear to hail from another planet. A faded 1964 Popular Science cover story—“Who’ll Fly You at 2,000 m.p.h.?”—barely recalls the dreams of a bygone age. But raw airspeed is only one unit by which we can measure our transportation progress.

…

Today, you can easily find a flight for the same itinerary for $500, and watch live satellite television or check your e-mail as you fly. Yes, Thiel is right that the planes themselves can’t fly any faster than they did forty years ago, and so by that metric, progress has in fact stalled. (Or gone backward, if you count the Concorde.) But just about every other crucial metric (other than the joys of going through airport security) points in the other direction. That extraordinary record of progress did not come from a breakthrough device or a visionary inventor; it did not take the form of a great leap forward. Instead, the changes came from decades of small decisions, made by thousands of individuals and organizations, some of them public-sector and some of them private, each tinkering with the system in tactical ways: exploring new routes, experimenting with new pricing structures, throwing chicken carcasses into spinning jet engines.

pages: 533

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
by Jamie Susskind
Published 3 Sep 2018

Personal assistant droids aside, there are other technologies whose purpose might best be served by functional autonomy. It’s not hard, for instance, to imagine a fleet of small autonomous agricultural robots whose purpose is to pollinate or treat plants in a delicate area of rainforest. More radically, consider Wendell Wallach’s example of an airport security system that is (a) self-directing, in that it is capable of identifying suspicious individuals or known terrorists without human assistance, (b) self-sufficient, in that it does not rely on active intervention by humans to stay online, and (c) functionally independent, so it cannot be subjected easily to human override.

…

Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017), 55. 48. Wallach and Allen, Moral Machines, 26–7. 49. De Filippi and Wright, Blockchain and the Law, ch. 10. 50. De Filippi and Wright, Blockchain and the Law, ch. 1. 51. De Filippi and Wright, Blockchain and the Law, ch. 10. 52. The example of an airport security system is from Wallach and Allen, Moral Machines, 15. Chapter 7 1. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York:Vintage Books, 1980), 152. OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Notes 395 2.

…

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS IN DE X 3D printing 56–7, 178, 329 4D printing 57 Ackerman, Spencer 396 acquisitions by tech firms 318–19 action, freedom of 164–5, 166–7, 184 digital liberation 169 predictive systems 176 adaptive law 107–10 additive manufacturing (3D printing) 56–7, 178, 329 Affectiva.com 382 affective computing 52–3, 229 affirmative action 261, 268, 292 affordances 169–71 Afghanistan 50 Agoravoting.com 415 Agüera y Arcas, Blaise 172, 403 AI see Artificial Intelligence Airbnb Decentralised Autonomous Organisations 47 guest acceptance/rejection 290 individual responsibility 346 reputation system 289–90 sharing economy 335, 336 Taiwan 234 airport security systems 120–1, 186 Ajunwa, Ifeoma 418 Aletras, Nicolaos 372, 393 algorithmic audit 355–6 algorithmic injustice 279–94 data-based 282 discrimination 281–2 neutrality fallacy 288–92 rough and ready test 280–1 rule-based 283–8 well-coded society 292–4 algorithms 266 and code 94–5 and distribution 266–70, 278 and information 268–9 and participation 268 and price 269–70 of recognition 260, 275–8 scrutiny 132–3 Al-Khwār izmī, Abd’Abdallah Muhammad ibn Mūsā 94 Allen, Colin 393, 394 Allen, Jonathan P. 336, 417, 419, 429, 430, 431 Alphabet 318, 319, 320 altruism, limited 365 Amazon acquisitions 318, 319 Alexa 293 book recommendations 66, 147 commons 332 concentration of tech industry 318, 320 ‘cyber’ and ‘real’ distinction, disappearance of 97 Echo 134, 135 Kindle 151 machine learning 35 order refusal 106 robots 54 rules 116 working conditions 310 ambient intelligence see smart devices OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 492 Index American Legal Realism 109 Amnesty International 148 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) 32 Anderson, Berit 410 Anderson, Elizabeth 118, 394, 401, 418, 420, 426, 429 Amazon’s working conditions 310 justice in recognition 273 Android 64, 359 Angelidou, Margarita 381 Anglican Church 159 anonymity 231–2 Anonymous ‘hacktivists’ 221 antitrust law 357, 358 Anwin, Julia 403, 422 apathy 349 Apollo Guidance Computer 38 Apple acquisitions 318 concentration of tech industry 320 founders 314 Guidelines for app developers 189 gun emoji 148 homosexuality ‘cure’ apps 235–6 inflexibility of operating system 359 iPad 38 manufacturers’ working conditions 151 refusal to unlock iPhone of San Bernadino terrorist 155 Siri 37, 47, 293 taxation 328 ‘Think Different’ advertisement 6 watches 44 Aquinas, Thomas 215, 409 AR see augmented reality Arab Spring 150, 221 Arbesman, Samuel 193, 406 arbitrariness, rule-based injustice 284 Arendt, Hannah 9, 72, 163, 237, 415 Aristotle 368, 403, 411, 418 democracy 215, 222, 224, 234, 249 justice and equality 259 man as a political animal 222 morality 176 objective failures of recognition 272 political theory 9 work paradigm 300–1 Armstrong, Neil 38 Arneson, Richard 308, 425, 426 Aron, Jacob 376 artificial emotional intelligence 53 artificial general intelligence 33 Artificial Intelligence (AI) 30–7 affective computing 53 AI Democracy 212, 213, 250–4, 348 algorithmic injustice 293 automation of force 119, 120 blockchain 47 bots see bots commons 332 Data Deal 337 data’s economic importance 317 degradation argument 361 Deliberative Democracy 232 digital law 108–9, 110, 113 Direct Democracy 240 facial recognition 66 future of code 98 increasingly quantified society 61 machine vision 51 perception-control 149 political campaigning 220 political speeches 31, 360–1 post-politics 362, 365–6 predictions 173 privatization of force 116 smart devices 48 software engineers 194 staff scrutiny 267 superintelligence 365–6 totalitarianism 177 usufructuary rights 330 Wealth Cyclone 322 Wiki Democracy 245 Asimov, Isaac 198 Assael,Yannis M. 371 Asscher, Lodewijk F. 400, 408 Associated Press 30 AT&T 20 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index Athens, classical 212, 214–15, 217, 222–3, 224, 228, 232 audit, algorithmic 355–6 augmented reality (AR) 58–9 mixed reality 60 perception-control 146, 149, 151–2, 229, 278 scrutiny 135 augmented things see smart devices Austria 235 authoritarianism 177–9 cryptography 183 state ownership of capital 329 authority 93 automated number plate recognition technology 49–50 automation of force 100, 119–21 autonomy 165, 167 Autor, David 428 Avent, Ryan 424, 425, 427 Azuma, Hiroki 247, 416 Babylon 77, 324 Bachrach, Peter 389, 391, 398 backgammon 31 Bailenson, Jeremy 407 Baker, Paul 422 Ball, James 428 Ball, Terence 368, 389 Baraniuk, Chris 432 Baratz, Morton S. 389, 391, 398 Barr, Alistair 421 Bartky, Sandra 126, 395 Bartlett, Jamie 388, 413, 417 Bates, James 134, 135 Baughman, Shawnee 407 BBC 373, 379, 381, 385, 405 Belamaire, Jordan 386 Belgium 129 Beniger, Andrew J. 369, 389 Benkler,Yochai 368, 370, 378, 398, 399, 400, 412, 416, 431 cooperative behaviour 45 networked information environment 145 smartphones 146 493 Bentham, Jeremy 126, 195 Berkman Center for Internet and Society 184, 405 Berlin, Isaiah 9, 166, 195, 368, 401, 403, 407 Berman, Robby 382, 384 Bernays, Edward L. 410 Berners-Lee, Tim 7, 48, 294, 367, 380 Bess, Michael 402, 434 Bhavani, R. 382 Bible 100, 124, 142, 257, 300, 317 BI Intelligence 428 Bimber, Bruce 369, 412 biometric analysis 52–3, 131, 186 Bitcoin 8, 46 Black Mirror 140 Blake, William 390 blockchain 45–7 automation of force 120 justice 264 smart contracts 106, 119 usufructuary rights 330 voting 240 Blue Brain project 33, 373 Bluetooth 48, 136 Bobbit, Philip 279 Boden, Margaret A. 373–4, 381, 382, 383 Bogle, Ariel 385 Boixo, Sergio 375–6 Bollen, Johan 416 Bolukbasi, Tolga 423 bomb-detecting spinach 51 Bonchi, Francesco 422 Booth, Robert 399 Borges, Jorge Luis 53 Bostrom, Nick 365–6, 372, 373, 379, 381, 382, 435 bots Deliberative Democracy 232–4, 235 network effect 321 Bourzac, Katherine 377 Boyle, James 331, 333, 430–1 Brabham, Daren C. 416 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 494 Index Bradbury, Danny 415 brain–computer interfaces 48, 169 Braithwaite, John 431 Braman, Sandra 389 Brazil 244 Brexit 4, 233, 239 Bridge, Mark 393 Bridgewater Associates 267 British Empire 18 British Library 66 Brown, Gordon 95, 96, 391 Brownsword, Roger 176, 403 Brynjolfsson, Erik 374, 382, 390, 393, 427, 431 capital 315, 316, 334 Burgess, Matt 379 Burke, Edmund 263 Byford, Sam 32 Byrnes, Nanette 392 Cadwalladr, Carole 410, 413 Calabresi, Guido 279 Cambridge Analytica 220 campaigning, political 219–20 Campbell, Peter 371 Canetti, Elias 29 capital 314–17 commons 331–4 sharing economy 335–6 state ownership 329–30 taxation 327–9 usufructuary rights 330–1 carbon nanotubes 40 Casanova, Giacomo 216, 409 Casey, Anthony J. 109, 112, 393, 394 Castells, Manuel 144, 394, 398 Castillo, Carlos 422 CBC 383 Cellan-Jones, Rory 371 censorship by Anglican Church 159 perception-control 143, 146, 148, 151, 156 private power 190 cerebral hygiene 170 CERN 65 Chan, Connie 428 charisma 349 Charles I, King 167–8 chatbots 30 checkers 31 Cheney-Lippold, John 132, 395 chess 31, 36 Chesterton, G.

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger
by Matthew Yglesias
Published 14 Sep 2020

Modern passenger planes typically cruise between 480 and 510 knots, whereas a Boeing 707 would’ve flown at 525 knots in the 1960s.* That’s mostly because airlines have figured out that flying slower is more fuel efficient, and that saving money is more important to customers than going slightly faster. At the same time, the airport security process has become much more cumbersome, meaning that actual total travel times have regressed considerably. Rather than making progress toward supersonic travel, we’ve just given up on going faster. These are not great trends no matter what we do regarding the size of the population. But it’s hard to deny that tripling the country’s population is going to put more strain on the transportation system.

…

But the transportation points will ring true to many people because it’s demonstrably not the case that our infrastructure has been scaling in line with the growth of our population and our economy. At the same time, the idea that America needs to shrink away from growth and greatness because we can’t figure out how to manage airport security lines is depressing. The country has real transportation problems, but we ought to try to fix them rather than let a cycle of learned helplessness convince us that a strategy of national decline is the only way to manage our commutes. Fix the damn roads! The most basic thing the government could do to turn the transportation situation around would be to actually prioritize the upkeep of our existing infrastructure.

pages: 219 words: 74,775

Liquid: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives
by Mark Miodownik
Published 5 Sep 2018

Introduction I have had peanut butter, honey, pesto sauce, toothpaste and, most painfully, a bottle of single-malt whisky all confiscated at airport security. I inevitably lose the plot in situations like this. I say things like ‘I want to see your supervisor’, or ‘peanut butter is not a liquid’, even though I know it is. Peanut butter flows and assumes the shape of its container – that is what liquids do – and so peanut butter is one. Even so, it just infuriates me that in a world full of ‘smart’ technology airport security still can’t tell the difference between a liquid spread and a liquid explosive. Although bringing more than 100 ml of liquid through security has been banned since 2006, our detection technology has not improved much in that time.

pages: 470 words: 128,328

Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
by Jane McGonigal
Published 20 Jan 2011

What we need are intrinsic reward programs—and two new games for fliers show exactly how it could be done: Jetset, the world’s first video game for airports, and Day in the Cloud, an in-flight scavenger hunt designed to be played plane versus plane, at ten thousand feet and higher. Jetset and Day in the Cloud Jetset, an iPhone game created by Atlanta-based developers Persuasive Games, is a cartoon simulation of an airport security line. Load the game and, on your iPhone screen, you get to watch virtual passengers march through a cartoon metal detector while virtual luggage rolls through the X-ray machine. Your role in the game is to play the part of the security agent: tap the screen to confiscate banned items and to pat down suspicious passengers.

…

The game’s lead designer, Ian Bogost, is a frequent business traveler who came up with the idea for the game after suffering endless frustration in the security line himself. The game has a decidedly satirical bent, and player reviews often mention laughing out loud as they play.3 That’s one of the main goals of the game, Bogost told me: to make players laugh during a stressful situation. “Hopefully, it helps frequent fliers laugh at the absurdity of the airport security process instead of being overwhelmed or infuriated by it.” Technically, you can play Jetset anywhere you take your mobile phone. But the only way to officially level up and unlock souvenir prizes to send to friends and family is by playing the game at real-world airports. That’s because Jetset uses the GPS data from your phone to figure out where in the world you really are.

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You’re actively participating in the moment, taking full advantage of your location by undertaking a game mission you could only play while at that airport. Taking full advantage of the moment is an important quality-of-life skill: it builds up your sense of self-efficacy by reminding you that you have the power at any time to make your own happiness. Jetset might not permanently resolve the ongoing frustrations of airport security and boarding, but it reminds us of our power to improve our own experience. And for that reason, it’s an excellent signal of the role that location-based games can play in improving our quality of life in the future. A good location-based game can transform any space into sites of intrinsic reward.

pages: 158 words: 16,993

Citation Needed: The Best of Wikipedia's Worst Writing
by Conor Lastowka and Josh Fruhlinger
Published 14 Oct 2011

(Turns out Ayase doesn’t care for oatmeal.) What still nags at him, though, is the possibility that everything would have turned out fine if he’d raped Ayase after the garage sale, rather than after the auction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Money Autograph hobby timeline 2001: The September 11 terrorist attacks raise airport security levels, making it difficult for the public to approach celebrities for autographs at U.S. airports. Nobody suffered more on that horrible day than the people who had been planning to get an autograph from the guy who plays Jay from Jay and Silent Bob when he got off an airplane on September 12th.

pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

Atherton, “Israeli Students Spoof Waze App with Fake Traffic Jam,” Popular Science, March 31, 2014. 30 In what investigators: Nathan Hodge and Adam Entous, “Oil Firms Hit by Hackers from China, Report Says,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 10, 2011. 31 “they inadvertently downloaded code”: Nicole Perlroth, “Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines,” New York Times, April 7, 2014. 32 “allegations about Chinese hacking”: Hodge and Entous, “Oil Firms Hit by Hackers from China.” 33 In 2013, hackers: Lee Moran, “Montana Residents Flip Out When Emergency Alert System Tells Them the Zombie Apocalypse Is Happening—Like Right Friggin Now,” New York Daily News, Feb. 12, 2013. 34 “traffic jerked to a standstill”: “Russian Hackers Jam Automobile Traffic with Porn,” Fox News, Technology, January 15, 2010; “Russian Jailed for Six Years for Hacking into Advertising Server and Making Electronic Billboard Show Porn to Motorists,” Mail Online, March 24, 2011. 35 The sign stood: Sevil Omer, “Racial Slur on Mich. Road Sign Targets Trayvon Martin,” NBC News, April 9, 2012. 36 Even in 2014: Serge Malenkovich, “Hacking the Airport Security Scanner,” Kaspersky Lab. March 14, 2014, 37 Even if a hacker: “Hacked X-Rays Could Make TSA Scanners Useless,” video, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12, 2014. 38 Shockingly, using a common hacker tactic: Kim Zetter, “Hacked X-Rays Could Slip Guns Past Airport Security,” Wired, Feb. 11, 2014. 39 “Hackers have hobbled”: U.S. Department of Transportation, “Review of Web Applications Security and Intrusion Detection in Air Traffic Control Systems,” Project ID: FI-2009-049, May 4, 2009. 40 The inspector general: Siobhan Gorman, “FAA’s Air-Traffic Networks Breached by Hackers,” Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2009. 41 Moreover, a security audit: Thomas Claburn, “Air Traffic Control System Repeatedly Hacked,” Dark Reading, May 7, 2009. 42 “will be highly automated”: Steve Henn, “Could the New Air Traffic Control System Be Hacked?

…

Even in 2014, many of these devices, such as the commonly used Rapiscan 522B, use Windows variants such as Windows 98 or even Windows XP, operating systems for which thousands of security vulnerabilities have been documented and Microsoft itself has stopped issuing updates. In addition, the banks of scanners at airports are often networked to one another via either Ethernet cables or Wi-Fi, two protocols that are also routinely hacked. Shockingly, operator passwords on many airport security detectors are “stored in plain text, and there are multiple ways to log in to the system without any prior knowledge of user actual names.” Even if a hacker were to enter a completely made-up account and password, after showing an error, the system on these machines would still log in an attacker, as the security researcher Billy Rios at Qualys discovered.

…

Given the number of zero days and exploits for the underlying software running these systems, were an airport X-ray machine infected with malware and had a rootkit placed on it, hackers could completely control the images security officials viewed on their screens. A Tumi bag containing a bomb or firearm can thus be made to appear on-screen as a Tumi bag with three suits and a pair of Bruno Maglis. Screens intermediate security officials from their task at hand and as such are subject to traditional man-in-the-middle attacks. In a typical airport security configuration, one official watches the bags as they go into the machine, where they are X-rayed by a second official, while yet a third individual supervises the removal of the bags as they came out of the device. With segmented responsibilities such as these, the first and third screeners could view the Tumi go in and out of the device, while the second screener was presented with a video image of a completely different bag.

pages: 347 words: 88,114

The Zero-Waste Lifestyle: Live Well by Throwing Away Less
by Amy Korst
Published 26 Dec 2012

You’ll also need accommodations—a place to relax and sleep after a fun-filled day. Your days will include eating out, sightseeing, shopping, and other forms of entertainment, all of which create some trash. From the simple-to-recycle (like paper ticket stubs) to bigger conundrums (supplying yourself with drinking water after passing through airport security), this chapter has you covered. Vacation Planning Planning for a vacation can be complicated, with arranging for pet sitting, the mail to be stopped, automatic bill pay, and so on. Planning a zero-waste vacation adds an extra layer of preparations to this already hectic process. Start planning your zero-waste vacation by thinking about your destination in terms of the waste you are likely to create.

…

• Frequent sit-down instead of fast-food restaurants. • Recycle brochures and receipts. • Request “no disposables” from restaurant servers. • Pack zero-waste snacks for the trip. • Refuse single-use amenities in hotels, airports, and the like. Moderate • Take an empty water bottle through airport security; fill up before boarding plane. • Hand-carry recyclable items from a restaurant; recycle when you get home. • Tip higher when restaurant servers accommodate your “no disposables” request. • Leave comments on comment cards regarding how much or little trash your visit generated. • Bring your own canvas bag when souvenir shopping

pages: 495 words: 154,046

The Rights of the People
by David K. Shipler
Published 18 Apr 2011

CRIMINAL ACTS As no one can forget, the morning of September 11, 2001, had a deceptively beautiful beginning, heralding one of those crystal days between late summer and early autumn. The clarity of the air provided unlimited visibility, deadly visibility. In Boston, New York, and Washington, a total of nineteen men, some carrying box cutters, passed through airport security. They boarded four passenger jetliners fully loaded with fuel, and after takeoff seized control of the cockpits. Two planes were driven at high speed, one after another, into the two looming towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, bringing the symbols of financial might down in a whirlwind of fire and debris.

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Now a psychologist at the University of Buffalo, he trains investigators to watch for fleeting “microexpressions” that indicate fear: eyebrows moving up and together, or a muscle that contracts to stretch the mouth, for example. So keen is the Department of Homeland Security to divine emotions this way that it launched an airport security project to detect body language and granted Rutgers university $3.5 million to design computer software that could read faces more reliably than veteran cops like Sergeant Brennan.47 But Brennan felt he was pretty good at it, and he found that funny things often happened in Union Station when he asked for identification.

…

“Its motto would be: ‘Everybody flies naked and nobody worries.’ Or ‘Naked Air—where the only thing you wear is a seat belt.’ ”3 As a real-life alternative, more than 260,000 travelers eagerly acquiesced to government background checks, fingerprinting, and iris scans (and paid about $200 a year) just to get into express lanes and save a few minutes at airport security with the Clear card from Verified Identity Pass—before the company suddenly went out of business.4 Where the Fourth Amendment still applies—as in personal searches—authorities extract preemptive consent in exchange for entry, not only at airports and courthouses but even on Maine State ferries, which have been adorned with signs reading, “Boarding This Vessel Is Deemed Valid Consent to Screening or Inspection” and “All Persons and Vehicles Aboard This Vessel Are Subject to Electronic Monitoring/Surveillance.”

pages: 519 words: 155,332

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It
by Steven Brill
Published 28 May 2018

What Buffett had meant was that he was attracted to companies that had such good products with such great reputations, predominant market shares, and good managements that competitors would have a hard time getting across the moat to attack it. However, the man I was talking with brought up his moat theory because he wanted to know whether a company he was investing in that I had founded, which was creating a system by which people could pay to be prescreened and get expedited access through airport security, was hiring the right lobbyists to make sure various airports didn’t do business with any newcomers that might try to compete with us. That was the kind of unfair advantage, or moat, he was looking for—protection from the marketplace and the consequences of my company not performing well enough to win on the merits.

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Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle gathered hand in hand on the Capitol steps that night to sing “God Bless America.” People flooded volunteer centers to help the injured and those who had lost loved ones. Hundreds of millions of dollars were donated to help the families of victims. Congress quickly passed bipartisan legislation setting up a victims compensation fund and revamping airport security. Police and other first responders were saluted by people on the left and right. That mood soon faded. Divisions in Washington and cynicism across the country returned. If anything, the isolation from the larger community that Putnam had blamed, in small part, on television, intensified in the age of smartphones and social media.

…

Warren Buffett: The investor has regularly used the term “moat” in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. In 2007 he explained, “A truly great business must have an enduring ‘moat’ that protects excellent returns on invested capital”: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf. expedited access through airport security: This was a company called Clear that I founded. leading growth industry: See Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying, pp. 9–11. That is why that study: Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (September 2014), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=37EDA24D1D5DA87AEB950CEFE63883FF?

pages: 264 words: 90,379

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
by Malcolm Gladwell
Published 1 Jan 2005

It used to be cut very short and conservatively. But I decided, on a whim, to let it grow wild, as it had been when I was a teenager. Immediately, in very small but significant ways, my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets—and I had never gotten any before. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention. And one day, as I was walking along Fourteenth Street in downtown Manhattan, a police van pulled up on the sidewalk, and three officers jumped out. They were looking, it turned out, for a rapist, and the rapist, they said, looked a lot like me. They pulled out the sketch and the description.

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If you look at the author photo on my last book, The Tipping Point, you’ll see that it used to be cut very short and conservatively. But, on a whim, I let it grow wild, as it had been when I was a teenager. Immediately, in very small but significant ways, my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets all the time—and I had never gotten any before. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines for special attention. And one day, as I was walking along Fourteenth Street in downtown Manhattan, a police van pulled up on the sidewalk and three officers jumped out. They were looking, it turned out, for a rapist, and the rapist, they said, looked a lot like me. They pulled out the sketch and the description.

pages: 369 words: 90,630

Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
by Nicholas Epley
Published 11 Feb 2014

A. Andrzejewski, and K. M. Hill (2012). The effectiveness of training to improve person perception: A meta-analysis. Basic and Applied Social Psychology 34: 483–98. 8. Frank, T. (September 25, 2007). Airport security arsenal adds behavior detection. USA Today. Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2007-09-25-behavior-detection_N.htm. 9. Weinberger, S. (2010). Airport security: Intent to deceive? Nature 465: 412–15. 10. Gilovich, T., K. Savitsky, and V. H. Medvec (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others’ ability to read one’s emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75: 332–46. 11.

pages: 340 words: 90,674

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
by Geoffrey Cain
Published 28 Jun 2021

Their flight was scheduled to depart at 10 a.m., but Tohti thought the authorities would be less likely to monitor them if they left in the middle of the night. At the airport, security agents pulled them aside and inspected their passports.8 “We were at the airport about to leave,” Jewher told me. “I was going to stay for about a month and he was going to stay for a year. The police were prepared to let me leave the country, but not my father. I asked him what I should do, not wanting to leave him behind.” Tohti was clear in his advice: “I think you should take this chance and leave.” He pushed his daughter away, afraid she would refuse to leave and place herself in danger too. “Go, just go,” he said. Jewher crossed through airport security for her stopover flight to Chicago, unsure when she would see him again

pages: 328 words: 100,381

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin
Published 5 Sep 2011

ARKIN Little, Brown and Company New York Boston London Begin Reading Table of Contents Photo Insert Copyright Page From Dana: To Bill, Nick, Haley, Shirley, and Ken for their love and humor, and to the late Banksy Priest for keeping me company for so many hours every day From Bill: To Rikki and Hannah, and Luciana, my love with no time line INTRODUCTION A Perpetual State of Yellow Though she could barely walk anymore at age seventy-six, Joy Whiteman remained calm as she fumbled to remove her new white tennis shoes, lift herself out of her wheelchair, and grab the side of the X-ray machine. She teetered slowly, in socks, through the security scanner at the Boise Airport in Idaho. Airport security guards folded her wheelchair and rolled it through the scanner, keeping an eye on the frail woman in a bright flowered jacket. “Can you make it without pain?” a guard asked her. “Oh, sure,” she replied. Whiteman followed instructions, lifted her hands above her head, emptied her pockets of crumpled pieces of paper, then apologized for having left her driver’s license in her purse rather than having it in hand for the guards to examine with her plane ticket.

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A decade of terrorism warnings about possible attacks in the United States had convinced Whiteman that she had much to fear. Walking through a body scanner without her wheelchair was a small price to pay for safety. Never mind that no terrorist had ever fit her profile or been foiled walking through a security scanner. Never mind that the Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for setting airport security policy, was ridiculed by people at every other intelligence agency because it hadn’t learned to hone its focus and still saw threats everywhere.1 The scene of Joy Whiteman holding herself up with the walls of the body scanner while a crew of security guards, paid by taxpayers, made sure she didn’t fall, seemed a perfect metaphor for what has transpired in the United States over the past ten years.

pages: 303 words: 81,981

Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees
by Ben Mezrich
Published 26 Sep 2005

And that was only half of the stake he and Allie had brought with them to Vegas. Allie had two hundred thousand more, though Semyon wasn’t sure how she had hidden the money, considering she was wearing such a tight leather skirt. He hadn’t seen her without her jean jacket, but he was pretty sure she had some sort of tank top underneath. Then again, he was pretty sure airport security spent less time working over girls like Allie; she might very well have had the money banded around her waist. He zipped his jacket halfway up his chest, then prepared to head back out into the airport. He wondered if Allie was already on her way to the meeting place. On Victor’s suggestion, they had decided to split up the minute they left the plane.

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No fucking way, he thought to himself, am I getting into that death trap. “Have a nice trip,” he finally said. Victor laughed, slapping Semyon’s shoulder. “Come on, man. Don’t you see? This is going to save us tons of money. We can hit Atlantic City at will, carry our money without worrying about airport security. It’s perfectly safe.” Semyon rubbed his jaw, looking at the chipped yellow paint that was peeling, in jagged triangles, from the wings. “Why did you bring me here, instead of the whole team?” he asked. Victor sighed. “If you haven’t noticed, Semyon, I’ve singled you out from the rest. I think you’re the best of the group—as good as me, actually.

pages: 339 words: 99,674

Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
by James Risen
Published 15 Feb 2014

—JAMES RISEN Index Abedin, Huma, [>] Abu Ghraib, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] abuse of power/power, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>] Addington, David, [>]–[>], [>] Afghanistan: Bagram Prison in, [>], [>]–[>], [>]; drones and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]; intelligence operations in, [>]–[>]; police training contracts in, [>]–[>]; Taliban and, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] air force, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>] airport security, [>], [>]–[>] Alarbus Transportation, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>] Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation, [>], [>] Al Jazeera, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>] Allawi, Ayad, [>], [>]–[>] Al Qaeda: broadcasts of codes and, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>]; end of threat from, [>], [>]–[>]; golden-chain document and, [>]; international drones market and, [>]; national security policies and, [>]–[>]; 9/11 lawsuits and, [>]; NSA data on operatives in, [>]–[>], [>]; registry of, [>] American Psychiatric Association (APA), [>] American Psychological Association (APA), [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Amnesty International, [>] anti-Muslim rhetoric, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] architecture, and homeland security, [>]–[>] arms dealing, [>], [>]–[>], [>] army procurement, and auditors, [>]–[>] army procurement, and military contractor audits, [>]–[>] Arrigo, Jean Maria, [>]–[>] Ashcroft, John, [>]–[>] Asimos, Michael: government contracts and, [>]; illegal business deals and, [>]; intelligence operations and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]; investigative work and, [>]–[>] assassinations, of terrorist suspects, [>], [>] assets/informants, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] audits, of outside contractors for U.S. military, [>] Babar, Major, [>], [>]–[>] Bachmann, Michele, [>]–[>] Baginski, Maureen, [>], [>] Bagram Prison, [>], [>]–[>], [>] Barko, Harry, [>] Bayes, Malcolm, [>]–[>], [>] beaureacrats’ postretirement employment, [>] behavioral scientists, and enhanced interrogation methods, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Behnke, Stephen, [>] Benevolence International, [>] Bergstrom, Rod, [>]–[>] Bin Laden, Osama, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] Binney, Bill, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Black, Bill, [>] Blackwater, [>], [>]–[>], [>] Blanchard, Paul, [>] Blixseth, Edra, [>]–[>] Blixseth, Tim, [>]–[>] Bloomberg, Michael, [>] Blue, Linden, [>]–[>] Blue, Neal, [>]–[>] Blxware, [>]–[>] Boston marathon bombing, [>], [>]–[>] Bowen, Stuart, [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Brachman, Jarrett, [>] Bradbury, Steven, [>]–[>] Brandon, Susan, [>], [>]–[>] Bremer, Paul, [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>] Brennan, John, [>] bribery scandals, and military contractors, [>] Brin, Sergey, [>] Brisard, Jean-Charles, [>]–[>] Brito, Jerry, [>] Brooke, Francis, [>]–[>] Bucci, Steven, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>]–[>] Bureau of Investigative Journalism, [>] Burnett, Deena, [>]–[>] Burnett, Tom, [>] Burnett et al. [>].

…

. [>] bin Laden et al. (2011), [>] Hayden, Michael, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] health hazards, burn pits as, [>]–[>] Heilbrun, Mark, [>]–[>], [>]–[>] Hersh, Seymour, [>]–[>] Homeland Security Department: counterterrorism and, [>]; cybersecurity and, [>]–[>]; drones program and, [>]; Einstein [>] and, [>]; enhanced interrogation methods and, [>]; intelligence operations and, [>]–[>]; money and, [>]; Occupy movement and, [>]; Operation Stonegarden and, [>]–[>] homeland security-industrial complex: overview of, [>]–[>], [>]; airport security and, [>], [>]–[>]; anti-Muslim rhetoric and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]; architecture and, [>]–[>]; Boston marathon bombing in 2013 and, [>], [>]–[>]; Canadian border and, [>]–[>], [>]; Derby Line Battle and, [>]–[>], [>]; fear and, [>], [>], [>], [>]; government buildings and, [>]; greed and, [>]; independent terrorism analysts and, [>]–[>], [>]; individual extremists and, [>]–[>]; money and, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>]; NIH and, [>]–[>]; 9/11 terrorist attacks and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]; power/abuse of power and, [>]–[>]; press investigations and, [>]–[>]; security zones/procedures and, [>]–[>].

pages: 351 words: 100,791

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction
by Matthew B. Crawford
Published 29 Mar 2015

The ever more complete penetration of public spaces by attention-getting technologies exploits the orienting response in a way that preempts sociability, directing us away from one another and toward a manufactured reality, the content of which is determined from afar by private parties that have a material interest in doing so. There is no conspiracy here, it’s just the way things go. When we go through airport security, the public authority makes a claim on our attention for the common good. This moment is emblematic of the purpose for which political authority in a liberal regime is originally instituted—public safety—and rightly has a certain gravity to it. But in the last few years, I have found I have to be careful at the far end of the process, because the bottoms of the gray trays that you place your items in for X-ray screening are now papered with advertisements, and their visual clutter makes it very easy to miss a pinky-sized flash memory stick against a picture of fanned-out L’Oréal lipstick colors.

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pages: 339 words: 95,988

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Published 11 Apr 2005

People do things in cars they would never do in other settings. Honking. Swearing. Cutting to the front of the line. And that is just my wife. The other drivers are far meaner. One obvious reason is that you don’t have to live with the consequences for any length of time. If you cut in line at airport security, you will be in close proximity for quite some time to the people you insulted. But with a car, you make a quick getaway. When I used to commute, there was one particular interchange where incivility ruled. (For those who know Chicago, it is where the Dan Ryan feeds into the Eisenhower.) There are two lanes when you exit the highway.

…

—SJD (Jan. 3, 2006) “I Almost Got Sent to Guantánamo” I arrived at the West Palm Beach airport yesterday, trying to make my way back to Chicago, only to see my flight time listed on the departure board as simply “delayed.” They weren’t even pretending it was leaving in the foreseeable future. With a little detective work, I found another flight that could get me home on a different airline, bought a one-way ticket, and headed for airport security. Of course, the last-minute purchase of a one-way ticket sets off the lights and buzzers for the TSA. So I’m pulled out of the line and searched. First the full-body search. Then the luggage. It didn’t occur to me that my latest research was going to get me into trouble. I’ve been thinking a lot about terrorism lately.

pages: 341 words: 99,495

Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Help You Move Freely and Live Fully
by Kelly Starrett and Juliet Starrett
Published 3 Apr 2023

, Al took to walking in place—a very good idea. VITAL SIGN 5 FUTURE-PROOF YOUR NECK AND SHOULDERS Assessment PART 1: Airport Scanner Arms-Raise Test; PART 2: Shoulder Rotation Test Physical Practice Shoulder Flexion, Upper Back, and Rotator Cuff Mobilizations REMEMBER THE AIRPORT security full-body scanner we talked about in Vital Sign 3? Let’s head back over to the TSA station to see what else we can learn about the body. This time, though, instead of focusing on the lower body, we’re interested in the upper body and, more specifically, the neck and shoulders. Many a time, as we’ve watched people assume the required arms-above-the-head stance, we’ve seen them contort their neck and other body parts just to get their arms up for those few required seconds.

…

When you’re lacking hip flexion, you end up using your lumbar spine to solve movement problems that your hip should solve for you. Say you bend over to pull weeds in your garden or are at the airport and must bend over to pick up your luggage. These are things you might do on repeat as you move from one area of the garden to another or relocate from the ticket counter to airport security to the snack shop. If you can’t effectively squat to make these transitions, you must round your back to bend over, introducing inefficiency to your movement system (your hips are much stronger than your spine and better at bigger ranges of motion under load). So that’s one reason being able to squat is a good thing.

pages: 113 words: 36,785

Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood
by Michael Lewis
Published 1 Jan 2009

What with the extra pillow and the warm blanket, the delivery room couch had proved surprisingly comfortable. Beep! Beep! Beep! Having witnessed childbirth twice before, I have acquired this expertise: I know that alarms on delivery room machines are nothing to fear. Along with smoke detectors and airport security machines, they belong on the long list of devices in American life designed to cry wolf. Apart from that, here is the sum total of what I’ve learned waiting for my children to be born: (1) arrive sober; (2) do not attempt to be interesting, as it makes the nurses uneasy; (3) never underestimate your own insignificance; and (4) try to get some sleep, as no one else can.

pages: 124 words: 40,697

The Grand Design
by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Published 14 Jun 2010

If we ever run into beings from other planets, they will probably have the ability to “see” radiation at whatever wavelengths their own sun emits most strongly, modulated by factors such as the light-blocking characteristics of the dust and gases in their planet’s atmosphere. So aliens who evolved in the presence of X-rays might have a nice career in airport security. Maxwell’s equations dictate that electromagnetic waves travel at a speed of about 300,000 kilometers a second, or about 670 million miles per hour. But to quote a speed means nothing unless you specify a frame of reference relative to which the speed is measured. That’s not something you usually need to think about in everyday life.

pages: 398 words: 120,801

Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow
Published 29 Apr 2008

He once threw a swing-set from Ikea across my granddad's whole lawn when it fell apart for the fiftieth time while he was assembling it. "Barbarians," Mom said. She's been living in America since she was a teenager, but she still comes over all British when she encounters American cops, health-care, airport security or homelessness. Then the word is "barbarians," and her accent comes back strong. We'd been to London twice to see her family and I can't say as it felt any more civilized than San Francisco, just more cramped. "But they let us go, and ferried us over today." I was improvising now. "Are you hurt?"

…

So when you're wandering through your day, take a moment to look at the security systems around you. Look at the cameras in the stores you shop at. (Do they prevent crime, or just move it next door?) See how a restaurant operates. (If you pay after you eat, why don't more people just leave without paying?) Pay attention at airport security. (How could you get a weapon onto an airplane?) Watch what the teller does at a bank. (Bank security is designed to prevent tellers from stealing just as much as it is to prevent you from stealing.) Stare at an anthill. (Insects are all about security.) Read the Constitution, and notice all the ways it provides people with security against government.

pages: 481 words: 121,300

Why geography matters: three challenges facing America : climate change, the rise of China, and global terrorism
by Harm J. De Blij
Published 15 Nov 2007

Part of this cost represents the impact on the airline industry, from the grounding of all American aircraft on the day of the attack and the shutdown of air transportation for several days afterward to the temporary but crucial fear-induced shrinkage in passenger volume. The chaotic and inconsistent installation of airport security systems further damaged the industry. Today the system works better. But a RAND Corporation study published in January 2005 raises the prospect of potential attacks on commercial aircraft in the United States by terrorist operatives using shoulder-fired missiles because hijacking an airliner by boarding it is now less feasible.

…

There we were ordered off the bus and all luggage and cargo was unloaded. Passengers were separated into three groups, Soviet, European (I was traveling on a Dutch passport), and others, including a group of Canadian and American academics. Every piece of luggage was examined in minute detail, and we were physically searched in ways that make the current airport-security procedure seem casual by comparison. Then we were instructed to sign documents stipulating that we were not carrying items ranging from books and "documents" to weapons and "propaganda." The entire operation took about three hours, and I wondered how long the wait would be when a line formed.

pages: 413 words: 128,093

On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey Into South Asia
by Steve Coll
Published 29 Mar 2009

Zia invited the Americans, Raphel and Wassom, to join him for the flight home. The Americans had their own small jet available. But they agreed to join Zia. The plane they boarded had been sitting on the Bahawalpur tarmac throughout the day, guarded by mixed and relatively loose contingents of soldiers, airport security paramilitaries, and local police. Nobody had performed any unusual repairs or maintenance, though the flight crew had spent a brief time fixing a jammed cargo door. At 3:46 P.M., Pak One rolled down the runway and lifted off in clear weather, circling toward Islamabad as it climbed. After a minute, perhaps two, a controller in the Bahawalpur tower asked the plane for its position.

…

Suddenly a black van came racing up from behind and stopped just in front of us on the main road to Kathmandu. Out jumped a dozen or so riot police with truncheons and a few soldiers holding automatic weapons. They surrounded us. A mustachioed lieutenant with a walkie-talkie pushed through the gun barrels to the front and announced that we were in big trouble. He was from airport security and he was upset—very, very upset—that we had stolen two baggage trolleys from King Tribhuvan Airport. We proceeded to have what must be one of the most absurd conversations in the history of world revolution. He wanted us to give the trolleys back. We said we needed them to get to our hotel.

pages: 161 words: 44,488

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology
by William Mougayar
Published 25 Apr 2016

I would expect that blockchain-assisted identity and access solutions can help us arrive at better solutions than the current ones. In an ideal world, why could not our online and offline identities blur? Why do we accept that our driver’s license is only valid in physical settings (mostly), and our online identities (Facebook or other) are useless at airport security or at the bank? Of course, newly issued passports are beginning to bridge that divide when we scan them at the airport kiosks, and we complete our identification via a retinal scan, or other pieces of information to triangulate on our identity. In the blockchain world, there are various approaches that are addressing identity and personal security, including granting us access to data and services.

pages: 137 words: 43,960

Top 10 Maui, Molokai and Lanai
by Bonnie Friedman
Published 16 Feb 2004

Major Airlines U.S. airlines are facing difficult times, and flight schedules and routes change frequently. United, Previous pages Plantation Inn (see p119) American, and Delta Airlines all fly directly to Maui from mainland U.S.; many major airlines fly into Honolulu from the mainland, Europe, and Asia. Enhanced Security Although Hawai‘i is a safe place, in the aftermath of 9/11, airport security has been enhanced, and items like pocketknives, scissors, nail files, and tweezers must be packed in checked luggage. When traveling interisland, you should get to the airport one hour before your scheduled flight. Cruise Lines Crystal Cruises, Princess Cruises, and Royal Caribbean have ships that stop in Hawai‘i as part of wider itineraries.

pages: 186 words: 49,251

The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry
by John Warrillow
Published 5 Feb 2015

In the meantime, the company still has to make payroll and keep the lights on, etc., causing cash flow stress for the owner. The other part of the business comes from servicing the radioactive sources in small, everyday devices that are used by all kinds of organizations. You know that little wand the airport security guy assaults you with when you forget to take your watch off as you go through the X-ray machine? That has a small radioactive source inside, and to make sure it is not leaking radioactivity into unsuspecting travelers, it needs to be tested by a company like Stuart Hunt & Associates once every year.

pages: 840 words: 224,391

Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
by Max Blumenthal
Published 27 Nov 2012

The airline has been accused of allowing Mossad officers to pose as EL AL staffers to collect information on non-Jewish passengers in foreign airports. In 2010, EL AL was forced to pay $8,000 to two Arab citizens of Israel who were humiliated by a female security officer who stood over them for an entire flight, ordering them not to speak or use the bathroom without her escort—and after they had passed every airport security check. Another Arab citizen of Israel, the journalist Yara Mashour, said she was forced to switch airlines after EL AL agents refused to relent in an interrogation process that seemed aimed more at denigration than investigation. “I felt like they were raping me in many senses,” Mashour said afterward.

…

Another Arab journalist from Israel, Ali Waked, who wrote for the major Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, was banned from flying to Egypt in 2004 with Israel’s then–foreign minister Silvan Shalom without any explanation. No Arabs are exempt from discrimination at Ben Gurion International, not even the six-month-old Arab baby who was separated from her parents and strip-searched by airport security agents. The discrimination against Arabs at Ben Gurion Airport is so systematic the Israeli authorities make little attempt to conceal it; in 2006, the Shin Bet and Israeli Ministry of Transportation ordered a local airline to block any Arabs from flying until a temporary glitch in X-ray machines was repaired.

…

Dimi Reider, the Israeli journalist who revealed the new forms, commented, “More than anything else, this is a clear and stark example of normalization of apartheid: when both parties accept an ethnically discriminative practice as a given, and just seek to make it a little more palatable.” In July 2011, hundreds of international solidarity activists organized a protest of discriminatory practices at Ben Gurion informally known as the “flytilla.” They planned to land at the airport on flights from around the world in a coordinated fashion, then unapologetically inform airport security agents of their intention to volunteer for human rights and aid organizations in refugee camps in the West Bank (even the slightest hint that a tourist plans to travel into occupied territory can lead to immediate deportation). On July 8, when the demonstrators converged at Ben Gurion, chanting “Free Palestine!”

pages: 188 words: 54,942

Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control
by Medea Benjamin
Published 8 Apr 2013

In the United States, this tendency to use force is sanctioned by a population that lives in a state of fear. Ever since 9/11, the public has been subjected to a concerted, massive propagation of fear that has become so common as to be unnoticeable, except perhaps when asked to remove your shoes by airport security. Public fear of terrorism is routinely inflamed and amplified by politicians, including President Obama, through never-ending references to 9/11. The official government acceptance of unlimited detention of US citizens in the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the backing by many politicians of Guantánamo detention and torture, finds support in public fear of terrorism.

pages: 209 words: 53,175

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
by Morgan Housel
Published 7 Sep 2020

It’s because the odds that Adolf Hitler’s parents argued on the evening nine months before he was born were the same as them conceiving a child. Technology is hard to predict because Bill Gates may have died from polio if Jonas Salk got cranky and gave up on his quest to find a vaccine. The reason we couldn’t predict the student loan growth is because an airport security guard may have confiscated a hijacker’s knife on 9/11. That’s all there is to it. The problem is that we often use events like the Great Depression and World War II to guide our views of things like worst-case scenarios when thinking about future investment returns. But those record-setting events had no precedent when they occurred.

pages: 205 words: 18,208

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
by David Brin
Published 1 Jan 1998

Yet requiring citizens to “assume the risk” of observation by whatever technology the government can command raises serious questions. For instance, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reportedly developed a millimeter-wave imager that “sees” through textiles but is blocked by metal, plastic, and skin. From across a room it can produce a remarkably detailed nude picture of an oblivious, fully clothed person. Airport security might be a potential application if this device is introduced, especially as criminals and terrorists continue to develop plastic weapons that escape discovery by todayʼs metal detectors. And yet, questions abound. Will a bashful public demand separate aisles for men and women? Or that all operators be elderly ladies?

…

The deputy director in charge of the FBIʼs New York City office said, “The privacy people say we shouldnʼt have this information, but the notion that we in law enforcement should not be able to take advantage of the technology is a crazy notion.” • Upon learning that a complete tutorial on bomb making is available online, including diagrams and tips for passing though airport security, Senator Dianne Feinstein declared, “When technology allows for bombmaking material over computers to millions of people in a matter of seconds, I believe that some restrictions on free speech are appropriate.” • Or take this comment made by former FBI deputy director for investigations, Oliver “Buck” Revel: “If we are unsuccessful in preventing significant acts of terrorism because of a failure to take prudent precautions, the ensuing public demand for action could result in Draconian measures.”

pages: 717 words: 150,288

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism
by Stephen Graham
Published 30 Oct 2009

Index Page numbers in italics indicate images ABC, 72 Abu Ghraib, 57, 72, 109, 110 n.81, 112, 235, 352 Abu Manneh, Bashir, 230–31 Achcar, Gilbert, 39, 372 Ackerman, Robert, 164 Ackerman, Spencer, 129 n.143 Aegis air-defence, 181 Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War, 69 n.28, 162 n.27, 211 n.91, 302 n.4, 338 n.150, 349 n.3, 381 n.89, 385 n.98 Afghanistan, 54, 73, 129, 170, 178, 195, 239–40, 252, 270, 273, 359, 371, 379; simulated, 196, 216 Africa, 2, 7, 17, 53 n.74, 54, 119, 176, 297, 311, 334, 337 African Americans: and Hummer, 321; and Hurricane Katrina, 25, 48 n.57, 52, 86 n.107, 94–95, 113; media portrayal of, 44–45; military target & employee, 62, 321; and prison, 110; surplus humanity, 113 Agamben, Giorgio, xxii n.19, xxv, 73, 94 n.31, 96 n.38, 113 n.96, 175 n.76, 235, 296 n.130, 300, 307 Agier, Michel, 18 n.72 Agre, Phil, 24 n.102, 31 n.130, 117, 263 n.2, 293–96, 298–300 Ahtisaari, Martti, 281 Air Force Magazine, 172 airport security, 136–38 Air and Space Power Chronicles, 275 Aizenman, N. C., 110 n. 77&79 Aksu, Esref, 378 n.75 Alaska, 311, 335 al-Harithi, Ali Qaed Sinan, 249 Al Jazeera, 72, 224, 283 Allison, Aime, 371 n.59 al-Qaeda, 22, 39, 40–43, 178, 232–33, 249, 338 Alsayyad, Nezar, 144–45 Alvarez, Samantha, 4 n.8 al-Zawahri, Ayman, 178 America’s Army, xxv, 203, 204, 205–6, 208–9, 210, 372; and US army recruits, 206 Amidon, John M., 303 n.11, 311, 335 n.142 Amman, 261 Amoore, Louise, 99,100, 125 n.128, 126, 138 n.180, 139, 142 n.190, 360 n.33 Anastassia, Tsoukala, 90 n.6, 91 n.10 Andrejevic, Marc, 93 Andreu, Paul, 89 n.2 Andrews, Andy, 190 Ansary, Tamim, 273 n.32, 300 Ansems de Vries, Leonie, 267 n.14, 383 n.93 Anthropocene, 382 anthropologists, 33 anti-globalization, 22–23, 59, 122, 353 anti-urbanism, xxi, 27, 32, 40–52 passim, 314, 317, 320 APEC, 122 Appadurai, Arjun, 145; Fear of Small Numbers, 16 n.66, 17 n.70, 28, 56 n.83; Modernity at Large,18 appropriation, 363–68 Arab cities, 38, 41 n.25, 53 n.74, 56–57, 71, 185, 188, 191, 194, 196, 199, 203, 205–6, 209, 211, 218–19, 225, 227, 237 Arabs, pathos of, 235 The Arab Mind (Patai), 53 n.71, 57, 235 Arafat, Yasser, 233 Arizona Republic,187 Arkin, Ronald, 180 Armitage, John, 181 ARMY, 243 Army News Service, 209 Arnold, Kathleen, 93 n.25 Arquilla, John, 22 n.89, 155 n.7 art, 351–80 passim Arziof, David, 255 Assa, Haim, 286 assassination raids, 248–50 Astore, William J., 292 n.112 asymmetric war, xiv, xx, 19, 27, 40, 71, 156, 162–63, 175, 230, 235, 238, 260, 265, 267, 292, 316 Atkinson, Rowland, 95 n.34, 107 Atta, Mohammed, 41 Aum Shinrikyo group, 268, 295 Australia, 98, 137, 340 Axe, David, 208 n.81 Axyell, Bryan, 202 Aziz, Tariq, 153 n.1 Aznar, 82 Azri, Ben, 284 Babero, Mike, 190 Backhaus, Gary, 110 n.78 Baeten, Guy, 43 n.36, 95 Baghdad, 112, 114, 121, 129, 130, 158, 170, 203, 224–25, 241, 242, 248, 261, 270, 280, 283–84, 324, 361–62; simulated, 201–2 Bajkowski, Julian, 378 n.71 Baker, Peter, 364, 364 n.39 Baladia.

…

See urban warfare, training cities urban warfare, xvi, xxv-xxvi, 11–12, 18–19, 23, 58, 85–86, 125, 140, 153–54, 156, 239, 244, 246–47, 249; civil unrest as, 78, 218; conference on, 227; and domestic urban space, 23, 98; economy of, 252–54; great challenge of century, 19; Israel’s lessons on, 228–30, 233–34; training cities, 183–200 passim: Baladia, 191, 192, 193–95, 246, Baumholder, 186–87, early examples of, 185–86, mock cities needed, 184–85, new purpose of, 186, Playas, 196, 197, 198, RAND on, 187, 195–98, Urban Terrain Module, 199–200, Wired on, 190–91, Yodaville, 187, 188, 189, Zussman, 189–90; and urban culture, 33; video games for, 200–225 passim: Urban Resolve, 201–3. See also city, and war urbicide, 83–88 passim, 227, 267 US: airport security, 136, 137; anti-communist efforts, 13; army advert, 34; army bases as gated communities, 211–14; army recruits, 206, 207, 208; banned images of war dead, 72; and Canada border, 139–40, 250, 330; car culture, 302; CCTV in, 114 n.102; citizen soldiers of, xxv; city-destruction, 153; city as double target, 52; city-driven economy, 47, 49–50; cultural awareness, 34; data mining centres, 127; defense budget, 65, 75; defense industry flourishes, 196; defense overhauled by video game, 202; and de-modernization, xxiv; Department of Homeland Security, 80, 135, 196, 250, 258, 299; detainees worldwide, 112; energy policy, 311, 334; Enhanced Border Security and Visa Act, 136; ethnic cleansing of Iraq, 35; financial meltdown, 312; foreign-domestic convergence, 22, 24, 45, 52–53, 82; gated communities, xix, 106–7, 129, 144, 315; ‘giver’ vs ‘taker’ states, 49 n.60; grain production, 341; health care, 142; hegemony, 29, 59; undermined by urban warfare, 154, 157, 159, 163; waning of, 35; highway construction, 327 n.116; highway system, 14; Identity dominance, 126; info-psych-military concern, 71; infrastructural war champ, 271, 274, 276–78, 280, 286, 297; intolerance of, 178; vs Iraqi civilians, 30; Iraq war, 275–84, ‘bomb now die later’, 279–80; and Israel, 184, 193–95, 228–62 passim, 285: assassination raids, 248–50, catalyze Islamic extremism, 262, different threats to, 262, economic aid to, 230–31, helps invade Iraq, 229–30, 232, 238–41, 243, 248, new geometry of occupation, 251–52, non-lethal weapons, 244–46, urban warfare lessons, 228–30, 233–34, 246; Israel Homeland Security Foundation Act, 256; and Mexico border, xxiii, 22, 217 n.109, 250, 258, 372; military and Hollywood, 69; military police, 98–99; national identity threats, xx; NSA, 141–42; policing of protest, 123; Posse Comitas act, 21 n.88; prison population, 7, 109–10, 111; RESTORE Act, 141; rural soldiers of, 61; security precedent of, 134; social polarization, 7; suburban nation, 79–80; superpower no longer, 313; SUV and imperialism, 304, 306, 318; SUV popularity, 315; SWAT, 23; trade vs security, 134–35; urban archipelago, 50, 51, 52; urban military focus, 20–22; urban warfare training, xvi.

pages: 553 words: 151,139

The Teeth of the Tiger
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1998

Even popular novels told people how to do it. You didn't even need all that much patience, because no state in the union cross-referenced birth and death certificates, which would have been an easy thing, even for government bureaucrats to accomplish. "So, what happens?" Davis shrugged. "The usual. Airport security people will get another notice to stay awake; and so, they'll hassle more innocent people to make sure nobody tries to hijack an airliner. Cops all over will look for suspicious cars, but that'll mostly mean that people driving erratically get pulled over. There's been too much wolf-crying. Even the police have trouble taking it seriously, Gerry, and who can blame them?"

…

"So, this time they may be right, boss. I've been keeping an eye on the background stuff. The thing is, we have a combination of reduced message traffic from known players, and then this flies over the transom. I spent my life in DIA looking at coincidences. This here's one of them." "Okay, what are they doing about it?" "Airport security is going to be a little tighter starting today. The FBI is going to set people at some departure gates." "Nothing on TV about it?" "Well, the boys and girls at Homeland Security may have gotten a little smarter about advertising. It's counterproductive. You don't catch a rat by shouting at him.

pages: 598 words: 134,339

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
by Bruce Schneier
Published 2 Mar 2015

So much of this data is collected and used in secret, and we have no right to refute or even see the evidence against us. This will intensify as systems start using surveillance data to make decisions automatically. Surveillance data has been used to justify numerous penalties, from subjecting people to more intensive airport security to deporting them. In 2012, before his Los Angeles vacation, 26-year-old Irishman Leigh Van Bryan tweeted, “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.” The US government had been surveilling the entire Twitter feed. Agents picked up Bryan’s message, correlated it with airplane passenger lists, and were waiting for him at the border when he arrived from Ireland.

…

You are already familiar with this; just think of all the irrelevant advertisements you’ve been shown on the Internet, on the basis of some algorithm misinterpreting your interests. For some people, that’s okay; for others, there’s low-level psychological harm from being categorized, whether correctly or incorrectly. The opportunity for harm rises as the judging becomes more important: our credit ratings depend on algorithms; how we’re treated at airport security depends partly on corporate-collected data. There are chilling effects as well. For example, people are refraining from looking up information about diseases they might have because they’re afraid their insurance companies will drop them. It’s true that a lot of corporate profiling starts from good intentions.

pages: 560 words: 158,238

Fifty Degrees Below
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 25 Oct 2005

They huddled together. Frank felt too strange to kiss; he was distracted, and it was hard to get used to the presence of someone else in his tree house. “Um—do you think you could show me what you mean about the chips?” She dug in her jacket pocket, took out a short metal wand, like the devices used by airport security. “Do you have some light?” “Sure,” he said, and clicked on the Coleman lamp. The lit circle on the plywood floor gleamed under them, ruining their night vision. The wind hooted and moaned. She had him bring his belongings to her one by one. Sometimes she would get a beep as she passed the wand over them, and these she put to one side.

…

He thought it over, images of one scenario then another. “Would he have other people helping him?” “Not for this,” she said. “I don’t think so anyway. Not unless he figured out that I copied the vote program.” “Shit. Let’s check you right here, okay?” “Sure.” He pulled the wand from his pocket, so much like an airport security device. Bar codes in the body. He ran it over her. When he had it against the top of her back it beeped. “Shit,” she said under her breath. She whipped off her jacket, laid it on the ground, ran the wand over it. It beeped again. “God damn it.” “At least it isn’t in your skin.” “Yeah well.”

Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child
by Bert Kreischer
Published 26 May 2014

“I’m forty years old and I don’t want to be called Cheese anymore.” It was a moment of honesty, a moment of assertion for a guy we had tormented for half our lives. We left that night and promised to hang out the next time I was in Denver. I went back to my hotel to pack for an early flight to L.A. The next morning, while waiting to go through airport security, I heard a familiar voice. “Yo Bert!” I turned and saw Siminson, dressed like a businessman and a father on his way to work, a grown-up in a collared shirt and khakis, rolling a carry-on bag. “I was wondering if I was going to see you at the airport today,” he said. We talked for a bit about how great it was to hang out and catch up, all these years later, then said good-bye again and made our way to our respective terminals.

Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home
by Julia Watkins
Published 6 Apr 2020

Unlike their liquid counterparts, lotion bars are incredibly convenient. When it comes to making them, you get to skip the difficult step of emulsifying oils and water, and when it comes time to use them, they’re clean, compact, and portable. I like to pop a bar in a tin container and take it with me wherever I go—including through airport security, where I’ve been asked to surrender liquid lotion more times than my well-prepared husband wants you to know. They also make unique gifts for friends, neighbors, family, and teachers, wrapped up in fabric scraps tied with twine. Ingredients 5 tablespoons grated beeswax or 3 tablespoons grated candelilla wax 3 tablespoons cocoa butter 3 tablespoons shea or mango butter 5 tablespoons sweet almond oil 10 drops lemon essential oil 5 drops rosemary essential oil Directions Pour 2 inches of water into the bottom of a double boiler (see recipe for how to make your own double boiler) and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

pages: 181 words: 62,775

Half Empty
by David Rakoff
Published 20 Sep 2010

To which one need only point out that, unless one was a marble-featured, lithe beauty who looked like her in The Philadelphia Story now, the odds were slim to none. I fly back to New York to see more doctors and get the apartment ready for one-armed living, although I haven’t a clue what that means. Airport security is a scary affair in what it bodes. The simple act of discarding the metal from my pockets has me panic that I am holding folks up. I cheat and use my left arm for the first time in days. Undoubtedly there will be special lines for people like me, but I can’t get rid of the dark visions of being victimized.

pages: 223 words: 60,909

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech
by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Published 9 Oct 2017

But regardless of what the census says, US culture certainly doesn’t consider most people of Latin American descent white—so, as a result, millions of people were not just confused, but also not accurately represented. A similar problem exists for people of North African or Middle Eastern origin: the census said they should mark themselves as White. (I’m sure they feel really “white” whenever they’re being “randomly selected” for secondary screening at airport security.) Then you have the 7 percent of Americans who identify as multiple races.7 Up until 2000, the US Census didn’t really account for them at all. But after hearing from many multiracial people, the Census Bureau decided to allow respondents to check more than one box for this question. Online forms rarely take this approach, though.

pages: 201 words: 62,452

Calypso
by David Sedaris
Published 28 May 2018

When visitors leave, I feel like an actor watching the audience file out of the theater, and it was no different with my sisters. The show over, Hugh and I returned to lesser versions of ourselves. We’re not a horrible couple, but we have our share of fights, the type that can start with a misplaced sock and suddenly be about everything. “I haven’t liked you since 2002,” he hissed during a recent argument over which airport security line was moving the fastest. This didn’t hurt me so much as confuse me. “What happened in 2002?” I asked. On the plane, he apologized, and a few weeks later, when I brought it up over dinner, he claimed to have no memory of it. That’s one of Hugh’s many outstanding qualities: he doesn’t hold on to things.

pages: 178 words: 61,242

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter
by Scaachi Koul
Published 7 Mar 2017

People I’ve worked with—predominantly white women—have told me to “watch my tone” or to be more polite, because a brown woman, any brown woman, can’t be too much of anything. I benefit, and yet I suffer in the same breath: bouncers at bars won’t reject me out of fear of letting an outfit “get too brown,” as has happened to my darker relatives, but airport security will pat me down with extra care, a magazine will hire me to write about Indian issues and nothing else, a boy I like will tell me I’m attractive “for a brown girl.” Someone who doesn’t like my work will call me a sand-nigger in an encrypted email. So it infuriates me that I am relieved for Raisin in this way, that I know her experience of my hometown will be different not only because she’s of a new generation but also because she is passing in a way that none of us ever could.

pages: 145 words: 40,897

Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps
by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham
Published 14 Aug 2011

Beating the Boss Level When United Airlines’ Mileage Plus frequent-flyer program began in the 1980s, it wasn’t conceived that players would ever reach the million-mile flown mark. After all, a million miles is the equivalent of more than 2,000 hours (or a full-time work year) spent in a moving plane, not counting any travel, airport, security, boarding, taxiing, or deplaning time. So, when the first players began reaching that milestone, United pieced together a Million Miler level with lifetime benefits. At first the level was informal, but it was formalized in the 1990s when United discovered that after those players passed one million miles, they tended to reduce or stop playing altogether.

pages: 235 words: 64,858

Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want From Sex and How to Get It
by Marty Klein
Published 7 Feb 2012

I tell them, “Ah, so you’re uncomfortable trusting.” I like that formulation better—it’s easier to change a “discomfort” than an “issue.” “Trust issues” sounds soooooo serious—who could be optimistic about changing that? Besides, “trust issues” sounds like the problem is external, like being hit by a bus, or having airport security mistake you for a terrorist. “I feel uncomfortable trusting” pulls the problem down to a human scale that can actually be changed. There are many things you need to trust during sex: that pleasure is safe and appropriate; that eroticism won’t get out of control in a destructive way; that you can connect with someone without being exploited; that your partner is telling the truth when he or she expresses desire, arousal, or satisfaction with you.

pages: 208 words: 65,733

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor - the Sunday Times Bestseller
by Adam Kay
Published 6 Sep 2017

Apparently there had been a limited trend for this, performed by tattoo artists and intended to give the recipient an ‘extra sense’ – an other-worldly awareness of metal objects around them, like a kind of vibrating aura (her words) or a slightly low-rent X-Man (my words). Her sales pitch needs work, to be honest. It turned out not to be the mystical, ethereal experience she had been looking for, but a regal pain in the arse – she tells me it’s become infected a number of times and going through airport security is now a living hell. I briefly toy with asking her to brush past my colleague Cormac to either confirm or refute the rumour that he has a Prince Albert,* but she says the implant has recently become either dislodged or demagnetized and she now barely feels a thing, except for a lump in her finger.

pages: 223 words: 72,425

Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath
by Thomas Sheridan
Published 1 Mar 2011

How did humans ever survive in the past without all this security and control? While we become absorbed in the latest episodes of Dancing with the Stars and Sex and the City, our phone calls were monitored, our rubbish bins were being examined, and our naked bodies were being leered at by slack-jawed halfwits on airport security monitors. Services such as Rapleaf store and sell every type of possible data about all of us, gathered from various public databases and by tracking our movements around the web via social networking sites. It is no longer only celebrities who are followed by services such as JustSpotted.com – an application which provides real-time encounters with celebrities ‘in the wild.’

The Techno-Human Condition
by Braden R. Allenby and Daniel R. Sarewitz
Published 15 Feb 2011

Level I: Military effectiveness Implications for action Goals and technology align; therefore adopt technology Implement techno 1ogy, but technology alone may not lead to achievement of stated goal Level I and Level III implications potentially in fundamental conflict as effective Level I military technology dramatically alters all elements of society in unpredictable ways (e.g., language undermined; privacy of thought eliminated) 148 Chapter 7 But if I can build a helmet that knows what you are thinking, I can eventually build devices that can read your thoughts from a distance; and if I can do that, I can know your thoughts without your knowing that they are being read. From a Level II perspective, this capacity could offer important benefits, for example, airport security. Yet knowing what people are thinking is hardly tantamount to knowing what they are intending to do. If telepathic technologies were to replace, for example, the judgment of well-trained security personnel, would the result be better security? As for Level III effects, consider what a telepathic helmet will communicate: not just nouns and verbs, but also images, and moving pictures, and fragments of sound, and perhaps olfactory and tactile memories and even emotional overtones and feelings.

pages: 233 words: 64,479

The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife
by Marc Freedman
Published 15 Dec 2011

The lightness reminded me of research findings suggesting one of life’s great joys was not taking a big vacation after the pleasures of anticipating one. Planning a trip, basking in the possibilities, experiencing the entire journey in one’s mind—those were the fun parts. Lugging bags, dealing with surly employees, battling airport security, spending more money than budgeted, and eventually returning home exhausted and confronting a pile of mail and accumulated obligations—in other words, taking the actual vacation—were much less enjoyable. The perfect combination, at least according to this research, turns out to be planning fantastic adventures and then bailing out at the last minute.

pages: 234 words: 63,149

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World
by Ian Bremmer
Published 30 Apr 2012

In years to come, we can expect a spike in both political pressure on China from the governments of other developing states and angry demonstrations targeted at Chinese workers living in other countries. STANDARDS Why do we care about international standards? Because when the rules of the game are simple, uniform, and universally accepted, trade in ideas, information, goods, and services costs less and produces less conflict. But in a G-Zero world, who decides how to make ports and airports secure? Who sets international technical standards, and why do they matter? Who decides how a cell phone works, how the World Wide Web will develop, and how all those communications-enabled consumer products flying from factories in one country to families in another are made safe? Ironically, the international standard that emerging-market governments complain about most is the one most likely to survive the G-Zero.

pages: 206 words: 68,757

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
by Oliver Burkeman
Published 9 Aug 2021

“When I watched videos of eye-witness accounts, including some in front of the church where I tied my shoes and the corner where I nervously loitered,” he wrote later, “it gave me a vital bit of perspective: I happen to be alive, and there’s no cosmic law entitling me to that status. Being alive is just happenstance, and not one more day of it is guaranteed.” This kind of perspective shift, I’ve found, has an especially striking effect on the experience of everyday annoyances—on my response to traffic jams and airport security lines, babies who won’t sleep past 5:00 a.m., and dishwashers that I apparently must unload again tonight, even though (I think you’ll find!) I did so yesterday. I’m embarrassed to admit what an outsize negative effect such minor frustrations have had on my happiness over the years. Fairly often, they still do; but the effect was worst at the height of my productivity geekhood, because when you’re trying to Master Your Time, few things are more infuriating than a task or delay that’s foisted upon you against your will, with no regard for the schedule you’ve painstakingly drawn up in your overpriced notebook.

pages: 208 words: 69,863

Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Published 28 Mar 2005

Booth claimed to have been running messages and medicine across the lines for years, often traveling to and from Canada to confer with Confederate spooks up there. Booth was able to do this, to move freely between North and South, because he was a nationally famous actor, just as movie stars today get whisked through airport security while the rest of us stand in long lines taking off our shoes. The Confederates were shrewd to take advantage of Booth’s fame. There is a lesson here for the terrorists of the world: if they really want to get ahead, they should put less energy into training illiterate ten-year-olds how to fire Kalashnikovs and start recruiting celebrities like George Clooney.

pages: 211 words: 66,203

Life Will Be the Death of Me: ...And You Too!
by Chelsea Handler
Published 8 Apr 2019

“Tell me what you mean, exactly.” “If something takes too long, I just move on. I lose interest. I can’t deal with electronics or technology or people who work in airports. Basically, anything that takes too long. If there is a line at a magazine store in an airport, I’ll just wave twenty dollars up in the air so the airport security cameras catch it and then I’ll place it near the register and walk out with whatever item I’ve taken. I can’t deal with the slowness of the transaction. It drives me up a fucking wall.” “Well, that is spoiled,” Dan told me. “Isn’t that more entitled?” I asked him. “A black person wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.”

pages: 244 words: 66,977

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It
by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert
Published 4 Jun 2018

By diversifying its service line and focusing on cross-selling to its devoted base, New Relic not only is increasing earnings per customer and thus overall revenue, but is also poised to grab a larger market share of the global IT management tools market. LAUNCH INTO A NEW SEGMENT If your subscription service is designed right, it can go anywhere. It can be universal. The CLEAR expedited airport security service, for example, started off with business travelers, then began selling to families, and from families it started approaching larger organizations about corporate plans. Lots of SaaS companies start off selling to SMB (small to medium-size businesses) before they push into the enterprise.

pages: 246 words: 70,404

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free
by Cody Wilson
Published 10 Oct 2016

“There’s still the problem of the Undetectable Firearms Act.” “Never heard of it.” “It’s a long story.” I gave him the condensed version of what I’d picked up while researching the law. “So, back in the day, the Washington Post ran an article about the new Glocks and how Gaddafi was buying them up to get his spooks through US airport security. Plastic pistols. Handgun Control Inc. makes the Glock its first big issue. They lobby Congress to ban the Glock as a setup for wide-scale handgun bans.” “But Glocks aren’t plastic,” Mike said. “Yeah, full of gunmetal, everyone involved knows it. But the NRA gives the issue up. The HCI bill doesn’t affect industry or the public.

pages: 206 words: 64,212

Happy-Go-Lucky
by David Sedaris
Published 30 May 2022

She was perhaps in her early fifties and significantly overweight, with dull gray hair that fell to her jawline. Her glasses were oval-shaped and crooked. It’s odd, giving away money. You don’t want someone thinking you pity them, though that’s usually what it amounts to, and often for something so small—in this case, crooked glasses. Plus, having to go through airport security every morning just so you can work at McDonald’s. “Excuse me,” I said. “This is going to sound crazy, but every day I choose someone to give fifty dollars to. Would you mind?” I put the bill on the counter in front of her and wondered for a moment if she hadn’t misunderstood and thought I’d said fifty thousand.

pages: 1,318 words: 403,894

Reamde
by Neal Stephenson
Published 19 Sep 2011

Certainly way more neurons than the average supermarket checkout clerk or private security guard fired during an eight-hour shift. And the power of the Internet ought to make all that neural activity reswitchable; you should be able to patch it all together so that it would work. Around this time there was an airport security scare in which some fuckwit entered a concourse by walking upstream through an exit portal, bypassing the security checkpoint. As always happened in such cases, the entire airport had to be shut down. Planes waiting for takeoff had to taxi back to gates and unload all passengers and baggage.

…

The total number of wrong-way goblins that had to be generated per year was about two hundred thousand—which was no problem, since generating them was free. The trick, of course, was that a tiny minority of those one-way goblins were not, in fact, computer-generated figments. They were representations of actual human forms that had been picked up by airport security cameras as they walked the wrong way into airport concourses. In reality, of course, this happened so rarely that testing the system was well-nigh impossible, and so they ran drills, several times a day, in which uniformed, badged TSA employees would present themselves at the exit and show credentials to the bored guard and then walk upstream into the concourse.

…

In exactly 100 percent of all such cases, some T’Rain player, somewhere in the world (almost always a gold farmer in China) would instantly raise the Horn of Vigilance to his virtual lips and blow a mighty blast and rush out to confront the corresponding one-way goblin: an event that, through some artful cross-wiring between Corporation 9592’s servers and the airport security systems, would cause red lights to flash and horns to sound and doors to automatically lock at the airport in question. Corvallis and most of the other techies hated this idea because of its sheer bogosity, which was screamingly obvious to any person of technical acumen who thought about it for more than a few seconds.

pages: 624 words: 189,582

The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda
by Ali H. Soufan and Daniel Freedman
Published 11 Sep 2011

They wrote down every detail, right down to the serial numbers of our weapons. We were stiff and exhausted from the long and uncomfortable flight and had little patience for all this red tape. The airport was also swarming with Yemeni officials: all of the different national and local law enforcement, intelligence, and military agencies were represented. There were airport security personnel; the military; the ministry of the interior’s internal security force; the intelligence service, called the Political Security Organization (PSO); the regular police; and Aden security services. It appeared that none had ultimate jurisdiction and that all intended to monitor us. Overlapping jurisdictions and blurred boundaries between security agencies are deliberate in some countries.

…

Still, I was skeptical despite John’s reassurance; knowing as I did both Ambassador Bodine’s personality and John’s, I guessed that the two would clash. Because of the rapport I had developed with the Yemenis at the airport, and because of John’s status as a “general,” we passed easily through airport security to the waiting escort. I pointed out to John the Binladin construction site with the big billboard as we passed it. The first thing John did at the Mövenpick was speak to our team. He told them what he told me: that he’d deal with the problems we were having. John’s presence lifted their spirits.

pages: 1,104 words: 302,176

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)
by Robert J. Gordon
Published 12 Jan 2016

As the final dimension of decline in the quality of airline travel, consider the 200 million hours per year of valuable consumer time wasted in airline security (roughly 600 million U.S. passengers multiplied by twenty minutes per passenger). This represents an annual wasting of time worth about $8 billion. The current system of airport security all over the world represents an overreaction to the September 11, 2001, hijackings. There was only one weakness in the U.S. airline security system on September 11, and this was that the cockpit doors were flimsy. Within days, they were replaced by completely secure doors that nobody could break through.

…

Though after 1970 automobiles did not change in their ability to move passengers and their cargo from points A to point B at a given speed, there was a steady increase in the quality of the automobiles making those journeys, thanks not only to safety devices but also to convenience and comfort items such as automatic transmission and air conditioning, as well as improved fuel economy. Our treatment of airline travel finds little improvement after 1970, a year when the conversion from piston to jet planes was complete. Along most dimensions, particularly seating comfort, meal service, and airport security, the quality of the air travel experience declined after 1970. Despite the promise of deregulation in 1978, the reduction in the relative price of air travel per mile flown was substantially slower during 1980–2000 than in 1950–80 and has been even slower than that since 2000. Just as automobile fatality rates have experienced a steady decline with no hiatus after 1970, so too have airline fatality rates, which since 2006 have fallen close to zero thanks to better aircraft and engine design, improved air traffic control, and shifts in maintenance procedures.

…

See blacks age: discrimination by, 519; labor force participation by, 32–34; population by (1870), 32 Agricultural Extension Service, 312 agriculture: in 1870, 40, 60, 248; after 1940, 500–501; decline of, 553–54; governmental intervention in, 312; Harrison Act financing of land for, 300; occupational transformations in, 249; workforce in, 52–56; work of American farmer, 261–66, 286 AIDS, 471–72 air conditioning: in automobiles, 382; in houses, 361–62, 372, 525, 583; life expectancy and, 485; migration to sun belt and, 502; predicting, 592 air pollution, 219; automotive regulation on, 382–83, 392; health and, 473–74 airport security, 406 air travel, 171, 375, 393–400, 408, 581; airline revenues, 377–78; big data used in, 597–98; computers used for, 449; cost of, 401–5; decline in quality of, 405–7, 525 alcoholic drinks, 71; adulteration of, 220; Prohibition ban on, 313–14 Alexopoulos, Michell, 556–57, 564–65 Allen, Paul, 452, 572 Allstate, 309 Altair computers, 452 Alzheimer’s disease, 465, 483–84 Amazon (firm), 443, 457–58, 579; robots used by, 596 American Airlines, 396, 404, 449 The American Commonwealth (Bryce), 28–29, 104 American exceptionalism, 245–46 American manufacturing system, 561–62 Amos ‘n’ Andy (radio program), 195 Anderson, Walter, 167 anesthesia, 232 antibiotics, 324, 465–67 antiseptics, 228 Appert, Nicholas, 72 Apple Computer, 452; iPhone by, 577 appliances, 356–63, 372; credit used for purchases of, 298–300; effect on labor force of, 499; electrification for, 115–22; housework unchanged by, 278 Armant, Thomas, 198 Armstrong, George, 47–48 ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency network), 453 ART (antiretroviral therapy), 471 artificial intelligence, 594, 597–99 assembly line, 11, 557, 576 Associated Press, 179 AT&T (Bell System): Bell Labs of, 572; breakup of, 577; coaxial cable system built by, 416; Direct Distance Dialing introduced by, 429–30; telephone service by, 183–84, 204; Traffic Service Position System of, 430 Australia, 648 automated teller machines (ATMs), 450, 459, 578, 596; impact of, 583 automatic transmissions, 381–82 automation, impact on employment of, 615 automobile industry: assembly line introduced for production in, 557; post-World War II production of, 379; robots used in, 594–95; wages in, 617–18 automobiles, 169–71, 374–76; after 1970, 525; accidental deaths caused by, 474–75; arrival of, 11, 149–52; Benz’s invention of engine for, 129; decline of public transit and, 149; diffusion of, 114–15, 130, 367, 376–77; doctors’ use of, 225, 234; drive-in movie theaters and, 420; driverless cars, 599–601; early acceptance of (1906–1940), 152–57; effects of transition to, 165–68; on farms and in small towns, 163–65; fast food restaurants and, 344; fatal accidents involving, 239–40; financing of, 297–98, 303; food consumption tied to, 76; fuel economy, safety, and reliability of, 383–89; horsepower of, 558–59; horses and public transit replaced by, 159–63; improvements in, 379–83, 407; insurance for, 308–9, 317; Interstate Highway System for, 389–93; paved roads for, 157–59; radio in, 421; regulation of, 314; suburbs dependent upon, 364–66, 370 Autor, David, 595, 600, 614 Aveling, Eleanor Marx and Edward, 268 baby boom generation, 15, 499; education of, 513; housing demands of, 371–72; retirement among, 23, 515, 517, 518, 576, 607, 628, 629; women among, 507–8 Baily, Martin, 586 Bakker, Gerben, 172 Ball, Lucille, 410, 417 Bank Americard (Visa), 450 banking: cash and checks in, 295; computers used for, 449–50; consumer credit and, 296–300; Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for, 315; impact of technology on, 582–83; mortgage financing and, 300–303 barcodes, 451 Bardeen, John, 430 bathrooms, 125, 127 batteries, 182; radios powered by, 194 Baumol, William, 570 Baumol’s disease, 13, 173–74, 186 Baxter (robot), 595 Beaudry, Paul, 623, 626 Bebchuk, Lucian, 619 Becker, Gary, 9, 207, 242, 247 Beebe, Lucius, 141 beer, 220 Bell, Alexander Graham, 21, 173, 181–82, 187, 204, 574 Bellevue Hospital (New York), 228 Bell Labs, 430, 571, 572 Bell System (AT&T).

pages: 220 words: 75,651

The Lunatic Express
by Carl Hoffman
Published 16 Mar 2010

“You must not take the bus,” said a taxi driver. “The train.” I wasn’t too worried, though. As a native Washingtonian who felt quite safe when D.C. had the highest murder rate in the U.S., it never surprised me whenever the alleged horrors of a place failed to materialize. Still, I liked to be prepared. Airport security in Kolkata had taken away the knife I’d had since Colombia; I bought a razor-sharp, handmade one from a vendor on the street and had a tailor at an open-fronted shop the size of a telephone booth sew me a sheath that I could strap to my leg. And hailed a taxi for Babughat, one of Kolkata’s bus terminals.

pages: 291 words: 77,596

Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything
by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell
Published 15 Feb 2009

Once I left my notebook computer containing most of my e-memory on the security table at San Francisco International Airport. I dashed back, my heart racing dangerously, wondering if someone had walked off with a digital copy of my life. Thankfully, it was still there. Then I forgot the computer again at the Dulles Airport security, and didn’t realize my mistake until I had boarded the plane and it was too late to go back. I managed to have it over nighted to me for $150, and all I could think was that I would gladly have paid many times that amount to ensure no one else had my data. More than a half million of my fellow Americans also left their computers at checkpoints in 2008.

pages: 252 words: 73,131

The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them—And They Shape Us
by Tim Sullivan
Published 6 Jun 2016

But we need to make these decisions for ourselves: instead of being subject to the whims of economists and businesses (where we currently find ourselves), if we have a better sense of where markets work, and why, and how, and in what form, then we can decide when we want to use them rather than be used by them. Mr. Socialist, Meet the Market Canice Prendergast is an economics professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He works in the language of dense mathematical models that aim to clarify why, for example, service at airport security is so dismal and why—you may not be pleased to hear—that might actually be a good thing. (Because a few of the Department of Homeland Security’s “customers” may be bomb-carrying terrorists, so it’s not exactly a customer-is-always-right setting.) He’s a serious enough art collector that when Booth built itself a $125 million campus across the way from Frank Lloyd Wright’s landmark Robie House, Prendergast was put in charge of a million-dollar budget for decorating its courtyards and hallways.

pages: 246 words: 116

Tyler Cowen-Discover Your Inner Economist Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist-Plume (2008)
by Unknown
Published 20 Sep 2008

Some economists might think that buying a place in line is a natural thing to do. Some people mind waiting in line more than others. Some of us are simply less patient by temperament. Other times we wish to avoid lines to avoid missing a flight or an important appointment. If the flight leaves in fifteen minutes and the airport security line is long, our temptation is to run to the front of the line, screaming for mercy and perhaps waving a few dollar bills. Yet it turns out to be remarkably hard to buy a better place in line. Oberholzer-Gee and a team of experimenters set out with some money in their pockets. They went to long lines and offered cash payments of up to $10 if they could cut in line, jumping ahead of some of the others.

pages: 274 words: 73,344

Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World
by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche
Published 1 Oct 2012

Fly in the Ultimate Comfort In 1977, Braniff International Airways put out an advertisement to promote the leather seats they’d installed in their new first-class cabins. However, the campaign’s slogan, “Fly in leather,” was translated for Spanish-speaking markets as Vuela en cuero. In Spanish, this was equivalent to saying, “Fly naked,” implying a more comfortable flight for some travelers, not to mention a much easier job for airport security screeners. Ice(landic), Ice(landic), Baby When you think of Iceland, what comes to mind? Perhaps you think of Björk or Sigur Rós, some of the country’s musicians who have risen to international fame. Or maybe you call up a mental image of some of its famous glaciers, geysers, and volcanoes, such as Eyjafjallajökull, whose pronunciation stumped news commentators around the world after its infamous eruption in April 2010, which caused nearly a week of delays in air travel across western and northern Europe.

pages: 266 words: 80,018

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
by Luke Harding
Published 7 Feb 2014

Surely this was some kind of practical joke? ‘The invitation, supposedly from one of the world’s most sought-after people, had a whiff of Cold-War-era spy thriller to it,’ she blogged. She fed her baby with mashed carrots, while juggling calls from the world’s media. It became clear that the invite was genuine. Airport security phoned up and asked for her passport number. Lokshina got on the airport express train; en route, the US embassy rang her up. An American diplomat wanted her to give a message to Snowden. It said that in the opinion of the US government he wasn’t a human rights defender but a law-breaker who had to be held accountable for his crimes.

pages: 243 words: 77,516

Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals
by John Lefevre
Published 4 Nov 2014

“Do you fucktards understand what happened to me? My friend from grade school is getting married. A lot of these guys I haven’t seen in years. They aren’t bankers or Wall Street guys. They’re firefighters, cops, and blue-collar guys. You think they understand this shit?” The gag could not have worked more perfectly. Going through airport security, the gun-shaped spatula set off all kinds of alarms. The TSA agent immediately pulled him aside and asked to inspect the contents of his bag, which of course got no objection on Funaro’s part. The latex-glove-clad agent then started slowly dissecting the sandwich of clothing and hard-core porn, holding each magazine up in the air as if it were radioactive.

pages: 253 words: 75,772

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
by Glenn Greenwald
Published 12 May 2014

The impetus for the study was Americans’ concerns about surveillance by the government: The Watergate scandal, revelations of White House bugging, and Congressional investigations of domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency have served to underscore the developing paranoid theme of American life: Big Brother may be watching you! Proposals for national data banks, uses of surveillance helicopters by urban police forces, the presence of observation cameras in banks and supermarkets, and airport security searches of person and property are but some of the signs that our private lives are under such increasing scrutiny. The participants were placed under varying levels of surveillance and asked to give their views on the legalization of marijuana. It turned out that “threatened” subjects—those who were told that their statements would be shared with the police “for training purposes”—were more likely to condemn marijuana usage and to use second- and third-person pronouns (“you,” “they,” “people”) in their language.

pages: 242 words: 73,728

Give People Money
by Annie Lowrey
Published 10 Jul 2018

Fruit-picking robots, cancer-screening apps, drones, digital cameras, and driverless cars cannot compete with the transformative power of threshing machines, commercial airliners, antibiotics, refrigerators, and the birth control pill in terms of economic importance. “You can look around you in New York City and the subways are 100-plus years old. You can look around you on an airplane, and it’s little different from 40 years ago—maybe it’s a bit slower because the airport security is low-tech and not working terribly well,” Peter Thiel, a billionaire tech investor and adviser to President Trump, recently mused to Vox. “The screens are everywhere, though. Maybe they’re distracting us from our surroundings.” (He more famously said, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”)

pages: 257 words: 76,785

Shorter: Work Better, Smarter, and Less Here's How
by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Published 10 Mar 2020

2 Inspire In the inspiration phase of the design thinking process, you cast a wide net around a problem in an effort to refine the question while still staying in touch with a wide range of ideas and disciplines. If you were thinking about designing a hospital admitting room, you would talk to doctors, nurses, and patients and their families about the space, the admitting process, and the worries and anxieties people have when coming into a hospital. You might also spend some time in airport security checkpoints, department stores, and churches to see how different spaces balance security, route people efficiently, and communicate empathy and reassurance. In this chapter, our inspiration will come from the companies that have already moved to four-day workweeks, six-hour days, or other forms of shorter working hours.

pages: 273 words: 76,786

Explore Everything
by Bradley Garrett
Published 7 Oct 2013

Lee, eds, Researching Sensitive Topics (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), and Raymond M. Lee, Doing Research on Sensitive Topics (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1993). PROLOGUE 1 Tim Edensor, ‘Staging Tourism: Tourists as Performers’, Annals of Tourism Research 27: 2 (April 2000); Peter Adey, ‘Facing Airport Security: Affect, Biopolitics, and the Preemptive Securitisation of the Mobile Body’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27: 2 (2009). 1. THE UE SCENE 1 Ninjalicious, Access All Areas: A User’s Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration (Canada: Infilpress, 2005), p. 3. 2 Geoff Manaugh and Troy Paiva, Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008), p. 9. 3 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, ‘Neoliberalisation of the City’, Antipode 34: 3 (2002). 4 Bradley L.

pages: 253 words: 79,441

Better Than Fiction
by Lonely Planet

In turn, governments routinely issue stern no-go or extreme-caution warnings for major parts of the planet we share. We have collectively allowed a handful of fanatics and zealots who by no means represent the values of the various races to which they belong to effectively deny travellers access to large parts of the world. Nowhere is said to be safe. Airport security, where everyone is a potential suspect, has become a huge and growing universal preoccupation where paranoia is the officially required psychological approach. When I was recently embarking overseas from my own local airport, the universally and now routinely common X-ray of my carry-on luggage took place, and the nail file from the gentleman’s manicure set I’d been given as a prize as a young schoolboy more than 61 years previously and had inadvertently tried to take aboard was confiscated.

pages: 291 words: 75,110

Marriage and Lasting Relationships With Asperger's Syndrome: Successful Strategies for Couples or Counselors
by Eva A. Mendes
Published 1 Sep 2015

♥ JOHN’S STORY ♥ John, a man with ASD, said that he became highly anxious every time he went to see his in-laws, even though they had been doing so for six consecutive years. His in-laws lived in Ireland on a remote farm. Once a year, his wife, kids, and him took a six-and-a-half hour flight, followed by a five hour drive to see them. He said it took him a while to work out the sequence of events for the trip every single time. He often felt overwhelmed by the airport security and stimulation of unfamiliar people, lights, smells, and sounds. He explained, “Every time I’m at the airport, I have to pretend like I know what I’m doing. If the children are with us, which they always are, I’m even more on edge.” In order to ease things for John, his wife and him came up with a detailed, written sequence of events and a list of “to dos” for him on each leg of the trip.

Yes Please
by Amy Poehler

Then I had the terrible memory of putting it in a separate tray in the security line. I was tired the morning I flew to San Francisco. I fly a lot, and it can wear you down. I opted out of the X-ray machine, because I was just getting tired of being zapped with rays that nobody could tell me were safe. I mean, if my phone is trying to kill me then that crazy X-ray machine at airport security is a straight-up assassin. I asked for a pat-down. It was nice, actually. A sweet woman and I chatted as she touched me. I didn’t mind. It felt human. She told me she loved me in Baby Mama. I went on my way, but because of the small change in my routine, I had left my laptop at LAX security forty-eight hours before.

pages: 296 words: 78,631

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms
by Hannah Fry
Published 17 Sep 2018

In Berlin, facial recognition algorithms capable of identifying known terrorism suspects are trained on the crowds that pass through railway stations.48 In the United States, these algorithms have led to more than four thousand arrests since 2010 just for fraud and identity theft in the state of New York alone.49 And in the UK, cameras mounted on vehicles that look like souped-up Google StreetView cars now drive around automatically cross-checking our likenesses with a database of wanted people.50 These vans scored their first success in June 2017 after one drove past a man in south Wales where police had a warrant out for his arrest.51 Our safety and security often depend on our ability to identify and recognize faces. But leaving that task in the hands of humans can be risky. Take passport officers, for instance. In one recent study, set to mimic an airport security environment, these professional face recognizers failed to spot a person carrying the wrong ID a staggering 14 per cent of the time – and incorrectly rejected 6 per cent of perfectly valid matches.52 I don’t know about you, but I find those figures more than a little disconcerting when you consider the number of people passing through Heathrow every day.

pages: 317 words: 79,633

Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees
by Thor Hanson
Published 1 Jul 2018

Other studies describe no perceptible nerve cells at the base of the hairs and point out that hairs tend to wear off as the bees age with no apparent ill effects (e.g., Phillips 1905). 4 almond reek of potassium cyanide: Returning home from The Bee Course, I experienced a tense moment that must be familiar to entomologists who travel by plane. As I stood in line for airport security, it suddenly occurred to me that I had two kill jars full of potassium cyanide in my carry-on luggage. I felt like a deer in the headlights watching that bag disappear into the X-ray machine … but it passed through without a hitch. I was glad to keep the jars—cyanide is hard to come by. But knowing that my bag contained crudely corked vials of a deadly poison did raise the discomfiting question of what the passengers around me might be carrying!

pages: 246 words: 74,404

Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
by Celeste Headlee
Published 10 Mar 2020

Let’s lay out all the reasons why our tech can be harmful, and I must warn you: It’s a long list. When I ask my friends to imagine life without a smartphone, most stare at me blankly in complete confusion. One friend says she has left her car keys at restaurants, her dog at the park, and her wallet at an airport security line, but usually knows within seconds if she doesn’t have her phone. How quickly these devices became indispensable! Remember, we lived without smartphones for many more years than we’ve lived with them. Smartphones are an extremely recent development. The first real smartphone was the Nokia 9000 Communicator, introduced in 1996 for about $800 (that would equal about $1,300 in 2019).

pages: 318 words: 78,451

Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business
by David J. Anderson
Published 6 Apr 2010

Chapter 11: Establishing Service Level Agreements We are all familiar with the concept of differing classes of service. Anyone who’s checked in for a flight at an airport understands that customers who pay more for their ticket, or who enjoy the rewards of a customer-loyalty program, are permitted to use an express lane to “cut in line.” Sometimes these privileges extend to airport security lines and include the use of a special lounge and preferential treatment at boarding time. Customers who pay more or who spend money with the airline on a regular basis enjoy a better class of service. We are familiar with this concept in software development and IT systems work, too, most evidently with defect resolution, and particularly with production defects.

pages: 244 words: 78,238

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic
by Michael Smith and Jonathan Franklin
Published 14 Jul 2022

Holland America’s travel offices were frantically booking buses and flights to shuttle people to the Punta Arenas airport, then home. But they needed more time, and the clock was ticking. Over the next two hours, they seemed to have mapped out what was essentially an evacuation plan. Corporate sent the plan over to the government while the port agent and a team of assistants scurried to arrange transport to the airport, secure face masks, book flights, arrange bag lunches, find a crate of hand sanitizer. The list kept growing. Captain Smit fretted. He emailed the agent for an update but received no immediate response. Then the Chilean government requested documents attesting that all the passengers were healthy.

My Shit Life So Far
by Frankie Boyle
Published 30 Sep 2009

The security now is as frightening as the flight. You’re not allowed to bring fluids on the plane in case you make an improvised bomb from Coca-Cola and iPod parts. Who’s training Al-Qaida these days, Johnny Ball? If you really want to bring a plane down, get a normal bottle of Sunny Delight and shake it. Of course, airport security is even tighter if you look vaguely Middle Eastern. If you’ve got a turban and a beard, you’re about six months away from having to fly naked on a clear plastic plane. I can’t begin to explain the different levels of increasingly wild paranoia that flying brings out in me. You think you’re scared of flying?

The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention
by Simon Baron-Cohen
Published 14 Aug 2020

The organization Ro’im Rachok now goes into schools in Israel to recruit autistic teenagers into this army unit so that they will feel equal to their peer group, experience a sense of inclusion, and feel valued for what they can bring. In societies where there is no conscription into the army, there are many jobs, such as looking at X-ray data in airport security or in hospitals, where it pays not to miss a single instance of an anomaly, such as a hidden weapon or a tumor. Indeed, one study confirmed that autistic security employees spot more suspicious items in X-rayed hand luggage. James Neely, who is autistic, had difficulty keeping a job before he applied to Auticon.

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence
by Christopher Andrew
Published 27 Jun 2018

In the few years before 9/11 the Federal Aviation Authority reported repeated security violations at Logan Airport, Boston, from which two of the hijacked planes took off.87 Contrary to widespread belief, neither Logan nor the two other airports from which the hijacked planes set out (Newark International and Washington Dulles) even had CCTV at the boarding gates.88 At least three eyewitnesses, ignored at the time, saw several of the hijackers studying the security checkpoints at Logan well before 9/11. One of the witnesses, an American Airlines official, confronted the ringleader of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, after watching him video and inspect one of the Logan checkpoints in May 2001. Though Atta was reported by the official to airport security, he was never questioned.* On 9/11 the watch list maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which was responsible for air travel security, contained only twelve names. The FBI and CIA had hundreds more that should have been added to the list. The failure to produce an expanded list was due largely to bureaucratic infighting.89 In the few months before 9/11, more than two dozen Islamist messages intercepted by the NSA made clear that, to quote its director, General Mike Hayden, ‘something was imminent’.

…

Christopher Andrew March 2018 Index Abdullah (Abu Bakr’s son), 87 Abdullah ibn Atik, 89–90 Abdullah ibn Jahsh, 87 Abdullah-Khan, ruler of Shirvan, 150 Abdur Rahman, Afghan Amir (‘The Iron Amir’), 421 Abedi, Salman, 757 Abedin, Moinul, 722 Aberdare, Lord, 400 Aberdeen, Lord, 359, 365–6, 368, 405–6 Ablis, Geoffroy d’, 102–3 Abu Al-Fadl Al-Abbas, 88 Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, 97 Abu Bakr, 87, 93 Abu Jihad, 733 Abu Rafi, 89–90 Abu Sufyan, 92 Abu’l Abbas As-Saffah, 96–7 Abwehr (German intelligence agency), 573, 626, 646–7, 652, 653–4, 656, 658–61 Acheson, Dean, 670 Act of Settlement, English (1701), 264 Act of Union (1707), 265 Adam, Robert, 303† Adams, Arthur Alexandrovich, 664–5 Adams, John, 295, 299, 309 Adcock, Frank, 518 Addington, Henry, 336, 337–8 Addison, Joseph, 131 Cato, 303 Adrianople, Battle of (378), 81–2 aerial reconnaissance early ballooning experiments, 411–12 First World War: Western Front, 505–8, 562, 563 Second World War: Middle East, 508, 529, 565 Aéronautique Militaire, 506 Aeschylus, 31 Afghanistan CIA covert actions in (1980s), 690–91 First Anglo-Afghan war (1839–42), 419 mujahideen in, 690–91 Northern Alliance, 725 North-West Frontier, 416, 418, 419–21, 449–50, 451 Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–80), 419–21 Soviet war in (1980s), 689, 690, 699 Agadir crisis (1911), 477–8, 479, 484, 485 Agasse, Guillaume, 106 ‘Age of Discovery’, 120–21 Ageloff, Sylvia, 624 agents provocateurs, 61–2, 220, 238, 273, 389, 394, 575 Agis II, Spartan king, 35 Ahmad, Rauf, 722–3 aircraft, 505, 507 airport security, 724–5, 757 Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress of (autumn 1818), 370 Akhenaten, Pharaoh, 19 Akram, A. I., 94 Alam Halfa, Battle of (August–September 1942), 640 Alaric, Visigoth leader, 82 Albam, Abram Mironovich, 620 Albania, 678–9 Albert, Dr Heinrich, 521–2 Alberti, Leon Battista, 127–8 Alcibiades, 30, 34, 35–6 Aldegonde (Philips of Marnix, Lord of Saint-Aldegonde), 139–40, 166–9 Aldrich, Winthrop W., 605 Alekseev, Aleksandr, 689–90 Alekseev, General Mikhail, 486 Alembert, Jean d’, 291 Alexander I, Tsar, 340, 343*, 352–3, 354–5, 356–7, 358–9, 360, 498, 499 at Congress of Vienna, 363, 366–7 Alexander II, Tsar, 154, 406, 425, 427, 437 Alexander III, Tsar, 154, 428, 436 Alexander the Great, 37–9, 45–6, 333 Alexander Severus, Roman emperor, 76 Alexandra, Princess (wife of Edward VII), 433 Alexandra, Tsarina (wife of Nicholas II), 500 Alexandrovich, Vyacheslav Alekseevich, 557, 558 Alexandrovskaya Sloboda (country estate of Ivan IV), 141, 142, 151–2 Alexei, Tsarevich (son of Nicholas II), 500 Alfield, Thomas, 171 Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 429 Alford, Dr Sidney, 757 Alford, Stephen, 190 Ali, Abdullah Ahmed, 757, 758 Alien Office, London, 323, 324*, 327, 329, 332–3 ‘Inner Office’ of, 336, 337 Allen, Sir Mark, 737 Allen, William, 171, 172, 176 Allenby, Field Marshal Viscount Edmund, 564–5 Allende, Salvador, 687–8, 690 All-Russian Co-operative Society (ARCOS), 583, 584 Alma, Battle of the (20 September 1854), 403–4 Almereyda, Miguel, 551 Alonne, Abel Tasien d’, 264 Alvensleben, Count, 469 Amalric, Arnaud, 101 Ambrose, Stephen, 672 American Revolutionary War, 5, 294–311 Ames, Aldrich, 687, 709, 713, 714 Amiens, Peace of (1802), 321, 336–7 Ammianus Marcellinus, 80, 81–2 Amnesty International, 752 Ampthill, Lord, 467 Amr ibn al-As, 94–5 Anabaptists, 110 anarchist movement, nineteenth century, 429–31, 432–3 Ancre, Concino Concini, marquis d’, 201–2 André, John, 303, 303†, 306 Andreev, Nikolai, 558 Andrew, Christopher Defence of the Realm, 10*, 10†, 90†, 548*, 658*, 722*, 732*, 738*, 758* Mitrokhin Archive, The (with Vasili Mitrokhin), 750–51 For the President’s Eyes Only, 6 76*, 748§ Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community, 731† Timewatch documentary on Cumming, 482§, 582* Androcles (Athenian demagogue), 34 Andropov, Yuri, 105, 130†, 687, 689, 690, 693, 694, 695–6, 699 Androsov, Yuri, 696 Angiolillo, Michele, 431 Anglo-Dutch wars (seventeenth century), 226, 235–6, 237 Ankhesenamen, Queen, 21 Annas (father-in-law of Caiaphas), 25* Anne, Queen of England, 250, 261, 266, 269 Anne of Austria, 201, 202–3, 204, 212 anti-Semitism in Elizabethan era, 189 Islamist brand of, 703 medieval conspiracy theories, 106–7 Nazi and fascist, 437, 645–6, 655–6, 732, 743 Protocols of the Elders of Zion (forgery), 437, 703 and Spanish Inquisition, 113 Antraigues, comte d’, 343* Appeasement policy in 1930s, 612–13, 614–16, 760* Arab Bulletin, The, 529–30, 737 Arab Rising against Turkish rule (1916), 508, 530, 541 Arabian Peninsula, 3, 86–92, 93 Arab armies’ military conquest in 630s/640s, 93–5 Arab nationalism, 508, 530, 541, 737 Arab Poetic Tradition, 720* pre-Islamic, 86† Arabic language, 98, 99, 111, 123, 334, 742 Arabic science and mathematics, 47, 97–9 Arafat, Yasser, 733 Aragon, Catherine of, 125, 126 Archibald, James F.

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H., 646 Thornton, John, 295 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de, 138 Throckmorton, Francis, 173–4, 191 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 162–3 Thucydides, 3, 30, 33, 34, 35–6 Thurloe, John, 223–8, 229–30 Thurstan, Edward, 537 Thwaites, Norman, 535, 566 Thwaites, Major-General Sir William, 473, 577 Tiberius, Roman emperor, 24–5, 72–3 Tibet, 417–18 Tikhomirov, Lev, 428 Times, The, 381, 399, 408, 427, 435, 578, 621 Crimean War coverage, 402–3, 405–6 Tinkler, Charles A., 411 Tinsley, Richard, 526 Tintoretto, Domenico, 130 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 513 Tisamenus of Elis, 31, 32 Tissaphernes (Persian satrap), 35–6 Tisza, István, 488 Tito, Marshal, 62, 63, 85, 680–82 Tittoni, Tommaso, 484 Tlaxcala confederacy, 134–5 TNT, 520–21 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 386 Todd, Janet, 235† Togo, Shigenori, 630, 670 Tojo, General Hideki, 630 Tolstoy, Sergei, 627 Tombs, Robert, 329 Tomkins, Nathaniel, 216 Tonge, Dr Israel, 239 Topbas, Osman Nuri: The Prophet of Mercy Muhammad, 3* Topographical and Statistical Department (T&S), British, 414, 415 Torcy, M de, 248, 264, 266, 267 Torquemada, Tomás de, 111 Torres, Juan Jose, 690 Torrijos, Omar, 690 torture, 4, 106, 116–17, 130, 137, 164, 174, 189 Totonac people, 134 Toulouse, 101, 102, 104, 742† Tourzel, marquise de, 316 Townsend, Robert, 305* Toye, Francis, 570–71 trade and commerce Anglo-Soviet trade negotiations (1920–21), 577–8 commercial intelligence and Renaissance Venice, 119, 121‡ and Phoenician Empire, 41 spice trade, 119, 121 trade routes in Old Testament times, 19–20, 41 transatlantic trade with New World, 121 Trafalgar, Battle of (1805), 338* Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), 751 Travis, Commander Edward, 642 Tresham, Francis, 193 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 656 Triple Alliance, 479, 479†, 493 Triple Entente (1907), 470–71, 472 Trojan War, 2, 27–9 Trotsky, Leon, 556, 598–600, 621–3, 680, 743 assassination of (20 August 1940), 62–3, 624 first attack on (24 May 1940), 623–4, 681 Fourth International, 600, 622, 623 Troubetzkoi, Prince Vasili, 343* Trubnikov, Vyacheslav, 711, 715 Truman, Harry S., 8, 668, 671 disavowal of covert action, 677–8 dislike of peacetime HUMINT, 670, 676 Truman Doctrine, 676–7 VENONA secret kept from, 673 Trumbull, Sir William, 248, 257 Tschirsky, Heinrich von, 488 Tsushima, Battle of (1905), 466, 469 Tunisia, 746 Turberville, George, 151 Turenne, vicomte de, 246, 247 Turing, Alan, 518 Turkish War of Independence (1919–23), 576–7 Tutankhamun, Pharaoh, 20–21 Twain, Mark, 132 Twentieth-Century Fund (think tank), 717 Tyrconnell, Earl of, 252 U-2 (first high-altitude spy-plane), 683 Udney, John, 334 Ukraine, 708 Ulbricht, Walter, 680 Ulyanov, Alexander, 436 Umar ibn al-Khattab, 93, 95 Umberto I, King of Italy, 428, 430, 433, 447 Umm Al-Fadl, 88 United States 2000 presidential election campaign, 723, 724, 728 arrival of troops in Europe (1917–18), 561, 563, 565 Aspin–Brown Commission (1995–6), 713–14, 716–17, 727 assumption of national superiority, 713–14 Black Tom attack (July 1916), 527, 528, 604 Bureau of Investigation, 435, 521, 527–8, 568 challenges Europe’s lead in intelligence, 5–6 Coordinator of Information (COI) post, 609–10 Department of Homeland Security, 435 diplomatic relations with USSR (1933), 586 Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) role, 378, 676, 677, 702, 706, 707–8, 710 embassy security in Russia, 458, 592–3, 662, 674–5 expectation of surprise Japanese attack (late 1941), 630–31 and First World War, 515, 516, 519, 520, 527–8, 533–42 German sabotage in (First World War), 520, 521, 522, 527, 528, 542, 604 growth of intelligence agencies during First World War, 568–9 intelligence coordination problem, 568, 609–10, 611–12, 628–30, 631–3, 634, 637 intelligence special relationship with UK, 7, 8, 169, 516, 565–7, 608, 609, 641–4, 670–71, 673–4, 735 Iran–Contra scandal (1986), 691 MAGIC (Japanese) decrypts, 611–12, 628–30, 631–3, 634, 635, 637, 669–70 MI1b decrypts of diplomatic telegrams, 533–4, 535–6, 538–9, 566, 571, 760 National Security Act (26 July 1947), 677 policy in the Third World, 8 poor airport security in pre-9/11 years, 724–5 post-9/11 scares and false alarms, 727–8 post-First World War intelligence cuts, 573, 587, 588–9 publishing of diplomatic correspondence, 422–3 Second World War intelligence failures, 7 Secret Service, 435–6, 521–2, 527–8, 568 Secret Service Fund, 310 Soviet penetration of Roosevelt administration, 662–3, 669, 673 Truman Doctrine, 676–7 ‘Year of Intelligence’ (1975), 687–8, 731–2 see also Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Urban VII, Pope, 138* Uritsky, Moisei Solomonovich, 559 US Army Air Force (USAAF), 642 Ustinov, Jona ‘Klop’, 612, 613, 614 Utrecht, Treaty of (1713), 267, 269 Vaillant, Auguste, 429–30 Valens, Eastern emperor, 81, 82 Valentian, Roman emperor, 78 Valerius Probus, 46 Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 304 Van Lew, Elizabeth, 413–14 Vansittart, Sir Robert, 612, 615 Varro, 50* Varus, Publius Quinctilius, 70–71 Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de, 243, 246 Vedic religion, 60 Velázquez, Diego, 208 Venanges (now Fort Franklin), 302 ‘Vengeur, Le’ (pre-First World War ‘French agent’), 465, 466 Venice, Renaissance Archivio Centrale, 119, 120 Bridge of Sighs, 132* and commercial intelligence, 119, 121‡ Council of Ten, 118, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129–30, 131, 138–9 and cryptanalysis, 127, 128–9 end of mercantile supremacy, 121 informers in, 119, 131–2 and Italian Wars (1494–1559), 128, 129 lion’s mouth (bocca di leone) letterboxes, 131–2, 131† and masks, 130–31 military inferiority to Ottomans, 122, 132 obsession with secrets and secrecy, 118–19, 126, 129–30 Phelippes tests ciphers of, 205 political-intelligence collection, 119–20, 121, 122, 124, 125–31, 207 as printing capital, 122–3 state inquisitors, 130, 131 trading empire, 119–20, 132 Vergennes, comte de, 293, 294, 296, 298, 299, 301 Versailles, Palace of, 242 Versailles, Treaty of (1919), 573, 585 Vetrov, Vladimir, 714 Victoria, Queen, 391, 427, 434 Victoria, Queen of Spain, 429 Victorian-era Britain Chartist movement, 379–80, 385 debate on letter-opening (1844), 381–3 Deciphering Branch closure (1844), 6, 337, 383, 410, 421, 449, 747 Fenian ‘Dynamite War’ (1881–5), 427 Great Exhibition (London, 1851), 391–2 ‘Great Game’ with Russia on North-West Frontier, 406, 416–21 intelligence decline, 6, 414 Intelligence Department (ID) in War Office, 449, 450–51 lack of ‘political police’, 380 as safe haven for continental revolutionaries, 380, 388–9, 396, 400–401 Vienna, Congress of (1814–15), 363–6 Final Act (9 June 1815), 368–9 and Napoleon’s escape from Elba, 368 sexual liaisons/pillow talk at, 366–8 Viète, François, 137, 138–9, 140, 198 Vietnam War, 66, 687, 748 Viguié, Léopold, 432 Villars, Marshal Claude Louis Hector de, 265 Villiers, Edward, 224 Vincent, Professor E.

pages: 829 words: 186,976

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't
by Nate Silver
Published 31 Aug 2012

But it’s unclear whether the broken-windows theory is more than window dressing. Likewise, the ever more cumbersome requirements for commercial flights fall into the category of what the security expert Bruce Schneier calls “security theater”75—they are more for show than to actually deter terrorists. It’s by no means completely irrational to be worried about airport security; airplanes have been the subject of a large number of terror attacks in the past, and terrorism can have a copycat element.76 Yet even accounting for crashes that had nothing to do with terrorism, only about one passenger for every twenty-five million was killed on an American commercial airliner during the decade of the 2000s.77 Even if you fly twenty times per year, you are about twice as likely to be struck by lightning.

…

Abbottabad, Pakistan, 434 accuracy, 129, 130, 133, 312 confidence and, 203 precision vs., 46, 46, 225 presentation vs., 137–38 AccuWeather, 128, 131, 132, 133 Achuthan, Lakshman, 196 acid rain, 400 Adams, Douglas, 26 adaptiveness, 98 Afghanistan, Soviet war with, 52 Africa, 379 African Plate, 143–44 aftershocks, 154, 161, 174, 476–77 agent-based models, 226, 227–29, 230 aggregate predictions, see consensus aging curve, 79, 81–83, 81, 83, 99, 164 aging population, 189 Agriculture Department, U.S., 123 AIDS, 213, 214, 215, 486 AIG, 37 Air Force, U.S., 108 Air India, 425, 429 air pollution, 400 airport security, 439 Ajedrecista, El, 265 Akerlof, George, 32–33, 35, 466 Alabama, University of, 394 Alaska, 149, 438 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, 425 algorithms, 265, 426 all-in bet, 306 Allison, Graham, 433–35 Al Qaeda, 422, 424, 425, 426, 433, 435–36, 440, 444 Alzheimer’s, 420 Amazon.com, 352–53, 500 American exceptionalism, 10 American Football League (AFL), 185–86, 480 American League, 79 American Stock Exchange, 334 Amsterdam, 228 Anchorage, Alaska, 149 Anderson, Chris, 9 Angelo, Tommy, 324–26, 328 animals, earthquake prediction and, 147–48 Annals of Applied Statistics, 511–12 ANSS catalog, 478 Antarctic, 401 anthropology, 228 antiretroviral therapy, 221 Apple, 264 Archilochus, 53 Arctic, 397, 398 Arianism, 490 Aristotle, 2, 112 Armstrong, Scott, 380–82, 381, 388, 402–3, 405, 505, 508 Arrhenius, Svante, 376 artificial intelligence, 263, 293 Asia, 210 asset-price bubble, 190 asymmetrical information, 35 Augustine, Saint, 112 Australia, 379 autism, 218, 218, 487 availability heuristic, 424 avian flu, see bird flu A/Victoria flu strain, 205–6, 208, 483 Babbage, Charles, 263, 283 Babyak, Michael, 167–68 baby boom, 31 Babylonians, 112 Bachmann, Michele, 217 bailout bills, 19, 461 Bak, Per, 172 Baker, Dean, 22 Bane, Eddie, 87 Bank of England, 35 Barbour, Haley, 140 baseball, 9, 10, 16, 74–106, 128, 426, 446, 447, 451n aging curve in, 79, 81–83, 81, 83, 99, 164 betting on, 286 luck vs. skill in, 322 minor league system in, 92–93 results in, 327 rich data in, 79–80, 84 Baseball America, 75, 87, 89, 90, 90, 91 Baseball Encyclopedia, 94 Baseball Prospectus, 75, 78, 88, 297 basic reproduction number (R0), 214–15, 215, 224, 225, 486 basketball, 80n, 92–93, 233–37, 243, 246, 256, 258, 489 batting average, 86, 91, 95, 100, 314, 321, 321, 339 Bayer Laboratories, 11–12, 249 Bayes, Thomas, 240–43, 251, 253, 254, 255, 490 Bayesian reasoning, 240, 241–42, 259, 349, 444 biases and beliefs in, 258–59 chess computers’ use of, 291 Christianity and, 490 in climatology, 371, 377–78, 403, 406–7, 407, 410–11 consensus opinion and, 367 Fisher’s opposition to, 252 gambling esteemed in, 255–56, 362 priors in, 244, 245, 246, 252, 255, 258–59, 260, 403, 406–7, 433n, 444, 451, 490, 497 stock market and, 259–60 Bayes’s theorem, 15, 16, 242, 243–49, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 258, 266, 331, 331, 448–49, 450–51 in poker, 299, 301, 304, 306, 307, 322–23 Beane, Billy, 77, 92, 93–94, 99–100, 103, 105–7, 314 Bear Stearns, 37 beauty, complexity and, 173 beer, 387, 459 behavioral economics, 227–28 Belgium, 459 Bellagio, 298–99, 300, 318, 495 bell-curve distribution, 368n, 496 Bengkulu, Indonesia, 161 Benjamin, Joel, 281 Berlin, Isaiah, 53 Berners-Lee, Tim, 448, 514 BetOnSports PLC, 319 bets, see gambling Betsy, Hurricane, 140 betting markets, 201–3, 332–33 see also Intrade biases, 12–13, 16, 293 Bayesian theory’s acknowledgment of, 258–59 in chess, 273 and errors in published research, 250 favorite-longshot, 497 of Fisher, 255 objectivity and, 72–73 toward overconfidence, 179–83, 191, 203, 454 in polls, 252–53 as rational, 197–99, 200 of scouts, 91–93, 102 of statheads, 91–93 of weather forecasts, 134–38 Bible, 2 Wicked, 3, 13 Biden, Joseph, 48 Big Data, 9–12, 197, 249–50, 253, 264, 289, 447, 452 Big Short, The (Lewis), 355 Billings, Darse, 324 Bill James Baseball Abstract, The, 77, 78, 84 bin Laden, Osama, 432, 433, 434, 440, 509 binomial distribution, 479 biological weapons, 437, 438, 443 biomedical research, 11–12, 183 bird flu, 209, 216, 229 Black, Fisher, 362, 367, 369 “Black Friday,” 320 Black Swan, The (Taleb), 368n Black Tuesday, 349 Blanco, Kathleen, 140 Blankley, Tony, 50 Blodget, Henry, 352–54, 356, 364–65, 500 Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey, 199, 335–36 Bluefire, 110–11, 116, 118, 127, 131 bluffing, 301, 303, 306, 310, 311, 328 Bonus Baby rule, 94 books, 2–4 cost of producing, 2 forecasting and, 5 number of, 2–3, 3, 459 boom, dot-com, 346–48, 361 Boston, 77 Boston Red Sox, 63, 74–77, 87, 102, 103–5 Bowman, David, 161–62, 167 Box, George E.

pages: 685 words: 203,949

The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
by Daniel J. Levitin
Published 18 Aug 2014

If a free weekend day is rare, and you are really looking forward to spending it bicycling with friends, or going to a party, you may well decide that it’s worth it to pay someone else to do it. Or if you’re a consultant or attorney earning upward of $300 an hour, spending $100 to join one of those priority services that bypasses the long line at airport security seems well worth it. If you calculate what your time is worth to you, it simplifies a great deal of decision-making because you don’t have to reassess each individual situation. You just follow your rule: “If I can spend $XX and save an hour of my time, it is worth it.” Of course this assumes that the activity is something you don’t find pleasurable.

…

International Journal of General Medicine, 4, 803–807. and, Gigerenzer, G. (2006). Out of the frying pan into the fire: Behavioral reactions to terrorist attacks. Risk Analysis, 26(2), 347–351. and, Hampson, R. (2011, September 5). After 9/11: 50 dates that quietly changed America. USA Today. and, Kenny, C. (2011, November 18). Airport security is killing us. Business Week. and, Sivak M., & Flannagan, M. (2003). Flying and driving after the September 11 attacks. American Scientist, 91(1), 6–8. ten million safe commercial flights Snyder, B. (2012, January 9) An incredibly safe year for air travel. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com “Terrorists can strike twice . . .”

pages: 369 words: 80,355

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
by David Weinberger
Published 14 Jul 2011

If we can’t be certain of something beyond the whiff of a glimpse of a tremor of a shadow of doubt, then we do not know it. Or so says Descartes and the tradition he influenced. The continuous ratcheting up of the standards of certainty seemed as inevitable as the increase in intrusiveness of airport security devices. But then nineteenth-century philosophers suggested that perhaps some knowledge was so ungrounded in reason that it could be held certain only with much fear and trembling (Kierkegaard). Perhaps knowledge’s certainty panders to the weak-souled, and hides greater, more terrifying and joyful truths (Nietzsche).

pages: 287 words: 86,919

Protocol: how control exists after decentralization
by Alexander R. Galloway
Published 1 Apr 2004

As one learns more and more about the networks of protocological control, it becomes almost second nature to project protocol into every physical system: Trafﬁc lights become the protocol for successful management of moving vehicles; a grocery store queue is the protocol for a successful checkout; airport security points are the protocol for prohibiting weapons; and so on. Protocol pops up everywhere. But protocol is more than simply a synonym for “the rules.” Instead, protocol is like the trace of footprints left in snow, or a mountain trail whose route becomes ﬁxed only after years of constant wear.

pages: 246 words: 81,625

On Intelligence
by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee
Published 1 Jan 2004

An intelligent machine attached to these sensors would observe the ebb and flow of electricity consumption in the same way you and I see the ebb and flow of traffic on a road, or the movement of people at an airport. Through repeated exposure, humans learn to predict these patterns just ask an employee who commutes by car, or an airport security guard. Similarly, our intelligent electrical grid monitor would be able to predict demands for power, or dangerous situations likely to lead to a power outage, better than a human. We might combine sensors for weather and for human demographics, in order to anticipate political unrest, famines, or disease outbreaks.

pages: 472 words: 80,835

Life as a Passenger: How Driverless Cars Will Change the World
by David Kerrigan
Published 18 Jun 2017

Impacts on other forms of Transport If you revolutionise the primary means of individual transport to the extent we’re discussing here, it’s inevitable it will have repercussions for the adjacent modes of transport. If you can potentially sleep in a level 5 driverless car, will overnight trips become preferable to short flights? Would driverless car travel from San Francisco to LA in a perfectly-driven electric vehicle be less environmentally damaging than a flight and less hassle than queuing for airport security and waiting for your bag at the other end? Public-transportation policy makers will need to consider the economics of AVs and consumer attitudes toward AVs in their investment plans. Their long-term planning must consider the possibility that the favorable economics of AVs might lead consumers not only to give up their own vehicles but also to shun conventional mass transit in favor of robo-taxis.

pages: 252 words: 80,636

Bureaucracy
by David Graeber
Published 3 Feb 2015

Max Weber famously pointed out that a sovereign state’s institutional representatives maintain a monopoly on the right of violence within the state’s territory.163 Normally, this violence can only be exercised by certain duly authorized officials (soldiers, police, jailers), or those authorized by such officials (airport security, private guards …), and only in a manner explicitly designated by law. But ultimately, sovereign power really is, still, the right to brush such legalities aside, or to make them up as one goes along.164 The United States might call itself “a country of laws, not men,” but as we have learned in recent years, American presidents can order torture, assassinations, domestic surveillance programs, even set up extra-legal zones like Guantanamo where they can treat prisoners pretty much any way they choose to.

Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season
by Nick Heil
Published 3 Feb 2009

He would go through half a dozen operations; by the time the doctors were done with him, he had a metal plate installed in his head, a titanium cage wrapped around his lower spine, half a dozen screws in his knee, and bolts holding his ankle together, fusing his foot into a nearly immobile ninety-degree angle. “Airport security was going to be an issue for the rest of my life,” he said later. But, then, so would the pain. That first year, Medvetz endured bouts of despair, craving normalcy, dosing himself with Vicodin, sometimes twenty pills a day, chasing it down with Jack Daniel’s. Then one afternoon, sitting glumly in his apartment, pondering what his future held, he spied the copy of Into Thin Air on his bookshelf, given to him by an ex-girlfriend.

pages: 304 words: 82,395

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier
Published 5 Mar 2013

Actuarial tables note that men over 50 are prone to prostate cancer, so members of that group may pay more for health insurance even if they never get prostate cancer. High-school students with good grades, as a group, are less likely to get into car accidents—so some of their less-learned peers have to pay higher insurance premiums. Individuals with certain characteristics are subjected to extra screening when they pass through airport security. That’s the idea behind “profiling” in today’s small-data world. Find a common association in the data, define a group of people to whom it applies, and then place those people under additional scrutiny. It is a generalizable rule that applies to everyone in the group. “Profiling,” of course, is a loaded word, and the method has serious downsides.

pages: 287 words: 81,014

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism
by Olivia Fox Cabane
Published 1 Mar 2012

For many of my clients, having to occasionally deliver negative feedback is the worst part of their jobs. Many tell me that when they know they have criticism to deliver, they walk around with a knot in their stomach all day, dreading the upcoming conversation. Unfortunately, criticism—like dental exams, airport security, and, depending on whom you ask, taxes—is a necessary evil. You may not like it, but sometimes you just have to do it. At some point in your life, someone—whether it’s a parent, spouse, friend, colleague, or boss—will do something wrong and you’ll have to tell them about it. The question, of course, is how to do it right.

pages: 244 words: 81,334

Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality
by Laurence Scott
Published 11 Jul 2018

Am I alone in hearing a note of menace in the supermarket’s description of their drivers as ‘the friendly face’ of the business? We now know that an experience is over when it’s time to quantify it, the moment ending on a question mark rather than a full stop. After each journey using a ride-sharing service, you are locked in that stalemate of mutual appraisal. Similarly, from library coffee shops to airport security lines, it’s now commonplace to encounter those stands with childish buttons for us to press on our way past. ‘How was your experience today?’ these unstaffed customer-service stations ask. The nebulous swirl of sentiment that we carry around with us must then be compressed into one of four buttons, each painted with a different cartoon face, moving swiftly from beet-red rage to beatific green smile.

pages: 254 words: 81,009

Busy
by Tony Crabbe
Published 7 Jul 2015

I wasn’t doing trivial stuff a lot of the time, I was learning and writing and working, but I was doing it without pause. I learned to be deliberately unproductive and bored as often as I can, at the times when it is most natural. For example, I no longer take my phone or Kindle to appointments like hairdressers or doctors, I deliberately allow all the wasted time traveling through airports (security, etc.) to stay wasted, and I drive and walk without music (mostly). My wasted time has become precious for me. I don’t think I would have written this book without all the dead time. Big Chunks The principle that made the most dramatic difference for me in writing this book, and in my other work, was big-chunking my time.

pages: 265 words: 79,747

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life
by Gretchen Rubin
Published 3 Sep 2012

Even more, I wanted to expect better from myself, to behave with more good humor when I felt annoyed or frustrated, so I resolved to “Dig deep.” Because this was the month of gifts, I wanted to remember to “Respond to the spirit of a gift” rather than to the gift itself. Finally, because December offered so many temptations—from sneaking bites of candy cane ice cream to losing my temper in an airport security line—I vowed to bolster my self-control, paradoxically, with the resolution to “Abandon my self-control”; I’d make changes to external conditions so that I wasn’t dependent on my unreliable self-restraint. I also promised myself that I’d drive a car every single day when we were in Kansas City for Christmas.

pages: 308 words: 82,290

Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper
by Geoffrey Gray
Published 8 Aug 2011

The memory Knoss claimed to have meshed together into a wacky comedy, a story about a gung-ho aspiring covert agent (McCoy), who in order to impress his rogue bosses recruited a charming crook from prison (Duane Weber). Together they conspired to hijack a Northwest plane, to accomplish the dual purposes of getting rich together and capturing the attention of legislators in Washington to increase airport security. Knoss knew about it because he was involved, he says. His story is complicated. Knoss was a draft dodger who got caught. Instead of going to prison, he volunteered to help McCoy on the Cooper hijacking. Knoss was McCoy’s witness, he tells Jo. In case McCoy got arrested, Knoss was to testify that McCoy was operating on behalf of interests friendly to the government.

pages: 306 words: 82,909

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
by Bruce Schneier
Published 7 Feb 2023

Before them, hijackings involved forcing a plane to fly to somewhere, some number of political demands, negotiations with governments and police, and generally peaceful resolutions. What the 9/11 terrorists did was awful and horrific, but I also recognized the ingenuity of their hack. They only used weapons that were allowed through airport security, transformed civilian jets into guided missiles, and unilaterally rewrote the norms around airplane terrorism. Hackers and their work force us to think differently about the systems in our world. They expose what we assume or take for granted, often to the embarrassment of the powerful and sometimes at terrible cost.

pages: 242 words: 81,001

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The Highs and Lows of an Air Ambulance Doctor
by Tony Bleetman
Published 2 Oct 2019

He looked stunned. I realised he was only trying to help and I immediately regretted opening my mouth. I brushed my comment aside as a poor attempt at humour and genuinely thanked him. He seemed fine with that. ‘Listen, we requested a blue-light ambulance with some kit for us. Please make sure airport security don’t cause any delays. I need that ambulance here, right now!’ The fire officer shot off to sort it out. A couple of minutes later an ambulance duly arrived. The crew approached with the desperately needed replacement drugs, batteries and oxygen. I spent the next 10 minutes sorting out our patient’s needs and the equipment’s requirements.

pages: 361 words: 86,921

The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor
by Andy Kessler
Published 12 Oct 2009

Food exposes you to another 40 mrems. Is this a problem? Those who handle radioactive materials are considered safe by international standards if they are exposed to 5,000 mrems each year. An X ray for a broken arm is no more than 1 mrem, a chest X ray about 6 mrem. Your TV set spits out 1 mrem per year. Airport security is 0.002 mrems. When you fly in an airplane at 36,000 feet, you are exposed to 0.5 mrems for each hour of flight. A six-hour flight is like having a few X rays. I’ve heard the dirty little secret that airline pilots are susceptible to leukemia, perhaps because of repeated exposure. A heart and body CT scan exposes you to 110 mrems.

pages: 803 words: 415,953

Frommer's Mexico 2009
by David Baird , Lynne Bairstow , Joy Hepp and Juan Christiano
Published 2 Sep 2008

The child must be carrying the original letter (not a facsimile or scanned 07 285619-ch03.qxp 48 7/22/08 10:51 AM Page 48 C H A P T E R 3 . P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P TO M E X I C O Cut to the Front of the Airport Security Line In 2003, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA; www.tsa.gov) approved a pilot program to help ease the wait time for airport security screenings. In exchange for information and a fee, persons can be prescreened as registered travelers, granting them a spot at the front of the line when they fly. The program is run through private firms—the largest and most well-known is Steven Brill’s Clear (www.flyclear.com), and it works like this: Travelers complete an online application providing specific points of personal information including name, addresses for the previous 5 years, birth date, social security number, driver’s license number, and a valid credit card (you’re not charged the $99 fee until your application is approved).

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Manufactured in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 02 285619-ftoc.qxp 7/22/08 10:50 AM Page iii Contents List of Maps 1 viii What’s New in Mexico 1 The Best of Mexico 7 by David Baird, Lynne Bairstow, Juan Cristiano & Joy Hepp 1 The Best Beach Vacations . . . . . . . . . .7 7 2 The Best Cultural Experiences . . . . . .10 3 The Best Archaeological Sites . . . . . .11 8 4 The Best Active Vacations . . . . . . . . .12 9 5 The Best of Natural Mexico . . . . . . . .13 10 11 6 The Best Places to Get Away from It All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 12 2 Mexico in Depth by David Baird 1 Mexico Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 2 Looking Back at Mexico . . . . . . . . . .24 It’s Just a Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 A Sticky Habit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 3 Eating & Drinking in Mexico . . . . . . .32 3 Planning Your Trip to Mexico by Juan Cristiano 1 Visitor Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 2 Entry Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Cut to the Front of the Airport Security Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Calendar of Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 3 When to Go . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 4 Getting There & Getting Around . . . .57 5 Money & Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 The Best Art, Architecture & Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 The Best Shopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 The Best Luxury Hotels . . . . . . . . . . .17 The Best Inexpensive Inns . . . . . . . . .19 The Best Spa Resorts . . . . . . . . . . . .20 The Best Mexican Food & Drink . . . .21 23 Dining Service Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 4 The Regions in Brief . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 5 Mexico’s Art & Architecture . . . . . . . .38 6 Mexico in Popular Culture: Books, Film & Music . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 45 6 Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 7 Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68 Smoke Free Mexico?

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Miscellaneous Restaurant Terminology una cucharra a spoon un cuchillo a knife la cuenta the check un plato a plate un plato hondo a soup bowl la propina the tip una servilleta a napkin un tenedor a fork el vaso glass IVA value-added tax una fonda a food stall in the market or street; also used loosely or with nostalia to designate an informal restaurant 26 285619-bindex.qxp 7/22/08 11:47 AM Page 771 Index A cademia Falcón (Guanajuato), 210 Academia Hispano Americana (San Miguel), 197 Academic trips, 80–81 Acanceh, 651 Acapulco, 4, 379–403 accommodations, 391–397 American Express, 385 beaches, 386–387 boat excursions and cruises, 387–388 climate, 385 consular agents, 385 currency exchange, 385 getting around, 384–385 hospitals, 385 layout of, 384 nightlife, 401–403 outdoor activities, 388–389 post office, 386 restaurants, 397–401 safety, 386 shopping, 390–391 tourist police, 386 traveling to, 381 visitor information, 384 Acapulco Historical Museum, 390 Accommodations best, 17–21 boutique hotels, 80 tips on, 85–86 Active vacations, best, 12–13 Acuario (Veracruz), 519 Acuario Mazatlán, 350 AeroMéxico Vacations, 78 Agua Azul waterfalls, 480 Aguacatenango, 481, 489 Aguilar sisters, 470 Airport security, 48 Airport taxes, 60 Air tours, Puerto Vallarta, 305 Air travel, 2, 57, 60 Akab Dzib (Chichén Itzá), 670 Aktun Chen cavern, 609 Akumal, 588, 608–609 Alameda Park (Mexico City), 145 Alaska Airlines Vacations, 78 Alebrijes (Acapulco), 402 Alfarería Tlaquepaque (Puerto Vallarta), 316 Alpargatas, 673–674 Altitude sickness, 66–67 Alux (Playa del Carmen), 604 Amatenango del Valle, 481, 489 Amatlán, 187 American Airlines Vacations, 78 American Express Acapulco, 385 Campeche, 661 Cancún, 532 Chihuahua, 692 Cuernavaca, 178 Guadalajara, 276 Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, 407 Los Mochis, 689 Manzanillo, 372 Mazatlán, 347 Mérida, 631 Mexico City, 110 Morelia, 250 Oaxaca City, 449 Puebla, 499 Puerto Vallarta, 300 Querétaro, 224 San Luis, 242 San Miguel, 195 Veracruz, 517 Zacatecas, 234 AMTAVE (Asociación Mexicana de Turismo de Aventura y Ecoturismo, A.C.), 81 Angahuan, 271–272 Animal-rights issues, 77–78 Annual Witches Conference, 52 Año Nuevo, 51 Anthropology Museum (La Paz), 738 Anthropology Museum, Mérida, 636 Antigua, 523 Apple Vacations, 79 Aquarium, La Paz, 738 Aquarium, Veracruz, 519 Aqueduct, Morelia, 255 Aqueduct of Zacatecas, 236 Archaeological Conservancy, 80 Archaeological museums and exhibits.

pages: 897 words: 210,566

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
by Romeo Dallaire and Brent Beardsley
Published 9 Aug 2004

The Force HQ was under bombardment. Today was the day that Luc was leaving with the Belgian contingent. He had been one of the first To Go or To Stay? 309 the ground, and his steady nerves and professionalism, his rock-solid sense, had provided me with a certain feeling of confidence, even He was handing over airport security to Colonel Yaache, the in the demilitarized zone, and Yaache and I met Luc at 0800 to discuss the last details. Luc did not look well. The the stress, the physical and mental pain and the crushing weight Kigali Sector command had finally worn him down, and he stood me slightly hunched and short of breath.

…

See ab Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) absence of, 104 death of relatives, 396 demilitarized zone planning, 170-2 description of, 65-6 meeting with, 214, 325-7, 341-4, 351 410-11, 507-8 meeting with U.S., 211 the Napoleon of Africa, 67 new vice-president, 475-7 opinion of BoohBooh, 355-6 pace of peace, 153, 200-1 preconditions for ceasefire, 250 refugees in Rwanda, 154-6 RPF site in Kigali, 127 transfer disruptions, 406-7 twenty-four-hour warning, 201, 291 the victor's map, 462 warning from, 247 Kagera, Tanzania, 199, 288, 292 Kagera National Park, 453 Kajuga, Robert, 346-7, 370 Kambanda, Jean, 285, 288-9, 316, 329-30 Kamenzi, Major Frank, 166, 300, 362, 423, 425, 440 attack on, 173 search of FrancoAfricans, 435 Kane, Mamadou, 172, 175, 300, 381 Kangura, 133, 183 Kanombe barracks, 187, 191 Kanyarengwe, Colonel Alexis, 65, 130, 475 Karamira, Froduald, 344, 347 Katimavik (training program, Canada), 30 Kavaruganda, Joseph, 161, 179-80, 212, 242-3 Kayibanda, Gregoire, 47 Keating, Colin, 298, 301, 319-20, 364, 374 Kesteloot, Major Henry, 142, 193, 318 Khan, Shaharvar, 437 556 Index description of, 459-60, 463 Operation Turquoise departure, 507 The Shallow Graves of Rwanda, 461Khartoum (movie), 274 KIBAT, 113 Kibungo, Rwanda, 291 Kibuye, Rwanda, 292 Kigali hospital, 360-2, 468-9, 491 Kigali International Airport Security Agree 285 Kigali Weapons Secure Area (KwsA) as an excuse, 189 description of, 87 signing of, 124-7 troops to support, 202-3 violations of, 144, 148-9, 159-60, 193, 226 "Kigame Nine" declaration, 464, 469 killings. See shootings and killings Kilometre 64, 125, 170 King Faisal Hospital, 158, 270, 291, 302413, 419-20 invasions of, 440-1 locked ward, 461-2 operational, 440n Kinihira, Rwanda, 102-3, 243, 365-6, 4( Kinyarwanda, 44, 110, 158.

pages: 342 words: 90,734

Mysteries of the Mall: And Other Essays
by Witold Rybczynski
Published 7 Sep 2015

For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below. Aalto, Alvar Abbey House, Barrow-in-Furness, England Ackerman, James S. acoustics, of concert halls and opera houses Beranek on reverberation times in shoe-box shape vs. fan shape in adaptive reuse Adirondack camps Adler & Sullivan AEG turbine hall, Berlin airport hotels airports, security at Alaska Highway Alberti, Leon Battista Aldrich, Chester Holmes Alleluia (Thompson) Allen, Paul Alofsin, Anthony AMC (American Multi-Cinema) American Academy of Arts and Letters American Institute of Architects American Social Science Association Amherst, Mass. Amsterdam Amsterdammertjes (bollards) Anacostia River waterfront, Washington, D.C.

pages: 309 words: 95,495

Foolproof: Why Safety Can Be Dangerous and How Danger Makes Us Safe
by Greg Ip
Published 12 Oct 2015

How long it will hold out is anyone’s guess; advocates, including the NTSB and Lohr, continue to press for the change. While cost-benefit analysis won in that instance, it has not in another. After 9/11, a new federal agency, the Transportation Security Administration, was created to take over airport security screening from private companies. Passengers must submit to full body scans, surrender their pocket knives, remove their shoes, surrender liquids, and sometimes miss their flight if they’re unfortunate enough to share the name of someone on the terrorist watch list. The cost is staggering. Beyond the $5.60 per trip direct fee, one study put the value of added travel time due to security at $25 billion in 2005.

pages: 267 words: 91,984

Strength in What Remains
by Tracy Kidder
Published 29 Feb 2000

The cash had been a gift from Jean. Exchanged for Burundian francs, it could have bought a lot of cows. But neither Muhammad nor the agents looked impressed. Where was he staying? Jean had told him he’d be asked this. A hotel, he said. The agents laughed. A week in a hotel on two hundred dollars? In 1994, airport security wasn’t what it soon would be. Muhammad said something in English to the agents. His words must have been the right ones, because after a few more questions, the agents shrugged at each other and let him through, into America. He had no idea what he’d do next. After six months on the run, he was in the habit of not looking ahead.

pages: 344 words: 93,858

The Post-American World: Release 2.0
by Fareed Zakaria
Published 1 Jan 2008

Index Abrahamic religions, 122, 171, 172 Abu Sayyaf, 11 Abyssinia, 195 Academy of Science, 211 Acheson, Dean, 255, 256 Acquaviva, Claudio, 124 Adams, James Truslow, 237 affirmative action, 109 Afghanistan, 13, 15, 54, 101, 172, 185, 199, 235–36, 241, 247, 260, 277, 284 Afghan War, 13, 241, 247, 260 Africa: agriculture in, 70 Chinese influence in, 129–32, 270 Christian population of, 98 colonization of, 65, 79, 80, 129, 156 corruption in, 130–32 economies of, 21n, 40, 68, 129, 130, 242–43 geography of, 77 instability of, 12–13, 20, 29, 40, 65, 68 national debts of, 130 natural resources of, 129 North, 12–13, 20, 80 slaves from, 79 sub-Saharan, 80 U.S. influence in, 270–71, 273 see also specific countries AFRICOM, 270–71 Aggarwal, Anil, 155 aging populations, 214–15 agriculture, 21, 30, 31, 32–33, 65–67, 70, 71–72, 100, 106, 112, 136, 151, 160 Agtmael, Antoine van, 2 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 16, 55 AIDS, 149, 161 AIG, 43–44 air conditioners, 102 air pollution, 111 airport security, 280 Akbar, 75 Al-Azhar University, 15 Albright, Madeleine, 246 Alembert, Jean Le Rond d’, 123 alerts, terrorist, 277 algebra, 67 Algeria, 13 algorithm, 67 Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, 67 Al Jazeera, 96 al-Khwarizmi, 67 Al Qaeda, 5, 10–18, 172, 248n, 270, 277 Ambrose, Stephen, 37 American dream, 237 American Enterprise Institute, 213 Amery, Leo, 193 Amsterdam, 67 Anglo-Chinese Wars, 81 Angola, 284 Annan, Kofi, 272 anti-Americanism, 13, 35, 39, 42, 60, 166, 241, 245, 251–55, 274, 283 Apple, Inc., 203 Arab culture, 67, 75, 76, 77, 80, 98 Arab-Israeli conflict, 6, 96, 246 arbitrage, 27 architecture, 95, 98, 103, 105, 152 Argentina, 3, 26, 55, 115 Armenia, 209 Arnold, Thomas, 187 Arroyo, Gloria, 133 art, modern, 95 ash-Sheikh, Abdulaziz al, 15 Asia: agriculture in, 70 Chinese influence in, 132–36, 143, 173, 176–77, 259, 267, 281 colonization of, 79, 80–82, 156 demographics of, 214–15 East, 20, 23, 29, 32, 36, 52, 64n, 65, 122, 133, 214, 241–42, 245 economies of, 52, 75, 138, 151–52, 221 education in, 208–12 financial markets of, 221–22 geography of, 76 global influence of, 245, 257, 259 India’s influence in, 151–52, 173, 181 manufacturing sector of, 202–3 South, 21n, 52, 60 technology sector of, 200–208 U.S. influence in, 90, 241–42, 245, 259–60, 266, 267, 273–74, 280–81 Western influence in, 90, 93, 99 see also specific countries “Asian Tigers,” 26 assets, 219 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 132, 133 Atatürk, Kemal, 84 Australia, 78, 132, 143, 196, 252, 266 Austria, 223 automobile industry, 33, 110, 149, 192, 205, 225, 229–30, 244 Autor, David, 231 Bacon, Francis, 86 bailouts, 43, 44 Baker, James A., III, 39, 244 Bakiyev, Kurmanbek, 54 balance of power, 79 Bali bombings (2002), 11, 17 Balkans, 20, 29, 117–18, 245, 246, 247 Bangalore, 50 Bangladesh, 60, 159, 281 Ban Ki-moon, 30 banking industry, 36, 43–45, 81, 106, 107, 109, 110, 127, 139, 153, 157 Barma, Naazneen, 38 Barnett, Correlli, 262 “Base Structure Report” (2006), 262 Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), 20 BBC, 96, 120 Bear Stearns, xi Beijing, 71, 103, 105, 111, 137, 150, 211 “Beijing Consensus, The” (Ramo), 142–43 Beijing Olympic Games (2008), 5, 103, 105, 137 Belgium, 41 Berlin, 103 Berlin Wall, 24 Beveridge Plan, 197 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 158–59, 160, 178, 179–80 Bhutan, 166 Bialik, Carl, 205 Bible, 172 bicycles, 192 bin Laden, Osama, 12, 13, 14–15, 85, 269–70 biological weapons, 18 biotechnology, 201–2, 215 bipolar order, 4 Bismarck, Otto von, 198, 257, 266–67 Blackwill, Robert, 177 Blair, Tony, 274 Blinder, Alan, 230–31 Bloomberg, Michael, 220–21 “blue card,” 224 blue jeans, 88, 89, 91 Boer War, 188–90, 261 Bollywood, 90, 94, 147, 153–55 Bono, 272 Boorstin, Daniel, 69 Bosnia, 272 Brahmans, 74 “brain drain,” 167 brand names, 203 Brazil, xii, 2, 3–4, 19, 23, 26, 28–29, 39, 48, 49, 53, 55, 60, 79, 95, 98, 257, 258, 259, 263 Bretton Woods Conference (1944), 253 British East India Company, 60, 80, 82–83 British Empire, 36, 37, 57, 60, 65, 79, 80–83, 84, 89, 94, 97–98, 151, 154, 156, 158–59, 161, 162–63, 164, 170, 173, 179, 184–99, 237, 261–63, 266, 268 British Guiana, 194n broadband service, 28, 224–25 Brookings, Robert, 235 Brookings Institution, 235 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 36 Buck, Pearl, 100 Buddhism, 124, 171, 172 budget deficits, 219, 241–42, 244 Buffett, Warren, 45–46 Bulgaria, 182 Burma, 79, 121, 264, 273 Burns, Ken, 37 Buruma, Ian, 187 Bush, George H.

pages: 309 words: 92,177

The Ghost
by Robert Harris
Published 22 Oct 2007

“Eight years. I worked in Downing Street. I’m on attachment from the Cabinet Office.” “Poor Cabinet Office.” She flashed her nail-polish smile. “It’s my husband I miss the most.” “You’re married? I notice you’re not wearing a ring.” “I can’t, sadly. It’s far too large. It bleeps when I go through airport security.” “Ah.” We understood one another perfectly. “The Rhineharts also have a live-in Vietnamese couple, but they’re so discreet you’ll hardly notice them. She looks after the house and he does the garden. Dep and Duc.” “Which is which?” “Duc is the man. Obviously.” She produced a key from the pocket of her well-cut jacket and unlocked a big gunmetal filing cabinet, from which she withdrew a box file.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen
by Dan Heath
Published 3 Mar 2020

Cars would not become better and cheaper if you paid for them that way.” At one point, I came across a commentary that highlighted American consumers’ world-leading access to MRI scans. We get them quicker and more often, apparently, than anyone else in the world. (USA! USA!) To take pride in that is a bit like bragging that Americans lead the world in receiving airport security pat-downs. I mean, if there’s something to find, it’s true that we’d like to find it quickly, but surely, we’d rather be the nation whose people need the least checking-over. (And as the Gil Welch turtles/rabbits logic implies, we might discover things that don’t need discovering.) What the MRI statistic illustrates is a simpler idea about our fee-for-service system: When you get paid for something, you do more of it.

pages: 290 words: 90,057

Billion Dollar Brand Club: How Dollar Shave Club, Warby Parker, and Other Disruptors Are Remaking What We Buy
by Lawrence Ingrassia
Published 28 Jan 2020

The airline edicts posed a challenge for Raden as well. Unlike with Bluesmart, the batteries in its suitcases could be removed, but only from the inside, when the bag was opened, which was a headache when your bag was fully packed. On social media, people began moaning about being stopped while going through airport security and having to open and unpack their luggage to take out the battery. In a few cases, travelers posted messages about missing their flights because of the delay caused by unpacking, removing the battery, and then repacking their suitcases. “When I was traveling with my Raden bag, it was a concern,” says Bryan Alston.

pages: 347 words: 90,234

You Can't Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction--From Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between
by Lee Gutkind
Published 13 Aug 2012

You can piece together snatches of who I am and the way I think from my flashlight, my Itch Eraser, my Cruex, my triple toothbrushes, and razors. It’s true I’m absentminded and cautious. I back myself up with flashlights and salves to avoid situations that might annoy me or curtail my activities. If I confessed these traits in an essay, you probably wouldn’t find them memorable, but in the context of an airport security search, the specifics of my shaving kit provided a porthole into my personality. Why did I go to New York in the first place? Because I felt compelled to get on a plane to break the spell of hesitation and alienation September 11 cast for me. Normally I’m on the road for a day nearly every week, but after September 11, I remained in my neighborhood for more than a month.

pages: 334 words: 93,162

This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America
by Ryan Grim
Published 7 Jul 2009

West African nations, which make Colombia and Mexico look like models of transparent governance, have become important stopping-off points for coke traffickers on the way to Europe. Out-of-work African youth make cheap foot soldiers, and drug runners with expensive equipment and weaponry have little to fear from airport security when the places have little access to electricity and cop cars with empty gas tanks. “Africa is under attack,” warned the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime executive director Antonio Maria Costa in a Washington Post op-ed in 2008. “States that we seldom hear about, such as Guinea-Bissau and neighboring Guinea, are at risk of being captured by drug cartels in collusion with corrupt forces in government and the military.”

pages: 304 words: 91,566

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption
by Ben Mezrich
Published 20 May 2019

.…” The drone of the bored TSA agent standing on the other side of the conveyer barely registered as Cameron unslung his black backpack from his shoulder. The TSA orders were, of course, redundant. Cameron had been flying since before he could walk. The poorly choreographed post-9/11 dance of airport security was second nature to him. His laptop was already on its way down toward the maw of the X-ray scanner. His high-tops were in the next bin, stacked on top of his leather wallet and keys. All that was left was the backpack. The thing felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, as Cameron directed it toward the third bin he’d retrieved from the tower by the start of the belt, but, in reality, it was quite light; when it got to the X-ray machine, all that the TSA agents were going to see were a couple of magazines, a comb, and a paperback book.

pages: 339 words: 94,769

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
by John Brockman
Published 19 Feb 2019

Proving things with unopenable black boxes can be a dangerous game for scientists, and doubly so for criminal justice. Other critics have underscored how perilous it is to rely on an accused (or convicted) person’s address or other variables that can easily become, inside the black box of algorithmic sentencing, a proxy for race. By dint of everyday experience, we have grown used to the fact that airport security is different for children under the age of twelve and adults over the age of seventy-five. What factors do we want the algorists to have in their often hidden procedures? Education? Income? Employment history? What one has read, watched, visited, or bought? Prior contact with law enforcement?

pages: 259 words: 87,875

Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World
by Nicholas Schou
Published 16 Mar 2010

Meanwhile, he continued to deal coke on the side. Stubby retired from the business in the mid-1980s after a DEA agent almost searched his bags at the San Diego airport. He was carrying two suitcases full of cash and coke. The agent told him he fit the profile of a coke dealer, but at the last minute an airport security officer who knew Stubby told the fed he was a television producer. He now lives penniless in a senior citizen’s home in Newport Beach. Stubby’s friend Oden Fong stopped dealing or using drugs in the mid-1970s and became a Christian rock musician. He is now a pastor with Calvary Chapel in Orange County.

pages: 327 words: 90,013

Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn
by Nick Kostov
Published 8 Aug 2022

If all went according to plan, Taylor and Zayek would land in Osaka in the morning on a private jet and stash two large boxes at a nearby hotel. They would then make their way to Tokyo, pick up Ghosn, bring him back to Osaka, and put him into one of the boxes in the hotel. Then they would wheel him past airport security and onto the waiting private jet. Taylor was a meticulous planner, and this was the kind of operation for which he’d usually want to do a dry run. He’d done some daring things in his time but never anything like this. Also, unlike Peter and Zayek, he’d never been to Japan. He wasn’t sure whether they’d get Ghosn out on December 29, or whether they’d have to go back a second time after picking up more information.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator
by Maria Ressa
Published 19 Oct 2022

While we were walking to immigration, they explained that they just wanted to help me get through quickly. Phew. There didn’t seem to be any sign of arresting agents. As we exited the arrivals area, there was a bank of television cameras and reporters. Lights came on, and questions came fast. “I don’t know what to expect,” I said after thanking airport security. “Here’s what we know. We know that an arrest warrant has been issued. I don’t know exactly what that means, right? I mean, imagine if an arrest warrant is issued for you. I will do what I need to do to face all this.”32 “Do you know what will happen with the cases?” another reporter asked, referring to the tax evasion cases.

pages: 285 words: 91,144

App Kid: How a Child of Immigrants Grabbed a Piece of the American Dream
by Michael Sayman
Published 20 Sep 2021

He had never been to Epcot before, and this was the perfect time because their big spring flower festival, which I normally would’ve gone out of my way to avoid, was happening. I liked this guy so much I couldn’t wait to go to a plant show. I’d never been so excited about anyone. William was waiting for me in the pickup area in a silver 2008 Ford Focus. As I approached, he was being yelled at through his open window by an airport security woman who wanted to clear the curbside spot he’d been hogging for fifteen minutes because I was late. The woman went right up to his window, waving her hands around and getting louder and louder, while William, I noted with a twinge of excitement, stayed coolly indifferent. “It’ll just be another minute, sorry,” he kept saying.

pages: 315 words: 87,035

May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases—And What We Can Do About It
by Alex Edmans
Published 13 May 2024

. ** Red teams were initially used to simulate the enemy in military wargaming, to hypothetically attack the home ‘blue team’. They’re also used in other settings with a defined adversary, such as appointing hackers to try to break into a cybersecurity system, undercover agents tasked with getting deadly weapons through airport security, or lawyers playing the role of opposing counsel to tear apart your case. However, even if there is no known enemy, a team can work together to identify the risks of a strategy. †† Examples include building defences against sea-level rise and developing crops that grow in warmer climates. 1 Janis, Irving L. (1971): ‘Groupthink’, Psychology Today 5, 84–90. 2 Malmendier, Ulrike (2021): ‘Experience effects in finance: foundations, applications, and future directions’, Review of Finance 25, 1339–63. 3 PwC and AIESEC (2016): ‘Tomorrow’s leaders today’. 4 Dallek, Robert (2013): ‘JFK vs. the military’, Atlantic, 10 September 2013. 5 Aggarwal, Ishani et al. (2019): ‘The impact of cognitive style diversity on implicit learning in teams’, Frontiers in Psychology 10, 112. 6 Fos, Vyacheslav, Elisabeth Kempf and Margarita Tsoutsoura (2023): ‘The political polarization of corporate America’, National Bureau of Economic Research 30183. 7 Loyd, Denise Lewin et al. (2013): ‘Social category diversity promotes premeeting elaboration: the role of relationship focus’, Organization Science 24, 757–72. 8 Phillips, Katherine W., Katie A.

pages: 736 words: 233,366

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017
by Ian Kershaw
Published 29 Aug 2018

Once the Euro had been introduced in 2002, currency transactions in Europe were greatly simplified. Business benefited. So did foreign travellers. Travellers could enjoy remarkably cheap air travel that allowed easy access, for business or pleasure, to far-flung destinations. Even after 9/11 had brought fortress-like changes to airport security the thirst for foreign travel (and the ease of undertaking it) was scarcely affected. International tourism was big business. People moved from continent to continent as never before. Travel to international conferences and business meetings expanded. Students, under the European Union’s Erasmus programme, could study without difficulty in countries outside their own, transferring their qualifications from one university to another beyond national borders.

…

Freedom to go places, see things, or move freely was in a variety of ways impaired. Security precautions, warnings, ubiquitous surveillance cameras or physical manifestations such as unsightly blocks of concrete outside public buildings exposed to possible ramming by vehicles became a regular part of everyday experience. Long queues at airport security checks or passport controls were accepted as the unfortunate but necessary price to pay to ensure safe travel. Attending any big public event or even visiting a museum also required patience to pass through security controls. All the precautions could be tolerated; freedom was limited, not destroyed.

Israel & the Palestinian Territories Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Sometimes they take an interest in passport stamps from places such as Syria, Lebanon or Iran, but often they don't. The one sure way to get grilled is to sound evasive or to contradict yourself – the security screeners are trained to try to trip you up. Whatever happens, remain calm and polite. Israeli airport security – whether you're flying in on an Israeli carrier or flying out on any airline – is the strictest in the business. It unabashedly uses profiling, but not necessarily in the way you think. In 1986, a pregnant Irish woman, Anne Mary Murphy, almost boarded an El Al 747 in London with Semtex explosive hidden in her luggage – it had been placed there without her knowledge by her Jordanian boyfriend, Nezar Hindawi, who is still in prison in the UK.

…

For up-to-the-minute details on arrivals and departures, go to the airport's English website and click ‘On-Line Flights’ at the top. A handful of flights from Europe, most of them charters, touch down at Ovda airport, 60km north of Eilat. Should Ben-Gurion airport have to close, Ovda serves as a back-up (so does Larnaca, Cyprus). Israeli airport security is very tight so international travellers should check in at least three hours prior to their flight – when flying both to and from Israel. Airlines Israel’s privatised flag carrier, El Al (LY; %03-977 1111; www.elal.co.il), has direct flights to several dozen cities in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as long-haul services to New York (Kennedy), Newark, Toronto, Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Beijing; some flights to Asian destinations are codeshares.

pages: 337 words: 103,273

The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World
by Paul Gilding
Published 28 Mar 2011

Even those not personally affected will be able to relate to it. Terrorism was a powerful example of this. Even though few were directly affected by the 9/11 attacks, people around the world felt an emotional engagement with those who did. As a result, enormous political and economic changes were accepted from new airport security measures to changes to legal rights to two wars—because people could relate to the issues in a new way. So the train hurtling toward us will become clear as the fog lifts, forcing us to jump rather than be hit. We will explore how this will unfold in the next few chapters. Second, we need to remember that this type of response is normal for our species.

pages: 342 words: 95,013

The Zenith Angle
by Bruce Sterling
Published 27 Apr 2004

Van looked at himself in the mirror, leaning close to take it in without his glasses. He had been a damned fool. He tiptoed away as Ted cooed and burbled. He silently fetched his backpack from the foot of Dottie’s bed. He returned to the bathroom with the jet-black SWAT knife. He couldn’t fly back to Washington with this throat-cutting pigsticker. Airport security would go nuts over it. But he’d bought it. It was his. It was stupid to not find some kind of use for it. Van grabbed a thick mess of beard and had at it. The knife went through his bristles like they were cotton candy. Six minutes later Van was looking at his bare face while Ted happily sucked on and spat a loose fistful of his beard.

pages: 307 words: 102,734

The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River
by Dan Morrison
Published 11 Aug 2010

The engine kicked on and thrummed for a moment, sending up nimbuses of dust before the chopper beetled on fat tires down the run-way and hauled us off the ground. The soldiers were tall and wiry, the fruit of India’s northern Hindu belt, most of them mustached, wearing pressed green camouflage uniforms. When I worked as a reporter in South Asia, I was often asked by Indian airport security officers: Where are you from? From America. But where were you from before that? The beard and black Easy Rider hair convinced the airport bulls I was some kind of Afghan or Arab. Now my interrogators’ army cousins were trapped in a metal can several hundred feet above the Nile, waiting, I imagined, for the unkempt stranger to scream “Allahu Akbar!”

pages: 349 words: 95,972

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives
by Tim Harford
Published 3 Oct 2016

Scovie tried to steer the conversation to the placement of a desk blocking his access to some filing cabinets. Pressed, Mr. Scovie reluctantly agreed to open his drawers, one of which he warned was “really nasty.”9 The humiliation is palpable. The description evokes a parent nagging a child to tidy her room, or airport security patting down a suspected hijacker. One perfectly competent employee is being harassed by another perfectly competent employee to satisfy the pointless demands of a company rule book. Haslam and Knight carried out the most explicit test of the importance of giving workers freedom to control their workspace, but other researchers have also pointed in that direction.

pages: 381 words: 102,966

Fatherland
by Robert Harris
Published 5 Jun 1993

An SS-Sturmbannführer with only a twenty-four-hour visa? The normal signals of rank and privilege, usually so clear, were too confused to read. Curiosity and servility warred in the customs man's face. Servility, as usual, won. "Enjoy your journey, Herr Sturmbannführer." On the other side of the barrier, March resumed his study of airport security. All luggage was scanned by X ray. He was frisked, then asked to open his case. Each item was inspected—the sponge bag unzipped, the shaving foam uncapped and sniffed. The guards worked with the care of men who knew that if an aircraft were lost to hijackers or a terrorist bomb during their watch, they would spend the next five years in a KZ.

pages: 372 words: 101,678

Lessons from the Titans: What Companies in the New Economy Can Learn from the Great Industrial Giants to Drive Sustainable Success
by Scott Davis , Carter Copeland and Rob Wertheimer
Published 13 Jul 2020

Admittedly, the early years after the euphoria of the tech bubble along with GE’s outsized reputation would have been a tough situation for any leader, but Immelt didn’t rise to the occasion. Instead of Welch’s bold, savvy bets, which were financed with the strong cash flow that came from patient attention to costs and productivity, he became fascinated with the hottest new trends, financed largely with debt. After the dark days of 9/11, he went into airport security, but he had no strategy for developing a competitive advantage. He paid a hefty price to acquire a number of subscale security firms that had no real connection to each other, only later to be sold at a big discount and loss to United Technologies. Then he made a play in clean water, but the myriad of acquired assets never quite fit together and were likewise sold at a big loss.

pages: 308 words: 96,604

American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic
by John Temple
Published 28 Sep 2015

Pain clinic staffers kept an eye on weather patterns in Kentucky and West Virginia; if a winter storm hit the mountains, business in Florida would be slow. Lots of Kentuckians and Tennesseeans began dying in South Florida motels that catered to the oxy-tourists. Likewise, coroners and ER doctors and airport security in Kentucky began recognizing the names of certain South Florida physicians after seeing them repeatedly on amber pill bottles they’d confiscated. Sandwiched between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties, Bro-ward County was the epicenter of the new painkiller trade. The newspapers were catching on to the story.

pages: 323 words: 100,923

This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
by Doug Stanhope
Published 5 Dec 2017

I’ve said it onstage and I’ll say here again, I’d be more confident crossing through customs at an international border with bricks of hashish taped to my body than simply getting through innocently with my Bingo. For someone who has flown about half a million miles with me to twenty-some countries on four different continents, I still wouldn’t be surprised to catch her using her passport as a coaster or forgetting to take off a metal jousting helmet before passing through the scanner at airport security. (This not something she has actually worn on an airplane but something that wouldn’t be out of the question.) The idea of her traveling by herself is even more distressing. I stood at the international arrivals gate at London’s Heathrow Airport. Bingo was coming to join me in the middle of a run at the Soho Theatre.

pages: 340 words: 97,723

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity
by Amy Webb
Published 5 Mar 2019

My hypothesis: the algorithmic decision-making dictated a set of predetermined steps to resolve the situation without using any context. The system decided that there weren’t enough seats, calculated the amount of compensation to offer initially, and when no resolution was achieved, it then recalibrated compensation again. When a passenger didn’t comply, the system recommended calling airport security. The staff involved were mindlessly following what was on their screens, automatically obeying an AI system that wasn’t programmed for flexibility, circumstance, or empathy. The tech executives, who weren’t United employees, didn’t deny the real problem: on the day that Dao was dragged off the plane, human staff had ceded authority to an AI system that was designed by relatively few individuals who probably hadn’t thought enough about the future scenarios in which it would be used.

pages: 279 words: 96,180

Anything to Declare?: The Searching Tales of an HM Customs Officer
by Jon Frost
Published 8 Apr 2015

And, bingo, with the bag now apparently discounted, Cree perceptibly relaxed. ‘Tell’ no. 2. Martin passed the bag to me to be X-rayed. Once again, in the early days for technology, Customs didn’t have the money to supply all airports with X-ray machines, but luckily I was on good terms with airport security and they had two of the machines in the outbound lounge search area. I X-rayed the bag upwards, downwards, sideways and on its ends but nothing showed. Defeated, I walked back and plopped the bag back on to the table. Billy Cree gave the smallest of smiles. ‘Let me guess: nothing. You found bugger all!

Holdout: A Novel
by Jeffrey Kluger
Published 2 Aug 2021

“Both men must go to the hospital.” “That’s not possible!” Zhirov protested. “That’s not possible,” Rozovsky echoed. “This man needs to go to the control center.” “I am told this man is sick,” the official said. “I am fine,” Zhirov said and took a few conspicuous steps toward the terminal building. Three airport security guards converged and stood—respectfully—in his path. One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie, and a moment later an Air Force officer strode from the terminal toward the group. The two stars on his epaulets marked him a lieutenant general. “Colonel,” he said, shaking Zhirov’s hand. The two men knew each other, had spent more than one evening drinking vodka together, and had long since come to address each other by their first names.

pages: 337 words: 101,281

Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming
by Mckenzie Funk
Published 22 Jan 2014

“It’s practically impossible for a boat to come here and not be seen by someone,” Colonel Mallia said. “If you think you are alone in Malta, think again.” Often, they were towed in by the AFM. The military had a force of seventeen hundred people and a maritime budget of almost $10 million, and among its many duties—defense, presidential protection, airport security—border control was now prime. Intercepting and managing boat people had become 80 percent of its work. Every time the members of the military approached a migrant vessel, it was a negotiation. “If they say they want to go on, they can go on,” Colonel Mallia said. “If they say, ‘We are lost. We need information,’ we give them the information they require.

pages: 329 words: 101,233

We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body's Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds
by Sally Adee
Published 27 Feb 2023

He took me into a small room where I found a bulky suitcase whose foam-padded insides nestled around an assortment of wires, a squeezy bottle full of ominous neon green liquid, and a beige box festooned with switches and dials, which housed a 9-volt battery. Weisend chortled as he unpacked the ingredients. “Can you imagine getting this stuff past airport security?” After Weisend had finished attaching the electrodes to my body, he tucked the chunky rig into the back of my bra. “You’re all set,” he said. It was time to go to war. It started easily enough, with some electricity-free target practice, during which I familiarized myself with the weight and heft of the modified gun.

pages: 337 words: 100,260

British Rail
by Christian Wolmar
Published 9 Jun 2022

The full introduction of HST 125s in 1979 on the East Coast Main Line saw the journey time from London to Newcastle reduced to three hours. That was deemed by transport economists at the time to be the cut-off point beyond which people would prefer to take the plane; today, with the encumbrance of added airport security, it is thought to be four hours. As a result of all these improvements, the new Inter-City services quickly captured market share from domestic aviation. The air service between Heathrow and Teesside was scrapped and a plan to build an airport at Sheffield was abandoned. The HSTs were introduced on several other routes, notably the Midland Main Line, and became the workhorse for Cross Country services, the express routes that bypass London to connect regional centres.

pages: 380 words: 104,841

The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us
by Diane Ackerman
Published 9 Sep 2014

Wake Forest engineers recently invented Power Felt, a nanotube fabric that generates electricity from the difference in temperature between room heat and body heat. You could start your laptop by plugging it into your jeans, recharge your cell phone by tucking it into a pocket. Then, not only would your cells sizzle with electricity, even your couture clothing could chime in. Would a fully electric suit upset flight electronics, pacemakers, airport security monitors, or the brain’s cellular dispatches? If you wore an electric coat in a lightning storm, would the hairs on the back of your neck stand up? Would you be more prey to a lightning strike? How long will it be before late-night hosts riff about electric undies? Will people tethered to recharging poles haunt airport waiting rooms?

pages: 341 words: 111,525

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
by Tim Butcher
Published 2 Jul 2007

The city below us is home to nine million people, but from the air it seemed as small as a riverside village next to the vast expanse of water. I tried to imagine how Stanley felt when, at the end of his threeyear-long journey, he reached this sea-like stretch. My own feelings were perfectly clear as I reached the scruffy arrivals hall at the airport. I was terrified. I can still picture the pudgy face of the airport security official as he spotted a Ugandan visa in my passport. Like the reels of a slot-machine shuddering to a jackpot, his pupils flickered both with suspicion and greed. Uganda was still at war with the Kabila regime and, seeing that I had been there only a few months earlier, the official started whispering to his boss.

pages: 540 words: 103,101

Building Microservices
by Sam Newman
Published 25 Dec 2014

We can ameliorate some of this by running tests in parallel — for example, making use of tools like Selenium Grid. However, this approach is not a substitute for actually understanding what needs to be tested and actively removing tests that are no longer needed. Removing tests is sometimes a fraught exercise, and I suspect shares much in common with people who want to remove certain airport security measures. No matter how ineffective the security measures might be, any conversation about removing them is often countered with knee-jerk reactions about not caring about people’s safety or wanting terrorists to win. It is hard to have a balanced conversation about the value something adds versus the burden it entails.

pages: 339 words: 105,938

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics
by Jonathan Aldred
Published 1 Jan 2009

But in the messy world of decision making, perfect quantification is usually a myth. Many attempts to quantify involve arbitrary assumptions. In 1226, TWA Flight 800 crashed near Long Island, New York. Shortly afterwards, Robert Hahn, an influential US economist and policy adviser, tried to estimate the costs and benefits of improved airport security. The benefit estimate was based simply on the number of deaths caused by terrorism up to that time, and the research concluded that the costs of improved security outweighed the benefits.34 Then there was 11 September 2001: that awful day could hardly have been anticipated five years earlier — but nevertheless, it was supremely foolish to use the past as a reliable guide to predicting future levels of terrorism.

pages: 389 words: 108,344

Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins
by Andrew Cockburn
Published 10 Mar 2015

In December 1999, the National Security Agency intercepted a phone call to a known al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen mentioning that two members were headed to a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. En route, the passport of one, Khalid al-Midhar, who would later help fly American Airlines Flight 77 into the south face of the Pentagon, was copied by Dubai airport security and passed to Alec Station in Washington. Although it bore a multiple-entry visa for the United States that had been issued in Saudi Arabia, the CIA office did not inform the FBI that someone connected to al-Qaeda intended to travel to the United States. Amazingly, a pair of FBI agents assigned as liaisons to the bin Laden unit knew that two known terrorists were headed to the U.S. but were forbidden to relay this vital intelligence to their home agency, which was responsible for domestic terrorist threats.

pages: 459 words: 109,490

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible
by Stephen Braun and Douglas Farah
Published 1 Apr 2008

“The only reason to be in Sharjah was smuggling,” the senior Ariana executive said. “In Sharjah, it was anything goes.”13 Inspection was lax and regulations easily skirted. Planes regularly landed and took off at late hours. Ground crews were adept at whisking cargos on and off in the enveloping early-morning darkness without interference from airport security men. Abdul Shakur Arefee, an Ariana flight engineer who flew frequently through Sharjah in the late 1990s, watched puzzled as arriving planes taxied off to dimly lit nooks, where ground crews hustled shipments on and off without interference from airport inspectors. “In Dubai, all the cargo would have to be taken off near the gates.

pages: 335 words: 107,779

Some Remarks
by Neal Stephenson
Published 6 Aug 2012

Their weight per square foot is no more than that of a normal human in an office chair (treadmill plus human has more weight than the human alone, of course, but it is spread out over a larger area). Walking at one to one and a half miles per hour is a completely different proposition from speed-walking in a health club; you amble along at about the rate of a coach-class traveler moving through an airport security queue, and breaking a sweat is unlikely. While on the topic of sweat, it might be helpful here to distinguish among three different general levels of physical exertion, from most to least intense. Aerobic exercise is something that everyone is supposed to perform for at least thirty minutes a day, five days a week.

Bit Rot
by Douglas Coupland
Published 4 Oct 2016

About once a year I’ll smell it in an unlikely place, like a European airport or a mall in the United States, and I’m right back in pre-bubble-collapse Tokyo. I wish they made a cologne that smelled like it. I’d wear it every day. I try to wear Eau Sauvage, but it keeps getting confiscated by airport security screeners because I always forget to not put it in my carry-on. There are more odours I wish I could bottle: freshly sharpened pencils; a bag of Halloween candy; car exhaust in the 1960s, back when they put lead in it; a freshly peeled tangerine. A smell I don’t miss? High-end magazines from the 1990s that were laced with scratch-and-sniff perfume cards.

pages: 382 words: 105,657

Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing
by Peter Robison
Published 29 Nov 2021

“Everyone’s telling me to be strong,” he said quietly in the chaotic jumble of people piecing through wreckage. “I can’t be. How can I be strong? How can I even live on? My family is my life.” Nadia and Michael, Samya’s parents, had spent that week in hellish movement: The flight from New York to Addis Ababa via Qatar, whisked through airport security by a U.S. Embassy attaché, no passports, no shots. A run-down Hilton with cold water, then the Hyatt. Nadia’s fury when one of the awkward young aides told her they couldn’t get Samya’s remains. But CNN was showing pictures of body bags! The embassy got the CNN reporter on the phone to explain that she didn’t know what was in the bags, and then a Red Cross worker who said they’d found nothing bigger than a femur.

pages: 489 words: 106,008

Risk: A User's Guide
by Stanley McChrystal and Anna Butrico
Published 4 Oct 2021

The Right Signal On a pleasant Tuesday morning in September 2001, while I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, conducting a routine parachute training jump, al-Qaeda shocked the world with a devastatingly lethal act of terror. In the United States it was flashbulb moment—an intense burst that seared itself into the nation’s memory. When nineteen hijackers passed unhindered through airport security, then successfully boarded and took control of four airplanes, subsequently turning the planes into weapons of death and destruction, it impacted the lives of every American. No community, however, has changed more as a result of the events of 9/11 than the one most often blamed for the oversights that failed to prevent the tragedy: the intelligence community.

pages: 350 words: 109,521

Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America
by Howard G. Buffett
Published 2 Apr 2018

Alternatively, and more long term, we should use our fifteen years of post-9/11 experience to rethink DHS and its mission. In addition to the tough conclusions of the Coburn report in 2015, many different analysts have noted that the grouping of agencies in DHS has not created the powerful synergies it was designed to achieve. “Americans are not safer because the head of DHS is simultaneously responsible for airport security and governmental efforts to counter potential flu epidemics,” Cato Institute analyst David Rittgers wrote in 2011. Rittgers proposed breaking apart DHS entirely, returning many of the component agencies to their original parent agencies and creating a “Border Security Administration” that would combine customs, immigration, and border patrol under one command.4 I think that is an interesting idea, and the increasing complexity of border threats should elevate the importance of such a command to a seat on the National Security Council.

pages: 403 words: 106,707

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
by Alex Hutchinson
Published 6 Feb 2018

“Never” is a long time, but I suspect the mountain would still be unclimbed to this day. The shoes add yet another wrinkle. On the day of the half-marathon, the New York Times publishes a grainy CT scan of a prototype, sent in by Yannis Pitsiladis, who heads a rival sub-two initiative, in which the carbon-fiber plate looks like a hidden knife revealed by airport security.4 The plate, the Times claims, is “meant to act as a kind of slingshot, or catapult, to propel runners forward.” Are such shoes, with their reported 4 percent efficiency boost, really fair? In a way, running is facing the same dilemma that confronted cycling’s governing body in the 1990s when they decided to “freeze” the technology permissible for the Hour record, and that faced swimming when they decided to ban polyurethane “fast suits” in 2010.

pages: 351 words: 108,068

The Man Who Was Saturday
by Patrick Bishop
Published 21 Jan 2019

Nonetheless, those around him sensed a deep hurt and guessed that the war was to blame. Veronica Beckett, who worked as his secretary in the early 1960s, recalled being told – perhaps by Diana – that he would ‘sometimes wake in the night screaming’.9 The children too have their recollections of behaviour that hinted at hidden scars, such as his irrational fear of airport security scanners. The phobia is confirmed by a diary entry more than thirty years after the ‘home run’ from Colditz. ‘I loathe travel,’ he wrote after arriving in Florence for a holiday with Diana in April 1973. ‘It reminds me of my escape, with the meticulous preparations to get through controls … I am very neurotic about this and panic easily.’

pages: 382 words: 107,150

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by Annelise Orleck
Published 27 Feb 2018

In Manila, fast-food workers sing the 1967 Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin anthem as they block rush-hour traffic: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to me.” I have heard that word from hotel workers in Providence, strawberry pickers in Oxnard, garment workers in Phnom Penh, airport workers in New York City. “You need to respect the job and the role we play,” says airport security guard Canute Drayton. “Bosses need to know that we are not garbage.” Around the world, low-wage workers are outlining a coherent vision of what a human-centered, post-neoliberal world might look like. What RESPECT means to them is this: a living wage; freedom of assembly, the right to unionize; job security, benefits; safe working conditions; an end to dispossessions, an end to deportations, and restraints on plunder of the earth for profit.

pages: 403 words: 110,492

Nomad Capitalist: How to Reclaim Your Freedom With Offshore Bank Accounts, Dual Citizenship, Foreign Companies, and Overseas Investments
by Andrew Henderson
Published 8 Apr 2018

One of the top reasons for having a second passport today is as an escape hatch from current or future tax burdens. It may not be ‘patriotic’ according to politicians, but it is your money, and it is not nice of them to insist on taking it just because you carry their passport. If you are not benefiting from the roads, the schools, or the beloved airport security of the United States, why pay? How to Obtain a Second Passport So how do you get a second passport? I thought you would never ask! There are four ways to do it. Let’s take a quick look at all of them and then dive into each one individually. The four methods are: • The “Lucky Sperm Club” Method: One of my friends is a Swiss and German dual national by birth.

pages: 371 words: 109,320

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World
by Alan Rusbridger
Published 26 Nov 2020

The online-only journalists, many of whom are young and at the beginning of their career, are encouraged to pad out picture-heavy pieces with adjectives, dissecting female bodies with all the vigour of abattoirs. Or, in one case, somehow trying to get mileage out of a singer who ‘dutifully passes through airport security’ and – the same singer – ‘exchanging looks’ with her actual husband. The verb that parades itself most often is ‘flaunt’. Not a word in common everyday usage, but useful when given ten minutes to knock off an extended caption for a picture of a person you probably haven’t heard of who is not wearing much.

The Deepest Map
by Laura Trethewey
Published 15 May 2023

The arrival had been all a “bit more sketchy than I had anticipated,” she said. Technically, she belonged to the ship’s crew, so she traveled the way ship crew the world over travel: she received a plane ticket but no instructions on where she was staying or how to get to her accommodations once she arrived. After she landed at the airport, security pulled her aside to ask about the extra hard drives Five Deeps had asked her to bring with her. After an intense round of questioning, she was let into the country. She stood on the curb of the arrivals terminal, feeling disoriented and looking out at the dark Caribbean night, whirring with a sound of insects louder than she had heard in her whole life.

pages: 394 words: 107,778

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission
by Eileen M. Collins and Jonathan H. Ward
Published 13 Sep 2021

See Chandra X-Ray Observatory aerobatic maneuvers, 49, 108, 111, 135, 163 age, space flight challenges, 278–279 aircraft commander school, 83 Air Force, 14, 286 Academy, 88–90, 131 “bottle-to-throttle” rule, 201 enlisted vs. officer, 19 Flight Screening Program (FSP, “Fishpot”), 34–36 flight training program, women, 29, 32–33 humanitarian missions, 82–83 Institute of Technology, 88 IUS Operations Control Center, 215 Manual 51-37, 44 Personnel Center, 87 Pilot Test School, 86–87 Professional Officer Corps (POC), 28 Regulation 60-16, 91 Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), 23–24, 28–33 Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) Third Lieutenant Program, 30–31 time-in-service waiver, 94 transfer policy, 93 Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT), 35–51, 90 women pilots, 24 See also Test Pilot School Air Force Magazine, 22 Air Force Systems Command, 112 Air Force Times, 87, 92 air traffic control, declaring emergencies to, 66–68, 135–137 airplanes, 13–14 Air Force Century Series, 22–23 airport security, 177 airsickness, 27–28, 31, 160, 163–164, 189 Alaska, 76 Albright, Madeleine, 217 alcohol, on space missions, 192 alcoholism, 8–11, 19 Aldrin, Buzz, 218 altitude chamber, 39, 106 Altman, Scott (Scooter), 225 Altus AFB, 75, 83 Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS). See Space Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX) Ames Research Center, 209 Ammoniaci, Lt., 111 Andersen AFB, 76 Anderson, Mike, 244, 254 Apollo 13, 252 Arbach, Bob, 106 Armstrong, Neil, 103, 153, 218 Arnold, Bruce, 108–109 Arnot Ogden Hospital, 15 Ashby, Jeff, 208, 212, 220, 233 asteroids, 231 astronaut astronaut interview, 118–119, 124 qualifications for selection, 72, 87–88, 117, 152, 158, 179 selection process, 118–130 astronaut beach house, 158–159, 219 astronaut candidate (ASCAN), 131, 146 Astronaut Crew Quarters, 124, 144, 146, 159, 217–219, 221, 222, 268 Astronaut Office chief information officer (CIO), 238 Astronaut Office Vehicle Systems Branch, 238 Astronaut Support Person (ASP), 139–145 duties, 140 Astronaut’s Prayer, 2 astronomy, 70, 205, 207, 231 Atlantis “cleanest vehicle” reputation, 181 cracks in flow liners, 241 fuel leaks, 132 Launch on Need rescue vehicle, 263 rudder/speed break actuators (RSBs), 261 STS-27R tile damage, 253 See also STS-84, STS-114 Austin, Bryan, 215 Austin, Texas, 135 Automated Transfer Vehicle, 197 autopilot, 4, 231–232, 263 basic training, 24–28 Beale AFB, 106 Beirut, Lebanon marine barracks bombing, 78–79 Ben Guerir, Morocco, 4 Bergstrom AFB, 135 Berlin Wall, 103–104 bicycle ergometer, 163–164 Bitburg, Germany, 193 Blagov, Viktor, 155 blind spots, gaps in knowledge, 284 Boeing, 214–215 Bolden, Charlie, 125 books, 13, 22, 180, 187, 285 Bowersox, Ken, 240 Brake, Jeff, 79 Brandenstein, Dan, 133 Brandt, Marlene, 38 bravery, 80, 121, 188, 286 Brown, Dave, 254 Budarin, Nikolai, 240 Building 9 (JSC), 132 Buran, 154 C-5 Galaxy, 31 C-9, 74 C-17 Globemaster III, 92 C-27A, 111 C-123, 27 C-130 Hercules, 31, 107 C-141 Starlifter, 74–75, 79–80, 82, 92, 138 crew, 75 as training to command space shuttle, 83–84 Cabana, Bob, 177, 205–206, 245 Cain, LeRoy, 259 call signs, 64–65, 139, 190, 228 Caltech, 119 Camarda, Charlie, 259, 263, 270, 276–277 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 215, 235 Camp El-Ne-Ho (summer camp), 13–14, 53 CAPCOM (capsule communicator), 145, 173, 177–178, 198, 225, 229, 243 Cape Canaveral, 267 Cape Crusader.

Coastal California
by Lonely Planet

For details, check www.getyouhome.gov. »All foreign passports must meet current US standards and be valid for at least six months longer than your intended stay. »MRP passports issued or renewed after October 26, 2006 must be e-passports (ie have a digital photo and integrated chip with biometric data). For more information, consult www.cbp.gov/travel. Air »To get through airport security checkpoints (30-minute wait times are standard), you’ll need a boarding pass and photo ID. »Some travelers may be required to undergo a secondary screening, involving hand pat-downs and carry-on-bag searches. »Airport security measures restrict many common items (eg pocketknives) from being carried on planes. Check current restrictions with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA; 866-289-9673; www.tsa.gov). »Currently, TSA requires that all carry-on liquids and gels be stored in 3oz or smaller bottles placed inside a quart-sized clear plastic zip-top bag.

Western USA
by Lonely Planet

All other nationals must carry their passport and, if needed, visas for entering Mexico and reentering the US. Regulations change frequently, so get the latest scoop at www.cbp.gov. Security » To get through airport security checkpoints (30-minute wait times are standard), you’ll need a boarding pass and photo ID. » Some travelers may be required to undergo a secondary screening, involving hand pat-downs and carry-on luggage searches. » Airport security measures restrict many common items (eg pocket knives) from being carried on planes. Check current restrictions with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA; 866-289-9673; www.tsa.gov). » Currently, TSA requires that all carry-on liquids and gels be stored in 3oz or smaller bottles placed inside a quart-sized clear plastic zip-top bag.

pages: 422 words: 119,439

Lunar Park
by Bret Easton Ellis
Published 15 Mar 2005

While steering the Range Rover down the empty interstate, I called ICM and asked them to set up the meeting with Ford’s people for the following day since I was flying in that night and was leaving Sunday morning. Everything went so efficiently that it was almost as if I had willed it. There was no traffic, I was whisked through airport security, the plane left on schedule, it was a smooth flight and we landed before the estimated arrival time at Long Beach (since so much of LAX was under reconstruction). When I spoke to Jayne while driving down the 405 toward Sunset she was “glad” (which I interpreted as “relieved”) that I was doing this for myself.

pages: 404 words: 113,514

Atrocity Archives
by Stross, Charles
Published 13 Jan 2004

The inner door opens and a big, shorthaired guy in a white shirt and black tie clears his throat and says, "Robert Howard, this way please." I follow him and he drops one of those silly badge-chains over my head then pushes me through a metal detector and gives me a cursory going over with a wand, airport security style. I grit my teeth. They know exactly who I am and who I work for: they're just doing this to make a point. He relieves me of my Leatherman multitool, my palmtop computer, my Maglite torch and pocket screwdriver set, the nifty folding keyboard, the MP3 walkman, the mobile phone, and a digital multimeter and patch cable set I'd forgotten about.

pages: 561 words: 114,843

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, + Website
by Matt Blumberg
Published 13 Aug 2013

Some great ideas have come out of flights I’ve taken in the past 13 years! Finally, my colleague and I get more social time than usual on a plane. Social time is an incredibly important part of managing and developing personal connections with employees. Time spent next to each other in the air, in an airport security line or lounge or in a rental car always lends itself to learning more about what’s going on in someone’s life. Don’t get me wrong: even when I travel with someone from Return Path, we each have some quiet time to read, work, sleep and contemplate life. The work and work-related aspects of the experience are not to be ignored. 3.

pages: 380 words: 118,675

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
by Brad Stone
Published 14 Oct 2013

It was a clever but transparent ploy, an effort to inflict further pain on Zappos. Employees who worked on Endless say that, naturally, this was Jeff Bezos’s idea. Yet Zappos still continued to grow. Its 2007 gross sales hit $840 million and in 2008 it topped $1 billion. That year, Bezos learned that Zappos was advertising on the bottoms of the plastic bins at airport-security checkpoints. “They are outthinking us!” he snapped at a meeting. But inside Zappos, a big problem had emerged. It had been acquiring inventory with a revolving $100 million line of credit, and the financial crisis, which intensified with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008, froze the capital markets.

pages: 349 words: 114,038

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution
by Pieter Hintjens
Published 11 Mar 2013

As with any bad news that affects us all, be it climate change, nuclear meltdown in Japan, rising fuel prices, deforestation, pollution, and so on, we deal with it by making it someone else's problem. Sure, it's bad, yet it affects so many people. So someone else will fix it. It's much like airport security, which everyone knows is pointless and annoying theater. We tolerate it unless it makes us miss our connections, because it's more fun than being ignored. Airports are frankly boring places. If every street-smart flier complains about the TSA, isn't that just because some people enjoy complaining?

pages: 386 words: 113,709

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
by Matthew B. Crawford
Published 8 Jun 2020

Just as with mechanized traffic enforcement, this social apparatus has to characterize people as childlike in their vulnerability, and the world as bristling with hazards that need to be regulated. A further parallel is that the system guarantees more collisions, as it were, and hence calls for more intervention. Our social amber time is approaching zero. 10.Jason Chaffetz, former chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, details the absurdities of airport security theater in his book The Deep State. In contemporary America, the role of Congress appears to be mainly that of brokering business deals, using its budgetary oversight of the administrative state (the customer) to take a brokerage fee in the form of campaign contributions from vendors—while distracting voters with culture war.

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich , Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein
Published 6 Sep 2021

There are the voice recognition services (“Alexa” and “Hey, Siri!”) that collect what we say, the facial recognition (every digital photo service that tags you, your family, and friends) that analyzes our faces, the biometric fingerprinting (our retinas, our thumbprints, our gait) that enables swift passage through airport security or access to our digital devices, and the location tracking in our smartphones that helps us navigate when we drive or call an Uber or Lyft. There are digital card swipes that trace and track our entry to our workplace or home, along with video doorbells, digital thermostats, fitness trackers, and on and on.

pages: 389 words: 112,319

Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life
by Ozan Varol
Published 13 Apr 2020

“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something,” Upton Sinclair said, “when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” If you were a horse breeder in Detroit in the early 1900s, you would have assumed that your competition was other breeders raising stronger and faster horses. If you ran a cab company ten years ago, you would have assumed that your competition was other cab companies. If you run airport security, you assume that the primary threat will come from another guy with a bomb in his shoe, so you “solve” terrorism by making everyone take off their shoes. In each case, the past drowns out the future. Steady as she goes—until you hit an iceberg. Research shows that we become increasingly rule bound as we grow older.4 Events begin to rhyme.

pages: 370 words: 112,809

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future
by Orly Lobel
Published 17 Oct 2022

Channeling Facial Recognition for Good Facial recognition software, which scans an image or video of a person’s face and matches it with a similar stored image to identify the person, is perhaps the most controversial AI technology in recent years. It has been rapidly introduced for a variety of uses ranging from law enforcement, airport security, and employee clearance to dating apps and friend mapping on social networks. Facial recognition has tremendous benefits when it comes to fighting trafficking and sexual abuse, for example, but the harms of inaccurate facial recognition—and the legal and ethical pitfalls of the technology itself—cannot be understated.

pages: 472 words: 117,093

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
Published 26 Jun 2017

The recent decline in the number of bank tellers in the United States indicates to us that once virtualization that is robust enough becomes available for a given process, many people will take advantage of it, especially as time passes and more and more of the population consists of “digital natives.” This is especially true if the human option takes longer or is otherwise less efficient and pleasant. If completely automated and equally safe and private airport security suddenly became available, how many of us would choose to stand in line and be screened by a human TSA agent? After enough technical progress, enough experimentation, and enough iteration, we believe that automated and digitally mediated processes will become quite widespread and will take the place of many that are now mediated by people.

pages: 465 words: 124,074

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda
by John Mueller
Published 1 Nov 2009

Slovic, Paul. 2000. “Perception of Risk from Radiation.” In The Perception of Risk, ed. Paul Slovic. London: Earthscan, 264–74. Smith, Derek D. 2006. Deterring America: Rogue States and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Patrick. 2007. “The Airport Security Follies.” nytimes.com 28 December. jetlagged.blogs.nytimes.com/author/psmith/2007/12/28/ Smith, R. Jeffrey, and David Hoffman. 1997. “No Support Found for Report of Lost Russian Suitcase-Sized Nuclear Weapons.” Washington Post 5 September: A19. Smoke, Richard. 1993. National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma: An Introduction to the American Experience in the Cold War. 3rd ed.

pages: 525 words: 116,295

The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives
by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen
Published 22 Apr 2013

“Biometric” refers to information that can be used to uniquely identify individuals through their physical and biological attributes. Fingerprinting, photographs and DNA testing are all familiar biometric data types today. Indeed, the next time you visit Singapore, you might be surprised to find that airport security requires both a filled-out customs form and a scan of your voice. In the future, voice-recognition and facial-recognition software will largely surpass all of these earlier forms in accuracy and use. The facial-recognition systems of today use a camera to zoom in on an individual’s eyes, mouth and nose, and extract a “feature vector,” which is a set of numbers that describes key aspects of the image, such as the precise distance between the eyes.

pages: 366 words: 123,151

The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today
by Ted Conover
Published 15 Jan 2010

I was delighted and relieved, because the Lagos airport is an almost mythically awful place, notorious among travelers for shakedowns by officials, and also the only airport on earth about which the U.S. government had seen fit, at various times, to post signs in American airports alerting travelers that “the U.S. Secretary of Transportation has determined that Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, Nigeria, does not maintain and carry out effective airport security measures.” I read the phrase again on a special page of my plane ticket, and was reminded to pass my arrival information on to Agbonifo so that he could tell Bill. No sooner had I said “airport” on the phone than Agbonifo told me to make sure I arrived in the morning, so that I wouldn’t have to drive into the city when it was dark: bandits prey on cars leaving the airport at night, he warned.

pages: 413 words: 119,587

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots
by John Markoff
Published 24 Aug 2015

His assignment was to find new applications for these instruments that could detect minute variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. Varian was the perfect match for Breiner’s 360-degree intelligence. For the first time highly sensitive magnetometers were becoming portable, and there was a willing market for clever new applications that would range from finding oil to airport security. Years later Breiner would become something of a high-tech Indiana Jones, using the technology to explore archaeological settings. In Breiner’s expert hands, Varian magnetometers would find avalanche victims, buried treasure, missing nuclear submarines, and even buried cities. Early on he conducted a field experiment from a site behind Stanford, where he measured the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a 1.4-megaton nuclear detonation 250 miles above the Earth.

pages: 257 words: 56,811

The Rough Guide to Toronto
by Helen Lovekin and Phil Lee
Published 29 Apr 2006

Trips to Toronto from major cities such as New York, Detroit, Chicago and Montréal take eleven, six, ﬁfteen and eight hours, respectively. From Los Angeles, it’s about a two-and-a-half-day journey, so budget and time constraints are the determining factors here. By Rail Rail travel to Toronto has become more popular, given the increased amount of time spent in airport security lines over the last few years. As with buses, Toronto’s train terminal, the graceful old Union Station, is conveniently located downtown. Train travel does takes time, however: a trip from New York City is thirteen hours (which includes a wait of about an hour and twenty minutes at the border) and it takes around ﬁfteen hours from Chicago.

pages: 381 words: 120,361

Sunfall
by Jim Al-Khalili
Published 17 Apr 2019

If all went to plan, the authorities would be hunting for her in and around the vast Central Station for long enough to buy her the time she needed to board her flight. She chose a seat towards the back of the carriage and, for the second time in the space of a few minutes, slumped down exhausted, grateful that the other passengers were ignoring her. The squelch jammer could still do the trick of disrupting the airport security cameras, but she should now assume the new identity that Evren had provided for her. There would surely be heightened security at the airport, but if the e-pill she’d taken did what it was meant to then any cameras and scanners running surveillance software would register her fake ID. She sighed inwardly: it was a big if.

pages: 385 words: 121,550

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles
by Fintan O'Toole
Published 5 Mar 2020

So with the author, the editors and the peer reviewers, there are at least twenty-five super-educated people, most of them professional historians, who read that in 1707 ‘England… also included Wales and parts of Ireland’ and did not cry out in amazement. This egregious piece of nonsense got through the intellectual equivalent of high-level airport security screening and set off no alarms. Now, okay, this is one half-sentence in one book. Five years ago, it would barely have seemed worthy of complaint. But in the great upheaval of British politics since 2016, we’ve all had a crash course in ignorance. It has become increasingly clear that the nature of what Theresa May calls the ‘precious, precious union’ is in fact increasingly unclear to much of the political and intellectual nexus in Britain.

pages: 402 words: 126,835

The Job: The Future of Work in the Modern Era
by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Published 22 Oct 2018

“Baggage screeners have it especially tough,” Anteby told me. “They feel they are ‘disappeared’ into the woodwork, interchangeable, no more than a code number. The only way they can get noticed as individuals is to screw up. And that’s what those surveillance cameras are about.” I had been through countless airport security checks, and found it hard to believe that TSA agents felt so beleaguered. While some seem bored, most appeared cheerful and even empathic. There was that TSA comradery, where agents josh among themselves and sometimes with passengers. But speaking with an actual TSA agent, I learned that these benefits are undercut by management practices that can take all the fun—and sense of purpose—out of the job.

pages: 427 words: 127,496

Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service
by Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal
Published 1 Jan 2010

In Tel Aviv, the documents seized during Spring of Youth helped solve a mystery that had preoccupied the Mossad for the previous two years. That was the Passover Affair. In April 1971, two young, pretty Frenchwomen landed at Lod airport and tried to go through immigration with fake French passports. The airport security had received an early warning about their arrival. The girls were taken to a side room where they were searched by policewomen and Shabak female officers. The search revealed something strange: the women’s clothing, including their underwear, weighed twice what would feel like its normal weight.

pages: 482 words: 121,173

Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Published 9 Sep 2019

This includes where decisions may create a risk of bodily or emotional harm to a consumer, where there may be implications on human or fundamental rights, or where a consumer’s personal freedom or privacy may be impinged.” Smith, “Facial Recognition.” Back to note reference 20. A camera that uses facial recognition at a specific location like an airport security checkpoint to help identify a terrorist suspect is one example. Even in this instance, however, it’s important to require meaningful human review by trained personnel before a decision is made to detain someone. Back to note reference 21. Carpenter v. United States, No. 16-402, 585 U.S. (2017), https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-402_h315.pdf.

pages: 309 words: 121,279

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters
by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Published 21 Jun 2023

In reality, it creates the awkward feeling of wearing clown shoes, which along with the outdated outerwear and ill-fitting helmet, does not leave me brimming with confidence. We pass through another set of guarded, security-coded gates. Then, under the watchful gaze of two guards (due to the pandemic, even security is socially distanced) and I am handed one of those wand-like devices that you see at airport security, used to detect explosive chemicals. I sweep it over my clothing like a lint brush, sheepishly, before the guards wave me through. Once we pass through I hear the sound of the plant’s radiation monitoring system, its rhythmic blip-blip-blip evocative of a hospital ward. Jonathan hands me a dosimeter, a small white device used to measure radiation.

pages: 536 words: 126,051

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion
by Dean Burnett
Published 10 Jan 2023

absence of emotions: DB’s imagined scenario 1, 2, 3; negative consequences of 1; in science fiction 1, 2, 3, 4 acting work: actor/character relationship 1; emotional labour 1 action representation network (brain) 1 adolescence and early adulthood: brain development 1; crushes 1, 2; intense emotions 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; safe exposure to negative emotions 1, 2; social media use 1 see also infancy and childhood affect: definition and components 1; versus basic emotions 1 airport security, facial recognition technology 1 altruism 1, 2 amygdala (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9; gender differences 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory formation 1; as part of olfactory system 1 AND model of nightmare production 1 anger: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; and colour red 1, 2; DB’s anger during grief 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1, 2; as ‘masculine’ 1(fn); and motivation 1, 2 see also negative emotions angular gyrus (brain region) 1, 2 anosmia (inability to smell) 1 anterior cingulate cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 anterior olfactory nucleus (brain region) 1 anxiety: caused by work 1; performance anxiety 1; social anxiety 1, 2, 3; and status 1; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 see also negative emotions; stress apatheia (ultimate goal of Stoicism) 1 appraisal theory 1, 2 approach-attachment behaviour 1 approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2 arguments with romantic partner 1 arousal (component of affect) 1, 2, 3 asexuality 1 @AstroKatie (Katherine Mack) 1 attachment during early childhood 1, 2 see also parent emotional bond attention restoration, and colour green 1 auditory cortex (brain region) 1, 2(fn) auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn) autism 1, 2 automated voices and announcements, annoyance caused by 1 avatar therapy 1 avoid versus approach motivation 1, 2 babies in the womb, playing music to 1, 2 baby-parent emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood Bain, Alexander 1 Baron-Cohen, Simon 1 Barrett, Lisa Feldman 1, 2 basal ganglia (brain region) 1 basic emotions theory 1, 2, 3, 4 BDSM (sexual practice) 1, 2 belief perseverance 1 Bell, Charles 1, 2 bias: confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; negativity bias 1, 2 Blackmore, Chris 1, 2, 3 blinking, by cartoon characters 1 blood sugar, effect on emotions 1 blue colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 body, emotions experienced in see physiology-emotion connection body language: communicating emotion 1, 2, 3, 4; mimicry 1; missing from communication technologies 1 brain: body’s influence on 1; competing resource demands 1, 2, 3; development 1; distinguishing what is real/not real 1, 2; emotions as conscious or subconscious processes 1; gender differences (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; influence of oestrogen and testosterone 1; left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn); lobotomies 1; mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4; nervous and endocrine system regulation 1; neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; reward pathway and system 1, 2, 3, 4; somatic marker hypothesis 1; spindle cells 1; synapses 1, 2; triune model 1, 2 see also cognition (thinking); learning (of information); memory(ies) brain, functional regions: action representation 1; auditory processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5(fn); cognition 1, 2, 3, 4; disgust 1; emotional regulation 1, 2; emotions (overview) 1, 2, 3; fear 1; imagination 1; intention processing 1; language processing 1; love 1, 2; lust 1, 2; memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; motivation 1, 2; olfactory processing 1, 2; visual processing 1, 2, 3 see also specific brain regions brain scans, limitations for studying emotions 1 brainstem 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 breastfeeding 1, 2 Broca’s area (brain) 1 Brown, Thomas 1, 2 Buddhism 1 bullying online 1 burnout 1, 2 Bushman, B.J. 1 bystander effect 1 cancer awareness, role of news and media 1 canned laughter, annoyance caused by 1, 2 categories and types of emotion: basic emotions (theory) 1, 2, 3, 4; identified by James McCosh 1 see also identifying and defining ‘emotions’ cats and other pets, emotional attachment to 1 caudate nucleus (brain region) 1 celebrity endorsements 1, 2, 3, 4 cerebellum (brain region) 1, 2, 3 childbirth, role of oxytocin 1 childhood see infancy and childhood chilli, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 cigarette smoke, DB’s memories and associations 1, 2 cognition-emotion relationship see emotion-cognition relationship cognition (thinking): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4; effect of love on 1; executive control 1, 2, 3; ‘flow’ state 1; and intrusive thoughts 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and social relationships 1, 2 see also learning (of information) cognitive dissonance 1 colours: cultural associations 1; in DB’s friend’s home 1, 2; emotional response to 1; and visual processing 1, 2, 3 communicating and sharing emotions: machine detection of emotions 1, 2; nonverbal information 1, 2, 3; online versus in-person 1, 2; at work 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also emotional contagion; empathy; facial expressions and emotions communication technologies see phone calls; social media and online communication; therapeutic applications of technologies; video calls confirmation bias 1, 2, 3 conformity 1, 2, 3, 4 consciousness, evolution of 1 consolidation of memories 1, 2, 3, 4 conspiracy theories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 see also deception; misinformation and ‘fake news’ constructed emotions theory 1, 2 corpus callosum (brain region) 1 cortex/neocortex (brain region) (in general) 1 see also specific regions of the cortex cortisol 1 cross-race effect 1 crushes, in adolescence 1, 2 crying: DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; gender differences 1; induced by TV and films 1; types and functions of tears 1 cuteness and cute aggression 1 cyberbullying 1 dancing 1 Darwin, Charles 1, 2 deception: automated voices and announcements 1; response to 1, 2; self-deception 1 see also manipulation of emotions; misinformation and ‘fake news’ defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 deindividuation and ‘mob mentality’ 1 depression: caused by work 1, 2; gender differences 1; and gut microbiome 1; and memory 1; post-natal depression 1, 2; vagus nerve stimulation treatment 1 Diana, Princess of Wales, impact of death 1 digestive system, influence of 1, 2 disgust: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; and colour green 1; facial expression of 1, 2; and horror 1; and memory 1; and suppressed motivation 1 see also negative emotions doctors, emotional aspects of work 1 dopamine 1 drama therapy 1 dreams and nightmares: AND model 1; bizarre nature of 1, 2; DB’s bad dreams 1, 2, 3; due to COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; and emotion processing 1; Freud’s interpretations 1; and memory consolidation 1; and mental health 1; post-traumatic 1; prevalence of nightmares 1; recurring 1; threat simulation theory 1 Dunbar’s number (of social relationships) 1 dysgranular field (brain region) 1 dysphoria 1 see also depression e-learning, motivation in 1 earworms 1 Ekman, Paul 1, 2, 3, 4 Eleri, Carys 1 embarrassment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 see also negative emotions emojis and emoticons 1 emotion-cognition relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; in attention and focus 1, 2, 3, 4; belief perseverance 1; cognitive dissonance 1; competition for brain’s resources 1, 2; confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; distinction recognised by Stoics 1; in effect of emotions experienced 1; in empathy 1; in ‘flow’ state 1; interrelatedness (in general) 1, 2, 3, 4; in learning and information processing 1, 2, 3; in love 1; motivated reasoning 1; in motivation 1, 2, 3; negativity bias 1, 2; role of imagination 1; shared evolutionary origin 1; in stage fright 1 emotion-memory relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; emotions triggered by memories 1, 2, 3, 4; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; happy memories being more detailed 1; for implicit memories 1; later emotions changing memories 1, 2, 3; longevity and potency of emotional memories 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; in memory consolidation 1, 2; in PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; role of nightmares 1; suppressing emotional memories 1 emotional contagion: dangers of ‘mob mentality’ 1; versus empathy 1; evolutionary importance 1; from groups of people 1, 2, 3; from music 1, 2, 3; neurological mechanism for 1; from social media 1 emotional detachment/suppression at work 1, 2, 3, 4 emotional manipulation see manipulation of emotions emotional processing 1, 2 emotional regulation, brain regions responsible for 1, 2 emotional relationships: attachment during early childhood 1, 2; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3; role of neurotransmitters 1, 2; romantic see romantic relationships; see also social relationships emotions: causing change 1; as conscious/subconscious processes 1; historical study of 1; identifying and defining 1, 2, 3, 4; language of 1, 2 see also categories and types of emotion; communicating and sharing emotions; emotion relationship; emotion relationship; negative emotions; physiology connection; positive emotions; specific emotions empathy: and autism 1, 2; in babies 1; and body language mimicry 1; versus emotional contagion 1; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; influence of own emotions on 1; as ingrained 1, 2; ingroup versus outgroup bias 1; versus mentalising (theory of mind) 1; neurological mechanism for 1, 2, 3, 4; and physical pain 1; in romantic relationships 1; as selfish/unselfish 1 endocannabinoids 1 endocrine system 1 endorphins 1, 2 envy 1, 2 see also negative emotions episodic memories 1, 2, 3 evaluative conditioning 1 excitation transfer theory 1 executive control 1, 2, 3 see also cognition (thinking) existential dread, as a motivator 1 explicit memories 1 extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation 1 Facebook: DB’s use of 1, 2; research into emotional manipulation 1, 2, 3 see also social media and online communication faces, seeing in inanimate objects 1 facial colour changes 1 facial expressions and emotions: in artificial/CGI faces (uncanny valley) 1; automated emotion recognition 1; in cartoon characters (blinking) 1; cross-cultural similarities and differences 1, 2; difficulties distinguishing between emotions without context 1, 2, 3; early writings on 1; Ekman’s work 1, 2, 3, 4; ‘invisible’ emotions 1; involuntary nature of expressions 1, 2, 3, 4; online curation of emotions portrayed 1 facial paralysis, and empathy 1 facial recognition, cross-race effect 1 facial recognition technology 1 fading affect bias 1, 2, 3 ‘fake news’ see misinformation and ‘fake news’ fandom 1, 2 see also parasocial (one relationships fear: as ‘basic’ emotion 1, 2; brain region associated with 1; enjoyment of 1, 2; facial expression and colour 1, 2; as first emotion 1; of flying 1; and horror 1; and imagination 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3; in PTSD 1; smell of (in sweat) 1 see also negative emotions films and TV causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 Firth-Godbehere, Richard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 flat Earth conspiracy theory 1, 2 ‘flow’ state 1 flying, fear of 1 football shirts, red colour’s competitive advantage 1 Freud, Sigmund 1, 2 friendships 1, 2 see also emotional relationships; social relationships frosty atmospheres, emotional contagion 1, 2 funerals: crying at 1; of DB’s father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; emotional contagion at 1, 2; live streaming 1, 2 gender differences: adolescent crushes 1(fn); attitudes towards infidelity 1; in brains (beliefs and experimental studies) 1; in brains (DB’s impossible experiment) 1; in emotional regulation and expression 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ‘maternal instinct’ 1; mental health problems 1; other physiological differences 1; societal influences 1 gender discrimination 1, 2, 3 goal distraction 1 green colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 grief: DB’s acceptance of emotions 1; DB’s anger 1, 2, 3; DB’s attempts to disguise grief 1; DB’s emotional confusion 1, 2, 3; DB’s (in)ability to cry 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; DB’s motivation and productivity 1, 2; DB’s need to talk after funeral 1; at death of Princess Diana 1; emotional processing 1, 2; shared grieving 1; stages of 1 see also negative emotions guilt 1 see also negative emotions habituation 1, 2 ‘hangry’ behaviour 1 happiness 1 hippocampus (brain region): and dreaming 1; and emotional regulation 1; and emotions processing 1, 2, 3; and imagination 1; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and navigation 1 Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2 Holmes, Sherlock (analogy for action representation) 1 hormones: cortisol 1; digestive 1, 2; effect of tears on 1; influence on the brain (and emotions) 1; oestrogen 1, 2; oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; testosterone 1, 2, 3; vasopressin 1, 2, 3 see also endocrine system horror (emotion) 1 horror movies 1, 2, 3 hypothalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 hysteria 1 Icke, David 1 identification, in parasocial relationships 1 identifying and defining ‘emotions’ 1, 2, 3, 4 imaginary friends 1 imagination and mental imagery 1, 2 imitation of observed actions 1 implicit memories 1 impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 infancy and childhood: attachment with primary caregiver 1, 2; breastfeeding 1, 2; DB’s memories of 1, 2; emotional experiences 1; empathy in babies 1; imaginary friends 1; importance of sense of smell 1; learning from media characters 1; nightmare frequency 1, 2; oxytocin in newborns 1; parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also adolescence and early adulthood inferior frontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 inferior parietal cortex (brain region) 1 infidelity, emotional versus sexual 1 insular cortex (insula) (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 intelligence, and brain anatomy 1 intention processing 1 intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1 intrusive thoughts 1 Izard, Carroll E. 1 jealousy 1 Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth 1 language of emotions 1, 2 language processing 1 learning (of information): from media characters 1; motivation 1, 2; from other people 1, 2; processing demands and information prioritisation 1, 2; from senses 1 LeDoux, Joseph 1 left brain/right brain facts and myths 1, 2, 3(fn), 4(fn) limbic system (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 lobotomies 1 Lomas, Tim 1 London taxi drivers, brain study 1 losing oneself in a book/film 1 love: brain regions associated with 1, 2; demands on the brain 1; effect on cognition 1; for family and friends 1, 2(fn); role of dopamine 1; romantic love 1, 2, 3 see also romantic relationships lust and sexual attraction: asexuality 1; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and romantic relationships 1, 2; Stoics’ rejection of 1, 2; suppression of 1 Mack, Katherine (@AstroKatie) 1 mammal brain (region) 1, 2, 3, 4 manipulation of emotions: by authorities 1; for marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; response to 1; by social media 1; by traditional news and media 1, 2, 3, 4 marketing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 McCosh, James 1 medical work, emotional aspects 1 memory(ies): brain regions associated with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; changeable nature of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; connections with objects 1, 2, 3, 4; consolidation 1, 2, 3, 4; DB’s memories of early childhood 1, 2; DB’s memories of his father 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; episodic memories 1, 2, 3; explicit memories 1; fading affect bias 1, 2, 3; forgetting memories 1; and imagination 1; implicit memories 1; and music 1; procedural memories 1; reminiscence bump 1; retroactive memory enhancement 1; semantic memories 1; and sleep 1; and smell(s) 1, 2, 3, 4; suppression of 1; as synapses 1, 2; working memory 1; Zeigarnik effect 1 see also emotion relationship mental health/illness: and social media 1; and status 1; therapeutic applications of technologies 1 see also anxiety; depression; PTSD; schizophrenia mental imagery and imagination 1, 2 mentalising (theory of mind) 1, 2 mirror neurons 1, 2, 3, 4 mirroring body language 1 misinformation and ‘fake news’: about COVID-19 pandemic 1, 2; David Icke’s space lizards 1; flat Earth theory 1, 2; and social media/internet 1, 2, 3, 4; susceptibility to 1 see also deception ‘mob mentality’ (deindividuation) 1 Moebius syndrome (facial paralysis) 1 monkey experiments, mirror neurons 1 Morgan, Matt 1 motivated reasoning 1 motivation: approach-attachment behaviour 1; approach versus avoid motivation 1, 2; brain regions associated with 1, 2; and cognition 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; DB’s experiences during grief 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation 1; and novelty 1, 2, 3, 4 motivational salience 1 music: dancing 1; DB’s emotional response to 1, 2, 3, 4; differentiating between voice and instruments 1; earworms 1; emotional contagion from 1, 2, 3; emotional response to 1, 2; evolutionary significance 1, 2; and memory 1 musical expectancy 1, 2 navigation, role of hippocampus 1 negative emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and creativity 1; emotion processing 1, 2; feeling good whilst experiencing 1, 2, 3; induced by TV and films 1, 2, 3, 4; and intrusive thoughts 1; and memory 1, 2, 3; as more impactful than positive emotions 1; negativity bias 1, 2; and novelty 1; and performance 1 see also specific emotions negativity bias 1, 2 nervous systems: enteric (‘second brain’) 1; parasympathetic 1, 2, 3; regulation by brain 1; somatic and autonomic 1; sympathetic 1, 2, 3 neurotransmitters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 news and media (traditional): credibility 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional content 1, 2, 3, 4; precursors to 1 see also conspiracy theories; misinformation and ‘fake news’; social media and online communication nightmares see dreams and nightmares noises, emotional response to 1, 2, 3 see also music novelty 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 objects, and memories 1, 2, 3, 4 oestrogen 1, 2 olfactory bulb and cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3 olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 one-sided relationships see parasocial (one-sided) relationships online communication see social media and online communication online learning, motivation in 1 orbitofrontal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 oxytocin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pain (physical): and empathy 1; enjoyment of 1, 2 paracingulate sulcus (brain region) 1 parasocial (one-sided) relationships: adolescent crushes 1, 2; benefits 1, 2; ending the relationship 1; with fictional characters 1, 2, 3, 4; identification with the object 1; with imaginary friends 1; losing oneself in a narrative 1; meeting the object 1; negative aspects 1; neurological mechanisms 1; with people you haven’t met 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 parasympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 Parch (TV drama), actor’s experiences 1 pareidolia 1 parent-baby emotional bond 1, 2, 3 see also attachment during early childhood ‘passions’ 1, 2, 3 pathos 1 performance anxiety (stage fright) 1 personality, influence of early experiences 1, 2 phone calls: DB’s last call to father 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1; walking around during 1 physiology-emotion connection: body influencing emotion 1; emotion influencing the body 1; somatic marker hypothesis 1 see also crying Pickle (DB’s cat) 1 Pixar movies 1, 2(fn), 3 positive emotions: and attention/focus 1, 2; and memory 1, 2 see also specific emotions ‘Positive Lexicography’ project 1 post-natal depression 1, 2 posterior parietal cortex (brain region) 1, 2 prefrontal cortex (brain region): cognitive functions 1, 2, 3; and emotional regulation 1, 2; and emotions processing 1, 2; and imagination 1; influence of testosterone 1; and memory 1; and mentalising (theory of mind) 1; and motivation 1, 2 pride 1 procedural memories 1 processing (negative) emotions 1, 2 Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time 1 psycho-emotional tears 1, 2 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 racism: cross-race effect 1; and oxytocin 1 rage see anger red colour, associations and effects 1, 2, 3 relationships see emotional relationships religious perspectives on emotions 1 reminiscence bump 1 reptile brain (region) 1 ‘resting bitch face’ 1 retroactive memory enhancement 1 reward, and motivation 1 reward pathways of brain 1, 2, 3, 4 Ridley, Rosalind 1 Rippon, Gina 1, 2, 3 romantic relationships: adolescent crushes as preparation for 1; attitudes towards infidelity 1; disagreements and disputes 1; emotional connection between partners 1, 2; empathy versus problem ‘fixing’ in 1; long-term relationships 1, 2; love in 1, 2, 3; negative emotions in 1; online versus in-person 1; and own identity 1, 2; physical attraction in 1, 2; role of oxytocin 1; stress associated with losing partner 1, 2; trumpeting on social media 1 see also emotional relationships sadness: as ‘basic’ emotion 1; and colour blue 1, 2; enjoyment of 1, 2, 3; facial expression of 1 schadenfreude 1, 2 schizophrenia 1 scientific method 1, 2 scientists: motivations 1, 2, 3; popular portrayal as lacking emotion 1 self-deception 1 semantic memories 1 Sesame Street (TV) show, learning from 1 sex differences see gender differences sexism see gender discrimination sexual activity, BDSM 1, 2 sexual attraction see lust and sexual attraction sharing emotions see communicating and sharing emotions Simpsons, The (TV show), blinking in 1(fn) Singer, Tania 1 sleep 1, 2, 3 see also dreams and nightmares smell(s): anosmia (inability to smell) 1; DB’s memories of cigarette smoke 1, 2; and emotions 1, 2; evolutionary importance 1, 2, 3; and memory 1, 2, 3, 4; olfactory system 1, 2, 3, 4 social anxiety 1, 2, 3 social media and online communication: adolescents 1; adults/older people 1; emojis and emoticons 1; and emotional contagion 1; impression management 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1, 2; live streaming funerals 1, 2; machine detection of emotions 1; negative aspects 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; online versus in-person emotions and personae 1; positive aspects 1, 2; versus real-world interactions, cognitive demands 1; and reward 1, 2, 3; and self-deception 1; and self-validation 1, 2, 3; and status 1, 2 see also conspiracy theories; Facebook; misinformation and ‘fake news’; news and media (traditional); video calls social relationships: cognitive load associated with 1, 2; Dunbar’s number 1; friendships 1, 2; one-sided see parasocial (one-sided) relationships; see also emotional relationships somatic marker hypothesis 1 spicy food, enjoyment of pain caused by 1 spindle cells 1 Spiner, Brent 1 sports kit, competitive advantage of wearing red 1 SPOT (Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques) programme 1 stage fright 1 stalkers 1 Star Trek: The Next Generation (TV series): Data actor’s experience of fans 1; Data’s inability to choose ice-cream flavour 1 Star Trek (TV series): Stoicism of Vulcans 1, 2; universal use of English language 1 Starbucks (branding) 1 status: and emotions 1; and social media 1, 2; subjective status and mental health 1 Stoics and Stoicism 1, 2 stress: benefits of green environments for 1; caused by uncertainty 1; caused by work 1, 2; coping mechanisms 1; cortisol 1; Holmes and Rahe stress scale 1, 2; PTSD 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and status 1; Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 see also anxiety; negative emotions striatum (brain region) 1 study of emotions (historical) 1 suicide 1, 2 superior temporal cortex (brain region) 1, 2, 3, 4 suppression of emotions: during disagreements with romantic partner 1; in learning and decision making (as impossible) 1; at work 1, 2, 3, 4 supramarginal gyrus (brain region) 1 surprise 1, 2 sympathetic nervous system 1, 2, 3 synapses (neuron connections) 1, 2 taxi drivers, brain study 1 tears, types and functions of 1 teenage years see adolescence and early adulthood temporal lobe (brain region) 1, 2 testosterone 1, 2, 3 thalamus (brain region) 1, 2, 3 theories of emotions see basic emotions theory; constructed emotions theory theory of mind (mentalising) 1, 2 thinking see cognition (thinking) threat simulation theory 1 transportation phenomenon 1 triune brain model 1, 2 TV and films causing negative emotions 1, 2, 3, 4 types of emotion see categories and types of emotion uncanny valley 1 uncertainty, unpleasant nature of 1 vagus nerve 1 valence (component of affect) 1, 2 vasopressin 1, 2, 3 video calls: DB’s call with friends after father’s funeral 1; lack of nonverbal emotional cues 1 virtual reality (VR) 1 visual cortex (brain region) 1, 2 visual processing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 see also colours voice characteristics, and communicating emotion 1 volcano/cupcake scenario (competing motivations) 1 wine tasting and appreciation 1 work and workplaces: communicating the wrong emotions at work 1; DB’s job embalming cadavers 1, 2, 3(fn); emotional aspects of medical work 1; emotional detachment/suppression 1, 2, 3, 4; emotional labour of acting work 1; mental health problems caused by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; performance appraisals 1, 2; wellbeing initiatives 1, 2 working memory 1 yawning, as contagious 1 Yerkes-Dodson curve 1 Zeigarnik effect (tendency to forget completed tasks) 1 ‘zone,’ state of being in 1 Zoom calls see video calls About the Author Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist, blogger, sometimes-comedian and author.

pages: 487 words: 124,008

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
by Kashmir Hill
Published 19 Sep 2023

“Mort liked me,” he said of Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate magnate who owned the paper, to whom he was introduced by Giuliani contacts. Schwartz oversaw editorial coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, including an ironic push, given his past work in privatization, for the federal government to take over airport security, presaging the creation of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA). By 2006, he had left the Daily News to go into the behind-the-scenes world of management and strategic consulting, giving his advice and connections to whoever was willing to pay for them. His partner was a longtime PR guy named Ken Frydman; they had worked together for Giuliani and then for the Daily News.

pages: 384 words: 121,574

Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption
by Patrick Alley
Published 17 Mar 2022

Let’s meet at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.’ Johnny probably thought it would be wise to meet in a crowded space where he could call for help if we turned out to be as mad as we seemed. But before we went to meet him, we had another task. We had delayed assembling the secret-camera gear until now, to minimize any unwanted interest at airport security. We laid the constituent parts on the bed. I unpicked the stitching at one end of the camera bag with a scalpel and then cut a hole in the padding and inserted the circuit board and lens. I glued this to the inside of the outer skin of the bag with just the pin head of the lens visible through a tiny hole we’d cut for the purpose.

pages: 404 words: 126,447

Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire
by Hans Gremeil and William Sposato
Published 15 Dec 2021

With a trial date pending, Ghosn brazenly jumped bail in Japan and fled to his ancestral homeland of Lebanon, aided by a team of operatives led by a former Green Beret. The thrilling dark-of-night escape involved secretly racing halfway across Japan, packing the then sixty-five-year-old captain of industry into an oversized audio equipment case and smuggling him through lax airport security. Ghosn left behind a record-setting bail payment of ¥1.5 billion ($13.7 million). Yet to Ghosn, the price was worth it. He was now essentially a free man, sheltering in a country that has no extradition treaty with Japan and which is loath to deport its own. Suddenly, it was unclear whether he would ever answer the charges in court.

pages: 666 words: 131,148

Frommer's Seattle 2010
by Karl Samson
Published 10 Mar 2010

Also, note that many banks now assess a 1% to 3% “transaction fee” on all charges you incur abroad (whether you’re using the local currency or your native currency). 5 Health & Safety Staying Healthy What to Do if You Get Sick Away from Home If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable health-care plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs up front and be reimbursed later; see “Insurance” in the appendix .

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly
Published 1 Mar 2006

So buying a gun is always my best move; the same holds for you, and so we both wind up with less money than if we had both been peaceful. In terms of game theory, this game is the classic prisoner’s dilemma. This assumes that buying guns is legal. In the United States, where you can buy assault weapons on the airport highway but where airport security scrutinizes your nail clippers, this may be a good assumption. One way to avoid the predators’ equilibrium is to allow only honest policemen to have guns. But predation doesn’t happen as often as this theory predicts, even without a policeman looking over your shoulder. Many opportunities for pilfering go unrealized.

pages: 260 words: 130,109

Frommer's Kauai
by Jeanette Foster
Published 27 Feb 2004

We list hospitals and emergency numbers under “Fast Facts: Kauai,” in chapter 11. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable healthcare plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs upfront and be reimbursed later. For information on medical insurance while traveling please visit www. frommers.com/planning.

pages: 494 words: 132,975

Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics
by Nicholas Wapshott
Published 10 Oct 2011

Bush met this threat with a large Keynesian stimulus. After a meeting between Greenspan, former Clinton Treasury secretary Rubin, Bush adviser Larry Lindsey, and congressional leaders, massive new federal spending was swiftly approved. Expenditures to strengthen America’s borders, such as tightening airport security, were accompanied by pork barrel projects, such as the building of fire stations in Maine, that had nothing to do with keeping America safe. Greenspan reduced interest rates to 1 percent to pump money into the economy fast, the prospect of the resulting inflation considered far preferable to a terrorist-inspired slump.

pages: 478 words: 146,480

Pirate Cinema
by Cory Doctorow
Published 2 Oct 2012

I knew how to assemble the pieces: we needed cover, we needed countermeasures, we needed escape routes. Cover: The enemy had given this one to us. Ever since the cinemas had introduced mandatory metal-detectors and coat-checks for phones and computers, every film opening looks more like an airport security queue, with a long snake of bored, angry people shuffling slowly toward a couple of shaved-head thugs who'll grope them, run them through a metal detector, and take their phone and laptop and that off them, just in case they're one of the mythological screen-cappers. This is London. Where you have a queue of people with money, you have a small ecosystem of tramps, hawkers, and human spam delivery systems passing out brochures, cards, and loot-bags advertising cheap curry, dodgy minicabs, Chinese Tun-La massage (whatever that is), American pizza, Minneapolis Fried Chicken, strip clubs, and discount fashion outlets.

pages: 436 words: 125,809

The Way of the Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of Firearms
by Iain Overton
Published 15 Apr 2015

Here was peace. A thought struck me: despite the inalienable right to own a gun in the US, you cannot go to this emblem of America armed. Liberty Island is a federal property, and National Park rulings ban all weapons. Tourists join long, slow queues on the New York shore and are herded through airport security scanners to make sure no guns are brought here. This has created an island that has virtually no crime. The United States Park Police were unequivocal: ‘We located no statistics of any firearms incident on the Statue of Liberty National Monument from 2000 to the present.’ This, despite about 20 million visitors travelling there over that time.

The Cleaner: The True Story of One of the World's Most Successful Money Launderers
by Bruce Aitken
Published 2 Mar 2017

At the heart of the story is a kid who was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and grew up in Hasbrouck Heights, who through chance and circumstance grew up to become one of the world’s most successful money launderers. However... There were unintended and devastating consequences. Bruce Aitken AKA Mr. Clean www.TheCleanerBook.com Foreword Many of us have travelled through customs or airport security carrying something we should not. Possibilities include a scintilla of the finest squidgy Afghan hash, an extra bottle of duty-free booze, or a few thousand dollars that did not seem worth mentioning to the authorities. We know it can be a nerve-wrenching experience that precipitates sweaty palms, a pounding heart, and the persistent fear that the little old lady in the corner is actually an undercover drug squad officer, and we are aware it does not usually facilitate a relaxed journey.

pages: 420 words: 135,569

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today
by Jane McGonigal
Published 22 Mar 2022

As a way to process what I’m learning, I try to come up with a new future scenario for each of my top future forces—so I can take some mental time trips and invite others to help me seriously imagine the world these forces might create. Here’s one scenario I’ve been playing with lately: Today, facial recognition is used in just a few contexts, like unlocking our smartphones or in airport security. But can you imagine—have you tried imagining yet—what your life will be like when facial recognition is used for everything? Within the next decade, “face search apps” will likely be as common as internet search engines are today. You’ll be able to get vast amounts of information about a complete stranger just by pointing your phone, smartwatch, or augmented reality glasses at them.

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future
by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen
Published 13 Sep 2021

Computer vision can be used in real time, in areas ranging from transportation to security. Existing examples include: driver assistants installed in some cars that can detect a driver who nods off autonomous stores like Amazon Go, where cameras recognize when you’ve put a product in your shopping cart airport security (counting people, recognizing terrorists) gesture recognition (scoring your moves in an Xbox dancing game) facial recognition (using your face to unlock your mobile phone) smart cameras (your iPhone’s portrait mode recognizes and extracts people in the foreground, and then “beautifully” blurs the background to create a DSLR-like effect) military applications (separating enemy soldiers from civilians) autonomous navigation of drones and automobiles In the opening of “Gods Behind the Masks,” we saw the use of real-time facial recognition to automatically deduct payment by recognizing commuters as they pass through a turnstile.

pages: 458 words: 132,912

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
by Victor Davis Hanson
Published 15 Nov 2021

But eventually China’s westernized engineering graduates and corporate teams began replacing their erstwhile mentors, as Beijing began to vertically integrate and absorb an increasing share of world manufacturing and assembly. Inexpensive and mass jet travel likewise eroded borders. It translated entering and leaving a country into a mere bureaucratic process of airport security rather than waiting for visas, butting against border walls and fences, crossing rivers, or climbing mountains. Border security was no longer defined as the ancient way of protecting the common space of fellow Americans. Instead it was recalibrated as an ossified concept of territoriality, now adrift in a mobile and interconnected world.

pages: 470 words: 137,882

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
Published 14 Sep 2020

We talked for what seemed an hour more, and I could see the effort it took to manage the unconscious signals of encoded superiority, the presence of mind necessary to counteract the programming of caste. I could see how hard it was even for someone committed to healing the caste divide, who was, as it turned out, married to a man from the subordinate caste and who was deeply invested in egalitarian ideals. On the way home, I was snapped back to my own world when airport security flagged my suitcase for inspection. The TSA worker happened to be an African-American who looked to be in his early twenties. He strapped on latex gloves to begin his work. He dug through my suitcase and excavated a small box, unwrapped the folds of paper and held in his palm the bust of Ambedkar that I had been given.

pages: 428 words: 134,832

Straphanger
by Taras Grescoe
Published 8 Sep 2011

The view of most of my environmental friends is sort of this Moscow-breadline thing, ‘Comrade, we’re so egalitarian. We’re shoulder to shoulder wasting our time in traffic going nowhere, isn’t that wonderful?’ No, that’s not wonderful, that’s stupid.” I’ll admit there have been times when I could have been tempted to buy my way past those annoying hordes in an airport security line, at the department of motor vehicles, or on a holiday weekend highway. But I wouldn’t want to live in the kind of society where the rich can pay to preempt the poor on publicly funded infrastructure. Revolutions have been fought for less. From the omnibuses of nineteenth-century Manhattan to the jeepneys of contemporary Manila, the free market has shown itself spectacularly ill suited to providing effective transit to cities.

pages: 454 words: 139,350

Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy
by Benjamin Barber
Published 20 Apr 2010

Consumers are poor substitutes for citizens, however, just as corporate CEOs are poor substitutes for democratic statesmen. It is telling that on the morning of September 12, 2001, America did not call Bill Gates or Michael Eisner to ask for assistance in dealing with terrorism. A privatized airport security system turned out to be fallible because it was more attuned to costs than to safety. Long-neglected public institutions reacquired overnight their democratic legitimacy and their role as defenders of public goods. Can this renewed legitimacy be employed on behalf of international institutions dedicated to public rather than private goods?

pages: 453 words: 130,632

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood
by Rose George
Published 22 Oct 2018

In 2014 a Tampax ad showing “a woman wearing a red top attending a rock concert and an animation showing how the Tampax worked” attracted twenty-two complaints, mostly about the timing and the imagery. The complaints were not pursued. If red tops can raise red flags, perhaps advertisers are right to be timid. Internalized shame is the hardest to reach and redress. Once, a female airport security employee, emptying my bag, took my packet of sanitary pads and carefully hid it under my books. I asked her why and she looked surprised. “Most women ask me to.” In the UK, where I grew up, I have had access to sanitary hygiene and—though I can’t remember learning about it—information. But I still hide a tampon when I go to the toilet.

pages: 506 words: 133,134

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future
by Noreena Hertz
Published 13 May 2020

Like the open-plan office but on steroids, it also incentivises employees to self-censor and withdraw. This is exactly what Boston University sociologist Michel Anteby found when he studied the organisational practices within the US’s Transportation Security Administration (the body in charge of airport security). As an example, he observed that the employees working at luggage-screening stations who were constantly video-recorded by their supervisors, would ‘do everything possible to stay under the radar, to essentially disappear … They try to never speak up, never stick out, do nothing that might get noticed by management’.33 In an environment of constant surveillance, our instinct is to withdraw into ourselves, isolate ourselves from those around us and try to slip out from under the watchful gaze of our employer to whatever degree possible.34 The trouble is, as Anteby observed, ‘This leads to a vicious cycle, whereby management grows more suspicious and feels justified in ratcheting up the surveillance.’35 The result is employees who hide from the cameras and each other.

pages: 565 words: 134,138

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources
by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy
Published 25 Feb 2021

Felix Lvov, the confident and charming representative of commodity trading house AIOC in Moscow, had been pushing to do more business with the Krasnoyarsk smelter. But even this buccaneering trader was afraid for his life. By the autumn of that year, when he set off for Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to fly to Kazakhstan, he was travelling with bodyguards. Lvov’s hired muscle accompanied him to airport security, and, having watched him go through the metal detectors, returned to Moscow. But Lvov never boarded the plane. Somewhere between security and the gate, Lvov was approached by two men in uniform who told him to follow them. A day later, his body was found, riddled with bullets. 29 For AIOC, the murder was a shock too big to weather.

pages: 491 words: 141,690

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire
by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson
Published 14 Apr 2020

• American students have the highest student loan debt of any country, roughly $1.5 trillion, and thanks to lobbying by the lenders to the Congress, that debt cannot be forgiven through bankruptcy, and private student loan debt even passes to family members after death. • America is only ranked 18th according to the World Happiness Report. • The United States spends more money on defense than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, France, the U.K., and Japan combined. • America spends more money on airport security, over $110 billion on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), even though they have a 95% failure rate and have never caught a terrorist.142 • Only 35% of Americans even have a valid passport, and on a yearly basis, 96.5% of the population never leaves the country. • A survey conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center showed that 37% could not name any of the five rights protected by the First Amendment, and only 48% could name freedom of speech

pages: 543 words: 143,135

Air Crashes and Miracle Landings: 60 Narratives
by Christopher Bartlett
Published 11 Apr 2010

Their instructors had been surprised that learning how to land did not seem to interest them. Using manuals for the airliners concerned, namely the Boeing 757 and 767, and no doubt PC flight simulation programs, they had acquired the necessary flying skills for their task. Although some of their number were stopped and searched at the airport security checks, they were allowed to board. It seems they largely depended on bluff—having a member go into the toilet and come out wearing something harmless made to look like a bomb that could be detonated at any moment if the passengers and cabin crew did not comply—and having other items including pepper spray that could be used to subdue or kill.

Hawaii
by Jeff Campbell
Published 4 Nov 2009

Hilton Hawaiian Village (949-4321, 800-445-8667; www.hawaiianvillage.hilton.com; 2005 Kalia Rd; r $219-850; ) On the Fort DeRussy side of Waikiki, the Hilton is Waikiki’s largest hotel –practically a self-sufficient tourist fortress of towers, restaurants, bars and shops. It’s geared almost entirely for families and package tourists. Expect check-in lines to move as slowly as TSA airport-security checkpoints. Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel (922-2511, 800-877-7666; www.astonhotels.com; 2570 Kalakaua Ave; r incl breakfast $225-425; ) With cheery surf-themed decor and a rooftop bar lit by tiki torches, this contemporary number opposite the beach is frequently sold out, especially on internet-booking sites.

…

While in Hawaii, develop print film as you finish each roll, as the high temperature and humidity greatly accelerate the deterioration of exposed film. One-hour print shops are everywhere. Don’t pack unprocessed film (including the roll in your camera) into checked luggage because exposure to high-poweredX-ray equipment will cause it to fog. As an added precaution, ‘hand check’ film separately from carry-on bags at airport security checkpoints. For a primer on taking good shots, consult Lonely Planet’s Travel Photography. Return to beginning of chapter SHOPPING In a nation known for its kitsch, Hawaii may be the (plastic) jewel in the crown. It is also rich with high-quality handmade crafts. The question is: are you a dashboard-hula-girl-type person or a gleaming-koa-bowl-type person?

The Sum of All Fears
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1989

Tell him also that one of our people, a Mr Clark, will be at the airport security office in a few minutes. Mr Ambassador, I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. Please do it now." "I'll do it. You'd better calm down up there," the career foreign-service officer advised. "We're trying very hard, sir. Please have your secretary transfer me back to the Station Chief. Thank you." Ryan looked over to Goodley. "Just hit me over the fucking head if you feel the need, Ben." "Clark." "We're faxing some photos down, along with their names and seat assignments. Okay, you are to check in with the airport security boss before you grab 'em.

pages: 541 words: 146,445

Spin
by Robert Charles Wilson
Published 2 Jan 2005

It had become obvious over the last few days that we would not discuss, mention, or allude in any way to the physical intimacy we had shared that night in the Berkshires before her marriage to Simon. If we acknowledged it at all it was only in the cumbersome detours we took to avoid it. When we hugged (chastely) in the space in front of the airport security gate she said, "I'll call you," and I knew she would—Diane made few promises but was scrupulous about keeping them—but I was equally conscious of the time that had passed since I had last seen her and the time that would inevitably pass before I saw her again: not Spin time, but something just as erosive and just as hungry.

pages: 509 words: 147,998

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
by Alexandra Robbins
Published 31 Mar 2009

“I’m confident in myself that I have enough self-control, really,” Blue concluded. “Those [thoughts] are just really annoying.” The error in the evil-outcast theory is that it assumes that only social outcasts can develop into Columbine-like killers. Identifying the outcasts and tossing them out of schools is akin to singling out a Middle Eastern passenger for extra airport security screening, or stopping a driver because he’s Latino. Just because a kid listens to screamo doesn’t mean he’s angry. Just because she plays Warhammer doesn’t mean she’s violent. Just because her face is pierced doesn’t mean she’s disrespectful. Just because he wears all black doesn’t mean he’s sad.

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions
by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher
Published 1 Jul 2009

Plot the correlation matrix, with axis labels. 288 > > > > > cors = cor(d, use='pair') ord = order.hclust(cors) cors = cors[ord,ord] image(cors, col=col.corrgram(7)) axis(1, at=seq(0,1, length=nrow(cors)), labels=row.names(cors)) CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Download at Boykma.Com intoxicated hire dogfight trustworthy intelligence talented age_well wealth attractive sex_o plastic politics weight age male haircut rehab outfit security dress_size +1 0 dress_size security outfit rehab haircut male age weight politics plastic sex_o attractive wealth age_well talented intelligence trustworthy dogfight hire intoxicated –1 Text of questions • • • • • • • • dress_size: What is my dress size? security: If you were an airport security guard, would you search me? outfit: Do you like my outfit? rehab: Will I end up in rehab? haircut: Do you like my hairstyle? age: How old am I? weight: How much do I weigh? political_affiliation: What is my political affiliation? (Higher is more conservative) • plastic_surgery: Have I had plastic surgery?

pages: 547 words: 160,071

Underground
by Suelette Dreyfus
Published 1 Jan 2011

This decade of digital security dominance is now defining the nature of our freedoms. We can no longer walk down a street without being watched and there is snooping on virtually every transaction we engage in. There is an Orwellian eeriness to the now famous YouTube video of the plane passenger being groped by US airport security and saying ‘don’t touch my junk’ (private parts), while the airport loudspeaker’s recorded messaging plays in the background, ‘Security is everybody’s responsibility’. Yet few people have commented on how creepy this recording is juxtaposed with the innocent citizen being manhandled in the name of security.21 What if all our freedoms were slowly stolen away from us and we didn’t even notice it?

pages: 535 words: 158,863

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
by David Rothkopf
Published 18 Mar 2008

Information Services (USIS), a private investigative company, is a classic example: “Since 9/11, USIS’s acquisition of contracts has exploded,” one Carlyle employee told Dan Briody. “All the new FAA, Customs … all those employees being hired [for homeland security] are being investigated by USIS. They also have contracts with all the major airlines, and the contract companies who provide airport security. I do not exaggerate when I say that Carlyle is taking over the world in government contract work, particularly defense work.” The terrorist attacks of 2001 exposed another aspect of the firm that hyperstimulated conspiracy theorists—among their investors (who include George Soros and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal) were members of the bin Laden family.

San Francisco
by Lonely Planet

Far East Flea Market Gifts Offline map Google map ( 415-989-8588; 729 Grant Ave; 10am-10pm; Stockton St- Powell St) The shopping equivalent of crack, this bottomless store is dangerously cheap and certain to make you giddy and delusional. Of course you can get that $8.99 samurai sword through airport security! There’s no such thing as too many bath toys, bobble-heads and Chia Pets! Step away from the dollar Golden Gate snow globes while there’s still time… The Hills & Japantown Pacific Heights | Russian Hill | Nob Hill For more detail of this area, see Click here and Click here Neighborhood Top Five Stepping off the Powell-Hyde cable car atop twisty Lombard St (Click here ) and taking in the spectacular hilltop vistas.

pages: 570 words: 158,139

Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism
by Elizabeth Becker
Published 16 Apr 2013

With an industry that has elicited such extreme ideological views from the political parties—Republicans zeroing out a government role and erecting a border security system that has intimidated visitors, Democrats offering federal help and dialing down border hostility—the industry is taking no chances. After watching the cloud of fear lift around airport security and seeing their industry treated as an economic engine, Freeman, of the travel association, said his group wants this helpful attitude to continue. Already his staff has traveled to Boston to huddle with Romney’s campaign staff. “We have to be prepared if the Republicans win.” Obama won. • • • Las Vegas is a good vantage point for surveying the state of play of tourism in the United States after the rest of the world pulled ahead during that “lost decade” and with hopes pinned on a stronger role for the federal government.

A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America
by Tony Horwitz
Published 1 Jan 2008

The fest was a “Timeline” event, meaning that every era was represented, other than the present. I passed the tent of a Confederate doctor studying a jar of leeches, and another occupied by Revolutionary Minutemen. A World War II G.I. strode past, griping to a pirate about the difficulty of getting decommissioned grenades through airport security. Then I spotted a brawny, bearded man in a rough jersey, hacking at something by a low fire. “Are you by any chance a conquistador?” I asked. “No, sorry.” He held up a piece of flint he was honing. “I’m a paleo. The Spaniards are over near the Seminoles, I think.” I finally found Calderon’s Company sipping wine from period goblets, though not yet in conquistador attire.

pages: 548 words: 147,919

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales From the Pentagon
by Rosa Brooks
Published 8 Aug 2016

Some of these technologies don’t yet exist, but the September 11 attacks made it clear that the fundamental changes described and predicted by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui don’t lie off in some distant science-fiction future. As the nineteen al Qaeda plotters made their unimpeded way through American airport security, the era of unrestricted warfare was already well under way. We just didn’t know it yet. The U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks moved us still further into the era of unrestricted warfare. On September 10, 2001, President George W. Bush announced during a visit to a Florida elementary school that it was “time to wage war on illiteracy,”8 but no one expected that “war” to involve bullets or bloodshed.

pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection
by Jacob Silverman
Published 17 Mar 2015

As he blithely explained, “Guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how Web sites work.” Rudder is correct on the facts if not the ethics. This kind of algorithmic experimentation is indeed widespread. And it’s not only culture and social life that are being subjected to this process. Whether in airport security lines or on e-commerce sites, our data is being run through the decision-making mill. We are judged on the basis of our personal data and our social-media presence, with little opportunity to dispute its accuracy or confront a real human being. Like demographic, medical, or credit data, information gleaned from social media is increasingly being taken up with the promise that it can tell companies and governments about who people are and predict their actions.

pages: 559 words: 155,372

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
by Antonio Garcia Martinez
Published 27 Jun 2016

The user interfaces were constantly improved to make the human reviewers’ tasks easier and more efficient, so that we wouldn’t need to hire more expensive humans. It was a terrible assignment for anybody who wanted to make his or her mark at Facebook, and it would take me months to scheme myself out of it. But before that, I had to appear as the face of this ads police department, one of the airport security lines at Facebook. Ads Review and Quality was officially part of Product and Engineering, but it worked for Sales and Operations, which was Sheryl’s grand fiefdom. Sheryl, of course, was much more than merely Zuck’s consigliera and the Ads team’s intercessor within the senior management stratum of the company.

pages: 484 words: 155,401

Solitary
by Albert Woodfox
Published 12 Mar 2019

He answered every collect call we ever made, spent part of each week on conference calls with our lawyers, with Marina Drummer, with Tory Pegram, with individual supporters and members of our advisory board; he took every call from every reporter who ever contacted him and sat down for interviews with anyone who could give us publicity for our case. I knew the travel was exhausting, that he sometimes got stopped by airport security. He never complained. In May 2014, Rep. Cedric Richmond introduced HR 4618, called the Solitary Confinement Study and Reform Act of 2014, to study and reform the use of solitary confinement in the U.S. prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities. In July, it was referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

pages: 477 words: 144,329

How Money Became Dangerous
by Christopher Varelas
Published 15 Oct 2019

There were hundreds of other details and angles to parse later, once he was with his colleagues, but the one thing he understood right away was that bankruptcy was a real threat. Tom returned to the present moment enough to realize that on the other side of his upheld hand the old guy was still shouting. He and the airport security guard were going fairly wild by this point, acting like Tom was a terrorist. And then—boom—quite suddenly, the old guy reeled back and punched Tom in the gut with everything he had. Tom doubled over, but he didn’t go down, knowing that falling could create a domino effect on the escalator and topple a substantial number of people.

pages: 517 words: 155,209

Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation
by Michael Chabon
Published 29 May 2017

I sign at the bottom: Lars Saabye Christensen, author, blue eyed, 4 June 2016. June 2017 will be fifty years since the Six-Day War of 1967. The occupation of the Palestinian territories has lasted just as long. And that’s the reason I’m here. To write about my impressions. Before departure, I got this bit of advice: you can tell airport security whatever you want, but don’t lie. Anyway, I’ve no intention of lying. Telling the truth is good advice in most circumstances, except in obituaries. Hence I have to confess—and I use that exact word, confession, since I’ve noticed that my views, my attitude, are almost taken for granted, that a European writer isn’t supposed to have a different opinion: Israel is the root of all evil.

pages: 486 words: 150,849

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
by Kurt Andersen
Published 14 Sep 2020

Yes, of course, the September 11, 2001, attacks and the financial and economic meltdown of 2008 were traumatizing, and right after each, I thought obviously this will finally change everything, and that I’d finally have to stop pointing out to family and friends every new bit of evidence that the 1980s never ended. Instead, immediately after 9/11, the president instructed us all to shop and to have fun as if nothing had happened, get over it, which we quickly did; apart from airport security and a disastrous war and a new focus for bigotry, the main lasting result was to amplify the overcompensating “USA! USA!” belligerence that had swelled up in the 1980s. In 2009 I imagined that the near-death economic experience of the crash and recession might scare us straight, prompt us to reform the reckless laissez-faire casino economy, as our forebears did after the Roaring ’20s.

pages: 550 words: 160,356

Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson
Published 15 Jul 2003

He punches the throttles, nearly throwing the jet onto one wing as it whips around in a tight curve, and redlines the engines as soon as he sees the center line of the runway. Now they can only see forward and sideways. They can't see what is chasing them. Y.T. is the only person who can see it happen. Having easily penetrated airport security with her Kourier pass, she is coasting onto the apron near the cargo terminal. From here, she has an excellent view across half a mile of open runway, and she sees it all happen: the plane roars down the runway, hauling its door closed as it goes, shooting pale blue flames out its engine nozzles, trying to build up speed for takeoff, and Fido chases it down like a dog going after a fat mailman, makes one final tremendous leap into the air and, turning himself into a Sidewinder missile, flies nose-first into the tailpipe of its left engine.

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
by Amy B. Zegart
Published 6 Nov 2021

But the process did provide insight into macro forces that made a price hike more likely than most people assumed: American energy needs were rising, domestic supply was not, and OPEC consisted mostly of Arab countries in the unstable Middle East who had opposed Western support of Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Thinking like an outsider is another popular tool, especially for intelligence and defense officials. Red teams are groups that play the part of skeptics, competitors, or enemies. Some red teams are tasked with penetrating cyber security systems. Some pretend to be terrorists testing airport security procedures.101 Others scrub intelligence assessments, challenging every assumption, piece of information, hypothesis, and judgment. After 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet created a CIA Red Cell whose job was to generate out-of-the-box thinking that challenged conventional wisdom. Members were hand-picked and given wide latitude.

pages: 535 words: 149,752

After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul
by Tripp Mickle
Published 2 May 2022

Yet Cook remained the same cost-conscious CEO he had always been, prone to flying commercial, so the board of directors intervened. In 2017, they began requiring that Cook travel on private jets rather than commercial airliners. His time was too valuable and Apple’s footprint was too sprawling for him to waste minutes clearing airport security. Plus, the challenges posed by the new president meant he would need to travel to Washington more than ever. Cook was summoned to the White House in mid-June for a tech summit designed for Trump to show the country his command over its most powerful industry. News of Apple’s advanced manufacturing fund had reached the administration and improved the president’s view of the nation’s most high-profile outsourcer.

pages: 543 words: 143,084

Pandora's Box: How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV
by Peter Biskind
Published 6 Nov 2023

You were definitely not hip enough to work there. It was not considered a problem, it was medicinal relief. We used to buy drugs from a guy out in front of the Time-Life Building. We’d get high at lunchtime and go back to work.”28 One woman who traveled back and forth between New York and LA is said to have avoided taking drugs through airport security by simply FedEx-ing coke to herself. Then HBO hit a wall. Along came the VCR, seemingly out of nowhere, that obliterated HBO’s prime selling point: showcasing uncut, uninterrupted Hollywood movies. As subscriptions dwindled, a bank of dark clouds settled over the company. The picture looked so bleak that McKinsey & Company, the EMT of management consulting, was hired to give the business model a hard look.

San Francisco
by Lonely Planet

The Disappearing Act
by Florence de Changy
Published 24 Dec 2020

Malaysia Airlines refused ‘for security reasons’ to explain how passengers holding forged passports had been able to buy their tickets. A flurry of contradictory information ensued. The Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation first claimed it was not sure that the two suspicious passengers had been picked up by the airport security cameras. Next, the Malaysian minister of home affairs declared that ‘they had Asian features’. But then Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the Director General of Civil Aviation, said that ‘they did not look Asian’. When a journalist asked the director to describe the physical appearance of the two Iranians, he answered, ‘Do you know the Italian football player Balotelli?’

pages: 1,266 words: 344,635

Great North Road
by Peter F. Hamilton
Published 26 Sep 2012

Security guards fanned out; it took another twelve minutes for them to locate the inert Jag. The Abellia Civic Administration officially announced Angela Tramelo was a fugitive, and alerted both the airport and the dock. Two passenger planes and five private jets had already departed that morning. Airport security reviewed images of all passengers embarking. None of them matched Angela. All further outgoing flights were canceled. Coast guard helicopters began searching the sea for any boats that might be carrying Angela away from Abellia. Back at the manor, it was clear to the security officers with a police background that the murders were seriously weird, the result of a very disturbed mind.

…

The detective who did finally get around to examining it at nine fifty-five didn’t know what to make of it—Zebediah North was in town with a bunch of crazed followers threatening people. Weird cylinders that might be connected with harming a plane. Nut-jobs working for AeroTech Support Services. It was all utter crap, of course, but given the current circumstances … He forwarded it to the small HDA security office operating out of the camp at the airport, as well as airport security. Both of them sent the blueprints on to engineering experts for a detailed analysis. What came back fast shunted the threat level to a much higher grade. AeroTech Support Services was immediately suspended from operating, and its personnel ordered not to approach any aircraft. Fuel stores were also proscribed to them.

Frommer's San Diego 2011
by Mark Hiss
Published 2 Jan 2007

. (& 858/657-7000), has a good emergency room, and you’ll find another in Coronado, at Sharp Coronado Hospital, 250 Prospect Place (& 619/522-3600), opposite the Marriott Resort. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. Medications are readily available throughout San Diego at various chain drugstores such as Walgreens, Rite-Aid, and CVS, which sell pharmaceuticals and nonprescription products. Some branches are open 24 hours (p. 290).

pages: 632 words: 166,729

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Published 15 Jan 2012

“Rather than restricting movement,” Andrejevic notes in his study of contemporary forms of monitoring and surveillance, the aim is that of “exploiting the productive potential of mobility” (2007, 106). 90. Parets 1999, 19. 91. For example, casinos were the first to use biometric systems for surveillance, far ahead of law-enforcement agencies, airport security, and mainstream business (Schwartz 2003, 216–17). Non-obvious relationship awareness (NORA) software used to discover cheating collusion in casinos was only later adopted by Homeland Security to investigate connections between terrorist suspects (see Kaplan 2010). Yet the exchange goes both ways: server-based gambling, for instance, adopts the same cryptography system as the government’s National Security Agency. 92.

Frommer's Paris 2013
by Kate van Der Boogert
Published 24 Sep 2012

U.K. nationals will need a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) to receive free or reduced-cost medical care during a visit to a European Union (EU) country, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, or Switzerland (go to www.ehic.org.uk for further information). If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines, in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name. For further tips on travel and health concerns, and a list of local English-speaking doctors, contact the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers (IAMAT; www.iamat.org; 716/754-4883 in the U.S., or 416/652-0137 in Canada).

pages: 552 words: 168,518

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Published 28 Sep 2010

“It’s important to remember that as much as we don’t think we have the time to volunteer,” says Colker, “we spend 9 billion hours a year playing solitaire.” Apparently, Americans spend 4.6 hours a week playing video games, 51 minutes riding public transportation to and from work every day, 18 minutes in an airport security lane, and half an hour on average standing in line at the post office.17 Colker and Rigby reckoned that all of this spare time could be harnessed and given a social purpose. So they designed The Extraordinaries, a micro-volunteering platform that allows supporters to use their mobile phone to transform their spare time into social action.

pages: 836 words: 158,284

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Dec 2010

Juliet Mae Fine Spices & Herbs (www.julietmae.foodzie.com) This is where you can buy Juliet Mae’s delicious cinnamon. I used her sampler for all testing, which includes Cassia, Ceylon, and Saigon cinnamon. MiR 50-Lb. Short Adjustable Weighted Vest (www.fourhourbody.com/vest) The best weighted vests in the business. This is what I almost wore through airport security. If you want a rifle butt in the head at customs, it’s the perfect choice. End of Chapter Notes 22. Technically, interstitial fluid levels, from which the blood glucose is extrapolated. 23. GL = (GI x amount of carbohydrate in grams)/100. 24. I was looking at artificially creating food allergies and then removing them, an experiment that didn’t make it into this book. 25.

pages: 598 words: 169,194

Bernie Madoff, the Wizard of Lies: Inside the Infamous $65 Billion Swindle
by Diana B. Henriques
Published 1 Aug 2011

Neither he nor his brother, Andrew, had spoken to their parents since the day of their father’s arrest. Still, Mark’s estrangement from his gilded past seemed to cut deeper than his brother’s. Within a short time, Andrew was unfazed by the inevitable raised eyebrows of waiters looking at his credit card and airport security guards examining his driving licence; yes, he would shrug, he was that Andrew Madoff. He told friends he had never met anything but courteous sympathy. But Mark did not seem willing to risk the ill will of strangers; he had agreed with his wife’s decision to change her own and their children’s last name from Madoff to Morgan.

pages: 575 words: 171,599

The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund
by Anita Raghavan
Published 4 Jun 2013

If anyone had told Gupta back when he was a little boy in Calcutta that he would someday work at—let alone run—McKinsey & Co. and be invited to the White House for dinner, they might have had an easier time convincing him that he would walk on the moon. The heights he had attained would only serve to make the events that followed all the more unfathomable. * * * Seventeen days later, as Gupta rushed through airport security with his carry-on in tow, his cell phone rang. The caller on the morning of Friday, December 11, 2009, was Gregory K. Palm, the general counsel to Goldman Sachs & Co. Gupta had been a board member since 2006, and at least once a quarter, he would hear from Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive.

pages: 561 words: 163,916

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
by Blake J. Harris
Published 19 Feb 2019

“Can you please explain what this object is?” “It’s a virtual reality headset,” Luckey replied. The agent gave Luckey a dubious look and then shuffled him off to the side where somebody would come by to see him shortly. Although Luckey knew that there was never a good time to be stopped by airport security, right now—mere days before the Kickstarter, at a time when every minute felt precious—this just felt like a kick to the groin. Especially as his flight was called to board, and especially as Antonov, carrying his own headset, slid through security with no problem. Luckey’s VR headset did look suspicious.

pages: 541 words: 173,676

Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future
by Jean M. Twenge
Published 25 Apr 2023

After, the U.S. was at war for twenty years, including eight years when the country was at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Day-to-day life changed little for most Americans after 9/11 beyond the first few days, but the memories—of shock, grief, and anger—remained, along with the feeling that the country was now a different place. For years after 9/11, armed soldiers stood duty in airports, security was tightened at public venues throughout the country, and Muslims and Sikhs were on the receiving end of more prejudice and discrimination. For Boomers, ages 37 to 55, 9/11 was an ominous sign that their generation’s leadership years were going to be more challenging than they thought. For Gen X, ages 22 to 36, the event cast a pall over what was supposed to be a joyful and ambitious time of building careers and families.

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
by Natasha Dow Schüll
Published 19 Aug 2012

pages: 645 words: 184,311

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
Published 30 Jun 2001

He told her it might not be valid as a driver's license, but it sure as hell was fine identification, and damn it, who else did she think he was, if he wasn't him? She said she'd thank him to keep his voice down. He told her to give him a fucking boarding pass, or she was going to regret it, and that he wasn't going to be disrespected. You don't let people disrespect you in prison. Then she pressed a button, and a few moments later the airport security showed up, and they tried to persuade Johnnie Larch to leave the airport quietly, and he did not wish to leave, and there was something of an altercation. The upshot of it all was that Johnnie Larch never actually made it to Seattle, and he spent the next couple of days in town in bars, and when his one hundred dollars was gone he held up a gas station with a toy gun for money to keep drinking, and the police finally picked him up for pissing in the street.

Frommer's San Francisco 2012
by Matthew Poole , Erika Lenkert and Kristin Luna
Published 4 Oct 2011

In most cases, however, your existing health plan will provide all the coverage you need, but be sure to carry your identification card in your wallet. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable healthcare plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs upfront and be reimbursed later. Hospitals Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, 900 Hyde St., between Bush and Pine streets on Nob Hill ( 866/240-2087 or 415/353-6000; www.saintfrancismemorial.org), provides emergency service 24 hours a day; no appointment is necessary.

pages: 603 words: 182,781

Aerotropolis
by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Published 2 Jan 2009

A professor on his way to see colleagues in Changsha, he’s been making this monthly trip for twenty years. What was it like when he started? “It was very un-derserved,” he replied. “Less passengers, less flights, and the planes were terrible. It’s better now, but with so many people flying, it takes more time to get on, and it’s more troublesome to get through the airport— security is that much stricter. But this is still better than anything in the States, where you have to pay for everything you eat.” He assumed the Chinese would ruin flying just as the Americans had. “More and more will fly, and we’ll have to bear it. There will only be more competition, and things will get worse.”

pages: 604 words: 177,329

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright
Published 26 Sep 2006

They came up with an extraordinary plan to bomb twelve American jumbo jets over the Pacific. They called it Operation “Bojinka”—a nonsense word that Mohammed had picked up when fighting in Afghanistan. Ramzi Yousef, the master bomb-maker, had perfected a small nitroglycerine device that was undetectable by airport security. He tested it out on a flight from Manila to Tokyo. Yousef got off the flight in Cebu, a city on one of the central islands of the Philippine archipelago. The passenger who took his seat was Haruki Ikegami, a twenty-four-year-old Japanese engineer. Two hours later, the bomb under Ikegami’s seat detonated, tearing him apart and nearly bringing the aircraft down.

Lonely Planet Colombia (Travel Guide)
by Lonely Planet , Alex Egerton , Tom Masters and Kevin Raub
Published 30 Jun 2015

The airport is 4km south of Tabatinga; colectivos marked 'Comara' from Leticia will drop you nearby. Don't forget to get your Colombian exit stamp at Leticia's airport and, if needed, a Brazilian visa before departure. When departing Letica's airport, all foreigners must check in at the Ministry of Foreign Relations before proceeding through airport security, regardless of whether you've left Colombia or not; you'll be directed there at check-in if you haven't done it already – it's a painless procedure that takes a matter of seconds. GETTING TO PERU High-speed passenger boats between Tabatinga and Iquitos (Peru) are operated by Transtur (%3 412 2945; www.transtursa.com; Rua Marechal Mallet 248, Tabatinga) and Transportes Golfinho (%313 202 6679; www.transportegolfinho.com; Rua Marechal Mallet 306, Tabatinga).

pages: 630 words: 177,650

The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance and Repair: For Road and Mountain Bikes
by Todd Downs
Published 16 Mar 2005

If you are taking your bike on a plane or shipping by air, the lower atmospheric pressure in the cargo compartment should be taken into consideration. Deflate tires by about half so they won't burst. Air-sprung shocks and suspension forks should also be aired down to prevent blown seals and oil weeping. C02 cartridges are banned from air travel, even in a checked item, so leave them at home. Airport security will remove C02 cartridges if they find them, and they do look for them specifically anytime a bike goes through the x-ray machine. 3 Cables and hydraulic lines may prevent you from putting the handlebar in an ideal position inside the box. It's easy enough to remove the front brake caliper from a road bike (see photo), so do this and wrap the caliper in plastic, foam, or paper.

pages: 812 words: 180,057

The Generals: American Military Command From World War II to Today
by Thomas E. Ricks
Published 14 Oct 2012

It did not become the Army of David Petraeus—but nor is it, thankfully, the Army of Tommy R. Franks. Today’s Army is deeply strained, having fought for more than ten years since 9/11, with soldiers serving multiple combat tours while 99 percent of the American population has been asked to sacrifice nothing except its time and privacy when going through airport security checkpoints. Now the Army and the other services are facing a decade or more of budget cuts. The Army will be shaped by young officers, likely veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who in the coming years will rise to command the force. What would George Marshall do if he could come back and fix things?

How Emotions Are Made: The New Science of the Mind and Brain
by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Published 6 Mar 2017

But the theory consistently predicts and explains the scientific evidence on emotion, including plenty of evidence that the classical view struggles to make sense of. Why should you care which theory of emotion is correct? Because belief in the classical view affects your life in ways you might not realize. Think about the last time you went through airport security, where taciturn agents of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) X-rayed your shoes and evaluated your likelihood as a terrorist threat. Not long ago, a training program called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques) taught those TSA agents to detect deception and assess risk based on facial and bodily movements, on the theory that such movements reveal your innermost feelings.

pages: 583 words: 182,990

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 5 Oct 2020

Institutional; tall windows in deep embrasures, obviously not meant to be opened. She went in and identified herself. They called in; the prisoner was willing to meet with her. There was a big meeting room. First she had to leave her phone and other stuff in a locker, then go through an X-ray machine, as in airport security. After that she was escorted by a guard down a hall and through two doors that unlocked and opened automatically. Like an airlock in space stations, she thought. Inside this building, a different atmosphere. And it was true. It looked different, it smelled different. The Swiss almost always displayed a little stylishness in even their most institutional institutions, and that was true here too— a blue wainscotting line, a big room with lots of widely separated tables with chairs, potted plants in the corners and some Giacometti imitations gesturing toward the ceiling in their usual elongations.

California
by Sara Benson
Published 15 Oct 2010

Return to beginning of chapter Transportation * * * CONTENTS GETTING THERE & AWAY Air Land GETTING AROUND Air Bicycle Boat Bus Car & Motorcycle Hitchhiking Local Transportation Train * * * GETTING THERE & AWAY Flights, tours and train tickets can be booked online at www.lonelyplanet.com/travel_services. Return to beginning of chapter AIR To get through airport security checkpoints, you need a boarding pass and photo ID. If you beep going through the metal detector, or if x-rays of your carry-on bags look suspicious, you’ll undergo a second screening, involving hand-wand and pat-down checks and opening your bags. You can request a private room. Airport security measures restrict many common items from being carried on planes. These regulations often change. Get information about current restrictions from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA; 866-289-9673; www.tsa.gov), which also provides average security wait times by airport (30 minutes is standard)

pages: 769 words: 397,677

Frommer's California 2007
by Harry Basch , Mark Hiss , Erika Lenkert and Matthew Richard Poole
Published 6 Dec 2006

. • Australia: www.dfat.gov.au/travel • Canada: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/index_e.html • U.K.: www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/HealthAdviceForTravellers/fs/en • U.S.: www.cdc.gov/travel Pack prescription drugs in your carryon luggage, in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. And bring copies of your prescriptions in case you lose your pills or run out. Don’t forget an extra pair of contact lenses or eyeglasses. the distance to the next gas station. In some areas, they may be 50 miles apart, and summer temperatures well above 100°F (38°C) can turn a scenic drive into a disaster.

…

Index A AA (American Automobile Association), 44, 45, 50 A Bug’s Land (Disneyland), 604 Accommodations, 39 best, 16–19 landing the best room, 48 saving on, 47–48 Actors Circle Theater (Los Angeles), 568 Actor’s Gang Theater (Los Angeles), 568 Adventureland (Disneyland), 601 African-American travelers, 38 Afternoon Tea on the Terrace (Los Angeles), 533 Agate Beach, 230 Agua Caliente Casino (Rancho Mirage), 652 Ah Louis Store (San Luis Obispo), 414 Air and Space Gallery (Los Angeles), 529 Airfares, 38–39, 42–43 Airlines, 41, 45 bankrupt, 33 long-haul flights, 43–44 Airplane rides, 623 Airport security, 42 Alamere Falls, 199 Alamo Square Historic District (San Francisco), 117 Alcatraz Island (San Francisco), 110–111 Alpine Meadows, 242, 251 Amador City, 341–342 Amador County Museum (Jackson), 344 American Automobile Association (AAA), 44, 45, 50 American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.; San Francisco), 21, 129 American Express Los Angeles, 473 San Francisco, 75 American River, 326, 329, 344 American Tin Cannery Factory Premium Outlets (Pacific Grove), 376 Amoeba Records (San Francisco), 128 Amtrak, 44, 47 Anacapa, 450 Andreotti Family Farm (Half Moon Bay), 151–152 Andrew Molera State Park, 393–394 Angelino Heights (Los Angeles), 534–535 Angel Island, 149–150 Angels Camp, 346, 347–348 Año Nuevo State Reserve, 152 Ansel Adams Gallery (Yosemite), 290 Ansel Adams Wilderness, 354 Antiques Capitola, 359 Carlsbad, 732 Fort Bragg, 219 Palm Springs, 643 San Diego, 724 Solvang, 429 Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, 11, 657–660 Aptos, 359 Aquariums Monterey Bay Aquarium, 368–369 Morro Bay, 412 Aquatic Park (San Francisco), 123, 125 Arcadia (Los Angeles), 631 Arcata, 13, 228–230 Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, 229 Architectural landmarks, best, 15 Arch Rock, 450 Arch Rock entrance, 283, 286–287, 292 ArcLight Cinemas (Los Angeles), 577 Arrowood Vineyards & Winery (Glen Ellen), 186 Arroyo Burro Beach County Park, 437 Artesa Vineyards & Winery (Napa), 165 Art galleries Big Sur Coast, 394 Carmel, 384 Mendocino, 212 Ojai, 444 San Luis Obispo, 415 Solvang, 428 Artists Drive, 667 Artists Palette, 667 Artists’ Studio Tour (Ojai), 444 Arts and Crafts Show (Santa Barbara), 433 ArtWalk (San Diego), 28 Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), 118 Asilomar State Beach, 376 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, 26 Atascadero State Beach, 411 ATMs (automated teller machines), 24 Atwell Mill Campground, 322 Avalon (Santa Catalina), 580, 583 The Avalon Hollywood, 570 Avenue of the Giants, 222–225 Aztec Hotel (Monrovia), 631 Azusa, 632 Azusa City Hall and Auditorium, 632 B abe’s & Ricky’s Inn (Los Angeles), 570 Badger Pass, 298 Badwater, 667 Bagdad Café (Newberry Springs), 664 Baker, 664 Baker Beach (San Francisco), 123, 125 INDEX Balboa Island, 622 Balboa Park (San Diego), 15, 16, 713–715 Balboa Park December Nights (San Diego), 32 Balboa Park Visitor Center, 713 Balboa Pavilion & Fun Zone (Newport Beach), 622 Balconies Cave, 401 Baldwin Beach, 245 Ballooning Lake Tahoe area, 245 Mammoth Lakes, 305 Napa Valley, 12, 167 Palm Springs, 639–640 San Diego, 720 Bambuddha Lounge (San Francisco), 132 Bargetto Winery (Soquel), 360 Barker Dam, 655 Barstow, 664 Battery Point Lighthouse (Crescent City), 232 Bay Area Discovery Museum (Sausalito), 147 Bay Model Visitors Center (Sausalito), 147 Bay to Breakers Foot Race (San Francisco), 28 B.

Frommer's Mexico 2008
by David Baird , Juan Cristiano , Lynne Bairstow and Emily Hughey Quinn
Published 21 Sep 2007

We list hospitals and emergency numbers under “Fast Facts,” p. 69. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry prescription medications in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Also bring along copies of your prescriptions in case you lose your pills or run out. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines, in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name. information on the latest U.S. Department of State Consular Information Sheet for Mexico. Precautions are necessary, but travelers should be realistic.

…

Nohs keh-dah-mohs ah-kee soh-lah-mehn-teh oo-nah noh-cheh oo-nah seh-mah-nah Pahr-tee-mohs (sah-lee-mohs) mah-nya-nah Ah-sehp-tah oo-sted cheh-kehs deh byah-heh-roh Eye oo-nah lah-bahn-deh-ree-ah sehr-kah deh ah-kee Ah-gah-meh el fah-bohr deh mahndahr eh-stah roh-pah a lah lahbahn-deh-ree-ah NUMBERS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 uno (ooh-noh) dos (dohs) tres (trehs) cuatro (kwah-troh) cinco (seen-koh) seis (sayes) siete (syeh-teh) ocho (oh-choh) nueve (nweh-beh) diez (dyehs) once (ohn-seh) doce (doh-seh) trece (treh-seh) catorce (kah-tohr-seh) quince (keen-seh) dieciséis (dyeh-see-sayes) 17 18 19 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 200 500 1,000 diecisiete (dyeh-see-syeh-teh) dieciocho (dyeh-syoh-choh) diecinueve (dyeh-see-nweh-beh) veinte (bayn-teh) treinta (trayn-tah) cuarenta (kwah-ren-tah) cincuenta (seen-kwen-tah) sesenta (seh-sehn-tah) setenta (seh-tehn-tah) ochenta (oh-chehn-tah) noventa (noh-behn-tah) cien (syehn) doscientos (do-syehn-tohs) quinientos (kee-nyehn-tohs) mil (meel) Index A ARP, 50 Abbreviations, 69 Academia Falcón (Guanajuato), 200 Academia Hispano Americana (San Miguel), 187 Acanceh, 645–646 Acapulco, 3, 370–394 accommodations, 383–388 American Express, 376 consular agents, 376 getting around, 375–376 Internet access, 376–377 layout of, 374–375 nightlife, 392–394 outdoor activities, 377–381 restaurants, 388–392 safety, 377 shopping, 382 tourist police, 377 traveling to and from, 374 visitor information, 374 Acapulco Historical Museum, 381 Accommodations best, 17–20 hotel chains, 64 house rentals and swaps, 64–65 landing the best room, 66 rating system, 63–64 saving on, 65–66 surfing for, 65 Active vacations, 59–60. See also Ecotourism and adventure trips best, 12–13 Acuario (aquarium) Mazatlán, 339 Veracruz, 490 Adventure trips. See Ecotourism and adventure trips AeroMéxico Vacations, 55 Agua Azul waterfalls, 470 Aguacatenango, 479 Aguilar sisters (Ocotlán), 459 Airfares, 34–36 Airport security, 35 Airport taxes, 61 Air Tickets Direct, 35 Air travel, 1–2, 33–36 bankrupt airlines, 43 in Mexico, 60–61 Akab Dzib (Chichén Itzá), 664 Aktun Chen cavern, 601 Akumal, 579, 600–601 Alameda Park (Mexico City), 135 Alaska Airlines Vacations, 55–56 Alebrijes (Acapulco), 392–393 Alfarería Tlaquepaque (Puerto Vallarta), 305–306 Alma Libre (Puerto Morelos), 596 Altitude sickness, 44–45 Alux (Playa del Carmen), 591–592 Amatenango del Valle, 478–479 Amatitán, 281 Amatlán, 176 Amber, San Cristóbal, 479, 480 American Airlines Vacations, 55, 56 American Express, 41 Acapulco, 376 Cancún, 521 Chihuahua, 688 Cuernavaca, 167 Guadalajara, 265 Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo, 397 Manzanillo, 362 Mazatlán, 336 Mérida, 625 Mexico City, 100 Morelia, 240 Oaxaca City, 440 Puebla, 504 Puerto Vallarta, 289 Querétaro, 213 San Luis Potosí, 232 San Miguel, 184 Veracruz, 488 Zacatecas, 222 American Express Travelers Cheque Card, 42 AMTAVE (Asociación Mexicana de Turismo de Aventura y Ecoturismo, A.C.), 59 Angahuan, 260 Annual Witches Conference, 28 Annual Yucatán Bird Festival (Mérida), 32 Año Nuevo (New Year’s Day), 27 Anthropological museums Casa Na-Bolom (San Cristóbal), 476 La Paz, 732 Museo Antropología de Xalapa, 498 Museo de la Cultura Maya (Chetumal), 616 Museo del Pueblo Maya (Dzibilchaltún), 643 Museo Nacional de Antropología (Mexico City), 15, 101, 120 Museo Regional de Antropología (Mérida), 630 Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara (Villahermosa), 461–462 Anthropology Museum (La Paz), 732 Apple Vacations, 56 Aquarium (La Paz), 732 Aquariums.

pages: 698 words: 198,203

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
Published 10 Sep 2007

An identity thief uses information connected with your name, such as your social security number or the number and password of your credit card or bank account, to commit fraud or steal your assets. Victims of identity theft may lose out on jobs, loans, and college admissions, can be turned away at airport security checkpoints, and can even get arrested for a crime committed by the thief. They can spend many years and much money reclaiming their identity. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has lost his wallet, or inadvertently divulged information on his computer, and now has a doppelgänger using his name (say, Murray Klepfish) to borrow money or make purchases.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1988

Colonel von Eich checked the clock in his instrument panel. Thirty more minutes to the coast, "What?" Major Zarudin asked. "Who got on the airplane?" "Chairman Gerasimov and an arrested enemy spy," Vatutin said. "On an American airplane? You tell me that the Chairman is defecting on an American airplane!" The officer commanding the airport security detail had taken charge of the situation, as his orders allowed him to do. He found that he had two colonels, a lieutenant colonel, a driver, and an American in the office he used here-along with the craziest damned story he'd ever heard. "I must call for instructions." "I am senior to you!"

Frommer's Egypt
by Matthew Carrington
Published 8 Sep 2008

For advice, ask at your local post office or see www.dh.gov.uk/travellers. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name. Try to avoid buying prescription drugs in Egypt (even if they are dramatically cheaper than back home), as the quality control of drug production is not guaranteed. SAFETY S TAY I N G S A F E One of the enormous advantages that Egypt offers visitors is that it is generally very safe when it comes to petty crime.

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation
by Blake J. Harris
Published 12 May 2014

Fischer repeated to himself. For a moment, he politely tried to avoid laughing at the inquiry, but ultimately couldn’t stop himself from cracking up. “Jeez, Tom!” he replied, rogue giggles slipping out between his words. “How on earth were you able to sneak such a loaded question past those goons at airport security?” “All right,” Kalinske admitted, “I suppose I could have toned it down a notch or two. But then again, isn’t the whole beauty of our breakfasts together supposed to be that we get to stop playing politics for fifteen minutes?” “This is true,” Fischer replied with a nod so earnest it made the cup of coffee in his hand bob.

pages: 388 words: 211,314

Frommer's Washington State
by Karl Samson
Published 2 Nov 2010

You may not get immediate attention, but you won’t pay the high price of an emergency room visit. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before leaving. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable healthcare plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay medical costs upfront and be reimbursed later. LGBT Travelers As elsewhere in the U.S., Washington’s major cities are home to active gay and lesbian communities, and Seattle is one of the most gay-friendly cities in the country.

pages: 795 words: 212,447

Dead or Alive
by Tom Clancy and Grant (CON) Blackwood
Published 7 Dec 2010

“Well, unless this Hadi’s on someone’s list by accident or the e-mail itself is innocuous, I’d say we’re looking at a courier.” While not the fastest means of communication, couriers were the most secure. Encrypted data and messages, easily hidden in a document or on a CD-ROM, aren’t something airport security folks were trained to ferret out. Unless you had a courier’s identity—which they might now have—the bad guys could be planning the end of the world and the good guys would never know it. “Agreed,” Jack said. “Unless he’s working for National Geographic, there’s something there. He’s operational or he’s playing support.”

pages: 695 words: 219,110

The Fabric of the Cosmos
by Brian Greene
Published 1 Jan 2003

Faraday’s key breakthrough was the concept of the field. Later expanded on by Maxwell and many others, this concept has had an enormous influence on the development of physics during the last two centuries, and underlies many of the little mysteries we encounter in everyday life. When you go through airport security, how is it that a machine that doesn’t touch you can determine whether you’re carrying metallic objects? When you have an MRI, how is it that a device that remains outside your body can take a detailed picture of your insides? When you look at a compass, how is it that the needle swings around and points north even though nothing seems to nudge it?

pages: 745 words: 207,187

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military
by Neil Degrasse Tyson and Avis Lang
Published 10 Sep 2018

To avoid pain, the protesters will willingly and rapidly disperse.66 There are other small-scale, ostensibly nonlethal weapons, security measures, and crowd-control gizmos that utilize other nonvisible wavelengths, notably infrared, and tend to occupy the MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain) portion of the use-of-force spectrum: surface-to-air missiles, airport security systems that disrupt the guidance system of any missile aimed at a plane, weaponized lasers, non-nuclear electromagnetic-pulse generators, pulsed-energy projectiles, PHaSRs. There are battle aids like night vision scopes and goggles capable of image intensification. And of course there are profoundly lethal electromagnetic weapons—armaments capable of massive devastation.

pages: 389 words: 210,632

Frommer's Oregon
by Karl Samson
Published 26 Apr 2010

Additional 06_537718-ch03.indd 34 emergency numbers are listed in chapter 13. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. 3/17/10 2:04 PM Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they may not make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable healthcare plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs up front and be reimbursed later; see “Fast Facts: Oregon” (p. 361).

pages: 706 words: 237,378

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Published 23 Sep 2013

He described his life leading up to his heart attack as “a joyless treadmill.” And this from a person who in some way obviously loved his work. Norman Cousins, the prominent magazine editor and leading intellectual, described the conditions leading up to his heart attack in much the same way in his book The Healing Heart—in the era before the airport security instituted following the attacks of September 11, 2001: The main source of stress in my life for some years had been airports and airplanes, necessitated by a heavy speaking and conference schedule. Battling traffic congestion en route to airports, having to run through air terminals … having to queue up for boarding passes at the gate and then being turned away because the plane had been overbooked, waiting at baggage carousels for bags that never turned up, time-zone changes, irregular meals, insufficient sleep—these features of airline transportation had been my melancholy burdens for many years and were especially profuse in the latter part of 1980.… I returned from a hectic trip to the East Coast just before Christmas only to discover that I was due to leave again in a few days for the Southeast.

Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area
by Nick Edwards and Mark Ellwood
Published 2 Jan 2009

BASICS A word of warning: it’s not a good idea to buy a one-way ticket to the US. Not only are they rarely good value compared to a round-trip ticket, but US immigration officials usually take them as a sign that you aren’t planning to return home; as such, they’ll probably refuse you entry. And with increased airport security checks, it’s unlikely you’ll be allowed to board your flight to begin with. route between Seattle and Los Angeles. Note that the other LA–SF Amtrak route heads inland by bus to Bakersfield, then by rail north through the comparatively dull San Joaquin Valley. One-way cross-country coach fares are around $400, though seasonal special offers (for two or more people traveling together, for example) turn up quite often; seniors and students enjoy a fifteen-percent discount on most rail journeys.

pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton
Published 19 Feb 2016

The combination of apparent opposites into adjacent fabrics and into a single form is one version of what reversible political boundaries and interiors collapsing on themselves—the normalized exception of the reversible interface—look like as a design language. Its utopian enclave is less Elysium than executive lounge membership check-in protocol, and its dystopia is less the vast pens of Agamben's canonical camp, and more the furtive moments of political exception, sandwiched between moments of generalized mobility, like the ten minutes spent in airport security lines. While we can interpret the political complications that give rise to these forms, we are less certain of their ultimate effects, even as we get used to them. The securitarian utopia of total interfacial visualization works at the scale of the individual building or city because it also works at the scale of subdivided states and jurisdictions, especially when its ability to separate one from the other is mostly legal and symbolic.

Fodor's Costa Rica 2013
by Fodor's Travel Publications Inc.
Published 1 Oct 2012

The several IMAS Duty Free shops, whose proceeds go to benefit government social services, have the standard selection of duty-free alcohol. Costa Ricans, who pay high taxes on liquor and wine, love the prices here, but you won’t find any bargains you can’t already get back home. Don’t forget that liquids in your airplane carry-on are limited to the same three-ounce restrictions as you pass through airport security. * * * MUSIC San José’s music stores stock the Latin sounds of every artist from Chayanne to Shakira, but Costa Ricans take special pride in their hometown Latin-fusion group, the three-time-Grammy Award–winning Editus. Universal. In addition to selling everything else imaginable, downtown department store Universal stocks a good selection of Latin CDs in its first-floor music department. | Avda.

Coastal California Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet

Many websites offer ‘carbon calculators’ that allow people to estimate the carbon emissions generated by their journey and, for those who wish to do so, to offset the impact of the greenhouse gases emitted with contributions to portfolios of climate-friendly initiatives throughout the world. Lonely Planet offsets the carbon footprint of all staff and author travel. Air ATo get through airport security checkpoints (30- to 45-minute wait times are standard), you’ll need a boarding pass and photo ID. ASome travelers may be required to undergo a secondary screening, involving hand pat-downs and carry-on-bag searches. AAirport security measures restrict many common items (eg pocketknives, scissors) from being carried on planes.

pages: 956 words: 288,981

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2011
by Steve Coll
Published 23 Feb 2004

Murad confessed that he had been working with Yousef on multiple terrorist plots: to bomb up to a dozen American commercial airliners flying over the Pacific, to assassinate President Clinton during a visit to the Philippines, to assassinate the Pope when he visited Manila, and to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into the headquarters of the CIA. The plot to bomb American passenger planes over the Pacific was far along. Yousef had concocted a timing device fashioned from a Casio watch and a mix of explosives that could not be detected by airport security screeners. He planned to board an interlocking sequence of civilian flights. He would place the explosives on board, set the timers, and exit at layover stops before the bombs went off. He had already killed a Japanese businessman when he detonated a small bomb during a practice run, planting the device in an airplane seat and exiting the flight at a stopover before it exploded.

pages: 1,118 words: 309,029

The Wars of Afghanistan
by Peter Tomsen
Published 30 May 2011

He could only count on the loyalty of a few close advisers who were relatives, his palace guard force, and KHAD chief Yaqubi. But his enemies had also infiltrated KHAD. The Kabul Airport was Najib’s only route of escape from Afghanistan, now that Bagram was in Masood’s hands. But the regime general in charge of airport security had also gone over to Masood.6 For two years, United Nations Special Envoy Benon Sevan had promised Najib safe haven in India if he would step down as Afghanistan’s president to facilitate a peace agreement. Sevan, at that moment, was in Pakistan attempting to persuade skeptical Mujahidin party leaders about the merits of his UN peace plan.

Rainbow Six
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1998

The rest was easy. Malloy came into his office after his own morning workout, and called to get his helicopter readied for a hop. It didn't take long. The only headache was having to filter through the in- and outbound airliner traffic, but the chopper landed at the general-aviation terminal, and an airport security car took John to the proper terminal, where Clark was able to walk into the Speedway Lounge twenty minutes before the flight to collect his ticket. This way, he also bypassed security, and was thus spared the embarrassment of having to explain that he carried a pistol, which in the United Kingdom was the equivalent of announcing that he had a case of highly infectious leprosy.

Frommer's Israel
by Robert Ullian
Published 31 Mar 1998

We list hospitals and emergency numbers under “Fast Facts,” in the individual destination chapters. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry prescription medications in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Also carry copies of your prescriptions in case you lose your pills or run out. Don’t forget an extra pair of contact lenses or prescription glasses. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines, in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name. We list additional emergency numbers in appendix A, p. 503. 7 Safety STAYING SAFE SECURITY W H AT T O D O I F YO U G E T S I C K A W AY F R O M H O M E Israel is a low-crime country.

pages: 1,242 words: 317,903

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 10 Oct 2016

It turned out that dot-com companies were not actually building a utopia with America at its apex; it turned out that the symbols of U.S. preeminence could become propaganda props for terrorists. Americans were left to reckon with the fact that their sense of post-cold-war invulnerability had been punctured. They would henceforth set aside more of their resources for airport security, border security, policemen, and air marshals. They would endure longer waits outside sporting events and concerts. They would lose some of their openness to immigrants, and hence a measure of their economic vitality. For Greenspan, too, life became more complicated. His low-key security team was replaced by an officious Secret Service detail, with rules about who sat where in the back of the car and about not getting out until the door was opened for you.

Debt of Honor
by Tom Clancy
Published 2 Jan 1994

"What the hell—" "You will continue your duties as before," a captain, or ichii, told him. "My English is quite good. Please do not do anything foolish." Then he lifted his radio microphone and spoke in Japanese. The first phase of Operation KABUL was completed thirty seconds early, and entirely without violence. The second load of soldiers took over airport security. These men were in uniform to make sure that everyone knew what was going on, and they took their places at all entrances and control points, commandeering official vehicles to set additional security points on the access roads into the airport. This wasn't overly hard, as the airport was on the extreme southern part of the island, and all approaches were from the north.

pages: 675 words: 344,555

Frommer's Hawaii 2009
by Jeanette Foster
Published 2 Jan 2008

Don’t go into any city park at night unless there’s an event that attracts crowds—for example, the Waikiki Shell concerts in Kapiolani Park. Generally speaking, you can feel safe in areas where there are many people and open establishments. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage, and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise, they won’t make it through airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of prescription drugs. For U.S. travelers, most reliable health-care plans provide coverage if you get sick away from home. Foreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs up front and be reimbursed later. See “Medical Insurance,” under “Insurance,” in the appendix.

Costa Rica
by Matthew Firestone , Carolina Miranda and César G. Soriano
Published 2 Jan 2008

DEPARTURE/ARRIVAL TAX There is a US$26 departure tax on all international outbound flights, payable in cash (US dollars or colones, or a mix of the two). At the Juan Santamaría airport you can pay with credit cards, and Banco de Costa Rica has an ATM (on the Plus system) by the departure-tax station. Note that you will not be allowed through airport security without paying. At the time of research, the government had recently declared a US$15 tax on international inbound flights, though this is included in the price of your ticket. The fee was designed to replace the 3% hotel tax, which didn’t capture the increasing amount of condominium and other private rentals.

pages: 1,208 words: 364,966

Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War
by Robert Fisk
Published 1 Jan 1990

A Lebanese then hijacked a Lebanese MEA Boeing the same day to protest at the hijacking of the Jordanian plane. One of the American passengers on the Alia flight had been transferred to the MEA jet, hijacked twice in a day by two different people. There was no accounting for this. A Lebanese airport security guard hijacked an MEA flight to Larnaca to protest at his low pay. The plane was forced to take off with its doors open, its escape chutes hanging from the fuselage. A passenger was sucked out of the Boeing and hurled onto the runway by the backthrust of the jets which killed him instantly. An old Lebanese man on a Larnaca–Beirut flight hijacked the plane by waving a Pepsi-Cola bottle which he said was filled with gasoline.

Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
by Laurie Garrett
Published 15 Feb 2000

Denouncing Soviet deceptions and the Communist beliefs behind them, Yeltsin swore “that we will not let it rise again in our land.” Harvard’s Matthew Meselson calculated that Russia’s lethal accident involved less than one gram of anthrax spores, an amount that could easily be hidden from inspectors, airport security guards, or police. “So along comes [Yekaterinburg] and there you are with cases coming down what—forty-two days,” Henderson recalled. “So I talked to [anthrax] experts and said, ‘What’s the probability this is resuspended particles in the air?’ And they were adamant that couldn’t happen. Since that time Friedlander at USAMRIID49 has exposed monkeys to low-dose anthrax.

pages: 1,410 words: 363,093

Lonely Planet Brazil
by Lonely Planet

Don’t forget to get your Colombian exit stamp at Leticia’s airport and, if needed, a Brazilian visa before departure. When departing Leticia’s airport, all foreigners must check in at Migración Colombia (%8-592-7189; www.migracioncolombia.gov.co; Aeropuerto Internacional Alfredo Vásquez Cobo; h7am-6pm Mon-Fri, 7am-4pm & 7pm-10pm Sat & Sun) before proceeding through airport security, regardless of whether they’re leaving Colombia or not; you’ll be directed there after check-in if you haven’t done it already – it’s a painless and free procedure that takes a matter of seconds. BOAT Buy tickets for Puerto Nariño and other points upriver from one of the three agencies at Transportes Fluviales (%311-486-9464, 311-532-0633; Malecon Plaza, Carrera 12 No 7-36).

pages: 1,797 words: 390,698

Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan
by Lynne B. Sagalyn
Published 8 Sep 2016

As the names controversy filled headlines, the protest intersected with objections to where Arad had located the names’ parapets: below the level of the Memorial Plaza in the underground galleries. Enormous halls far below street level, the underground galleries presented genuine security as well as safety concerns; visitors might have to go through an airport-security experience to reach bedrock. The noise of the waterfalls was likely to be deafening as well, a physical force that threatened to cancel out the design intent of creating a place for a contemplative memorial reflection. Technical advisors to the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, an organization founded by Sally Regenhard, whose probationary firefighter son perished on 9/11, raised concerns about the safety of the exit pathways in the underground galleries.

Frommer's England 2011: With Wales
by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince
Published 2 Jan 2010

For conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes, or heart problems, wear a MedicAlert Identification Tag (& 888/633-4298 or 209/668-3333; www.medicalert.org), which will immediately alert doctors to your condition and give them access to your records through MedicAlert’s 24-hour hot line. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage and carry prescription medications in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Also bring along copies of your prescriptions, in case you lose your pills or run out. Don’t forget an extra pair of contact lenses or prescription glasses. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines, in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name. We list additional emergency numbers in “Fast Facts,” p. 755.

Central America
by Carolyn McCarthy , Greg Benchwick , Joshua Samuel Brown , Alex Egerton , Matthew Firestone , Kevin Raub , Tom Spurling and Lucas Vidgen
Published 2 Jan 2001

For information on these and other routes, Click here, Click here and Click here. Direct international bus routes from Guatemala City include: Belize City, Managua (Nicaragua), San Salvador (El Salvador), Tapachula (Mexico), Tegucigalpa and other Honduran destinations. Click here for more details. * * * DEPARTURE TAX A US$30 departure tax (plus US$3/Q25 airport security tax) is charged on all international flights leaving Guatemala. The departure tax is usually (but not always) included in the price of your ticket; the security tax must always be paid separately in quetzals or dollars. All passengers on domestic flights are charged a Q10 departure tax, payable at the airport

Frommer's California 2009
by Matthew Poole , Harry Basch , Mark Hiss and Erika Lenkert
Published 2 Jan 2009

We list additional emergency numbers in “Fast Facts,” in appendix A. If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult y our doctor befor e y our depar ture. Pack prescription medications in y our carry-on luggage, and carr y them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels— otherwise they won ’t make it thr ough airport security. Visitors from outside the U.S. should carry generic names of pr escription drugs. F or U.S. trav elers, most r eliable health-care plans pr ovide co verage if y ou get sick away fr om home. F oreign visitors may have to pay all medical costs up fr ont and be reimbursed later. 49 P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P TO C A L I F O R N I A The most popular are offered by American E xpress (& 800/807-6233; & 800/ 221-7282 for car d holders—this number accepts collect calls, offers ser vice in several foreign languages, and ex empts Amex gold and platinum car dholders fr om the 1% fee); Visa (& 800/732-1322)—AAA members can obtain Visa checks for a $9.95 fee (for checks up to $1,500) at most 50 7 S P E C I A L I Z E D T RAV E L R E S O U R C E S P L A N N I N G YO U R T R I P TO C A L I F O R N I A TRAVELERS WITH DISABILITIES S P E C I A L I Z E D T RAV E L R E S O U R C E S 3 California’s spirit of tolerance has made it a welcoming place for trav elers with disabilities.

Southeast Asia on a Shoestring Travel Guide
by Lonely Planet
Published 30 May 2012

Safe Travel Drugs The risks associated with recreational drug use and distribution are serious even in places with illicit reputations; just down the road from Kuta Beach in Bali is a jail where travellers are enjoying the tropical climate for much longer than they had intended. In Indonesia you can be jailed because your travel companions had dope and you didn’t report them. A spell in a Thai prison can be very grim; in Malaysia and Singapore, possession of certain quantities of dope can lead to hanging. With heightened airport security, customs officials are zealous in their screening of both luggage and passengers. The death penalty, prison sentences and huge fines are given as liberally to foreigners as to locals; no one has evaded punishment because of ignorance of local laws. In Indonesia in 2005, nine Australians (dubbed the ‘Bali Nine’) were arrested on charges of heroin possession: seven received life sentences and two were sentenced to death by firing squad.

Italy
by Damien Simonis
Published 31 Jul 2010

You will need one of these documents for police registration when you take a hotel room. In theory, there are no passport checks at land crossings from neighbouring countries, as all are members of the Schengen zone (in which border controls have been eliminated). In fact, random customs controls still take place when crossing between Italy and Switzerland. Airport security is tighter than ever. Check the latest restrictions on what can and cannot be carried on flights as hand-held luggage. Return to beginning of chapter AIR High seasons are generally June to September, Christmas and Easter, although it depends in part on your destination. Shoulder season is often from mid-September to the end of October and again in April.