Notes On Travel #1

1. Moving Sidewalks. The single brilliant thing about air travel is the use of moving sidewalks that allow you to electric bugaloo across terminals. In fact, it's the one single halfway decent thing at all related to airplanes and airports.



My problem is this: how come we don't have these everywhere?!?! We've had the technology for decades, dammit! We need to install these everywhere, so as to make the future less of a sham at the very least. And it's not as if it takes much to power these things--the secret is that airports use about 3 hamsters per sidewalk, so all we need to do is amp up our hamster breeding program and we're set.

2. Unattended Baggage. Now I understand the security concerns, and the more things that you can try to account for, the better. But the fact that they tell you to be on the lookout for unattended baggage at baggage claim, well that crosses the line from reasonably stupid to just retarded.



Think about it. The one place where everyone is separated from their baggage, and yet they are asking us to be on the lookout for baggage separated from their owners? Doesn't seem like this would work too well. Of course, if you think about it, the whole philosophy is predicated on the belief that potential terrorists are too afraid to die with their bombs, but to think about that is just depressing.

3. The "No Smoking" Sign. For years, they've had these electric lights on planes that tell you it is not OK to smoke, thank you very much, but the fact that these are lights and are not painted-on indicates the potential for smoking at some point. But that is not the case. Of course, way back when, it was possible to partake in smoking, but that hasn't been true for as long as I've been traveling, which is about 15 years. We are wasting precious electricity powering these lights!

Of course, today I saw a different light in place of the "No Smoking" one. "Please Turn Off Electronic Devices" is now apparently making appearances. I don't want to go into the general bullshit of that policy, but if you want to comment on that, please do so.



Anyways, Orlando was a great deal of fun, and no, there were no crimes as had been my fear, as stated in the previous post. Stories will soon follow, especially now that I have given my secret on Matter Transport (Cold Fusion will wait another day). And it's good to see that my co-authors kept going on the blog. Way to pull in the viewers with those new posts!

And now I sleep.