The best thing about an eleven hour flight is it made the subsequent four hour flight seem mercifully brief.

I finally got to my hotel room just before 4 AM local time Sunday.  I was ready to hit the sack when my colleague showed up at the door.  He’d driven to the airport to meet me, but I didn’t know that he was planning to do that, so I’d taken a taxi to the hotel.  I ended up going to bed around 6 AM.  I woke up around noon, and fortunately the project schedule doesn’t require me to do anything until this evening.

The airlines have already damaged my new suitcase, but the suitcases did their job of protecting the contents, and it looks like everything made it intact.  Except the book I was reading, which I managed to hold onto for thousands of miles and then leave in the taxi.  I can replace the book easily enough, but I had a page of handwritten notes stuck into it that were moderately important to me.  Sigh.

I didn’t get to see anything scenic in Tokyo, Guam, or Saipan last night, but the view from my hotel window is gorgeous.

Once we reached the gate in Las Vegas, paramedics boarded the plane and evacuated the ill passenger.  The plane was refueled, and there was a slight delay for two oxygen bottles which had been used for the passenger to be replaced.  I didn’t check the time, but I don’t think we were on the ground in Las Vegas for much more than half an hour.

I was pleasantly surprised that none of the passengers made any fuss about the unplanned stop.  Everyone respected the instructions to remain seated while the paramedics boarded.  Before we left Las Vegas, the flight crew informed us that the paramedics said the passenger was in critical condition, so it was a very good thing that we landed in Las Vegas rather than proceeding directly to San Jose.  They also let us know that a passenger who was a former EMT had assisted the flight crew while en route to Las Vegas, and the passengers gave him a round of applause.

We weren’t told any details about the passenger or his illness, nor should we have been, but I can only hope that he or she has a full recovery.

Yesterday they didn’t tell me to do that, and I’d forgotten about it, so I just sent my entire backback including laptop through the scanner.

I was expecting them to pull one of my bags aside for manual screening, because it contains a CPAP machine, and they always manually screen those now. (I have no idea why, as a CPAP machine isn’t the least bit dangerous, nor does it look particularly strange on an xray.) But because of the laptop, they had to manually screen both of my bags.

They removed the laptop from the backpack and swabbed it. Then they ran the backpack (but not the laptop) through the xray again.

I can’t think of any rational basis for the manual screening of CPAP machines after they’ve been xrayed, nor why a laptop must be xrayed separately from a bag. I’m fairly sure that this is just another case of “security theater,” trying to make the public feel like something is being done to protect them, even if the so-called security measures are actually silly.

I seem to recall that this happened on my last vacation too.

According to “The U.S. Electronic Passport Frequently Asked Questions“, if the chip fails the passport is still valid until its normal expiration date. I expect that it won’t be long before there are published instructions on how to “encourage” the chip in one’s passport to fail. Note that alteration or mutilation of a U.S. passport is prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 1543, and is punishable by fine or imprisonment.

If the liquids really were binary explosives or poison gas sources, what would you expect to result?

Once again the government rushes to give the appearance of doing something to protect us. But usually that just inconveniences us, rather than puts us into danger.

I had scheduled air travel for vacation next week, but I’m probably going to cancel it. But I’m not cancelling it because of the risk of terrorism; that risk is too low to be worth worrying about. Rather, I’m cancelling it due ot the stupidity of the TSA.

Unfortunately the net result is the same. The terrorists get what they want, which is to disrupt our lives.

Imagine if you took your automobile to the mechanic because it was backfiring several times a day, and the mechanic said that he couldn’t fix it, but that you should not wear a shirt while driving. You might ask “will that help?” When he replies, “no, but there isn’t a better plan”, will that convince you that you really should in fact take your shirt off while driving? Of course not! Yet the government is doing things that are just nonsensical, and claiming that they are justified by the war on terror.

In point of fact, a much better response to the threat of terrorism is to do absolutely nothing at all, rather than pointless actions that take away our civil liberties. Taking away our freedom by turning the US into a police state is in fact one of the objectives of the terrorists. Instead of doing that, if we go about our business as usual, we have not increased our risk of being harmed by terrorism (which is incredibly minute to being with), and may even have reduced that risk. If terrorist acts don’t advance the agenda of the terrorists in some way, eventually they will stop committing them. They may be crazy, but they’re not completely stupid.

Recommended reading: How to Fight Terrorism by Sam Hughes.

I am not opposed to security measures with a rational basis, such as strengthening cockpit doors and putting air marshals on planes. What I object to is the useless supposed security measures which take away our civil liberties without any increase in actual safety, such as:

1. wiretapping without warrants
2. requiring airline passengers to present photo ID
3. the no-fly list, which just prevented a U.S. Marine returning from eight month’s service in Iraq from flying from Los Angeles to Minneapolis
4. requiring passengers on city busses passing through federal government property to show picture ID, even though the IDs are neither recorded nor checked against any list, and the federal property in question is a non-military site that is open to the public

My mother was getting dissatisfied with her laptop due to its speed (very slow) and Windows crashing a lot. We probably could have solved the latter problem by reinstalling Windows, but it wouldn’t have sped it up all that much. She bought a new Compaq Athlon 64 desktop system that was on sale at Costco, and I installed some of her software. She seems to be really happy with it.

The main thing wrong with the vacation is that it wasn’t long enough. And I had to leave one day before my niece Juliana’s birthday party.

On the way back, I stopped in Cedar City, Utah to visit my friends Tod and Ana and their daughter Aubrey. They’ve been in Tanzania for the last year, so this was the first time I’ve seen Aubrey. The pictures of Tanzania and stories are amazing.

As I was driving southbound on I-15 just past Las Vegas, I caught a brief glimpse of a traffic accident on the northbound side: the smoking remains of a bus. Almost the entire top of the bus was burned up. The fire department was there, and the fire had already been extinguished. I’m not sure whether another vehicle was involved. The northbound traffic was backed up for almost 30 miles. I haven’t found any mention of it in the news, though.