Airport Security. And wine racks.

On Badscience there's a link to a superb article in the Atlantic about how airport security is as poorly thought-out as it is annoying. Which is saying something. As an aside, last time I was taken aside for a random security check I asked the guy exactly how random it is, and he said 'continuous random'. Which means, he explained as he got out the glove and the car battery, that when they've finished doing someone they grab the next person who walks past.

Anyway, this article would be a great find anyway, but it also has this superb paragraph. Note the past sentence, the one in parentheses:

During one secondary inspection, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America device called a “Beerbelly,” a neoprene sling that holds a polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed originally to sneak alcohol—up to 80 ounces—into football games, can quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through airport security. (The company that manufactures the Beerbelly also makes something called a “Winerack,” a bra that holds up to 25 ounces of booze and is recommended, according to the company’s Web site, for PTA meetings.)

See! (Oh, and if you don't know the colloquial meaning of the word 'rack' in American I suggest you get out more.)

What sort of board exactly?

Swans

I would expect this sort of thing (a hanging garden of apostrophes) from one of the rival codes, and I'm thinking particularly of the one that's had all the off-field incidents lately. But not AFL.. and not the swannies. I'm a member!

Numbers

Younger daughter asked me the other day "Who invented numbers?". And I thought for about a tenth of a second and said "The arabs", which isn't all that true but it seemed to satisfy her, and - now that I think about it - is a pretty good answer to any question of this type.

She thought for a moment, then asked a follow-up question: "Daddy, did they have numbers when you were little?"

Remix

At the gym I go to they play a lot of music which is remixed and updated versions of 80s songs. At first I thought that what this meant was that all popular music these days is just remixed versions of old songs (which span me off into a "kids these days.. so unoriginal" bender), but then I realised that the gym's a controlled environment, and that a remixed 80s song allows them to cater for a wider age range. People like me recognise the original, the younger crowd like the remix sound. Everyone's a winner, right?

They were playing a remixed version of "Another Brick in the Wall", that loathsome Pink Floyd song, which actually sounds even worse than it did back in 1979. And what struck me is that among the things the song rails against (education, thought control, whatever) is.."dark sarcasm in the classroom". Dark sarcasm? My heart bleeds.