Blackmoor Vituperative

Dear Congress:

A few weeks ago, the Bakersfield, CA airport was closed because TSA agents became hysterical at the site of honey in a bottle. Just recently, a New York-to-Kentucky flight was diverted to Philadelphia because a Jewish passenger started to pray. Simply getting on an airplane has become a dehumanizing and all-too-often humiliating experience — and it serves no useful purpose.

This is ridiculous. None of this makes us safer. All it does is make airplane travel more tedious, more expensive — and more unlikely, if the traveler has any choice in the matter.

One or two well-publicized incidents do not change the fact that air travel is far, far, far safer than driving. More people die in car crashes in one month than have died in airplane crashes in the past decade (including the ones on September 11, 2001).

Please abolish the TSA, stop the wild-eyed fearmongering, and allow us to go back to traveling the “friendly skies”.

Kind regards,
An American Traveler

A gang of Somali pirates has kidnapped a British couple, who were sailing to Tanzania.

The Chandlers set off from the Seychelles for Tanzania on October 21 on their 38-foot-yacht, the Lynn Rival, according to their blog. A distress beacon was activated October 23, according to naval officials.

(from Briton says pirates holding him, wife, CNN)

Yet again, I wonder how — or if — the news media will compare/contrast these real pirates with the so-called “pirates” who buy the latest Miley Cyrus album and share it with their friends.

A reminder:

Sharing is not piracy
Copying is not piracy

As a computer guy and a gun owner, I thought this idea was brilliant: packing your laptop with a pistol in order to keep your laptop safe while traveling via airplane.

Of course, it is vital to know all of the rules and laws when one is transporting a firearm, on an airplane or anywhere else. So do your homework first.

Then again, gun ownership in the USA is rather like an intelligence test: if you own one (or more), and stay out of jail, you pass.

An example of real piracy:

Somali pirates hijack ship; 20 Americans aboard
Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 20 American crew members onboard, hundreds of miles from the nearest American military vessel in some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

The 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama was carrying emergency relief to Mombasa, Kenya, when it was hijacked, said Peter Beck-Bang, spokesman for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk. It was the sixth ship seized within a week, a rise that analysts attribute to a new strategy by Somali pirates who are operating far from the warships patrolling the Gulf of Aden.

The company confirmed that the U.S.-flagged vessel has 20 U.S. nationals onboard.

I wonder how — or if — the news media will compare/contrast these real pirates with the so-called “pirates” who buy the latest Hannah Montana song and share it with their friends.

A reminder:

Sharing is not piracy
Copying is not piracy

On a side note, Somalia has not had a functioning government in a couple of decades. Piracy is their most lucrative industry.

PointClickHome has a slideshow of unusual architectural projects that is pretty fun to look at.

A fun look at the cruise ship of tomorrow!

According to the BBC, Richard Gere aroused the ire of Indians when he kissed actor Shilpa Shetty on the cheek at a charity event.

An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Hollywood actor Richard Gere after he kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in public.

Gere, 57, kissed Shetty, 31, several times on the cheek at an Aids awareness event in Delhi earlier this month.

The court in Jaipur in Rajasthan state called it “an obscene act”, after a local lawyer filed a complaint.

It was not immediately clear how the warrant could affect Gere, who is a frequent visitor to India.

Shetty, who found fame outside India as the winner of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK, has also been asked to appear before the court.

Photographs of the clinch were splashed across front pages of newspapers in India.

Public displays of affection are still largely taboo in India, and protestors in Mumbai (Bombay) set fire to effigies of Gere following the incident.

(from BBC News, Gere faces Indian arrest warrant)

I think it’s sad that the culture that gave us the Khajuraho temples, which house some of the most beautiful erotic sculptures on Earth, is so uptight that they issue arrest warrants for public displays of affection.

The USA is pretty messed up, as far as our hypocritical neo-Puritan ways are concerned, but at least we aren’t that messed up.

I still haven’t put the photos from our vacation online. Probably this weekend.

Thinking about our photos, and our vacation in general, reminds me what a beautiful country we live in. Geographically, culturally, politically, economically… the USA really is a great place to live. That’s not to say that it’s perfect: there are certain laws and actions of our government officials that I think could use a great deal of improvement, but part of the beauty of the USA is that we can hope to peacefully change the things that need to be changed. And if we don’t, well, we get the government we deserve. That’s ultimately what makes the USA a great country. We’re responsible: it says it right there in the Preamble, “We the people”.

I often veer into extreme hyperbole in my online diatribes, just to vent some steam from time to time about things that bug me. But seriously, I think these are minor issues. They only loom large in that they are such deviations from what the USA should embody: freedom to speak our minds, to pursue our happiness, and so forth. And it’s such a huge contrast because, in general, we do have that extraordinary freedom, and a darn good standard of living. It’s good that we call our officials on the carpet when they step over the line, but we should also realize just how lucky we are to live here despite the unusual things that remind us that our country isn’t perfect.

It really is a great country.

Susan and I just got back from Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point amusement park. Cedar Point is reputed to have the best collection of roller coasters in the USA, which is why we went. We did have a good time, but you know, I think Busch Gardens Europe (formerly known as Busch Gardens: The Old Country) is on par with it, and Busch Gardens is a nicer amusement park to spend the day in.

We also visited Harpers Ferry, WV, during what just happened to be the centennial celebration of the first meeting of the Niagra Movement on US soil. Pretty cool. We also got to see (from the outside) the only English Norman castle in the USA, Berkeley Castle. Too bad it isn’t open for tours anymore.

I noticed some strange things on our trip. Some of them were obvious, and easy to talk about. For example, in Pennsylvania you can’t buy wine at the grocery store. You can only buy it at state-run stores. When I asked a fellow in PA where I could find the wine in the grocery store, he made a disparaging comment on his “backward” state. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, you can buy liquor at the corner 7-11. I kind of wish I had, just so that I could say that I did.

It was also hard to miss the demographic differences, but those are more difficult to talk about. People react strangely when you notice their differences. For example, there seemed to be an unnatural number of lean, reasonably attractive women in Sandusky, Ohio. Literally half of the people on the shuttle bus going to Cedar Point on our first day were young women. I do not know why. It was also hard to miss that Ohio is a very “white” state. Here in central and south-eastern Virginia, I am used to there being a roughly 50/50 mix of light-skinned and dark-skinned people. I think of this as normal. It was very odd to see a few dark faces in an otherwise oatmeal-colored crowd. I have to wonder how it would feel to be the X in a crowd of Os. I would have liked to ask a few people how they felt being a literal as well as figurative minority, but as I said, people react strangely when you draw attention to such things, so I didn’t.

I took a bunch of photos during our trip, using our nifty new Nikon digital camera. I’ll put them online soon, probably tomorrow.

Science Fiction & Fantasy return to Richmond, VA with RavenCon 2006, a weekend celebrating the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. (And as we’re playing the Edgar Allan Poe angle, we’re Mystery friendly, too!) Join our guests for panel discussions and workshops that can only happen at RavenCon!

Find out more at http://www.ravencon.com/