Newark airport is inhabited by sparrows. They feed on the crumbs dropped by the eternal stream of travelers. I noticed them while writing a blog posting and cursing Boingo for the poor Wifi service I was getting. I mentioned that the Boingo service was poor on Twitter and Boingo swiftly stepped in, demanding details and ultimately giving me two free Boingo sessions, courtesy of special activation codes.
I was traveling to London by way of Amsterdam, and by the time I got to London, Boingo had transformed me into a satisfied customer.
The UK: A Status Report
England was uplifting in a number of ways. First of all, the economy is in the tank and it actually feels worse than the US. Nobody has any idea what to do about it, especially the Labour Government, which hasn’t properly recovered from Tony Blair’s dirty little war. Tony’s replacement, Gordon Brown, is a dour Scotsman with a charisma deficit. He is now firmly focused on becoming unelectable, so everything he does looks incompetent.
There’s a little local political difficulty in progress about detaining terrorist suspects. It seems that the Prime Minister (Gordon Brown) had decided to raise the allowable detention period from 28 days to 42 days, which seems a little excessive to me. If you cant coerce some forlorn terrorist to confess treasonable behavior in 28 days then, imho, you are hiring wimpy coercers. Ergo, the fault lies not in the law, but in recruitment and training. Of course, the subtext is really about frightening the electorate into voting for the party that can posture most effectively about terrorism.
Nevertheless, some notable Tory, David Davies by name, has resigned his seat so that his constituency can vote on whether civil liberties are threatened – a quite unexpected “civil liberties” ploy. The other parties (Labour and Liberal) have refused to stand against him, thereby foiling his public gesture and making the bye-election meaningless. It will most likely become a playground for deranged candidates and clowns. If you don’t understand this, don’t worry, nobody understands it. British politics is as arcane as American politics – which is beyond comprehension – a reality that became clear to me when I tried to explain the Electoral College to my son.
Everyone in the UK is depressed about the price of petrol (or gasoline as Americans are wont to call it). I try not to interfere with this because the British enjoy being depressed. So I cheerfully let everyone know that US petrol now costs a third as much as British petrol and it is creating havoc. Thousands of families are throwing pickup trucks and SUVs away, replacing them with Segways. Naturally this is a complete lie, but I’m very keen on the Segway because I think its potential hasn’t properly been exploited. It’s my belief that this “miracle of the modern age” needs more encouragement. For that reason I’ve invented two new sports:
- Segway polo: Basically it’s the same as polo with horses, except done on Segways, thus reducing the suffering this cruel sport inflicts on our fine four-legged friends.
- Segway basketball: It’s obvious that height has a big influence on how well individuals play basketball, so I propose a handicapping, which ensures all players are the same height, by adjusting the height of the Segway platform itself. Clever huh? It should stop oversized Chinese guys dominating the sport.
Over the weekend in the UK, I discover that hundreds of completely naked bicyclists are riding through London, protesting about the lack of bicycle lanes. A sensible idea, you may be thinking “attention getting and very green”. Unfortunately the truth is that a naked English person is an eyesore at the best of times. The Internet informs me that the same protest took place a week before, all over the world including London, so “methinks they do protest too much.” This isn’t really a protest, its an unwarranted and unsighty gathering of exhibitionists on bikes.
I can’t help thinking that it’s counterproductive. Some of these sad specimens undoubtedly believe that it’s OK to take your clothes off in public, as long as you’re riding a bike, and if we provide more bicycle lanes then it will undoubtedly encourage more of them to go riding around with their bits on display. The consequence will be a collapse in the London tourist industry and, in all likelihood, nobody will bother turning up for the 2012 Olympics. The economic consequences will be horrendous.
My proposed solution is that it should be possible to detain naked bicyclists, rather than terrorist suspects, for 42 days. It wont stop their absurd behavior, but it will keep them off the streets for a while.
The Evolution of MASP (Meaningless Airport Security Procedures)
On passing through Heathrow Terminal 1, on the way to the US via Amsterdam, I was completely surprised to discover that the UK now leads the world in the unintrusiveness of its MASP. I was astonished at the speed of passage through the Heathrow MASP – here’s how it works:
- You put your bags through the Xray machine
- You walk through the metal detector.
It’s what is not included that is revolutionary: No need to take your laptop out of your bag. No need to take coins out of your pockets. No need to take shoes off. No need to take belts off.
I ask about the disturbing lack of unwarranted hassle and the response is “new technology”.
Can this be, or is it just pretense? Who knows? However, as I’m flying through Amsterdam I get a chance to compare MASPs. In Amsterdam they do the security at the departure gate. Clearly they’ve worked out that this requires more X-ray machines, more metal detectors and more security staff, so nobody can accuse the Dutch of not investing in airport security – the bill must be huge.
Another neat feature of Schiphol Airport is the constant announcements, which go something like this:
“Mr Gianopoulos and Mr Antoniadis flying to Athens, you are delaying the departure of the aircraft, immediate boarding at Gate D21, your luggage will be unloaded from the aircraft.”
The bizarre thing is that these announcements are being made all the time, which makes me think that they aren’t real. Someone has got a book of surnames and their job is to read this announcement out all day, varying the names and destinations, just to hurry everyone up and convince everyone that the Dutch are organized enough to be able to unload someone’s luggage once it’s been put in the plane.
Sadly, Schiphol airport aint what it used to be. Sometime back in the 1980s, I was stranded in Schiphol airport for almost a day, while some weather system or other passed on by. In those days Schiphol was, like Newark, home to a fair few sparrows who swept up the crumbs and twittered constantly. The birds have now gone, but their song remains. It is piped through concealed speakers into the corridors that take you to the many gates and jet ways.
It would be more than pleasant if this symphony of birdsong did not have to compete with constant faux announcements about the unloading of luggage.
