I'm headed out to the West Coast at an ungodly hour tomorrow morning, as one of the faculty accompanying the students who are presenting at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. I'm looking forward to the trip, other than the bit where I have to get up at 4am to go to the airport.
Prior to departure, I decided to check the current Security Theater status, and looked at the Official List of Things You Can't Take On Planes. The TSA helpfully provides a very long table of items that you might be thinking of bringing on the plane (lacrosse sticks, flare guns, cattle prods, nunchakus), and whether they're allowed in carry-on luggage (no) or checked bags (yes). Way, way down at the bottom of the list, we find:
Snow globes and like decorations regardless of size or amount of liquid inside, even with documentation.
These are not allowed in carry-on luggage.
You just know there has to be a story behind that. What it might be, I can't imagine, but there must be something.
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According to this page, it's because the water in a snow globe could potentially be replaced by nitroglycerin. (And since many snow globes are hermetically sealed, their composition presumably can't be checked by chemical sniffers...?)
Oops, should be this page.
Jesus H. Christ, this is getting ridiculous. Banning an entire phase of matter is nuts. And one of the big three, to boot. I could see how a quark-gluon plasma, or maybe even a Bose-Einstein condensate, could be dangerous in the wrong hands, but snow globes have never hurt anyone. Not even a little frostbite.
On the other hand, I could see banning music boxes. And not just from airplanes. They invariably play insipid songs ad nauseum.
No logic whatsoever...
Has there been any successful hijacking since 9/11? The only attempt I can recall is Richard Reid, which was thwarted by a beatdown by airline staff and passengers. I expect that the same thing would happen in any other case in the future.
I have had a pair of 2 inch nail scissors singled out by security after I mistakeny had them in my carry on bag. On another flight I carried a 16 X3/4 inch sharpened pencil that my daughter bought in an airport shop. I could easily kill someone with this thing (stab to the heart, throat or ear canal), but not an eyeblink.
Actually, a snowglobe in the right hands could cause a concussion or, if broken, could sub nicely for a box-cutter.
According to Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man, snow globes are shopping mall eggs, which grow via a mobile stage as wire trolleys. I can see how you wouldn't want to risk them hatching in flight.
Enjoy Marin County. If you so desire you can talk with the Outlaw Physics teacher at Tamalpais High School which will be a 10 to 15 minute drive south on 101 from where you will be.
I'm glad to see they haven't banned motherf*****g snakes from the motherf*****g planes.
"Rosebud!"
Titanium nose hair clippers cut through an armored flight deck door in a flash. Rice grains efficiently jam mechanical linkages. Dandruff is a biological vector. Don't even think about shoving ceramic inductors up your butt - pre-flight enemas for everybody! Homeland Severity means you.
"I could see how a quark-gluon plasma, or maybe even a Bose-Einstein condensate, could be dangerous in the wrong hands"
Well, there goes my plan to bring a plasma thrower and an exotic mass accelerator as carryon the next time I fly. Drat! Foiled again!
Was anyone ever actually charged in that British liquid bomber incident from last year that is ostensibly the reason why you now have to buy $4.50 bottled water if you want to drink something on a plane? They seemed pretty darn certain of what was going on when they talked to the press about that at the time, giving an entire elaborate script for how the bombings were (imminently, they said) going to be carried out. You'd think if they were certain enough to tell all this to the press, they'd be certain enough to tell it all to a court and demonstrate that these people were in fact capable of and going to make the bombs that our soda bottles are now being confiscated to prevent.
But I've not heard anything since about a trial, or even an ongoing investigation. I mean, I realize the wheels of justice grind slow, but you'd think we'd have heard something about this by now. And it's kind of bizarre when you think about it; these new regulations will be around apparently forever yet the event itself seems to have been totally forgotten. Am I just missing something?
Coin: my understanding is that the "liquid bomb" plot could never have been carried out. The ingredients for the explosives referred to in some of the news articles at the time could not possibly have been mixed on the plane. Google for it, you will find various discussions by chemists, none of whom seem to think it is plausible. Basically, we are all inconvenienced for the foreseeable future because someone panicked over completely unreliable information.
I may be wrong, but the last time I was on the TSA site, it said that, if you want to travel with carry-on luggage, you have to pack it in your checked luggage.
Coin: You don't have to buy the bottle at the airport. I routinely take empty bottles through security, and fill them up at a drinking fountain on the other side.
Asad
That's a good idea.
Are you coming down to the South Bay - say, Sunnyvale or thereabouts - as well?