A guy walked into the student newspaper office and asked “does anybody want to jump out of an airplane?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, I said “I’m your man.” It was only afterwards that I confirmed a parachute would be involved.

Well, that was ten years ago (can’t you tell, I look young — young!), but the video is still laying around and I just uploaded it to YouTube. Actually, this video has been through the wringer. It was recorded on Hi8, edited at the jump site to VHS, years later I encoded to DV and re-edited in iMovie (version 2, I think) and just now uploaded that edited file (the source DV and iMovie project are long gone).

video, sky diving, parachute, skydiving, flying, jump

The Mercury News’ QA on carry-on restrictions answered a big question I had:

Q Can I still carry my laptop, cell phone and iPod on board?
A Those items are still OK as long as you’re not traveling to or through the United Kingdom.

But a Reuters story posted at C|Net suggests the restriction on liquids won’t be going away any time soon.

Draconian restrictions on carry-on baggage may stay in place for months, even years…

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the mid-term elections and everything to do with our new understanding of evidence first uncovered in 1995.

Extra: Java Cafe’s photo of the flight home.

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If I didn’t like flying, or at least if I couldn’t tolerate it, I wouldn’t making my third distant trip in as many months. And though I know many others spend a whole lot more time in planes than I do, I still think Vasken has a bit of a point in the following:

I couldnt help thinking about the horrid dichotomy that is airline travel… on one hand, my flight from Philly to Manchester takes 50 minutes, or 6+ hours less than the trip takes in a car–on the other hand, it took me 5 hours to get from my house to the place I was staying in PA, a savings of a mere 2 hours. Looking back, the stinking train ride took a full hour to transport me a whole 10 miles, the drive home was another hour (45 miles), and the security line comes in dead last (a full 15 minutes for 20 feet). The 50 minutes in the air? 350 miles, and they bring you drinks. What a marvelous technology, rendered almost useless by the inadequacies of American public transit and the paranoia of its citizens.

Anyway, see you in Corvallis.

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