Good word, newsages. I found three stories this morning on /. that I happened to like. The first, right here, is about how the US is actually going to begin pulling troops out of Iraq. That’s great news, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what sort of ramifications it’ll have on the new government there, but it’s time for us to quit wasting American lives on it.
The next story, located here, is a bit more recently relevant to me. On the way back home from the cruise, American Airlines tore up one of our bags. The pulling handle was actually broken in half and the metal on it was bent up all crazy. They claim they don’t cover it, because it’s an “external attachment”, but that’s fucking bullshit. Those handles retract, and we sure as shit didn’t leave it out when we gave it to them. So somebody took it out and then fucked it up.
Anyway, the story is about the Sydney Airport using RFID tags to better track their bags. The part that caught my attention was this sentence: “Industry experts say that baggage mishandling costs the industry globally $US1.7 billion each year”. Oh boo-hoo. If the god damn airlines were just more careful with that shit, it wouldn’t happen. Morons.
The third and final story, which can be found here, is apparently about the Antikythera. It’s an analog computer that was developed almost 2000 years ago to map the positions of the sun and moon, and to map the lunar phases. It’s pretty cool, when you get right down to it.
December 1, 2006
I have to admit, the luggage, with metal rods sticking out of it, is now much easier to identify on the carrousel. the duct tape is just an added accessory