Biometrics and the TSA

Airline travelers are quite used to metal detectors and x-ray machines by now.  And they may be getting used to what I call “the puffing thing,” but is referred to as a trace portal machine by the TSA.  (That’s the device that you walk into, and it puffs air at you, analyzes bits of debris it has dislodged, and lets you go on your merry way.)   Travelers are probably not yet used to the millimeter wave scanner, which I experienced over the weekend in DC.

Spoonerisms

I suppose this isn’t a true spoonerism, such as thinking that Jimi Hendrix was saying “’scuze me while I kiss this guy,” rather than saying “’scuze me while I kiss the sky,” but I found this headline somewhat amusing:

“Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable.”

I initially thought it said “Swearing Makes Palin More Tolerable.”  And I thought, you know, that’s actually kinda true.

But then I read the article and discovered I was wrong about what was being said, though, in truth, it’s an interesting read nonetheless.

Spiders Can Be Kinda Cool

This is a really cool story.  NASA sent some spiders to space to see how they’d react to zero gravity.  Initially, they didn’t respond very well, making some very chaotic webs.  And then one went missing, though it probably didn’t cost $100,000 like a tool belt that accidentally floated away.

Well, the missing spider showed up again, and the other spider seems to have adapted to space, spinning normal looking webs.  That’s just really, really fascinating to me.

Anyway, NASA.gov has a little video of a spider, though not much detail.  And it also has an amazing picture gallery, and information on buried glaciers on Mars.