Let's put this anthrax thing into perpsective. We'll even ignore smallpox for the moment. Did you know that in 1918, half a million US citizens and up to 50 million people world wide died of the flu? 80% of US military deaths in WWI are attributed to influenza. When's the last time you caught it?

At least the media barrage was broken today by somebody finding a half-block of C-4 and some military fuse material in a bus terminal in the city of brotherly love. I was relieved. Not that's there's C-4 in a bus terminal, but that maybe, just maybe we'll get a break from being fed everything human knowledge has to offer on the anthrax bacteria. Cutaneous, cipro, optimum particle sizes, weaponization, etc. We americans have short attention spans, not because we aren't curious, but because with all the information sources available, it doesn't take long to find out the important details and the rest is just hundreds of talking heads chipping in for their fifteen minutes of fame. We're burned out from information overload on anthrax. It's a nuisance but we'll deal with it. Time for something new.

Now about getting folks back on airplanes again. I don't argue against increased security. But let's be realistic. Airline travel is becoming significantly less convenient over time. At some point it isn't worth the trouble, or we get much more selective about our long distance travels unless they're critically important. With parking moving further away from the terminal and the lengthened time for check-in, we're talking about leaving for the airport perhaps four to five hours ahead of time in some cases. Potential traffic jams and curtailed shuttles from the outlying parking areas can easily add two or more hours to the two-hour check-in. This is just to get on the plane. For an SF/LA trip why bother? I can drive it in 6 and eat a solid meal and stretch my legs on the way. Only rarely do you get a meal on a flight any more. A dry sandwich and a cookie. Remember no plastic knives so it's going to stay dry, unless you use the Dijonnaise wrapper to smear on the extremely frugal amount of that substance. Now you can't even have sugar or non-dairy creamer in your coffee. I like to use plastic razors on trips so I don't need to worry about a power converter. Have to buy them at the destination now and throw away any you don't use. Forget personal hygiene things like nail clippers or tweezers unless you want to add another hour to the flight to wait around for your baggage at the other end. The inspectors are going to undo all your careful packing and probably show your dirty underwear to your fellow travellers. Uncomfortable seats with no leg or elbow room. So while being scared probably has a huge impact, the larger impact will be that it's an increasingly unbearable pain in the butt to use this mode of transport.

I'm now getting a few emails sent last Monday trickling in. I think the majority of my mail has gotten here promptly, but that tells me at least a few of you have sent me messages this week that I haven't yet seen. I'll be on the road again shortly so I'll get the replies out in due time. But it's time to take action and get my external mail forwarder out of the loop since it has a history of getting clogged. I know how to accomplish this; but will require quite a bit of keyboard time and config file tweaking. I'd do it right now but I'd rather hit the road with badly working email than risk not getting it right in time and having none at all.