Quick Change

I've accumulated another batch of short items and it's a rainy Saturday, so here they are.

• Whew! Between our refusal to let Cat Stevens into the country a couple of years ago, and now our defense against Arabic writing on t-shirts, I feel way safer! Thank &deity for the TSA:

  Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt — apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant — and asked him to remove it. He refused, arguing that the slogan was not offensive and citing his constitutional rights to free expression.

  Seriously, this is all one of those surreal dreams, right, like when you see a tank crashing through your fireplace shooting Salvo tablets at you... and then you wake up and go to work?
• In related news, which everyone's surely heard by now, air marshals can now dress like normal people. Someone finally figured out that by having them board first and dress neat and snappy, we make them stand out in the crowd of travellers who look more like a pack of war refugees.
• Jon Stewart talks about how George Bush, in his press conferences, engages in a little dance with journalists, a dance that Mr Stewart refers to as a pas de "duh".
• Another interesting sport that I heard about first on NPR:

  Morning Edition, August 28, 2006 · Bet you've wanted to do it at least once. Say, after a frustrating talk with an annoying service representative, just throw your cell phone as far as you can. The urge is sufficiently widespread to have given rise to a Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship. Now in its seventh year, it was held over the weekend in Finland, with a hundred contestants from around the world. This year's winner was a Finn who threw a late model Nokia nearly 300 feet.

• From a "phishing" message I got in my batch of spam last week:

  This instruction has been sent to all bank customers and is obligatory to fallow.

  I like it; it's not often you hear the word "fallow". It's also nice to see someone make a verb out of an adjective, rather than using a noun.
• A fortune cookie I got the other day:

  Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

  I've taken to calling them "platitude cookies", since they seldom actually have the "fortunes" of old ("You will take a long and fruitful journey."). Still, this one is so, so true.
• A somehow-related fortune cookie I got about 25 years ago:

  You will be chosen some day to go to the moon, because in school you took up space.

• Acey deucey; centers roll, ends 1/4 in.