Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says the airline smoking ban already covers electronic cigarettes — which do not smoke or burn in any way.

In a world where it depends on what the meaning of is is, all the government needs to do is interpret. Regulating interstate commerce includes forcing people to buy things they don't want to buy, and smoking includes not smoking. You can make anything you want be true, if you only believe. And "you" means "the government," and "believe" means "dictate."

E-cigarettes are plastic and metal devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution in a disposable cartridge, creating vapor that the "smoker" inhales. A tiny light on the tip even glows like a real cigarette. They have prompted debate over how risky they are and whether they're even legal....

Numerous videos on YouTube show passengers using the devices on airplanes. ... [S]ome passengers have interpreted flight attendant instructions to mean that the devices were only prohibited when other electronic devices were not allowed during takeoff and landing.

It sounds like the passengers are doing a pretty good job at interpretation. It's an electronic device, not a smoking device.

Many airlines already have begun informing passengers that the devices are not allowed on flights, but [Senator Frank Lautenberg, author of the 1987 smoking ban] said there had been confusion over their use and wanted to make sure officials were solidly opposed to opening the door to e-smoking on planes. 

Opening the door? How dare a politician talk to us like that! The doors are open until they close them with laws.

"I understand from an airline's point of view the hassles it could create," [said Jason Healy, president of e-cigarette maker Blu Cigs.] "It's not the actual product, it's the disruption and explaining to everyone else that it's not smoke."

Not smoking does not become smoking because you have to keep explaining that it is not smoking. If the disruption of people thinking these things are smoking is important enough to deny the physical needs and pleasures of the individuals who use them, then summon up the political will to ban them explicitly.  And quit lying.

People need to quit smoking and quit lying. If you're trying to quit smoking, maybe it will help you to have an e-cigarette that delivers some of the satisfaction you get from smoking. There is no corresponding device to wean you off your lying. Oh, but you say you're not lying, you're interpreting. Hey, your interpreting looks more like lying that an e-cigarette looks like smoking, and I'm going to grab it right out of your mouth with my blog. How dare you disrupt me like that!

[Correction.]

Cockpit panoramas.

Scrollably spherical.

(Via Metafilter.)

"Top Tweets: Jonah Goldberg Rides a Plane Edition."

Well tweeted, I'd say.

Why should it be illegal for airlines to charge a fee for carry-on bags when they can charge a fee for checking bags?

I don't get it. No one likes to pay more for anything, but why should one particular way of collecting money from passengers be forbidden? If I'm getting on a plane with a bag and I could either check my bag or not, why should the cheaper option be the one that slows down other passengers in 3 separate places (the security line, getting on the plane, and getting off the plane)? Right now, the checked baggage fee has cost-conscious travelers dragging more bags on board. Why is it always the most annoying people who find champions in Congress?

Instapundit says "this sort of thing should happen more often"... but should it?

"Barney Frank gets a high-altitude haranguing on health care. Two women ophthalmologists, whom Frank’s partner, Jim Ready, dismissed as 'bitchy; — which really set them off. Frank got an earful. As far as I’m concerned, these guys shouldn’t be able to go anywhere without getting an earful. Luckily for Ready he’s the partner of a gay Democrat, because if he were a Republican that remark would have been sexist."

At the linked article, I see that "high-altitude" signifies that Frank was riding in an airplane at the time. It wasn't a political event, just normal transportation, and Frank was initially polite and said that he didn't like to talk on planes. He wanted to read. The women kept talking louder and louder to intrude on Frank anyway, which is pretty unfair to the other passengers on the plane. The "bitchy" remark, which sounds apt, was nevertheless stupid and impolitic, and it stirred things up, again to the detriment of other passengers.

"No one was calming things down and people were standing up shouting," said Brooke Sexton, who was seated seven rows behind Barney....

You really cannot have this kind of environment on an airplane.

"The women had been drinking, and they were crying and shouting," Sexton said. "They were clearly the antagonizers, and Mr. Frank was kind of minding his own business."...

So "this sort of thing should happen more often"? I think not.

ADDED: "Mr. Frank was kind of minding his own business." An obvious rejoinder: It's not his business. It's the people's business. But I'm sticking to my position: It's an airplane.

When you're caught smoking in the airplane lavatory...

... don't wisecrack "I was trying to light my shoes on fire."

Pilots and their laptops.

Shhh. Don't interrupt me.

The pilots ignored repeated attempts to contact them by air-traffic controllers, including efforts that set off chimes in the cockpit, until a flight attendant finally got through on the intercom somewhere over Wisconsin.

Well, at least these guys have the capacity to concentrate and screen out distractions. If they would just commit to flying the plane, it would be great.

Airport. Airplane. Airplane. Airport.

Washington.









Detroit.

"Jose Flores Pereira, 44, who carried a Bible and a small box wrapped in packing tape, explained that the date - 9/9/9 - was the number of the Beast upside down."

"He forced the pilot of AeroMexico Flight 576 from Cancun to circle Mexico City seven times before landing, and demanded to talk to Mexican President Felipe Calderon. 'He had a revelation that Mexico was threatened by an earthquake,' said public safety minister Genaro Garcia Luna. The hijacker released all 104 passengers unharmed before SWAT teams stormed the plane, freeing the crew and capturing Pereira without firing a shot."

So he was only a lunatic. But he showed us that it's still pretty easy to hijack a plane.

"White House 9/11 evoker resigns."

The headline in Iran.

The asinine photograph:

"Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo-op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination."

Mayor Bloomberg raged, after a needless, stupid White House mission caused a panic in NYC:

“People came pouring out of the buildings, the American Express Building, all the buildings in the financial district by the water,” said Edward Acker, a photographer who was at the building, 3 World Financial Center. “And even the construction guys over by 100 North End Avenue area, they all got out of their buildings. Nobody knew about it. Finally some guy showed up with a little megaphone to tell everyone it was a test, but the people were not happy. The people who were here 9/11 were not happy.”

Mr. Acker added: “New York City police were standing right there and they had no knowledge of it. The evacuations were spontaneous. Guys from the floor came out, and one guy I talked to was just shaking.”...

In Jersey City, construction workers were evacuated from a condominium tower under construction at 77 Hudson Street.

The workers, who were on the 32nd floor of the construction site, said the plane circled three times past the Goldman Sachs tower, the tallest building in New Jersey. On the second pass, they said, the jet appeared to be only a few dozen feet from the building — close enough to clip the side of the skyscraper. A fighter followed right behind, mirroring its moves....

Sidney Bordley, a floor director in an office building at 1 Battery Park Place, said, “People were running out of the office, claiming they saw a commercial flight being pursued by F-16’s.” He added, “There was some confusion and a little excitement.”

A group of financial services workers, who were gathered outside the same building but declined to give their names, described their reactions. “I saw the landing gear and I was out of here,” one said. Another said: “There were people in my elevator, sweating and shaking. There were women crying. It was not an experience to be taken lightly.”

Sir Archy, archy, and blogging cockroach.

In the early morning hours yesterday, this blog received a visit from our ghost commenter Sir Archy -- dead these 260 Years and more. As a ghost, he had something to say about Barack Obama's first press conference, in which the prez-elect claimed to have spoken to all the living Presidents and quipped "I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." (That quip -- for which Obama's had to apologize -- would surely have inspired warm chuckles in a law faculty room.)

In the comments, Amba said about Sir Archy: "I get him mixed up with the cockroach." By "the cockroach, she means our delightful insect commenter blogging cockroach. (Click the "blogging cockroach" tag below to see old posts with writings by the industrious arthropod.)

Amba adds: "I wonder if they aren't the same person, though, and 'Archy' is a clue." She's thinking -- I happen to know -- of archy of archy and mehitabel, the literary creations of Don Marquis:

Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past -- she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life....

"expression is the need of my soul," declares Archy, who labored as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis' typewriter to describe a cockroach's view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It's difficult enough to operate the typewriter's return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy's dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter.

"boss i am disappointed in some of your readers," he writes, weary of having to explain the mechanics of his literary output. " ... they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not."

Marquis' George Herriman's ink drawings are sublime. See, here is archy putting in the immense athletic effort needed to type a short column:
Now, blogging cockroach is surely a tribute to Marquis' archy, and we appreciate his explanation of the the mechanics of his literary output by computer even as we contemplate whether the stuff is literature or not. (Perhaps someone can make a drawing in the Marquis style of blogging cockroach at the computer or photoshop this drawing somehow.)

But Amba's question is whether Sir Archy is named to connect him to the cockroach. (Bonus points if you you do that drawing/photoshop and replace mehitabel with Sir Archy.) Are these writers one and the same (and, if so, are they also anybody else that we see around here)?

Well, the cockroach saw Amba's musings and dropped by the comments thread. Here is what he wrote:

well all i can say is that there are some
advantages to being a cockroach
one of them is i don t have to worry
about my hair or clothes anymore

having the transmigrated soul of a composer
i can look back at all the troubles i had
when i was a music professor
to buy the right suits and keep my shirts ironed etc
in those days they paid us a pittance
and so i drove a 56 studebaker
but had to wear a suit on campus every day
which cost me as much as the damn studebaker
i hated clothes
not to mention haircuts
i was actually kinda glad to go bald
except maybe for the combover
which frightened away my female students
damn
but now i don t worry about any of that
and other than molting now and then
life is simple
and i sure don t want to mess it up
with a powdered wig

but having spent a little time
on the astral plane myself
i can tell you archy s right about seances etc
you just settle in and some idiot
comes and bothers you
about something really stupid
reminded me of office hours
anyway one day my ex wife showed up
wondering where the key to the
safe deposit box was
now some exes hire private detectives
but mine hired a medium
tells you a lot
anyway i screamed let me out of here
let me slouch somewhere to be born
and presto the next ticket said

cockroach
cambridge mass

so here i am
maybe i ll tell you about the safe
deposit box next time

So here's another clue for you all:



Plus, cambridge mass... Harvard/MIT? Some bald professor with a penchant for nudism?

ADDED: And at last night's Crossroads Café, Chip Ahoy said:

What I know about the Kennedy administration was learned by reading.

Smithsonian used to be so interesting. My favorite part was letters from the readers remarking on articles. What an erudite bunch. It ran a couple of pages. Then they got another new editor who cut that section back to just a few letters and to about half a page. That told me all I needed to know about the new editors attitude toward his readers.

Then they ran an article in relation to the John Kennedy assassination anniversary. Readers were asked where they were when the event occurred. That series of letters then ran for several pages. All the remarks were about how glorious the age of Camelot was, how idealistic, youthful, energetic, positive, and optimistic everyone was. How amazing incredibly beautiful the time was. Every single one glowed with praise and rued a lost past.

Except for one. A response from Tom Clancy. He had a wee on their little party. He remarked the administration wasn't all that remarkable. He reminded readers of several notable failures and obvious shortcomings. He suggested had the administration lasted, it would not be remembered so fondly. This caused me adore Tom Clancy, even though he's a schmuck.

I was so put off by the whole thing, the rebuff to the readers, the hard leftist turn, the ceaseless pontificating, the whole desktop publishing look, I ended the subscription I held since junior high school.

It occurred to me though, reading through all those responses, those writers, were recalling an idealized, sanitized youthful optimism -- their own youths. Their optimism was entirely of their own making and had little to do with facts on the ground. As is their present pessimism.

And now, I'm seeing that phenomenon occurring again right before my eyes. I'm going to enjoy this. As an observer. But this will not affect my own naturally occurring cheerful optimism nor my own self-indulgent satanic pessimism. I'm just going to watch my wonderful country, the less wonderful world, willfully create their own optimism. Myth making. That's what is happening. Observe a new myth. This is how it's created. Begin by overlooking faults, dismissing them, excusing them. Next exaggerate any gain, whatever actual good there is, suddenly is really REALLY, REALLY everlastingly good. Yay! Dance! Glee! Canonize! Deify. Mythologize. Expect comparisons to Camelot, and know then you're in the arena of myth. But know also, this is all occurring within the minds of the mythologists.

But know also, optimism is very real. Just as real an uplifter as pessimism interprets into very real and actual drag. Therefore, I choose to enjoy the optimism in my fellow Americans, no matter how ridiculous it is. I could go for another Camelot myself, even though I know it's all occurring entirely within the minds of all you silly dumkopfs, present company excepted, of course. I vastly prefer my fellow citizens as silly little shits, than as obnoxious unbearable cnuts. <--- See what I did there? Letter transposition. Disguises a word unacceptable in polite mixed company, one worse even than the s word before it. This completes my remarks about ridiculously delusional self-constructed optimistic mythos. And now for something entirely different. Here's what I made for lunch.

Sorry you couldn't be here, I'm sure you'd have been wonderful lunch dates.

Go to Chip's lunch link for all the steps, but here's his last pic:



That brought the cockroach over:

yes chip ahoy that was a beautiful lunch
i adore hummus
if you don t eat those lettuce leaves completely
and leave the remains on the plate
or better yet drop one on the floor
well i ll have a beautiful lunch too

now about the beautiful
kennedy administration
i was a young grad student
when camelot happened
the main thing i remember
is seeing kennedy getting off
an airplane looking really snappy
or hot as they say today
and thinking man that guy
must get some action
then i thought naw
he s the president of the u s
that s really sick to think those thoughts
hoo boy was i wrong

And here's what Tom Clancy wrote:

I never voted for the guy. I was only 13 when he got elected. I was a junior in high school when Kennedy got whacked. I was in the Waverly Theater on Green Mount Avenue in Baltimore watching Shirley MacLame and Jack Lemmon. I had a half-day of school. It was a Friday. I heard it on the way coming out of the movie. The ticket-taker said the president got shot. Then followed four days of nothing but a dead president. They didn't even show the Colts play. He was the president of the United States, so I didn't want him murdered. I wanted him to lose the next election. I mean, what did he accomplish? He has been canonized by the media, which I think is a bit unseemly. He was a handsome guy. He had great style. He meant well. It was Lyndon Johnson who got the civil rights movement rolling. He was a patriot and he put his life at risk in World War II, and that's something to be admired, but I don't see anything historically significant that he did other than the space program. For the space program, I'd buy him a beer.

ADDED: Thanks to Jeff with one "f" for correcting me about the ink drawings. I love George Herriman -- and even blogged about him back here. Mehitabel's resemblance to Krazy Kat is clear... clearer than Sir Archy's resemblance to blogging cockroach.

AND: Dear, sweet Palladian has sent me the illustration I wanted!

"Invisible Man: How Ralph Ellison explains Barack Obama."

David Samuels has a piece in TNR with that title. This is one of those things I decide to blog about before reading, or, to be more accurate, after reading 1 or 2 sentences. Here are the 2 sentences that grabbed me:

It is one of the more interesting facts about Obama the writer that the father he chooses to represent, and whose legacy he chooses to embrace, is a bona fide monster--a scary polygamist who abused his wives and children and drank away his intellectual promise and his career, then crippled himself in a car accident that left him with iron legs, and finally wrapped his car around a tree in a second accident that luckily proved fatal to no one other than himself. Dreams is a book about Obama coming to terms with this troubling monster and creating a workable self out of the ruins of his father's life.

Then I see the first comment over there:

What a load of branless bloviation!

Ha ha. Branless. Why not braless? As long as we're subtracting letters and creating new meanings...

Anyway, now I will try to read the article, or enough of it to determine whether it's brainless or -- ! -- flatulent.

While I don't know the candidate personally, I feel as if I do, in part because he was at Harvard Law School when I was at Harvard, and he lived a few blocks away from me in a "transitional neighborhood" in Manhattan where rich people brought their dogs to poop. I know where the candidate is coming from, I am thinking, as I watch the fluffy white clouds float by my airplane window in a sea of antidepressant Obama blue.

Oh my. Samuels does sound insane. If those dog owners are so rich why are they walking their own dogs? What sort of dog owner treks to another neighborhood to deposit shit? Who looks at blue sky as "antidepressant" rather than simply cheerful?

It is hard not to like the idea of a writer becoming president...

Oh, no. That's so wrong. The writerly mind is exactly what you want to watch out for. There's plenty of writerly mind on display in this long article, which you may or may not like. Let me know.

ADDED: Swampland calls the article "compelling and challenging." (Challenging ≈ branless?)

It is at once a book review, a comparative literature exercise, a rumination on race, a candidate profile, and a magazine feature. Its central idea is that Barack Obama has internalized the thesis of Ralph Ellison's classic novel, Invisible Man, which Samuels summarizes as the notion that "the symbolic and actual baggage of race makes it difficult if not impossible for a black man to ever realize his full humanity in the eyes of anyone."

"Her first creation... was a 'vaginal vault' made of a cardboard toilet-paper roll, Play-Doh and a badminton shuttlecock..."

"She has also constructed a scrotum using two wood balls linked by a rubber band (vas deferens) and suspended in an extra-large condom filled with oil and peanut butter."

It's not another art show. This is a serious medical project: Designing anatomical models to train doctors to get over their prudishness so they can examine body parts properly:

[Dr. Carla Pugh] often buys penises at adult “novelty” shops, though they are all erect and circumcised, and sometimes welds on rubber tubing used for synthetic intestines when a foreskin is needed....

“We need permission to fail in a safe environment,” [Dr. Richard M. Satava] said. “Aviation has used simulators since 1955 that are now almost indistinguishable from flying real airplanes and have achieved a remarkable safety record. It’s time that health care followed.”

The models need not be particularly high-tech. “A very sophisticated simulator would be too much for a student,” he said. “For simple tasks like a pelvic exam, a simple simulator like Carla’s is actually preferable. You don’t teach a teenager to drive in a million-dollar Ferrari.”

The Lolita Midsleeper Combi, an item of cute bedroom furniture for little girls, offered for sale by Woolworths.

For the annals of cluelessness:

Whereas many mothers were familiar with Vladimir Nabokov and his famous novel, it seems that the Woolworths staff were not. At first they were baffled by the fuss. A spokesman for the company told The Times: “What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.”

Via Metafilter. Sample comment:

Makes me think of "Amelia Earhart luggage"...

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of imagined brand names, including — from Ruth Anne Adams — the Sylvia Plath oven range. Ouch!

ADDED: Here's an ad for the Lolita Midsleeper Combi: "This Lolita Midsleeper Combi is the perfect space-saving solution for your child's bedroom."




MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Omaha1 has more bad product names:

Jon-Benet kiddie cosmetics

Andrea Yates bathtub toys

Christopher Reeve rocking horse

OJ Simpson gloves

Lewinsky humidor

Bill O'Reilly loofah

David Koresh lighter fluid

Jim Jones fruit-flavored beverage

Michael Jackson underoos

John Denver model airplane kit

Lynn Spears' guide to successful parenting (oops that one's real!)

Last night's debate.

I didn't post last night about the Republican debate because I was on an airplane, but since it was a JetBlue airplane I had TV reception and was able to watch the whole thing on the seatback in front of me. Admittedly, I slept through part of it, but I saw at least the first hour of it.

I turned on CNN in my hotel this morning and heard talking heads yammering about how there were "no fireworks." Oh, too bad!

On the subject of the media's ridiculous hunger for emotional outbursts, watch this "Daily Show" clip:



But let's discuss the debate. I thought Mitt Romney was especially good. Beginning with the first question, he let us see some of the depth of his expertise on economic matters.

Meanwhile, John McCain was challenged on a statement of his that conceded he was not well-versed on economics. McCain seemed to deny that he'd said any such thing. I say "seemed" because it was a little hedged: "I don't know where you got that statement." But as TPM makes painfully clear, he has disparaged his own understanding of economics on several occasions.

Romney must be terribly pleased that the central issue in the campaign is suddenly economics.

"Her tailspin began when he got off the airplane in Iowa and started running around making 3-hour speeches about himself..."

Rush Limbaugh (TiVo'd on Fox News at 3:19 AM, Central Time).

Let's take a closer look at these noise-cancelling headphones.

Needing to get a night's sleep on an airplane a couple days ago, I got to thinking about getting some noise-cancelling headphones. I tested the Bose® QuietComfort® 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones yesterday, and I would have bought them impulsively, but the store — at the Apple Store in SoHo — was out of them.

So now I've got to contemplate the purchase rationally.

Pro: Sounded good. Seemed to cancel some noise. Rested softly but solidly on the ears (and no ridiculous cup around the ears).

Con: $349 is expensive. No built-in microphone-switch for the iPhone. Too big and bulky to look good walking around in outdoors.

Advice?

ADDED: I think I should hold onto my money until Bose comes out with headphones that work with the iPhone. That's so important to me, and I heard they were going to do it soon.

What do you think? Should I learn how to fly?

Maybe. If I had this $450,000 airplane...

ADDED: I don't actually want to own a plane, even if I had an extra $450,000 to spend. But if one of my millionaire readers wants to hit the PayPal button for $450,000... well, don't impetuously give me $450,000 and think you've made a contract that obligates me to do any particular thing. I may eat an egg salad sandwich for $200, but I don't want anyone giving me $450,000 and then thinking they've bought the right to tell me what to do, with access to courts to enforce the obligation. Paying for the plane would only be the beginning. First, it might be taxable income, and I'd have to pay for a lawyer to advise me on the subject (unless TaxProf wants to give me free advice). Second, I'd have to get insurance and pay and pay for it. Third, I'd have to pay to keep the plane somewhere and to use various airports. Fourth, I'd have to use it to go places, with all the expenses of travel. Do you know how expensive hotels and restaurants and clothes are for a person with a $450,000 plane?

Therefore, I think I would need several million dollars before I could learn to fly. But if you love this blog and would love to see more travel and adventure blogging here and if you are very rich, you see the PayPal button over there. I say this, worrying that anyone who gives me several million dollars might feel entitled to intrude into my private — and mysterious! — life. I would really prefer more of a John Beresford Tipton character. A John Beresford Tipton who operates via PayPal. Isn't there some web geek turned billionaire who would find fulfillment giving $1 million PayPal donations to the bloggers he loves?

Anyway.... the inside of this Cirrus airplane looks and feels very much like a car (a very nice car). I thought the design was beautiful, and I enjoyed sitting in it — which wasn't my idea. The guy showing off the plane invited me to get in. His idea was to get lots of people to sit in the plane. Most wouldn't buy, but the company is surely correct to assume that there were a lot of rich people walking by here at a PGA tournament and that seeing the plane close up would plant the idea of owning it in the heads of some people who might actually buy it.

I think the plane was designed to make an ordinary car driver feel safe, at ease, and capable of flying. I can drive, so why can't I fly? The seats are constructed to adjust to your height, so as you pull it forward so your feet reach the pedals, the height of the seat changes according to an assumption about the length of your torso. I got into a discussion with the guy who was demonstrating the plane about leg-torso disproportion, and he admitted the design only took account of the average proportion. But he swiftly called attention to the way my eyes were at exactly the same perfect level as the eyes of the tall man sitting in the other seat, and had had me close the door to see how the comfy armrest put my hand in exactly the right place to hold the throttle. I've never considered learning to fly, but I had the real sensation that with a plane like this, I could do it.

ADDED: Hey, I got linked by Daily Aviator. Thanks. And a special hi to anyone who hasn't read this blog before.

Picture it: your airplane has mechanical problems.

And the airline sacrifices two goats to win favor from Akash Bhairab, the Hindu god of sky protection:

Nepal Airlines said the animals were slaughtered in front of the plane - a Boeing 757 - at Kathmandu airport.