Presumably the box cutter threat has been neutralized by locking the cockpit door. Not sure a gun would be any more effective - actually a gun is limited by the number of runs you can sneak on board, not so much with a knife.

I mean, what's the big deal about someone touching your junk? We all go to the doctors (by choice), even 12 year olds. You really think that the TSA guys (or girls) really get a kick out of fondling some guy? They have a job to do, its not to harass us, its to make sure no one is carrying bombs onto the airplane. If one of them is being inappropriate, they will get fired, and I betcha it will happen faster than in the catholic diocese.

I am not sure how you qualified Brian as an expert... but this explanation sure sounds good.

Except for in the UK where it is 20 oz...

English proficiency is not required for citizenship, only that you pass a test, or were born here. There is no federal requirement that those born in the US speak english.

I imagine that the hierarchical models proposed by Scott Graham would be a pretty good candidate. If you break the TSP problem into a series of sub-problems of increasing complexity you get pretty good accuracy with reduced computations. Basically instead of trying to figure out how to move through all the towns in the US you first plan a route through all the states. You could probably derive a few simple heuristics that would give you that sort of behavior from a swarm...

At least in the US, the employer is required by law to make up the difference to the federal minimum wage. http://www.dol.gov/wb/faq26.htm

Its always nice to have a reminder of how much cash you don't have in your wallet when you are using plastic. I would think a lot of people would be willing to spend a $ a month for a card that displayed their balances in real time on them

I am amazed at the number of pigeon eating jokes. I thought most people in the US consider pigeons as non-edible flying rats. Are the posts all non-US, or have tastes changed?

This thread does a good job of pointing out - state by state differences in lockpicking, as opposed to DMCA which outlaws across the nation.

It seems that one obvious issue with citing wikipedia is that it constantly changes. There is no guarantee that the article which you cite is the same article that someone will read at a later date.