Last year I was in Rio de Janeiro, and an older gent had a heart attack (maybe stroke, or seizure) in front of my friend and I on the street. We were the only ones nearby, so the right thing for me to do was rush to the nearest pay phone (about halfway up the block) and try to dial 9-1-1. Afer the second try, it dawned on me. Different country, different emergency code.

Hey I'm working on it. We're 10 years away.

There are millions of more people who did not vote in 2000. Why get mad at 5 of the voters who voted for Nader? Why not look at the 40 or 60 percent of potential voters who did not vote in that election at all??

I fly internationally (O.K. Canada) for business twice a month. I don't mind the processes at customs or security checks at all. Sure, I've been searched roughly 1 out of every 5 times, and my computer opened and booted up 3 times. No prob.

The only thing which I find amusing with security at the airport is the amount of people it takes to X-Ray. Often, I will see 9 to 11 individuals on one X-Ray machine, standing shoulder to shoulder. At least three are 'managing' the others. I find it to be wasteful and unnecessary.

That's my only beef with TSA. This process seems to have a lot of cogs which are really useless. One person reminds us to take off our shoes. One person stacks the dish buses. One person confirms that our pockets are really empty.

Other than this one particularly inefficient step, I do not find TSA or other TSA-related processes to be annoying or burdening.