Minor Thoughts from me to you

An oldie from August, that I've been hanging on to, for some reason. Veronique de Rugy breaks down S&P;'s memo about why they downgraded US debt to an AA+ rating.

The bottom line:

In other words, to avoid a downgrade, it would have been key in S&P’s opinion to show signs of willingness to cut (contain) Medicare and other entitlement spending. That didn’t happen, since many lawmakers in Congress (Democrats mainly, though not exclusively) refuse to talk about how much we can really afford to spend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs.

As a result, it is difficult to claim that the Republicans’ unwillingness to raise revenue is the only reason for this downgrade. It seems to me that there is enough blame to go around.

∞

Megan McArdle, on my American Airlines is entering bankruptcy.

But airlines do have another problem that's special to them: their unions, which are both powerful, and plentiful.

Whatever you think about the United Autoworkers, at least there's only one of them. The union doesn't want to kill the company any more than management does. In theory, at least, you should be able to work something out.

But when there are three or four unions--pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and baggage handlers--things get complicated. All of those groups are completely necessary to make sure that the plane gets in the air. If one of them doesn't show up, you lose all the money on every seat.

... But when times aren't so flush, this dynamic becomes a problem. The company's past labor agreements don't leave much margin for error--particularly when there were sizeable pensions, as there have been at most of these legacy airlines.

It's not clear what will happen to American's $8 billion worth of pension obligations, which are underfunded by billions, but I'd expect that the company will push hard to shed them. It will also want the judge to rewrite its labor contracts.

∞

Hate the rich? Don't worry, most of them won't be rich for long. Only about 6% of millionaires manage to stay millionaires for 9 years or more.

This week, Mercatus Center Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy examines the income dynamics of taxpayers with millionaire status using data calculated by the Tax Foundation that followed the same Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax returns from 1999 through 2007. The data represent 675,000 taxpayers who were millionaires at some point during this period; this number serves as the benchmark for the percentages of millionaires who remain millionaires.

... Interestingly, things look rosier at the bottom of the income distribution. That same Tax Foundation study also shows that about 60 percent of households that were in the lowest income quintile in 1999 were in a higher quintile in 2007, and about a third of those in the lowest quintile moved to the middle quintile or higher. In other words, while it is difficult for one to rise from rags to riches, and while it may be harder now than it was in the past, there is still real upward economic mobility in the United States. (Mark Perry, over at the Enterprise Blog, reported back in March on similar data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.)

∞

If we ignore the fake prices that typify the American health care experience, it's clear that the U.S. uses fewer resources to deliver health care than any other developed nation.

The concept of opportunity cost allows us to see that if we don’t trust spending totals in the international accounts, there is another way to assess the cost of health care. We can count up the real resources being used. Other things equal, a country that has more doctors per capita, more hospital beds, etc., is devoting more of its real income to health care than one that uses fewer resources — regardless of its reported spending.

On this score, the United States looks really good. As the table below (from the latest OECD report) shows, the U.S. has fewer doctors, fewer physician visits, fewer hospital beds, fewer hospital stays and less time in the hospital than the OECD average. We’re not just a little bit lower. We are among the lowest in the developed world. In fact, about the only area where we “spend” more is on technology (MRI and CT scans, for example), as is reflected in the second table.

We might be able to see these lower costs if we could only get some real price competition into the market.

∞

I like gift cards. I know it's considered gauche to give them as a gift but I've never really agreed with that. The common knock against gift cards is that they "show little thought" or demonstrate that you don't know enough about the recipient to know what gift they'd really like. That can be true and in certain settings (like the family or supposedly close business relationships) it can be fatal.

But, in some circumstances, gift cards can also demonstrate both humility and that you do know the recipient well. I'm primarily thinking of circumstances in which the recipient himself doesn't know what he wants and couldn't tell you if you asked. I'm a great example of this. I love to read. And most people think that buying a gift for me is easy: buy a book. This is true.

But, which book? Aye, there's the rub. Oftentimes, I don't know which book I want to read next. I don't even necessarily know which book I want to read in a year. I have ideas of books that I think I might want to read. But a cursory glance at my bookshelf would reveal that there are many books there that I've purchased and never read. I purchased them with good intentions but somehow never quite got around to actually cracking the covers.

Now, there are bad gift card gifts. A gift card to a store I never shop at (and never really want to shop at) does tell me that you don't know me and didn't ask others about me. That gift of a card does validate all of the negative stereotypes about gift cards.

But the fact that bad gift card gifts exist doesn't invalidate the entire category. At least, I don't think so. A gift card, earmarked for books, tells me that you know that I like to read. It also tells me that you're willing to admit that you don't know what I want to read, anymore than I do. And that's appreciated.

I've never had even the slightest hint of resentment about receiving a gift card for books. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's an opportunity for me to browse shelves, slowly and deliberately, looking for something new and unexpected. It's an opportunity for me to splurge on a book that I might not otherwise buy (but will enjoy nonetheless). It's an opportunity for me to complete (or start) a collection that I didn't know I was interested in. It's an opportunity for me to pre-order that book that won't be released for another year.

It's a great gift because, for a time, it's every book everywhere. And that's wonderful.

Jerry Pournelle, on foreign policy.

Iraq is another story. We’re pulling out. We have spent $Trillions, we have left chaos, we have removed a major threat to the stability of Iran, and I am not sure what we got out of it. And Iraq certainly does have stuff we want. Oil, to begin with. A fair amount of Yellowcake – uranium ore. Lots of other stuff. And we’re running out because the Iraqis insist on applying Iraqi “law and order” to the US forces in Iraq.

I’d be tempted give them a $3 Trillion bill on the way out, and leave an occupation force in one of their major oil fields where we’d be pumping oil and selling it until most of the bill was paid, but that option was apparently never considered. Incidentally, we could defend our occupied oil fields with Sudanese and for that matter Libyan mercenaries, which we pay for out of the oil proceeds.We wouldn’t need a large US force in Iraq; they could be in Kuwait . Pumping lots of Iraqi oil would drop the world price of crude, and be a great jobs program for the United States.

... I don’t much like Empire as a policy, but if we are going to play Empire, can’t we find someone who knows how to do it competently?

∞

Amity Shlaes on what sparked the job growth of the 1980's.

The era didn't start well. The mid-1970s were a dead period. Then suddenly, from 1977 to 1978, new private capital devoted to venture capital increased by 15 times, to $570 million in 1978 from $39 million the year before.

In 1977, public underwritings of firms with a net worth of less than $5 million amounted to a meager $75 million. By 1980 that figure was $822 million, as Michael K. Evans, founder of Chase Econometrics, points out. The venture-capital boom continued down the decades, serving computing, technology, biotech and many other areas.

But what caused this boom? Three policy changes. The first was a [capital gains] tax cut for which this newspaper campaigned. ...

A second policy change came in pension law. ...

A third factor, and one that ensured the boom would continue, was a law ... [that] clarified murky intellectual property rights so that universities and professors, especially, knew they owned their own ideas and could sell them. ...

∞

Megan McArdle artfully skewers an entire genre: books that make us feel bad about buying things.

One of the running themes of the economist Robin Hanson's excellent blog is that arguments like the ones found in these books are actually an elite-status proxy war. They denigrate the one measure of high-visibility achievement—income—that public intellectuals don't do very well on. Reading "Shiny Objects," you get the feeling that he is onto something.

Consider the matter of status competition. Mr. Roberts, like so many before him, argues that conspicuous consumption is an unhappy zero-sum game. But this is of course true of most forms of competition: Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles. Any competition, from looks to money to academic credentialing, both consumes a lot of resources and makes many of the participants feel bad about themselves. Why, then, does the literature on status competition always tell us that we should redistribute capital gains or inheritances and never tell us that we should redistribute academic chairs or book contracts?

Fantastic.

∞

Ron Paul's new ad explains perfectly why I'm not interested in nominating Newt Gingrich.

The usual liberal complaint against the conservative opposition to higher income taxes is greed and the better-offs’ self-serving reluctance to pay their “fair share.” But while perhaps true in some instances, I don’t think that is an accurate writ against most of those in that now demonized $200,000 and above categories who resent forking over more. Rather, here are a random 12 complaints that I hear from those who become furious about preposed higher income tax rates:

1. The Entire Bite
2. Inequality?
3. Wise Spending?
4. Always More Spending?
5. Less Efficiency?
6. Inequality by Income?
7. Psychological
8. Sic Transit Gloria
9. The Private HHS Department
10. The Technocratic Class
11. Politics
12. Technology

Worth reading. This certainly explains a lot of my own resistance to higher taxes: for me or for others.

∞

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

This book was a ton of fun to read. It's a heist mystery, that's almost steam punk, set in the Mistborn universe. If you're a Brandon Sanderson fan that's pretty much all you need to know. If you're not a Brandon Sanderson fan, well, you're in for a real treat. I've been waiting for this book since mid-summer and I'm happy to say that I wasn't at all disappointed.

The best part of the Mistborn universe is the magical system that Sanderson created for these stories: allomancy, feruchemy. Allomancers can "burn" various metals (which they've swallowed in trace amounts), to get various powers: increased strength, speed, ability to influence emotions, the ability to Push or Pull on steel, etc. Feruchemists can store various attributes (speed, weight, knowledge) in metal and then retrieve it as needed.

The stories are very character driven and resemble super hero stories, in the way that the characters creatively use their allomantic or feruchemic powers. This particular book is filled with a few great puns, interesting characters, mysterious heists, detective work, and some incredible fight scenes.

This book wasn't perfect. I felt like the main villain took a bit too much inspiration from Batman Begins and Renard (the Bond villain). This is still a very good book, if that's the only weakness (and I thought it was).

How does this book fit into the rest of the Mistborn universe? I'll let Sanderson explain.

I pitched my editor a series where the first trilogy is an epic fantasy series, and then years later an urban fantasy series, and then years after that a science fiction series, all set in the same world. And the magic exists all through, and it is treated differently in each of these time periods. And that’s what Alloy of Law is: looking at the Mistborn world, hundreds of years later, where society has been rebuilt following the events of the third book.

... This is actually a sort of side story I decided to start telling. ... With this one I decided to do something a little more action/adventure and a little more self-contained. So Alloy of Law is not the start of a trilogy, though I may do a little more with the characters, but in general the story I wanted to tell is told.

Now. Go forth, buy, and read.

Update (11/29): Esther Bochner, a publicist at Macmillan Audio, emailed me yesterday with a nice offer.

I saw your great review of ALLOY OF LAW by Brandon Sanderson and I wanted to make sure that you are aware that the book is also available as an audiobook from Macmillan Audio. I’d love to offer you a clip from the audiobook to post on your site alongside the review as multimedia content.

So, here's a nice preview both of the style of the book and of the sound of the audiobook.

Download the audio clip.

TARDIS Eruditorum - A Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 1: William Hartnell by Philip Sandifer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: Loads of Fun

I started watching Doctor Who about 2 years ago. It was a vivid awakening for me. I had been very dimly aware that the show existed but had never been exposed to it. Once I started watching it, I loved it but I always wanted to know more about it. It is a story with a rich and complex history. One that I knew nothing about it.

One can, of course, try using Google to do research. With something as complex as Doctor Who, the results are rather … confusing. So, I just suffered in ignorance, merely enjoying what was on TV in front of me.

Last week, randomly, I became aware that a new book had just been published through Amazon. It was a collection of essays from the blog TARDIS Eruditorum: A Psychochronography in Blue. Up until this point, I hadn’t even known that the blog existed. But, I clicked over and decided to take a look.

This is the story of a story that can never end. This is the story of how a daft idea from the bowels of the BBC in the 1960s changed everything. This is the story of an impossible man, and his magic box, and everything that happened after.

Because there's something you'd better understand about me. Because it's important, and one day, your life may depend on it.

I am definitely a mad man with a blog.

Okay, so Philip Sandifer (“a hopeless geek with a PhD in English focusing on media studies”) is an entertaining writer. After a few hours of reading through blog entries, I was also convinced that he knew Doctor Who, he knew British culture, and he knew literary criticism. So I bought the book.

From the book’s description:

TARDIS Eruditorum is a sprawling and very possibly completely mad critical history of Doctor Who from its first episode in 1963 to the present. In this first volume, we look at topics like how acid-fueled occultism influenced the development of the Cybermen, whether The Celestial Toymaker is irredeemably racist, and whether Barbara Wright was the greatest companion of all time. This book aims to be the most staggeringly thorough look at the evolution of Doctor Who, Great Britain, and the world from 1963 to 1966 ever published.

Revised and expanded versions of every entry from the acclaimed blog TARDIS Eruditorum from the start to finish of William Hartnell's tenure as the Doctor.

It was utterly fascinating and has already given me a lot of insight into the show and how it works. I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of future volumes and have every intention of purchasing them as they’re released. Why not? I’m a sucker for really good literary criticism and a sucker for Doctor Who.

A Desert Called Peace by Tom Kratman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Read for free, at the Baen Free Library

This is a story that mostly works. It's a combination of a revenge fantasy and a polemical and Kratman does a very good job of pulling off both sides.

The story centers around Patricio Hennessey de Carrera, a retired military officer living on the planet Terra Nova. His world is turned upside down when his wife and 4 children (the youngest daughter still unborn) are killed in a terrorist attack. Fighting his way out of nearly suicidal grief, he comes out of retirement, builds an army, and uses it towards the goal of killing everyone who directly or indirectly had a hand in the terrorist attacks.

That's, rather self-evidently, the revenge fantasy portion of the work. Those elements of the story really work and are done well.

The polemical bit comes when you consider who the various groups in the story are. Carrera is clearly a stand-in for a competent but too blunt American military officer. And the terrorists who killed his wife and children are clearly barbarian Islamic fanatics. And the building destroyed in the terrorist attack is clearly a stand-in for the World Trade Center towers. The story is best seen as a description of what happened to America on 9/11 and how we should have responded to it.

It's also a look at how we will have to become (at least somewhat) more like our enemies, in order to win. It's not always pleasant but Kratman doesn't try to make us feel good about the changes. He just wants us to recognizes that victory won't be easy and it will probably change us.

The polemical part of the story works fairly well and is well-integrated into the rest of the novel. It's not forced and the explanations and and motivations that make it up are simply in the natural flow of the story.

So far, so good. But the book goes completely off the rails when it comes to the setting. I mentioned that the book takes place on another planet, Terra Nova. This is a planet that a robotic exploring ship just happened to find. It's a planet that just happened to have been settled by every major nation and ethnic group on Earth. It's a planet that just happened to have geography similar to Earth's. It's a planet where the settlers just happened to group themselves similarly to how people are grouped on Earth.

There is a clear and direct correlation between the countries of Terra Nova and the countries of Earth. It's fairly easy to make a translation list.

• The USA is represented by the Federated States of Columbia (FSC).
• The United Kingdom is represented by the Kingdom of Anglia.
• France is represented by the Gallic Republic.
• Germany is represented by Sachsen.
• Iraq is represented by Sumer.
• Afghanistan is represented by Pashtia.
• Iran is represented by Farsia.
• Russia is represented by Volgon.
• Japan is represented by Yamato.
• Europe as a whole is represented by Taurus.
• The European Union is represented by the Tauran Union.

Yes, you saw that right. Not only are individual countries represented by their oh so similarly named counterparts but so are political boundaries. In fact, it gets much worse. Not only the geography and politics are the same between Earth and Terra Nova but so is the history!

This planet, settled from Earth, had many of the same wars and conflicts Earth. For instance, there was a Great Global War that featured the same alliances and events as World Wars I and II. In fact, at the end of the Great Global War, the FSC dropped two nuclear bombs on Yamato. There was a Sumer-Farsia War that happened in the not too distant past. There was a recent "Petrol War" that sounded very similar to Desert Storm.

Much of the book takes place in and around the country of Balboa. Balboa, geographically and culturally, is very similar to Panama. In fact, the Balboans even have a "Balboa Transitway" that's identical to the Panama Canal.

This level of correspondance is highly, highly frustrating. Why make the reader spend all of the effort to make a mental map between the nations and history of Terra Nova and the nations and history of Earth? Especially when the end result is Earth in everything but name? What is the point of all of that work? Why not just set the story in an alternate history version of this past decade?

Everytime I wanted to get lost in the world, I kept getting bludgeoned with the similarities between the world of the book and our world today. It totally destroyed my ability to immerse myself in the book and just enjoy it.

I liked the characters in the book (even if they were formulaic) and I liked the story. I really didn't like the setting, so I can't rate this book as highly as I would otherwise like too. I can only say that it was disappointing, overall.

This explains so many questions about the new Amazon Kindle Lending Library: why it has so few books, why you can only browse the books from your Kindle, and why you can only check out one title per month.

PW has learned that the overwhelming majority of publishers with titles featured in the program did not reach any agreement with the retailer. Rather, these titles were taken without publishers' knowledge or consent.

... As has been reported already, titles from the big six houses were not included in the Lending Library because these publishers sell on the agency model. The books featured in Amazon’s Lending Library are all either self-published, published by Amazon (under one of its imprints), or published by houses that sell on the wholesale model. Amazon was able to include publishers’ titles without their consent because the e-tailer is treating the borrowing process as a sale—each time a Prime user borrows a book, Amazon pays the publisher as if the book was bought.

Apparently, some of the publishers (and some authors) are quiet upset about this. Legally, I'm not sure how this works. If Amazon is essentially buying a book, each time it's checked out, the publishers are still getting sales and Amazon is eating costs. This seems to financially hurt Amazon far more than the publishers. But, intellectual property contracts and law can be very slippery things and there may be legitimate ways that this hurts publishers and authors.

∞

In a study that provides provocative support for a new approach to treating obesity, a drug that kills a particular type of fat cell by choking off its blood supply was shown to cause significant weight loss in obese monkeys.

After four weeks of treatment at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, obese monkeys given daily injections of the drug, called adipotide, lost an average of 11% of their body weight. They also had substantial reductions in waist circumference and body-mass index and, importantly, striking improvement in the ability to respond to insulin, researchers said. The drug didn't have any effect on weight when given to lean monkeys.

Results of the study, published online Wednesday by the journal Science Translational Medicine, confirmed a 2004 report from the same research team showing marked weight loss in mice treated with the agent.

My first reaction was: "I want to take this drug". My second reaction was "I should invest in this drug. Everyone is going to want to take it."

∞

In my favorite of these studies, children were divided into two groups. All of them were given a sugar-free beverage to drink. But half the parents were told that their child had just had a drink with sugar. Then, all of the parents were told to grade their children’s behavior. Not surprisingly, the parents of children who thought their children had drunk a ton of sugar rated their children as significantly more hyperactive. This myth is entirely in parents’ heads. We see it because we believe it.

∞

This is the real work of "rebuilding America's crumbling roads". And the money involved is going to require everyone to pitch in, especially the people who use Wisconsin's roads the most.

All highways wear out over time, despite ongoing maintenance. Over the next 30 years, most of Wisconsin’s Interstate system will exceed its nominal 50-to 60-year design life and will need complete reconstruction. When that point is reached, it makes sense to update designs to current safety and operational standards, as was done recently in the reconstruction of the Marquette interchange. And in corridors where demand is projected to exceed capacity, resulting in heavy congestion, it makes sense to add lanes.

Wisconsin already has a $1 billion per year highway funding gap. The total $26.2 billion cost of this Interstate program is far beyond the ability of current transportation funding sources to handle. Federal and state fuel tax revenues, the largest source of transportation funding, are in long-term decline in real, or inflation-adjusted, terms, and a portion of Wisconsin’s vehicle registration fee revenue is now committed for several decades to paying debt service on transportation revenue bonds issued since2003 to cover funding shortfalls. General obligation bonds, with general fund debt service, were also issued to make up for recent diversion of transportation fund revenue to the state’s general fund. To rebuild the rural Interstate and southeastern freeway system in a timely manner will require an additional source of transportation revenue.

This study explores the feasibility of using toll revenue financing to pay for this $26.2 billion reconstruction and modernization program. Under the principle of value-added tolling, tolls would not be charged on a corridor until it was reconstructed and modernized. All toll revenues would be dedicated to the rural Interstate and southeastern freeway system corridors, as pure user fees. Based on a 30-year program of reconstruction and assuming moderate toll rates comparable to those on other toll road systems, the study estimates that the entire rural Interstate program could be financed by toll revenue bonds. For the southeastern freeway system, one option is to toll only the new lanes, operating them as express toll lanes. Doing so would produce enough revenue to cover about 17% of the cost of the entire freeway system reconstruction. Tolling would be all electronic, with no toll booths or toll plazas to impede traffic. If political support could be garnered to price all lanes on the southeastern freeway system instead, our analysis estimates that the revenues would cover 71% of the cost of reconstruction.

∞

Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., has estimated that 106 billion humans have been born since Homo sapiens appeared about 50,000 years ago. That means that the richest one percent in history includes 1.06 billion people. There are currently 6.2 billion humans alive, leaving approximately 100 billion who have died. Who among the dead was rich by today's standards? Not many. Royalty, popes, presidents, dictators, large landholders, and the occasional wealthy industrialist, such as Andrew Carnegie and Leland Stanford, were certainly rich. All told, it is difficult to imagine more than 20 million of these people since ancient Egyptian times. This leaves 1.04 billion wealthy alive today, or 17% of the world's population.

The poor in the United States, by contrast, live on up to $23.50 a day. Except for the few hundred thousand who are homeless, the Americans whom the U.S. government defines as poor live exceptionally rich lives. In most ways, their lives are better than those of kings and queens just 200 years ago. Consider the quality and quantity of our food, clothing, refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, stereo systems, and automobiles. King Louis XIV of France had a greenhouse so he could eat oranges. The poor in this country can eat an orange every day, regardless of season. King Edward III of England could summon the royal musicians to play music. The poor in this country have a wide variety of music at their command, 24 hours a day, played note-perfect every time. Edward III lived in a dark, smelly, cold castle. Even the worst houses in this country are more comfortable and have electric lights, too. Care to live without showers and flush toilets? The kings of England and France had to. Next time you see a Shakespeare play in which kings and princes cavort, remember that royalty in Shakespeare's day had rotten teeth, terrible breath, and body odor that would make you keel over.

∞

I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity.

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

(Ecclesiastes 2:18-25 ESV)

Steve was richly blessed by God and we were all richly blessed by what he did, here on the Earth.

My daughters routinely watch Pixar films. Every night, they sleep in sleeping bags decorated for Pixar characters. Tonight, my daughter took a Cowboy Woody doll to bed with her. They both clamor to play games and watch movies on our iPad.

My life has been enriched by my iPod touch and everything that it allows me to do. I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro and I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can upgrade my phone to an iPhone 4S.

All of these products have been personally overseen by Steve Jobs and have been built according to his vision and his values. And they are all that there is. Apple will live on and will continue creating great products. But Steve's personal vision and creativity ends here. It seems sudden and too soon. I had no idea he was this sick and this close to the end.

He will be missed.

Yesterday I went through the imaging scanner at JFK Terminal 4 for my Virgin America flight to San Francisco.  Evidently they found something, because after the scan, I was asked to step aside to have my breast area examined.  I explained to the agent that I was a breast cancer patient and had a bilateral mastectomy in April and had tissue expanders put in to make way for reconstruction at a later date.

I told her that I was not comfortable with having my breasts touched and that I had a card in my wallet that explains the type of expanders, serial numbers and my doctor’s information pictured and asked to retrieve it. This request was denied.  Instead, she called over a female supervisor who told me the exam had to take place.  I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared.  She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear.  And they did.  And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.

There are reasons that I don't fly, unless I absolutely have to.

∞