Let it Snow

It's a slippery slope. First TSA takes our babies (or not) and then they take our snowglobes. Both contain liquid, but only the snowglobes have been banned from flights.

Confiscating liquids at airport security checkpoints is, of course, the ongoing reaction to the 2006 terrorist plot to bring down airliners with liquid bombs.

But I'm not being totally snarky with my remark about babies containing liquids. We all do, and many of the ingredients for explosive mixtures, such as potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate and phosphorus, were originally manufactured from putrefied urine, though that process seems a little too complicated to carry out in an airplane lavatory.

So anyway, just consider this blog post a friendly holiday warning to pack your favorite snowglobes in your luggage, and if by chance your wintry tchotchkes mysteriously disappear, look for them on eBay.

Turning Urine into Drinking Water

Water is necessary for life. Are you following me so far? Good. Dean Kamen is an inventor and the founder of Deka Research. I admire him because he makes stuff that actually helps people -- sick people, poor people, all people. Ok, so whole cities did not evolve around the Segway, but whole villages might prosper with his latest offering:



Although I don't understand how this amazing invention works, you can check out the patent application yourself. Equally impressive is the economic model Kamen hopes to use to get this invention to the people who need it most.