It’s the “Red Velvet” jar that got them into trouble a week later. When they tried to clear security at the Las Vegas airport, the jar got seized for violating the 3-1-1 rule. “This wasn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill cupcake,” wrote TSA blogger Robert Burns. “Unlike a thin layer of icing that resides on the top of most cupcakes, this cupcake had a thick layer of icing inside a jar.”

via TSA defends cupcake confiscation – CNN.com.

Okay, so it’s the amount of frosting on the cupcake that matters. SO what would be the difference between one cupcake with a lot of frosting, and say, 12 cupcakes with 1/12 of the frosting each?

What if five people brought five individual cupcakes onto the plane? Could the five of those combined not have enough explosive frosting to blow up the plane?

The liquids rule never has and never will make any sense. Any five-year old can figure that out.

The TSA says travelers can bring cakes, pies and cupcakes through the security checkpoint, but should expect that they might get some additional screening.

via TSA defends cupcake confiscation from Mass. woman – Boston.com.

This would be funny if it weren’t so tragically stupid. The fact that most people will read this article and think “Yeah, I guess whatever makes us safer,” is proof that we don’t deserve to continue much longer as a species.

Imagine the possibilities, not just for news consumers but producers. Enhanced spell check for journalists! A suspicious sentence is underlined, offering more factual alternatives. Or maybe Clippy chimes in: “It looks like you’re lying to your readers!” The software could even be extended to email clients to debunk those chain letters from your crazy uncle in Florida.

via Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news » Nieman Journalism Lab.

I don’t want to rain on this guy’s parade or anything, but the issue here isn’t that politicians lie and journalists often get their facts wrong. It’s that most readers don’t WANT the truth.

These aren’t mistakes that need to be corrected, in other words. The product contains these lies by design.

People who support Michele Bachmann don’t care that every other sentence coming out of her mouth is a complete fabrication, or at the very least, a strong exaggeration of the truth. They want validation for their mistaken beliefs at all costs. Truth is irrelevant. She’s handing them what they want to hear, and that’s far more powerful than the truth.

We’re not educating people here. We’re indoctrinating them.

The only people who want to know about her lies are the people on the Left, who aren’t interested in the truth either, really. They simply want validation for THEIR side of the story.

We all fall victim to this, though some to a larger degree than others.

The time when journalism’s job was to dispossess us of our mistaken beliefs is long gone.  Journalism is big business. They’re selling a product, and ultimately people buy bullshit more than the truth. That’s how it goes.

Politicians know this, which is why they keep spewing out the nonsense, even though they KNOW we have the resources at our fingertips to disprove every word they say. They’re completely comfortable lying about something they said yesterday, even after someone shows them the video of them saying it. Because while there’s always someone on the other side to call them on their lies, the people on their side will never see that. Rachael Maddow could scream her head off all day about Michele Bachmann, but not a single Fox News viewer will ever know. Rush Limbaugh can spend an entire day on a single incorrect statement from President Obama, and no one reading the Nation is going to know.

So while I respect what this guy is doing technologically, thinking it’s going to change anything is sort of silly.

Coffee Time: Market Share vs Profit – journal – minimally minimal.

Have to love his last set of images, comparing Apple’s product line to Samsung’s. Thanks to John Gruber for linking to this.

Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded when their Comtel airline flight stopped for fuel in Austria over the weekend. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.

via Airline passengers asked for extra cash for fuel.

This is obviously an exception, not the general rule. It was a chartered flight, not a typical commercial airline. But it is the extreme example of a growing problem with commerce in general these days.

The whole notion that price trumps everything needs to go away. It’s our own fault. When Wal-Mart came to town, we were all far too willing to give up customer service, sustainability, and an all around good shopping experience to save 50 cents. As a result, companies learned the lesson that being cheapest was the be-all-and-end-all of success. Literally nothing else mattered to people.

And we’ve been suffering for it ever since.

Once they dropped prices as far as humanly possible by laying off workers, cutting corners on benefits, and shipping products in from China, companies had little choice but to start giving the “appearance” of cost savings, by hiding fees and extra charges behind every corner of the experience.

And it’s no different in the airline industry. Do a flight search on Kayak, or wherever, and you get quoted a price on the first page, but by the time you’ve checked out it’s a different story. So price comparison becomes a major hassle, as you need to get all the way to the last “buy” button page before you know how much something is actually going to cost. And even that is far from guaranteed, as they’ll probably tack on some more fees down the line. So much for convenience.

What we need is a simple rule: tell me how much it’s going to cost. Period. All-inclusive. If you can’t afford to offer cheap prices, then don’t. Put the cost of bags, food, and yes, gas, into the cost of your ticket. We may all have a heart attack the first time we see your adjusted prices, but at least we won’t hate you for trying to trick us.

And customers, in the meantime. Stop always trying to nickel and dime yourself on everything you buy. I know times are tough, but what you’re saving in dollars you’re paying for far too dearly in quality of life. And so are your neighbors.