Category Archives: Philosophy

Flying with no ID where your going

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Shared by Ben Shoemate

A few years ago,I lost my ID on my way to Las Vegas. (It turns out I left it on the plane and got it back 6 weeks later with $200 cash still inside. Thanks Southwest!) But I had to fly from Las Vegas to LA, LA back to Las Vegas, and Vegas to Houston with no ID that week. I ended up going through security faster without ID! In Vegas, if do not have ID, the airline will write NO ID – on the ticket. The guard checking IDs will point you to a special line where they “puff test” you for explosives, open all your bags, and xray them. But this line had 5 people in it. The normal line had hundreds! I was though security in 5 mins versus 30!

Consumerist’s Meg Marco sez, “One of our readers describes flying with no ID under the new TSA policy, first hand:”

After about 15 minutes, the main supervisor, Laurie, arrived. Again, Laurie was exceedingly nice and professional, but seemed a little more concerned than Brenda. She asked if I was sure I didn’t have photo ID, like a credit card with my picture on it, or even a CostCo card. I wound up going through my wallet in front of her to show that I didn’t, and she pointed to various cards and receipts in it to ask if they were IDs. I wound up showing her everything to prove I was telling the truth. She repeatedly said they had no way of “verifying” that I was who I said I was, and that someone could have stolen my credit card and traveled under my name. I didn’t want to mention that they shouldn’t need to verify who I am, because I was afraid they could then say I wasn’t cooperating and deny travel on that ground. In fact, I even mentioned several times that I wanted to fully cooperate with them because I was aware that was a component of the new regulation, and they assured me that I was.

Finally satisfied that I didn’t have ID, Laurie took my boarding pass and went away. She came back a few minutes later having photocopied it, and also had an affidavit that she requested I sign. It asked for my name and address, and stated in small print at the bottom that I did not have to fill it out, but if I didn’t I couldn’t fly. It also said that if I choose to fill it out and then provided false info, I would be in violation of federal law.

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(Thanks, Meg!)


Justification of Ockham’s Razor as a principle of reasoning

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Scientists use the principle of Ockham’s Razor as their guide. Ockham’s Razor states that when there are multiple consistent theories are being considered, the choice should be the simplest one. Simple theories have an intuitive appeal, but that is not a justification of Ockham’s Razor as a principle of reasoning. A justification should demonstrate that preferring the simplest compatible theory is better at finding the truth than any other competing strategy.

This article does a good job with great cartoons of explaining why this principle is valid. Very insightful. Here’s the link.

Update: here is an animated older version. The link above goes to the version 2 story board which has not been animated.

Powerpoint version of Shift Happens Movie

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The purpose of this presentation was originally to inspire a group of educators at a single school in Colorado to take their job seriously and invest in education. From that intended audience of 250 people, it has now been seen by millions. The message is clear, the world is changing. More and more of my clients are asking me to help them adapt to this change. To prepare road maps and visions and governance models that will help them adapt. What are you doing to prepare?

Science Question: If the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace – is gravity’s effect on time the culprit?

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I have been watching the debate about dark energy as a possible explanation of what is causing the universe to expand faster and faster (as cosmologists first discovered 10 years ago). But last night, as I was watching the new series “The Universe”, I was reminded of a particularly interesting facet of Einstein’s relativity theory – the effect of gravity on time. Bottom line of that theory is that time passes slower when you are inside a gravitational field.


This is something NASA has been able to demonstrate by putting atomic clocks in orbit and that the programmers of the GPS satellite system had to take into account to make the system work properly. Clocks (and all other matter) move faster when there is less gravity. Time, as we measure and understand it, passes slower on earth, than in orbit, and it is faster still once you get away from the sun, and even faster when you get out of the Milky Way. This leaves me with 2 questions:

1) If time is passing faster, the further away from a gravitation field you get, wouldn’t that explain why the universe is expanding faster? Eventually, as galaxies get further apart, there is less and less gravity in inner-galactic space, thus (I would assume) time is going faster between galaxies and the “normal” expansion process would be occurring at an accelerated pace. In other words, voids grow faster than matter rich areas of the universe because everything happens faster there. Think of a large balloon that is expanding on a wall of video monitors, some of the videos are playing faster and thus that part is expanding more rapidly. Not only that, be the expansion itself is causing gravity to be less and less on an influence because the galaxies are now further away (more space-time between them). Will time eventually become a run-away engine in the vast emptiness of space? Will the speed of time approach infinity?


Fact: The emptier space is (the less gravity) – the faster time passes.

One way I thought to test this would be to observe the speed of stars (if there are any) or any other matter in the “vast hole in the universe” that was discovered recently. If “emptiness” has the affect of accelerating time, that may be measurable by observing its affect on light traveling through those empty spaces. (objects opposite fast empty holes in the universe would appear closer than they really are)

2) About this time/gravity relationship. I imagine that as gravity approaches infinity as in a black-hole, time approaches zero. If time is slowed down – then what does that say about the spectacular speeds of stars orbiting black-holes? Have those calculations beed adjusted for this? Is there even a mathematical way to express time passing differently in different regions of the universe?

As I type this, it also occurs to me that this may also explain why there seem to be few stars between galaxies – maybe they age and die very quickly. I don’t understand the math well enough to try and calculate the relative difference in the rate of time in inner-galactic space versus on earth – much less in the middle of that billion-light year wide void, but imagine if there is a measurable between the surface of the earth, and 200 miles up in orbit, that a billion-light years of gravity free space might tack on the years pretty quickly.

If any one out there has a science background I would love to hear from you in the comments.