and people say the US gets more and more anti-science
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I suppose this ridiculous rule having staying power has nothing to do with the fact that cheap airlines make money by selling you overpriced drinks on board?
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Last time my partner travelled with our young daughter, her jars of Nutella hazelnut spread and Marmite (yes, we’re British) were confiscated as liquids - the former is hard enough at room temperature to need a moment in the microwave before it can be spread, and the latter is one of the goopiest substances known to man. It defies belief.
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I just flew out of the Columbus airport, and they’re letting people carry liquid in carry-ons after it goes through the new liquid scanners. They seemed to be pretty quick and efficient from what I saw.
As I understand it, the liquid scanners they’re using have been used ‘behind the scenes’ to test suspicious looking confiscated bottles, but are now being tested out in front to screen bottles on the fly.
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I was once able to talk a TSA guy out of confiscating a mason jar of Bob’s Big Boy relish by telling him “that’s not a liquid, it’s a gel suspension of relish”. The big words baffled him and I got my relish back.
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This was at Heathrow airport in London, where the employees have all the fine qualities that we admire and respect in the TSA staff, with the addition of a uniquely British bloody-mindedness that allowed them to watch my partner opening one of the jars and up-ending it for several seconds without anything escaping (even several minutes would not have been enough!), but to still insist that it contained a liquid.
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I almost forgot my favorite (American) TSA incident. A guy in front of me was trying to go thru security with a foam cooler full of ice cream. TSA pulled him aside and said “You can’t take these liquids on board.” He explained that ice cream packed in dry ice isn’t liquid. “Well, we’ll have to hand inspect that,” they responded, and he said no, please don’t open that, it’s full of dry ice, you don’t want to do that here. “Don’t tell us our jobs!” the TSA guy barked, and they cut the foam open.
Dry ice steam started rolling out of the case and spreading, and they freaked out. “Oh shit! What the hell? Cover it! Cover it!” The guy was just shaking his head sadly as they threw towels over the ice cream.
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Spare a thought for Flint Michigan every time you are forced to throw out a new sealed bottle of fresh lead-free water at the security checkpoint 
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Something else that just occurred to me is have they never heard of solid explosives? What’s so special about liquids?
(In looking for an illustration for this post I inadvertently discovered that there is a Czech energy drink called Semtex. It is a liquid. Now I’m even more convinced that I’ve been in a coma dream all year.)
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Absofuckinglutely nothing except that some jackass decided it would be “easy” to sneak components to make a notoriously unstable acetone peroxide explosive (AKA Mother of Satan) into a plane and mix them there, despite the numerous inherent and ridiculous difficulties in doing so.
Basically a terrorist said they could do something impossible and we believed them.
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I had the same thing happen to me in Shanghai. I was pissed.
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3 ounces per bottle, 1 quart per bag, 1 bag per traveller. Everything vital is in the mnemonic–the descriptive text only clarifies it.
The rule is stupid, but making it very clear is not. Everyone overestimates how clear rules are when they’re sneering at idiots who got it wrong, but it’s a different story when you’re a harried first-timer.
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They don’t do that in the US. The business model of selling ultracheap tickets and charging for the most basic amenities hasn’t caught on here; tickets are expensive, but I’ve never seen a US flight where water, soda, and coffee aren’t free.
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Or rather, people in power said they believed it in order to make it look like they were doing something constructive to improve security. I don’t think anyone except the most underinformed, frothing-at-the-mouth, authoritarian assholes thinks the liquid bomb plan is or ever was credible.
Kip Hawley is still an idiot.
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