Off the News

Breezing through airport security

After you've produced your picture ID, emptied your pockets, removed your shoes and belt and exposed yourself to a full-body scanner, you may think you have nothing left to show the Transportation Security Administration.

You'd be wrong. This fall, the TSA will test a new pre-screening program in which selected frequent fliers provide more personal information. In exchange, they would receive expedited service at airport checkpoints.

The TSA won't say what kinds of screening travelers might avoid. Nor would participation exempt them from any security measures. But any relief from the dreaded security line sounds promising. It might even bring more common sense to the current one-method-fits-all system. The test program will eventually expand to include Hawaiian Airlines, among others.

Until then, get in line. And empty your pockets.

Googled, and then forgotten

That wonderful invention, the Internet, has poked holes in our memory banks, which are now leaking like a sieve.

That's the upshot of psychologist Betsy Sparrow's research, though she put it more scientifically. Something about our reliance on search engines and the like have made us less likely to remember stuff.

Ironic, isn't it? The Web is also constantly compelling us to sign up on sites and log in. So the very thing that is eroding our ability to remember things is also forcing us to commit more and more user names and passwords to our memory, or what's left of it.