links for 2008-08-12 [delicious.com]

I feel *so* much safer now…"Recall that to indicate that I required extra screening, staff wrote in red Sharpie on my boarding pass. If I had simply printed off a second boarding pass at home, I could have presented that instead of the marked one, and gone through the metal detector as usual. In other words, passengers without ID can travel without undergoing any extra screening other than “identity verification.” A lawyer friend of mine commented that “if TSA marked ‘SSSS’ on a person’s hand rather than a piece if paper…the airport’s security would at least be as good as a bar’s.”"

Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.

"I'm one of the undeserving poor… Think of what that means to a man. It means he's up against middle class morality, all the time! If there's anything going, and I puts in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have any." And yet my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than he does; and I drink a lot more… I'm playing straight with you. I ain't pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I likes it."