Susan Paynter is going to get a lot of mail. Again.

[L]ike the Rev. Mark Travis of All Pilgrims Christian Church, the Rev. Diane Darling of Alki Congregational United Church of Christ and at least a dozen other religious leaders in Seattle, I say amen to their idea of examining what the heck a minister is doing by acting as the state's quasi-legal middleman or woman anyway. [...]

So they're not going to do it anymore.

Oh, they'll be happy to perform wedding ceremonies for two people of the same or different genders. They'll just no longer sign the paper and send it to Olympia. [...]

In other words, separation of church and state.

Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/281661_paynt18.html

Checking more luggage is easy, right?

Fun with luggage, UK edition:

Marie Henley, together with her partner and one-year-old daughter, flew from Heathrow to Brussels on Friday, arriving back in London on Saturday evening.

The family were asked to pack keys and mobile phones in suitcases. [...]

"Having spent several hours trying to claim our bags [at Heathrow], we abandoned the car at the airport because the keys were in the luggage as requested.

"We queued for ages for a taxi - which cost £60 - and travelled home obviously with a distressed baby and had to smash a window to get into our house in the dark on Saturday evening because both sets of keys were in the baggage as requested."
Source: the BBC

And wouldn't it be convenient for a baggage thief if they had their address in the bag along with the keys?

from a blog discussion:

The ban on carry-on luggage in the UK caused massive delays across the board. Checked-in luggage is subject to many more security checks than the simple xray that carry-on luggage gets, so flights were greatly delayed as a result.
-o-
In fact, most of the low-cost airlines were trying to get rid of checked in luggage completely by offering incentives - such as charging for checked-in luggage and Internet/FastPass check-ins for people with hand baggage only. These don't work so well when people still have to queue to check in their luggage.

Other reports bear this out. One US article suggests a novel solution:

I carried my main bag on the plane and checked the make-up, toothpaste, etc., and a few other non-essentials in a small, cushioned laptop case. This didn't prevent me from having to wait at baggage claim to retrieve that bag, but at least I didn't risk losing anything important.

The article also notes that yes, "[r]eports of lost, damaged, delayed and pilfered checked luggage filed with the Department of Transportation have been rising".

History meme from solicita

Instructions: Look through your LJ calendar and post an entry from this day (or the nearest day with an entry) for all the years you've had a LiveJournal. If all your entries that day are dull, I give you license to look at 2 days either side.

( 2005 )

( 2004 )

( 2003 )

( 2002 )