Having traveled a little more than usual in the last couple of months, I've grown increasingly frustrated with airport security and although it's great to see that others are just as frustrated as me, it pains me to see such resources wasted in making life so difficult for everyone.

Two anecdotes. I was catching an early-morning flight with my zip-lock bag, and just out of curiosity asked the TSA guy whether the 3oz rule applies to the contents or to the bottle itself. That is, if I have a 6 oz bottle, but it's clearly less than half full, would that be ok. You guessed it: Nope.

Another time, sitting around the terminal in Denver, a woman's voice came on over the intercom intermittently, saying: The Department of Homeland security has raised the threat level to Orange. Please be aware of the increased threat.

So I'm sitting in the terminal wondering, a) Where does Orange lie in that wonderful rainbow threat meter, and b) how exactly am I supposed to "be aware of the increased threat"—should I run around the terminal screaming like my hair is on fire?

This message was repeated approximately every 15-20 minutes. At one in the morning.

Maybe because I'm from the NYC area and not middle america, I chose to go back to reading my magazine. And I say that only because I don't hear similar messages broadcast constantly at JFK or Logan. What gives?

More generally, a nice idea to implement: take all the confiscated items from upstairs at security and resell them to the people arriving downstairs at the baggage claim.

"The fact is that we went to Iraq as a unified nation. Now that we are there, we have to figure out how to win for the Iraqi people."

I detect some truthiness in this statement.

The fact is, Mr. R. Allen King, that if unified means everyone, then you are incorrect: I did not want to go to war.

And another thing.

You're not the first person in support of the war in Iraq who I've noticed uses the word "win" so...ambiguously. Would someone PLEASE tell me what constitutes "winning" in Iraq? You seem to know, and maybe I'm a little slow, so could you please put together a checklist so that I can figure out whether we're winning or not? Thanks!

I think it's great that the difference in preparation was laid out so clearly that it's obvious we're being sold a false sense of convenience. However, thinking about it from the convenience angle adds a couple more steps to the recipe:

Homemade

1. Boil water

1.5 Measure pasta

2. Add pasta

3. Cook pasta

4. Grate cheese

4.5 Measure amount of cheese (maybe this is 3.5?)

5. Drain pasta

6. Add pat of butter and stir

7. Sprinkle with grated cheese

8. Serve

So there are actually three steps that you have to do with homemade that you don't have to do with Annie's, two of which include simple math. (Yes, I'm skipping the steps for measuring water, milk, the pat of butter, etc. because they're the same in both situations.)

I'm certainly not sticking up for Annie's; I'm just trying to understand what makes Annie's attractive. And I find it fascinating that the idea that Annie's saves you time (i.e.: is more convenient) doesn't actually hold water when you actually stop and think about it.

More to the point, I wonder what this kind of marketing mojo could achieve were it turned from the dark side (so to speak) and applied to important issues like the climate crisis...issues which form the subtext behind a lot of these kinds of purchases.

Reading this story whilst overseas, the self-centered assumption implicit in the subjective personal pronoun "we" speaks volumes: I suppose there is only one "we" in the view of Empire.