Pro Travel Tips For Idiots

Pro tips for Americans traveling abroad:

1. Don't go to authoritarian regimes (Belarus, Russia, North Korea, Hungary, Egypt, etc.)

2. If you must go to an authoritarian regime, respect the local laws. That means if there's a zero-tolerance narcotics policy, you don't have any THC or cannabis on your person or bags. This also applies to free nations with zero-tolerance narcotics policies, like Japan. Yeah. 420 + Japan = prison!

3. As a general rule, you should know and respect the laws of wherever you are. This includes US states that aren't yours or nations that aren't yours.

4. If you are a guest worker in a nation that is about to go to war, check the US State Department guidelines on whether it's safe for you to keep guest working in that country. Remember, being an American makes you liked in some countries, and hated in others (more the latter). Check to see if being a US citizen makes you a target for political imprisonment and an unbalanced prisoner swap.

5. Related to # 4 - A note about American privilege. Being a US citizen is a birthright privilege. It is not a card that gets you out of trouble abroad. If a nation beats people to death who take down propaganda posters, that rule applies to Americans as much as anyone else. Perhaps even more so. Just ask Otto. Oh, Otto! Can you comment? Otto is not available to comment.

Public Health Crisis Roundup

Gloucester, MA: Alleged teen pregnancy 'pact' quadruples the normal number of pregnancies at Gloucester High School. It's a localized public health anomaly that will be sensationalized by the media, and studied by scholars for years.

Japan: The number of domestic suicides topped 33,000 in 2007, the second-highest recorded number since the nation began compiling them. The article correctly points out that Japan does not have the highest suicide rate in the G8. That would be Russia. But as Parag Khanna and others point out, Russia cannot be considered a part of the elite industrialized world, given its shrinking population and increasingly vast, sparsely populated regions. Russia is too big, too corrupt, and is losing too many smart people. But that's another post for another time.

Broken And Beautiful - Magnum Photos' "Silicon Forest"

Magnum Photos has another interesting photo essay entitled Silicon Forest. It is a collection of photographs from Russia's science and technology fields going back over 100 years in the Siberian capitol of Novosibirsk.

I like the yellow ethernet cables in the patch panels. Reminds me of my company 10 years ago, except we let our patch panel situation get out of control until it was known as the 'yellow wall.' Below is a red wall at some anonymous American data center.