BoingBoing has posted some great reads around travel issues this week. Here are a few of my favorites:

Airport biometric station screens people for “hostile intent”, about a system that measures blood pressure and other body functions to see if they might be terrorists. Key snip:

According to the TSA, two million people fly everyday. That’s 730 million people a year. Let’s assume that 10 of them are terrorists. With a 4% false-positive rate and a 10% false-negative rate, that means 29 million innocent travelers are going to be detained as suspects, and one out of the 10 terrorists will still make it through security to conduct his or her dirty work. Is it worth it, or would the money be better spent preventing terrorism through intelligence work?

Make a scarf-book to read on UK outbound flights, about how, now that books are banned from outgoing UK flights, you can print out a book on a piece of clothing. Really.

TSA wins war on lipstick. OK, nothing too great about that post, but I loved the headline!

That’s a question David Gammel asks in this post on ASAE’s Acronym blog. He says,

The news this past week has me thinking about what the association world would be like if business travel as we know it ends…If these trends continue and spread, I can see business travel by air drying up significantly. The first things to be cut in that kind of travel-unfriendly environment are often non-essential meetings, which basically defines the association event.

I know, I know, we said similar things after 9/11 and meetings did, eventually, come roaring back. But he makes some good points, the most salient being that associations better pay attention to all this, at the very least. He posits one possible solution, but it sounds less than ideal because it relies on holding regional events with national speakers being beamed in via satellite. But if I wanted that, I’d go to chapter meetings. The point of the national meeting is to see all those folks who you don’t see at the local level, right? I don’t have any answers, but it sure is a good question to ponder.

According to this article, the American Psychological Association is moving its meetings from Virginia to Washington, D.C., because of “the possible impact of the Affirmation of Marriage Act and a proposed gay marriage ban on its members and their domestic partners.” From the article:

The APA announced July 21 that governance meetings scheduled to be held in Virginia in 2007 and 2008 will be moved to Washington, D.C.

“Some of our staff are gay and lesbian,” said Clinton Anderson, staff liaison of the APA’s Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual Concerns office. “They expressed concerns that hospitals and emergency rooms might not honor powers of attorney. People felt unsafe in their lives about meeting in Virginia.”

I was wondering when the first articles on how videoconferencing can replace some air travel would come out after Thursday’s foiled terrorism attempt on U.S.-bound planes from London. Seems like at least at least one is already out, though it does take care to point out that videoconferencing is an adjunct to, not a replacement of, face-to-face meetings.

It sounds like hotels are trying to make life a little easier for air passengers who have had to dump their toothpaste and lipstick before getting on board. Omni Hotels is giving away free facial skin care products, women’s cosmetics, hair care products, contact lens solution, and toothpaste, and pointing people toward nearby pharmacies to get anything else they might need. Wyndham also is providing bottled water, contact lens solution, hair spray, hair gel, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and deodorant to its guests.

I know we’ll all adjust to the new “no fluids” rules, but in the meantime, it’s nice to know our hospitality friends are looking out for us.