The housing/credit bubble is bursting. Today the economic report states that "the inventory of unsold homes rose 3.2% to a record 3.856 million, a 7.3-month supply at the July sales rate, the highest since April 1993. The past year has seen the sharpest increase in inventories on record. The median sales price has risen 0.9% in the past year to $230,000. It matches June for the weakest price growth in 11 years. Prices fell on a year-over-year basis in the West and the Northeast."

It's looking grim. Soon there will be a stampede to sell and as no buyers come a-callin', reality will set in over America. That reality spells "not-as-rich-as-you-thought-you-were." But it gets worse because Americans are over-extended on credit too (credit cards, risky and not-so-risky mortgages and loans) and the bills will keep coming. Here's more fuel for the perfect storm: Wages have stagnated! Earnings for workers with four-year degrees fell 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2004 when adjusted for inflation. Why? Probably due to off-shoring. Why pay an American triple what you can pay an equally (if not more so) talented individual who doesn't require health care?

So what can we do about all of this? I will be giving this matter some deep thought and post what my musings construct in future posts.

When I flew out of SFO this week to fly to Chicago the security lines was a tad longer than usual but not bad at all. The line to check bags however was super long. I guess more people are opting to check bags rather than part with liquids.

I went through security and my bag was pulled out of the xray for a special look-see by the TSA. I packed extra light so I was wondering what it could possibly be that set off the alarm, turns out it was my toothpaste. The TSA guy also gave my deodarant the twice over. Had it been a gel he'd have confiscated it - lucky for me my Mennen days are far behind me. As he took my toothpaste, my favorite, hard to find, Tom's cinnamon clove toothpaste, he explained that had this been a prescription then I could take it. "Prescription toothpaste?" I asked. "Well you never know these days." He said.

As I was sitting in my aisle seat 37,000 feet above the Wyoming plains a german shephard dog walked past me, my adrenal gland squirted. When the dog came back down the aisle with its owner, I could see that the lady was blind and this was her seeing eye dog, how nice, adrenals stop squirting. Begs the question: which is more dangerous, my Toms toothpaste or a german shephard? How easy would it be to take over a plane with an attack dog? Super easy! So what if she's blind, come on, it's easy to fake blindness. Did she need a doctor's prescription for her dog? Doubt it. There was another dog on board too. It could have been even easier to take out a flight attendant or two with those. I'm all for blind people getting on planes and their dogs too but c'mon outlawing water, toothpaste and deodorant onboard flights and making me run my shoes through an x-ray isn't going to stop a terrorist from taking out a very vulnerable aircraft all it does is inconvinience travellers, get us used to giving up our civil liberties and scare us into believing that the terrorist threat always upon us.

If all liquids are banned from airplanes and the average human is 70% liquid wouldn't the ban include all of us? Or if 30% solid is above the plane danger threshold, what about a tomato which is 90% water? or blood (90%)?

Here's another thought, could a terrorist ingest these common household items, mix them in their stomach and then set it off by jumping up and down or a wire to their stomach or something? I mean if their going to die anyway, what's a couple of hours of stomach discomfort?

The other problem with liquids is that they can be gases or solids as well, so what if a terrorist brought on board some peroxide ice cubes? By the time the flight is half over they'd have the liquid variety (I admit that I have no idea what the freezing temperature for peroxide is, but it's probably similar to water).

You'd think that we'd have heard more about liquid bombs before. This is the first time I've heard of such a thing being used to bring down a plane. Is there anything else the Dept. of Homeland Security is not telling us? Like chewing gum can be used to fashion a fusion bomb? Or igniting a banana will fill a football stadium with cyanide gas?

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