body

Once upon a time, we mortals could make resolutions and, as quietly as we wanted, get busy ignoring them. Those days are numbered. Which is a good thing for personal health and wellness, right?

This week, Sprint gets more heavily involved in the your-phone-knows-when-you're-lying game by partnering up with BodyMedia, enabling the FIT armband to transmit such personal data as vital signs and sleep patterns using Sprint's 3G wireless network.

To mark the occasion, Sprint will be showcasing its suite of apps (dubbed the Sprint ID BodyMedia Pack) for its Android-based phones at the Consumer Electronics Show in … Read more

Just when you thought it was safe to enter an airplane, along comes some professor to tell you that it may not be quite so.

For it seems that, despite the entrance of body scanners and their piercing gaze on every last element of your junk (reference embedded for those who missed it), these machines might not be foolproof.

According to Fox News, two professors at the University of California, San Francisco--Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson--have released a learned document that suggests it might be depressingly simple to fool a body scanner.

"It is very likely that a … Read more

There's nothing better than feeling invulnerable down there.

You'd think these would have been standard-issue for years, but bomb-proof boxers developed by a British firm are being sent to troops fighting Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Blast Boxers from Cardiff-based BCB International are lightweight, Kevlar-lined shorts that can protect privates' privates from improvised explosive devices. The shorts are comfortable and machine-washable, it says.

British shoppers are snapping them up and sending them to loved ones, according to The Sun.

BCB has tested the boxers with IED-like explosives (check it out in the ad here). The company says they're … Read more

There is tension in the air. Well, even before you manage to get into the air.

Stories have abounded concerning new screening procedures and their overly personal nature. Why, just the other day, a woman decided that the only way to maintain her dignity was to go through screening wearing only matching bra and panties. (I have embedded her here.)

And yet, as one might imagine in a land in which the enthusiasm for self-expression and the invention of the Internet merge to create a dynamic cocktail, some of the stories told are simply not true.

So the TSA has … Read more

Many of you will be flying today. You will be going to see those to whom you feel closest, or, indeed, most indifferent, in order to give thanks for your feelings.

You will also have to enjoy the watchful eyes, hands and smiles of the TSA inspectorate.

You may not find it entirely comfortable. However, like "Mythbusters" presenter Adam Savage, in the rush to leave the house, you may have forgotten that you have a couple of 12-inch razor blades secreted about your person.

Savage, in the highly entertaining monologue that I have embedded, describes how earlier this … Read more

The Transportation Security Agency's new security procedures, including full-body scanners and what it obliquely calls "enhanced" pat downs, have cemented its reputation as one of the most reviled appendages of the federal government.

In the last few weeks, TSA has been rebuked by some of the same politicians who voted unanimously to create it nearly a decade ago. Its screeners have been mocked by the cast of Saturday Night Live, lampooned in song by Grammy-winning musician Steve Vaus, and parodied in a cartoon video.

And the new rules themselves? To help explain them, especially to our readers … Read more

A grassroots effort that began with a single Web page exhorting air travelers to decline body scans has become a full-fledged Internet sensation that has the uncommon distinction of officially irking the Transportation Security Administration.

The idea behind National Opt-Out Day is simple: on the day before Thanksgiving, when screening lines stretch so far they seem to snake back on themselves like an ouroboros, Americans should opt out of what critics call "pornoscans." Instead, they should choose a police-style pat-down instead, which will take TSA screeners far longer to complete.

TSA head John Pistole initially called the idea &… Read more

I just had a harrowing incident on a flight from New Orleans to Seattle. Due to a small electrical fire, my plane had to be diverted to Memphis; it then took another day and a half to get home.

But what got me more than the thought that my flight could crash was that in Memphis I had to deal with the indignity of going through one of the controversial new backscatter body-scanning machines. A person I didn't know got paid to scrutinize my scrotum. Lucky lady.

But I didn't like it. I felt like I was being virtually strip searched. That's why I'm in favor of these new briefs designed by engineer Jeff Buske. They're regular boxer briefs, with the exception of a fig leaf-shaped radiation blocker located right over your junk. TSA agents looking at your scan will see a shape of a leaf instead of your private parts. Smart, but we're still waiting to learn whether the TSA will let these underpants fly. … Read more

In a sign that the new airport screening procedures may be altered, two key politicians told the Transportation Security Administration today that the rules may be unconstitutional and a waste of government resources.

"We are concerned about the new enhanced pat-down screening protocols and urge you to reconsider the utilization of these protocols," Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the influential chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), chairman of a transportation subcommittee, told the TSA in a letter (PDF). They asked TSA to turn over internal documents, studies, and traveler complaints by December 1. … Read more