Passports

Me? I'm waiting for a universal passport. One where everyone can go anywhere. And abolishing visas too. It would make my life a lot easier.

These new passport regulations are crazy! Our friends in Canada cannot come into the U.S. without a passport. That should effectively stop the easy flow of people across the border.

And Americans? Only 27% of Americans have a passport. Under the new regs (with the silly name Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative), everyone (including kids) will need a passport when traveling between the United States and Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. No more Caribbean trips without passports. No more cruises without passports. (I don't do cruises, but for a lot of people, that's the only way they get out of the U.S.)

All of this made me think of my own passport, which I like to look at once in a while, so I pulled it out. It has additional pages, which I wish they'd add from the get go since I'll need 'em.

The great thing about a passport is that you can look at where you've been. When my first passport expired, I felt a sense of loss. But now the one I got two years ago is starting to fill up. There are visas and stamps from (from front to back) Indonesia, Vietnam, Argentina, Australia (where I've never been...only through airports), East Timor, Kenya, Mali, Cameroon, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh (as yet, unused), Ethiopia, the Philippines, Ecuador, Madagascar, and Chile. So, I guess that's where I've been in the last 2 years.

I'll come back to that topic of Horowitz and dangerous professors soon.