h a l f b a k e r y"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
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You're on a long journey, maybe involving many flight connections, a couple of buses and a camel. You've listened to all the podcasts on your phone, your ears are numb with listening to music, you've finished the only book you brought with you and you've even read the in-flight magazine. This is when
you should open your passport and read the short story, beautifully offset-litho printed in multicoloured pastel inks across multiple pages as one of the background security features. Every 5 years (in most countries) the passport design is refreshed to combat counterfeiters so that's when a new short story would be chosen.
Passport redesign from our glorious leader.
https://www.thestar...s-hed-scrap-it.html
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 18 2023]
[link]
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Approved! My latest passport (EU - hurrah) is just a credit card sized plastic card with a photograph and all sort of bio-metric gibberish. Can the short story in this case take the form of a micro print and be read by scanning it into an iPhone or iPad? |
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[xen] I'm slightly surprised that you don't travel with a microfilm reader and a selection of different magnification lenses as a matter of course. Everyone else I know does. |
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// surprised that you don't travel with a microfilm reader and a selection of different magnification lenses as a matter of course // |
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Of course they do, as does any iPhone or iPad users. I use the camera on mine as a barcode scanner and magnifying glass all the time. |
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I’m now also imagining the exact opposite of the idea…. a massive 1,000 page closely written tome with passport features. |
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Requiring a sequel, shirley. |
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Story selection could be a somewhat thorny issue for the State department to work out, to avoid ruffling feathers in certain countries, but I like the idea. Imagine a country being offended by a story that vaguely seems supportive of capitalism or greater individual freedom than they allow. |
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No use of a humourous story on the Chinese Passport of course (or for several other countries) |
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I think that this is an infinitely better idea than the changes currently being made to our passports here. [link] |
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No more historical images, just pop-art. |
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Yes, it’s traditional for everyone, in every country in the world, to grumble about their country’s regular passport redesign and then, 5 or 10 years later, to grumble about the passport design they so hated before being replaced with another one. |
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//massive 1,000 page closely written tome with passport features// Now there's an idea! I've come close to filling all the pages of the passport, but not quite--do they just tape more pages in? Not very classy, or legal, probably. Staples might be legal. |
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[xen]'s idea would allow for never running out of a page to stamp on a 10-year passport! We could mark the voyage using the Librarian's trick of stamping the page that matches the end number of the year, month or day of travel, eg: processing a new book for shelving, the Librarian stamps 'Property of Unseen University*' at the bottom of page 23 for a book purchased in the year 2023. |
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Will they quiz you on the story line? + |
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“Did anyone in this story ask anyone else in this story to take any prohibited articles on this flight?” |
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It's a metaphor from keeping something in front of something. So, for example, an airline employee might hope to keep your big bag of detcord in front of the check- in desk, and not let it into the hold of the aircraft which waits somewhere behind. |
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Yes stupid to try carrying that on. Should have split it into two small bags. |
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Or maybe we could change the metaphor; maybe "inhibited" would be our friend: "exhibited" probably less so. |
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