Thursday, January 28, 2010

Haiti Earthquake update: answer to Doc Gurley

In her brilliant blog post, Doc Gurley explained her Haiti trip plans in great detail and offered this brain-twister:

Algebra Problem of the Day: If I board my connecting flight to Chicago, hurtling at 31,267 feet for 3.87 hours, while carrying a 4-liter grocery bag of donated 2 oz. pill-bottles labeled with 34 different individual names, and each bottle is 3/4 full of highly regulated narcotics, then please calculate how many DEA agents, on arrival at O'Hare, will force me to undergo how many body-cavity searches? Please express your answer in mucosal centimeters. Extra Credit: And, more importantly, given an estimated factor of X minutes per search will those body-cavity searches cause me to miss my Haiti flight? Hmm...


The answer I provide is simple: zero. The reason is Doc will never get through TSA Security at SFO carrying "a 4-liter grocery bag of donated 2 oz. pill-bottles labeled with 34 different individual names". That is one huge bag, more like a trash bag that's oversized to start with, thus can't even be allowed on a plane.

Better to check the bags. But that brings up the issue of baggage claim at Haiti and other what would seem to be wild details.

Stay tuned.

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