The Civilized Explorer aggregation

Photos and videos from our trip to Guadeloupe in 2008; includes Carneval

You think it’s hard on you in the airport? Read what it’s like for foreigners trying to come into the US.

You think it’s hard for you in the airport? Read what it’s like for foreigners coming into the country.

Remember all the jokes about being glad the shoe bomber wasn’t the underwear bomber? Now it’s happened. Get ready for more jokes. And let’s see what the TSA does.

In the never-ending lemming race off the cliffs, British Airways is charging an extra 20 pounds (the British currency, not your excess baggage) for a reserved seat (but an extra 50 pounds for a seat in the emergency exit row, and 60 pounds in business class).

This is a charge for requesting specific seats. You used to be able to get a specific seat just for the asking, but not it’s extra: you want to sit next to your child? It’s an extra fee for the specific seats. Next to the window? The aisle seat? Extra fees.

BA says the extra charge gives customers more control over their seating options, although it’s not clear to me you get more control now than when it was included in the advertised price.

Question of the day: have you heard of a prison which has totally eliminated knives and other contraband from within it’s heavily fortified walls, even with total control over access? Why are we wasting time and money having our bags searched for knives and scissors?

Gigaom says Southwest Airlines will the the first airline with fleetwide WiFi in flight. No pricing; availability - sometime next year.

• Clear, the now-defunct airport security fast-pass company, was ordered Tuesday by a federal court judge not to sell the biometric data it collected from hundreds of thousands of customers.

When you look up “irony” in your Funk&Wagnalls, there’s a link to this story:

Shah Rukh Khan is a big star in India. He came to the US to promote his new movie “My Name Is Khan,” about the racial profiling of a Muslim whose life in the US is affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

When Khan got to the US, he was detained for two hours by the TSA, who grilled him because Khan is on the terrorist watch list. He says he was released after he contacted a lawmaker in India who called the Indian embassy in Washington and got embassy officials to intervene.

The TSA says it’s all untrue. The agency says Khan was questioned as part of a routine process, and the delay was the result of lost baggage.