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Would you let Delta airlines scan your face if it meant you could skip the line to check-in your baggage? An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Delta is testing a face-scanning kiosk for baggage check... It uses facial recognition technology to match your identity to your passport photo. You tag your own bags, pay the fee and drop your luggage on a conveyor belt... Delta will test four of the machines at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this summer. The airline spent $600,000 on the four kiosks.
A senior staff attorney at the EFF warns this could be a slippery slope -- at what point this morphs into airline surveillance? But a Delta spokerspeson insists the images won't be stored, that they're complying with privacy laws, and that the kiosks could double the number of passengers whisking through their check-in procedures.

scienceListener asks: "As an avid radio listener with an interest in science and technology communication, I'm really excited about podcasts. I've found many that I like, and many more that are just terrible. One of the areas I find very lacking is science news podcasting. Aside from some very good podcasts that are really repackaged radio shows (NPR's Science Friday and their aggregated Health and Science, Canada's Quirks and Quarks, Australia's The Science Show, and a few others), and a couple produced by science centers (the Current Science & Technology Podcast from Boston's Museum of Science and the Redshift Report from the Ontario Science Centre -- which is good but isn't really about science news), I haven't found any independently-produced science podcasts worth listening to. Is anyone doing science news without the help of a major organization and doing it well?"

Ellen Spertus writes "The Eleventh First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony will be held in Cambridge, MA, on Thursday, Oct. 4, to honor scientific achievements that cannot, or should not, be reproduced. The ceremony, which will be webcast live and broadcast later on Science Friday, is sponsored by The Annals of Improbable Research. The accompanying Ig Informal Lectures will be held Saturday, Oct. 6, at MIT."

lyonsj writes "NPR's Science Friday show is discussing technology patents today; it sounds like this one is going to be well worth a listen. They'll be discussing Jeff Bezos' letter about patent reform, and the bar's reaction to that letter (which everyone should read). Call in and talk about tech patents with a law professor, a guy from the USPTO, and the chairman of Aurigin Systems. " Check out NPR's website for radio stations, and you can grab the archive of the show later on.

EMS writes "NPR's Science Friday news radio program today has a discussion on the Future of the PC at 3-4pm EST. Guest speakers Tim O'Reilly, Steven Levy, and Scott Bradner discuss how PC's are evolving in a "decentralized, network driven world". Contributing forces to be discussed include Linux and network appliances. " It's worth checking out NPR site later on-they typciall put these up in archives.