(I tried sending this earlier from my smartphone, but it's keyboard wouldn't let me add the brackets so I'm not sure if this was noticed as being Traveller-related . . .)

Since Monday, I have been experiencing the fascinating world of professional trucking. And it has struck me that - at least at the PC level and for smaller ports - a truck stop has a lot to contribute, in the way of ambiance, over airports [and seaports]. Let me give a couple of examples:

Case 1: After using the scales, a certain ill-mannered driver stopped only a few feet out of the scales, apparently to deal with trip paperwork. It didn't seem to bother him that everyone was cursing him to Hades for blocking the exit from both the scales and half the fuel islands . . .

Case 2: I watched someone cursing in what seemed to be Arabic, as they chisselled what appeared to be decades of corrosion off a trailer's DOT bumper, presumably because that was what was needed to get the reflective stickers he had been ticketed for not having to adhere . . .

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.