Airline Math: Jet Blue Increases Leg Room
Posted on December 19, 2006 - Filed Under Airlines, Audio, News, Travel Biz | Leave a Comment
“There are things we know that we don’t know.†Donald Rumsfeld I have always thought airline math was as twisted as political rhetoric. As someone who was forced at quill-point to study the value and foibles of statistics and who for many years lived down the rabbit hole of the broadcasting business (a little too [...]
Death of a Newsman: Johnny Apple
Posted on October 5, 2006 - Filed Under Misc., News | Leave a Comment
Growing up, I had Hemingway dreams. I wanted to be that globetrotting writer, raconteur and connoisseur of fine clarets exemplified by “Papa†and the New York Times’ R.W. Apple Jr. Apple died yesterday. Thankfully we still have his words. As a cub reporter in the 70s, I pored with admiration over Apple’s dispatches from Vietnam, [...]
Read More..>>Achoo!
Posted on October 2, 2006 - Filed Under News, Tech & Science | Leave a Comment
An AP dispatch via CNN-Travel says the University of Virginia put 15 people with colds in hotel rooms then checked the rooms for germs afterward. About one-third of the objects they touched became contaminated with rhinovirus: about half the doorhandles and pens, also light switches, TV remotes, phones, faucets, shower curtains, coffee makers and alarm [...]
Read More..>>To the Moon, Alice!
Posted on September 29, 2006 - Filed Under News, Tech & Science | Leave a Comment
…but it will cost you $190,000 and you’ll have to wait ’til 2009. Sir Richard Branson showed off a mockup of his Virgin Galactic space ship yesterday. To be launched from the New Mexico desert, the craft, based on the design of Burt Rutan’s Spaceship One, will carry six passengers into sub-orbital space. Not “to [...]
Read More..>>The Meaning of TIT: What Would Jitplecheep Do?
Posted on September 27, 2006 - Filed Under Audio, Culture, News, Thailand | Leave a Comment
TIT, she said about the military coup in Thailand in an email from Bangkok. TIT to farangs means “This is Thailand.†That is not the title of a bad travelogue but the notion that “hey, stuff happens here we may not understand but mai pen rai, no big deal.“ Another friend emailed me his fear [...]
