Airline Sevice has become an Oxymoron

Airline customer service?

Within the last 6 to months to a year:

The airlines were just short of torturing their passengers (no food, little water, poor heating and humidity, cramped confinement, aggravating individual health concerns (asthma, diabetes treatment, etc), tempers flaring) - I know. I've been held on a plane longer than 4 hours on the tarmac and I have experienced or witnessed all these problems. In fact, the worst place to be confined to a plane on the ground is Dallas during the summer during a thunderstorm; the heat and humidity does become torture. The planes on the ground rely on auxiliary power to maintain decent conditions and there is none on the tarmac and they only minimally stock with stores to save weight, hence fuel.
 
Congress had to pass a federal law about how long passengers could be held on the tarmac before take off. After that time, they were to be returned to the gates and off loaded because the airlines had become so insensitive to their customers. If they were sensitive, then no federal law would be needed. 


Then they started charging per bag checked

Then they stated charging for carry on luggage.

Then TSA has imposed draconian, invasive searches prior to boarding, violating the 4th amendment

Over the holiday period, 10,000 flights were  CANCELED

One plane was on the tarmac 11 HOURS, violating federal law

And the airlines reaction?

Today, effective immediately, almost all of the airlines raised their fares by $20! (does anyone smell collusion?) Airlines Raise Fares on Many Routes

Airline service has truly become an oxymoron!


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Facebook Lynch Mob hysteria

Facebook post falsely accuses man of Philadelphia stranglings

 There seems to be a serial killer active in Philadelphia. "Fears of a serial killer stalking women in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have prompted some residents to take matters into their own hands -- and onto the internet, with frightful results for one man."

"Police say a male Philadelphia resident was falsely accused of being responsible for three strangulation murders and three other assaults that have occurred in the central Philadelphia area in recent weeks. The post contained a photograph of the man and listed his address and contact information, police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers told CNN."

"Shortly after the posting, a group of people began gathering outside the man's home, prompting him to call the police, according to Evers."

DNA evidence proved he was not the killer.

 Facebook Falsely Accues Many of Serial Killing

(this lousy editor does NOT give you what you see! I will not apologize for how it has mangled this post and made it double spaced after publishing!)

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Signs to Restore Sanity

 In the spirit of

The 100 Best Signs At The Rally To Restore Sanity

and Smart and Creative Protest Signs

Free the Slavs

Sign? I thought they said, "Bring Singh".

Return to Traditional Values - play Donkey Kong

Protest like the Boston Tea Party - Use loose leaf tea!

I'm with Stupid (arrow pointing down)

Matthew 22:37-40

Jesus turned water into wine, not whine!

Fundamentalists should quote the Gospels

I could be home watching "American Idol"

Signs? We ain't got no signs. We don't need no signs. I don't have to show you any stinking signs.

Tea Party? Vote for Earl Grey for president.

Palin-Gosselin for 2012!

Tea Party looks to the future. Vote for Thomas E. Dewey!

Return to traditional values. Put TV evangelists back into their tents where they belong.

Traditional Values - resurrect the Inquisition!

My sign is better than your sign!

I drink my tea black.

Sane people stay home and read books.

404 - sign not found

Has anybody seen my sign?

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Has the news editor gone the way of the dodo?

Has the role of the news editor become extinct in the online age? Reporters seems to be in a rush to "get something" into the great maw of the media that they don't care about or, even worse, don't know what nonsense they are writing.

For example, there was a shooting at a strip mall today. The article was not very well written, and it included the phrase

"The gunfire damaged several vehicles in the parking lot, including a Chinese restaurant across the street about 200 yards away"

Since when is a Chinese restaurant a vehicle?

Shooting at Mall

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The TSA has criminalized the US citizen

More offensive and unnecessary searches 

The TSA has criminalized the average US citizen. In their eyes, everyone is a guilty criminal until proven innocent! Under US common law and international law, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The TSA has got it backwards.

TSA has met the enemy and they are us

"...somehow [... the TSA has to provide security ...] without treating everyone from frequent business travelers to the family heading home to visit grandma as a potential terrorist. "

"Over time, TSA has settled into a pattern of issuing directives with little explanation and expecting they be followed. But increasingly fed-up travelers don't understand the agency's sense of urgency and aren't buying it."

""They're very expensive and what they (TSA officials) should be able to do is answer if it does reduce the risk, how much does it reduce the risk and is it worth it?"


"The TSA has spent roughly $40 billion dollars. The ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items being carried through sterile areas of airports fared no better than the performance of the screeners prior to September 11, 2001"



TSA gone wild


The TSA has become paranoid and has overstepped its authority and all bounds of decency.

The TSA is flaunting the fourth amendment that guarantees American citizens against unreasonable search and seizure. Other law enforcement agencies need a warrant to invade a person's privacy. Body searches, thus far, have been by the police with reason to believe a person has committed a crime. Yet the TSA sidesteps the fourth amendment whenever a person refuses to submit to intimate body scans. These searches are offensive, touching the most intimate parts of a citizen's body. This is sexual harassment. By what right does the TSA have to do this?

What justifies this intrusion of privacy? What justifies this illegal search? What incidents were there with the metal detectors? A precious few, none leading to any serious incident. The paranoid TSA has perpetrated an enormous boondoggle, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to allow them to exceed the limits of the bill of rights.

They have not shown than the abrogation of a citizens rights and the expense they have incurred is justified by the facts at hand.

They have become an uncontrollable bureaucracy, unaccountable to anyone, least of all the US citizen.

Fight to get your rights back

New clothing line reminds tsa of the 4th-amendment rights

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The FAA is missing 1/3 of the airplanes in the US!

Why waste time and money on the TSA when the FAA can't find 1/3 of the "registered" airplanes in the US??? It would be so easy for a terrorist to "steal" the tail number of an airplane and use it for nefarious purposes (porpoises?).

Where's all the Planes
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The government should pay for lighthouses and autopsies

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches”  said Ben Franklin

"Here's a simple question at the heart of the debate over the federal deficit: What should the government spend money on? As it turns out, economists have an answer to this question: Lighthouses. Also, autopsies."

 

"Of course, these are economists we're talking about here, not politicians. So these answers aren't particularly helpful in advancing the public debate over government spending."

"Still, autopsies and lighthouses are useful examples of what economists call a public good — "something that we all need, that will make our lives better, but that the market will not and cannot provide," says Charlie Wheelan, who teaches public policy at the University of Chicago."

"Lighthouses

If the government didn’t build lighthouses, Wheelan says, where would the money come from?

Sure, someone could go around to ship captains and say, "Hey, we're gonna build a lighthouse. Wanna contribute?" The captains would say, "No thanks; don't need one. I'm a good sailor."

Those captains are "just going to use our lighthouse without paying for it," Wheelan says. "We can't say, 'Close your eyes when you sail past this rocky point.' ""

"Before the U.S. government set up a lighthouse service in 1789, there weren't many lighthouses in key places where it was expensive to build, according to Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society."

"Autopsies

"The Journal of the American Medical Association has been arguing for 15 years, at least, that there's a public health problem, because we're not doing enough autopsies," Wheelan says."

"If we had more autopsies, we'd know more about how people die — and about how to keep people healthier longer. So collectively, we'd all benefit. But where's the benefit for any given person?"

"There's none for the person being autopsied," Wheelan points out. "It's a little late for that."

"And there are reasons why doctors might not be pushing for autopsies, either.

It turns out to be extremely common, much more than you think, that there were either undiagnosed conditions, misdiagnosed conditions. So this person, best case he was right. Worst case, he's going to be looking at malpractice or something like that. So the person who is in the best position to encourage autopsy often will not.

There are some other public goods that we hear about more often in political debates: court systems, for example, and the military."

"But economists agreeing that these things are public goods fails to answer the real question: How much should we spend on the military? How much should we spend on the courts?"

"And what about health care and education? Those don't meet the strict definitions of public goods. But many societies have agreed that they should be publicly provided, so governments end up getting involved."

What should the government pay for?

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Health Care - American Style (from a Canadian)

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Naming a boy "Draco"???

Danica McKellar, who played Winnie Cooper on late 90's TV program "The Wonder Years", has just had a baby boy.

She named him "Draco",  from the Greek 'drakon' meaning "dragon; serpent"! From it is derived "draconian", meaning excessively harsh or severe.

Draco is Harry Potter's nemesis in of all the "Harry Potter" books, a very negative, even evil, character. Could you imagine hanging a name like that on a kid who has to go through life with the villain's name from a classic series of books and movies?

Its like calling a kid "Jean Valjean" from "Les Miserables" or "Quasimodo" from "The Hunchback of "Notre Dame" or "Judas", Jesus's betrayer or "Sue" (re Johnny Cash), condemning him from the git-go.

What was she thinking? She graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with a BS in mathematics in June 1998. Obviously, they didn't teach her the humanities or math is no longer a liberal art.

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Progress?

- There is a new service in San Jose, Red Kiosks that dispense DVDs, Blueray, etc. They only have the latest titles, obviously, and they are becoming quite popular. Our local supermarket has two, one inside and one outside the main door. Herein lies the rub. They are so popular on a Saturday night that there is a queue at both kiosks and the people in them block the entrance so other shoppers cannot get into or out of the store!

- There is a new app, Explore Your World: Virtual Globetrotting ( Virtual Globetrotting ). Once you learn to use the categories, its quite fun. However, Google Earth's Street View has one major problem.: The vast majority of its pictures are parked cars! As if I want to see every parked car in the world! Virtual Globetrotting? I can see all the parked I want by driving to the supermarket.

- Electric cars? I foresee a major problem: Lack of infrastructure.They may have a range of 200-250 miles without a charge, a reasonable distant for routine around town driving with recharging every few days. This is fine if you have a charging station, but what happens if you live in an apartment complex? Does one expect the complex to install the very expensive units? One per car? How about a "long" trip? Vacation? Holiday visits? People in California routinely drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back, a distance over 400 miles each way. Its a whole lot cheaper to drive than to fly and you don't get groped on the way and its actually faster because you don't incur the trip to the airport, checking in, the TSA hassle, waiting for the flight, taxi time, the flight time, and the reverse (minus the TSA) on the other end. Then you go through all of the rigmarole when you return. What happened to the passenger rail infrastructure we had up until the mid 50's?

- When are they going to upgrade spell checkers with a college education!!! When I use an erudite word, they do not recognize it, and give a list of inane choices. For example, the word "anhedonia" which one might encounter in a undergraduate pscyh class is not recognized and the checker gives me list of "Macedonian, Caledonia, Macedonia, and hedonism", none of which are even close!

Progress? Technology has again opened a new doors without considering the consequences.


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