Don't Back Down

That isn’t to say that I think you should be stuck in a long tube with undecorated walls, because that might be a little creepy, and perhaps even claustrophobic. I’ve been in an inside cabin in a cruise ship, and I get the concept of the window. It’s very comforting that you can see out, even if you aren’t going to be able to actually open that window – and let’s face it, you can’t open that window in the plane.

While I am not an engineer, and I have no formal training as to the psychology of the windows themselves, I have to imagine that having windows is less structurally sounds that not having windows. So what if planes didn’t have them, at least in the passenger compartment? Yes, this would make a giant steel tube, and it might seem claustrophobic. Hear me out.

Every time we turn around, someone wants to label the times in which we live. Many would call these the golden years, though they invariably are only golden compared to those that come after us and remember how much better things were previous to now. Looking at a prior time is invariably better because you are not burdened with the day-to-day, and you can look fondly upon those memories.

Regardless, many will look upon these times as the information age because of the explosion of data and machinery to process the data. Unfortunately, it is just as appropriate to look upon this as the garbage age because of all the junk we leave by the wayside.

It seems like every few days, there is an announcement about a problem with a “security database” at some web service or another. The problem with having so much information in the cloud is that it means your very identity is in the hands of someone else. It is quite possible that someone will take good care of it. But it is also possible that someone will take the information and do something with the information that they shouldn’t.

And let’s face it, the more sites out there, the less and less likely that we are going to be able to keep track of all the credentials needed to log into them. Something has to be done at some point, but in the meantime, we have to figure out first just how secure (or perhaps how insecure) those sites are in the first place.

While that might not be a precise title, it’s not far off.

In the annals of history – which is to say, about 13 years ago at this writing – the CBS television show premiered, and is generally credited with creating the reality television genre. What really happened, for those of you who weren’t watching at the time, was that 15 contestants demonstrated they had no idea what was happening, while one (Richard Hatch) promptly showed the world that he had no problem parading around in the buff and walking away with a million dollars.

Unfortunately, he soon forgot that he was being broadcast on television, and that everyone knew he won a million dollars, and the government would come looking for their cut. Eventually he would do some time for not paying taxes. In the meantime, the game would change. There are a few players (see Rob Mariano) who would use their skill at manipulation to win, but the vast majority simply hunkered down in voting blocs to try and ride out the game. For a more in-depth look at that (probably too in-depth), take a look over here.

In this case, let’s look at the upcoming (in progress?) merger between American and USAirways as an example. Each airline operates a reasonable number of flights at a number of airports across the country. But with nine hubs in this merge, someone is bound to lose. The problem comes down to the cities that have those airports.

For instance, the two largest hubs – Dallas/Fort Worth (786 combined flights at the merger announcement) and Charlotte/Douglas (653 flights) both have bonds outstanding. This is really no surprise, as most airports have bonds issues, for anything from parking decks to new terminals. But if an airport is shuttered, or even loses a lot of flights, as Pittsburgh did previously, then those bonds may have a tough time being repaid.

First came the news that New York City would be paying the Occupy Wall Street protesters more than $100,000 for property damaged when their “camp” was cleared out. Then it was bumped to $230,4000. Seriously?

I’m the first to admit that I don’t get it. I’mold. On the edge, and not the good one – depending on who you ask, I am either beyond the desired demographic or just barely within it, and I understand that. I may or may not have come to grips with that fact just yet. The point is that I don’t get the whole Occupy movement. It isn’t quite a sit in – most of the people taking part in the movement probably have no idea what the sit in is, in fact. Instead, they just have nothing better to do.

Slightly more than eleven years ago – and a bit less than six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001 – I wrote a short piece to no one in particular. I actually addressed it to “Mr. President”, at the time meaning it would have been delivered to George W. Bush. But it was only a title, someone to focus the energy of the letter, and not specifically aimed at him.

The point of the letter was simply to get out the feelings that had been going through my mind for a while. At the time, there was no Facebook, no Twitter. Even blogs were something of a novel invention then. I may or may not actually post the contents of the letter itself. I thought about sending a hard copy it to a representative, but since they usually result in a form letter response, I didn’t (or haven’t).