Editorial

If airlines were honest about safety

Courtesy of The Economist

"GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is.  At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust.

The flight attendants are now pointing out the emergency exits. This is the part of the announcement that you might want to pay attention to. So stop your sudoku for a minute and listen: knowing in advance where the exits are makes a dramatic difference to your chances of survival if we have to evacuate the aircraft. Also, please keep your seat belt fastened when seated, even if the seat-belt light is not illuminated. This is to protect you from the risk of clear-air turbulence, a rare but extremely nasty form of disturbance that can cause severe injury. Imagine the heavy food trolleys jumping into the air and bashing into the overhead lockers, and you will have some idea of how nasty it can be. We don’t want to scare you. Still, keep that seat belt fastened all the same.

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero. This aircraft is equipped with inflatable slides that detach to form life rafts, not that it makes any difference. Please remove high-heeled shoes before using the slides. We might as well add that space helmets and anti-gravity belts should also be removed, since even to mention the use of the slides as rafts is to enter the realm of science fiction.

Rate your spouse with this guide from 1939

The entire rating chart is here.

This video is pure, silly joy

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Essays for The Denver Post, circa late '80s

For archival purposes, I have just posted two essays published almost twenty years ago in The Denver Post.  Please note that the newspaper writes the headline, these are not the ones I would have chosen!

The piece on the war on drugs was published on the op-ed page, without a single edit.  There were two letters to the editor about it, one pro and one con; I have reproduced them as comments.  I was told they selected my op-ed because they agreed with me but could never get away with saying that kind of stuff themselves. 

They invited me to apply for a job there as an editorial writer and I asked them how they determined what positions to take on issues.  I distinctly remember the very honest reply:  "We see which way the public is moving and try to get out in front."

Those who know me as an ardent progressive will be amused to hear of this exchange, when I went to interview for the job:

"What's your political persuasion?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you lean to the right or the left?"

"Hmmm.  Good question. Can I get back to you on that one?"

Bicyclists: Don't resent them, thank them instead

Published in The Denver Post, May 7, 1989

It's that time of year again--the bicyclists are on the roads and the angry letters are on the editorial page.  Pedestrians think we go too fast and drivers think we go too slowly.  And everybody, it seems, would be happier if we would just pedal away and not come back.

We bikers are at a real disadvantage.  For although virtually all of us have experience driving cars,  there are many of you who don't ride bikes.  Plus, we know alot about what drivers think because they can get a good breath to tell us.  But we're usually huffing and puffing too much to say anything back. 

I would like to have some signs made up that say:  "You can stop honking now.  I realize that I am more than a hair's breadth from the curb.  What you don't know is that there is a pothole here that could swallow a small banana republic.  I will be around it in two more seconds, please be patient."

Not everybody honks; some indicate their displeasure by jamming into a lower gear and tearing past in the cloud of dust. 

Last year I rode my bike to work downtown from May through September.  And I really felt that, instead of resenting my presence on the road, those drivers should be thanking me.  Does it ever occur to them that bicycle commuters make their lives easier?

iPhone: The Musical

David Pogue combines the wit of a former Broadway composer with the nerd factor of his current job as tech writer for The New York Times for an on the street production of great joy and fun. He sings, he gets people in line at the Apple store to sing, all to the tune of "I Did It My Way." See it here:

Satyr Masks

From what not to crochet:

Quick Honey, call 911, my pancake stack is coming back!

Bill Sullivan Turnstile Photos

Photographer Bill Sullivan wanted to remove himself from the process of taking a photograph--other than setting up the circumstances under which they'd be taken.  He traps his subjects--apparently big city commuters--in a moment of temporary imprisonment in a metro turnstile.  They don't know they're being photographed and wear the blank, bored expressions the world is full of (yet so rarely seen in any media, perhaps because no one looks that way when they know it's being recorded).  His description:

At the moment that the subjects passed through the turnstile, unknown to them, I took their picture stationed at a distance of eleven feet. I stood there turning pages of a magazine observing subjects out of the corner of my eye, waiting for only the moment when they pushed the turnstile bar to release the shutter.

See the rest of Bill's work at his site.

100 lives in 100 rooms

Link: MICHAEL WOLF | PHOTOGRAPHY | HONGKONG .

There is something bizarrely compelling about this photo essay of Hong Kong's oldest public housing complex:  one hundred residents each live in rooms ten feet long by ten feet wide.  Michael Wolf photographed every one of them. 

Although we all know we live in an enormous world of billions of souls, we cannot possibly conceive of all those lives happening simultaneously.  But this essay helps us try.  For here in this one building, in one city, one hundred lives are lived, each with their own cook pot, shoes, bed. 

The photo essay also calls into question our ideas about material wealth.  Whether you believe you have a lot or a little depends so much on how your define those terms.  Many of the residents here seem proud to show off their rooms, and not at all ashamed of what Americans would consider woeful poverty. 

Thanks to David Pogue for the heads up.

Ideal Parent: Young, married, thin, happy and rich?

Link: China may not allow some people to adopt.

Due to high demand for their infant daughters, whom the Chinese often put up for adoption so they can keep their sons, the Chinese government has put restrictions on who can adopt their children. Caution: ugly people need not apply!

With them, several groups of people may no longer be eligible for Chinese adoptions:

Unmarried people

Overweight people, with a body mass index greater than 40

Those older than 50

People who take medicine for depression or anxiety or have a "severe facial deformity"

Other potential restrictions could require an adoptive family to earn more than $80,000 a year and not already have more than four children, adoption officials say.