Chez Chesler

FAA officials have decided not to require toddlers under two years of age to occupy their own airline seats, the Bloomberg news service reports. The rationale, according to the FAA, is that parents forced to pay for a toddler's plane ticket might decide to drive instead, putting the family at greater risk than if they flew, Bloomberg reported.

Wouldn't this reasoning apply to older passengers as well? I regularly drive instead of flying because of the costs, not just the cost of the ticket and getting too and from the airport, but the non-economic costs of the "security" measures, which are nothing but show. If I were travelling with other friends or family to the same destination, within about 250 miles, we would almost certainly drive together. Since any people forced to pay for an extra plane ticket might decide to drive instead, should the FAA stop requiring that passengers beyond the first in a party purchase their own tickets?

I'll be declining Orin Kerr's invitation to aid in the Katrina relief effort. I suppose that makes me a selfish, heartless prick, even by libertarian/neocon standards. Here's why:

• "Let the bastards freeze in the dark"
• These victims knowingly lived in a hurricane-prone region, on land that is below sea level
• The federal government is going to contribute millions of dollars, which came from me and other taxpayers, for "emergency relief"
• That program was rife with corruption after last year's Florida hurricanes
• I'll be personally contributing one or two thousand dollars extra this year to petroleum companies, some of which extra, including the current spike, will be blamed on Katrina
• I'm an unemployed software engineer, while the industry is claiming visa quotas must be lifted due to a desperate labor shortage

Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan writes:

If you were secretly disappointed yesterday when the roof of the Superdome failed to crash down on NBC anchor Brian Williams, you weren't alone. "I would say I was mildly disappointed," said Kiss 108 morning man Matt Siegel. "My colleague Bill Costa was devastated. Normally on Mondays he gets his manicure and pedicure but he stayed and watched TV for two hours waiting for the thing to cave in." When it didn't, Siegel said, Costa felt betrayed. All that build-up, anticipation. Hundreds of thousands at risk. Oil field devastation. Caskets floating out of cemeteries. Caskets floating out of cemeteries? Well that's what they said, those breathless reporters in slickers flapping so madly you expected both slicker and reporter to shoot off into the stratosphere, like human cannon balls.

OK, it looks like a levee broke, and much of New Orleans is under water. Petroleum prices are spiking on the news. But Eagan has a good point about storm hype. Herald Columnists may be available only to subscribers. If you're not a subscriber, become one, but in the mean time, ask for a password. UPDATE September 1, 2005: Brian Chirco of Beverly writes in a letter to the editor No thrill in disaster

I had to chuckle at Margery Eagan's column about disappointed nitwit media folks when the New Orleans Superdown wasn't wiped off the map. Having weathered Category 4/5 Ivan on Grenada, my wife and I are nauseated rather than thrilled by these types of disasters.

Gary Thober took her to task in an e-letter. In her column today Eagan writes about the Spirit of New Orleans, but doesn't apologize for, or even mention, her earlier column; neither did the Herald issue any sort of clarification. On the other hand, when we ask why people did not heed the warnings and evacuate, some blame must be placed on the prior false alarms and hype. Related story: A glitch in the Reverse 911 system in the town of Ipswich sent up to 15 calls in rapid succession at dinner time to the same homes warning about Eastern equine encephalitis. Yet the town's emergency management director Charles Cooper was disturbed that so many calls went to answering machines, busy signals, or were hung up on, saying "People should listen to anything from the Ipswich Public Safety Department." How many times?

Every restaurant is all-you-can-eat, but at some of them you have to order and pay more for that privilege. (This may hereafter be cited as Chesler's Observation)

If you're under the sweater, under the bra, and under the natural-feeling prostheses is that getting to shortstop?

When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, back when there was still choice in undergraduate Houses, I lived in Adams House. Before becoming Adams House, Randolph and Westmorely Halls had been two of the Gold Coast hotels. Adams House was "renovated" the summer after my junior year. The spring prior to the renovations, many store rooms were opened and emptied. I found one in th basement of H entry, Randolph Hall. The vent ducts were pasted with lingerie advertisements from the 1920s, and graffiti indicated the room had been used in the late teens and early 1920s (judging from the scores for The Game recorded) by three students who called themselves "The Tippling Tiplets". Since this was not official Harvard history, and they were not readily identified as anybody famous (if I'd known, I would have taken photos, and it wouldn't have been too hard to find them from their initials), the renovation for this room painted over all the surfaces in a uniform grey. I don't know who they were, but through this blog, the Tippling Tiplets now have a place on the web.

CNN.com - Israel: Gaza pullout moving quickly - Aug 17, 2005 I sort of understand why Israel is ceding Gaza to Palistinia. I don't understand why Palistinia is getting away with expelling its Jews. Will the Jews expelled from the Gaza homes they've known for a generation now be refugees? Will they live in refugee camps? Will they spend the next generation demanding that Palistinia be partitioned so that they can have a homeland where they lived for a while?

I suppose there is a lot to like about Lowell, Massachusetts. But I never get to see it. In the fall of 1979, when I had been here only a couple of months, a high school classmate then at MIT and I went to hear Peter Shickele perform works of P.D.Q. Bach at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. We consulted our maps, took the Red Line to the Orange Line to North Station, and took the old Boston & Maine railroad (now the Lowell line of the MBTA commuter rail to Lowell (past the home of the woman I would meet 9 years later and marry, and past the house we would buy 17 years later) and walked to the auditorium. We walked from the station to the auditorium. We left the concert about an hour early in time to catch the last train back to Boston. We got to the station early. The train never came. We never figured out why. We ended sharing a cab with 5 other stranded travellers, $49 to North Station. (Not knowing the city yet, we didn't know where to be asked to be taken other than where the train would have gone.) I probably still have my unused return ticket somewhere. When my wife and I were still DINKs we subscribed to Broadway in Boston or a similar arts program. We bought tickets for the Count Basie Orchestra playing in Lowell, probably also at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Somewhere near Spot Pond on I-93, on our way from Somerville to Lowell, my Cadillac, The Jewel of Denial, threw a freeze plug, lost all its coolant, and overheated. We never made it to the concert. Last weekend I took my kids to LaLacheur Park to see The Lowell Spinners. It's a lovely stadium, admission was only $3.50 (standing room), concessions were cheap, and everybody was friendly, but the game was rained out. I didn't get the contract I was trying for with JP Morgan/Chase at Cross Point Towers (the former Wang Laboratories towers) either. Update, August 27: We finally made it to a game two weeks later, which makes it the first professional baseball I've seen in person since before the 1994 strike. I forgot that I'd taken the rainchecks out of my wallet a few days earlier (on the basis that I'd know if I were going to be headed to a game and could pick them up.) We arrived late, and missed Major Leaguer Keith Foulke's pitching in rehab, and the supply of free T-shirts. Unlike two weeks ago, when they assured me there would be plenty of empty seats if we took standing room, with the nice weather empty seats were hard to find. We lost our first squatter's seats after an inning, with some unnecessarily nasty comments, and stood for the remainder of our time. I found the entertainment between the half-innings, for which the Spinners are somewhat famous, distracting, spoiling the rhythm of watching a game. My kids felt that the half-innings of baseball were distracting from the entertainment, and we left after about three innings. But at least I'd found free street parking.

Last weekend (August 13 and 14) was the Massachusetts Sales Tax Holiday. Unlike last year, the tax-free days were both Saturday and Sunday. Putatively, this was so that Orthodox (viz. Shomer Shabbat) Jews would be able to buy items costing $2500 or less, excluding food, clothing, cars, and tobacco, tax-free in Massachusetts (instead of going up to New Hampshire? Except for refrigerators, it's hardly a big deal) on Sunday. Except Sunday was Tisha B'Av. I doubt many who are Shomer Shabbat would shop on Tisha B'Av. Commenters to The Bostonist make a similar point.

The NCAA has banned Indian mascots in the postseason. In an article in the Boston Herald on August 6, 2005, which I couldn't find, but which editor Mike Sullivan referenced in his blog, Dr. Joely De La Toree, a Luiseno Indian and professor of public administration at Cal State San Bernadino, is quoted as saying "I think it is unfortunate that the NCAA hasn't taken a strong stance. They wouldn't be this slow if there were mascots denigrating African-Americans or Asian-Americans. If the 'Fighting Jews' were a nickname, I think it would be taken care of." As Mike Sullivan points out, Notre Dame has been the Fighting Irish. The Herald article points out that Andover's [sic -- they're in North Andover, aka East Lawrence] Merrimack College's Warriors went from American Indian to Roman in 2003. While there aren't many Spartans around today, there are certainly individuals of Roman descent, many of whom live here in Massachusetts. Personally, I'd be proud if a team were called the "Fighting Jews", as would Dennis Prager, although I'd suggest the team just call itself "The Maccabees". (I'm still trying to think of a suitable school to front such a team, and I'm coming up blank. I blame my childhood. Bronx Science doesn't have a football team, and Harvard's doesn't have a mascot, just a misnamed color.)