Subsidize Me

Alitalia Airlines Tanya Hostess – Alitanya - This is a stewardess doll representing Italy’s Alitalia Airlines. She’s wearing the official stewardess uniform, and carries her “leather” shoulder bag.

For the first time in five years, I recently flew on Italy’s national airline, Alitalia. Alitalia’s common nickname is "Always late in the air, late in arrival". I arrived at London Heathrow for the flight two hours before departure.

When I arrived for the two hour flight, the line for check-in wound around and around, beyond sight of the check-in desk. I waited in line for one-hour, forty-five minutes.

But it doesn’t matter. The wait was worth it. I forgot how much I enjoy Italy. Especially the major cities like Rome. Everyone is beautiful in Rome. The women are gorgeous, the men are stunning. Even the grandma's and grandpa’s are attractive.

After sprinting to the gate with a crowd of other late people, a literal herd, we arrived to the late model airplane transport. The stewards and stewardesses were all beautiful. After the flight took off, they served us all good wine, tasty sandwiches and sumptuous pasties at the end of the meal. The stewards even wore nifty “captains hats”. I would have trusted these guys to fly the plane based on the care they took in their uniform presentation. And all of this took place in a two hour flight.

By contrast, my 10 hour flight from SFO to LHR was staffed by dumpy air waitresses who wanted $5, €4 or £3 for really bad wine. And they had the gall to serve me salty pretzels and no choice of meal. All in the name of profitability.

I am now a big fan of government subsidies of airlines. I’ve come to realize that government subsidized airlines are much more enjoyable than the standard, profitable airlines.

From Business Week: “Last year, the company (Alitalia) lost an average of €1 million ($1.3 million) a day, and it hasn't posted a profit in five years. Its labor woes and inefficiencies are notorious: In one particularly mind-bending example, Alitalia forfeits countless millions in revenues every year as paying passengers are regularly bumped from its most profitable Rome-Milan route to make room for commuting pilots and crew who have refused to relocate to Milan's Malpensa hub.”

Revenue, smevenue, bring on the good food and hot sky waitresses. Richard Branson and his Virgin Airlines definitely have it right.

Lauren, Alfred, David and Me

What seems like forever now, my friends, family, bosses, and people-who-want-to-insult-me have commented on my gap-toothed smile.

I have never been insulted or offended by my gap-tooth smile as it is what it is; my smile. I’m proud of my smile. I also share my gap-tooth smile with lots of famous people.

David Letterman

Alfred E. Newman.

And Lauren Bacall. Now I couldn’t find a gap-tooth image of Lauren as in all her beautiful images, she has her mouth shut. She must have been embarrassed by her toothy grin.

Too bad as I believe the legend of the gap-tooth grin began with her. See, the legend holds that a gap-tooth grin has a special purpose and meaning in a gap-tooth persons’ life. It means they have a very high sexual quotient.

An Inconvenient Truth

”…can it be compared with the Ease and Comfort every Man living might feel seven times a Day, by discharging freely the Wind from his Bowels? Especially if it be converted into a Perfume: For the Pleasures of one Sense being little inferior to those of another, instead of pleasing the Sight he might delight the Smell of those about him…” Ben Franklin

I recently read that Australia has announced it will ban incandescent light bulbs in three years. This legislation is an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In such a move, Australia would become the first country to do away with this 125-year-old technology.

“The Environment Minister says that replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs would cut 800,000 tonnes from Australia's current emissions levels by 2012.”

One Billion Bulbs

If every home in the US replaced just one light bulb with a compact florescent bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year.

Imagine then if people all over the world mobilized to replace the one billion standard incandescent light bulbs that exist today, with energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs. It would result in an energy savings equivalent to the power consumption of tens of million of homes.

A Better Idea

But I have a better idea. In addition to saving our planet from global warming, we should be focusing our attention on an even more important warming and sense-attacking agent. The humble cow and steer.

“A steer releases enough methane gas in its lifetime to power Miami's fleet of public transportation vehicles for one day”.

All this methane can add up to a significant amount. Australia's 140 million sheep and cattle are estimated to produce one seventh of the nation's total greenhouse gas emissions, whilst America's 100 million cattle also are major contributors.

“Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together". So forget the bulbs, focus on the flatulence:

“Retain the wind by compressing the belly.” Desiderius Erasmus

Being John Malkovich

I am unsure as to the exact date it happened. One would think that significant, life-changing events would not pass un-noticed, but it did. Unbeknownst to me, a change happened. Ignorant of the dramatic turn of events, I recently transitioned from being a young hipster, to being, well…my dad.

Recently, I was out for dinner with a friend of mine who is the same age. It was a nice dinner, followed by drinks at the accompanying bar. Perhaps it was the work attire I was wearing, or maybe it was the subtle lighting of the place casting deep shadows over my face, but either way, it the midst of a conversation with some young lady at the bar, she called me “dad”.

At that very second, I decided that it would be educational and enlightening to have a Being John Malkovich -type portal. Such a portal would allow me to be able to view myself through the eyes of somebody else. See, in the movie, the main character finds a portal leading inside John Malkovich. For 15 minutes you see, hear, and feel whatever John Malkovich is doing…and then you fall out by the New Jersey Turnpike.

Except for the New Jersey Turnpike part, it sounds great. Just think of the ego-boost. I could flatter myself with comments like “you look like you’re 29” and generally flirt with myself.

Let me tell you, if I had my very own portal, there would be no more of this “dad” crap from anyone except my daughter.

Bong Hits For Jesus

In this weeks Washington Post, I read a fascinating article about "the most important student free speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War".

Bong Hits For Jesus

This was the "important message" being debated in our highest court. The defendant, Joseph Frederick fashioned a 14-foot scroll of paper and some duck tape with the devastating message.

Five years ago, Deborah Morse, principal of a Juneau, Alaska high school stormed across Glacier Avenue, off school property, to confiscate the banner from the anarchist Joseph. After eloquently paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson's admonition that "speech limited is speech lost".

She gave him detention and he sued.

Oh, how I miss high school (not).

Godless

I just returned from a news-less vacation and logged onto the CNN website. The first article that caught my eye was one of the “godless coin”.

When I was young, I collected coins. The interest has stayed with me throughout my life. A few years back, my mom made me clear out my secret stash of goods stored at her house because she was moving home. During the clearance evaluation, I found my old coin collection. Most were in damaged condition because the collection albums sold at that time contained some form of corrosive material. I guess we all got ripped off during the 1970’s.

When I moved to Japan, during the “pre-web era”, I found a news group where coin collecting enthusiasts, “numismatics”, would post their coins for sale. Around 1992, I purchased a gold, one-yen coin. I still have that coin and according to Ebay, my investment has performed dismally. I paid around $900 in 1995 for the coin and it’s now worth somewhere around $1200 today.

But the intrigue of coin collecting is still with me. When I saw the “godless coin” article today, I immediately went to Ebay and completed a speculative purchase of the coin.

“Due to a glitch that still has federal officials befuddled, the U.S. Mint printed thousands of the new $1 coins without the "In God We Trust" inscription traditional on all its money. The coins also are missing the "E Pluribus Unum" inscription, as well as a mint mark indicating whether they were produced in Philadelphia or Denver. Also, the coins are missing edge inscriptions specially made for the new dollar.”

I paid, including shipping insurance, $318 for a one-dollar coin. We’ll see how foolish this speculative investment turns out to be.

DeVry

The other night, I was out for dinner with one of my smartest and most successful friends, let’s call him Conan O’Brien. As he is British, he refers to the skills and lessons learned during the whole university experience as “qualifications”.

Conan, my smart and successful friend, has issues with his lack of a college education. Despite his obvious skills and confidence in the workplace, he displays the subtle personality trait in that he refrains from ever participating in conversations about any kind of formal schooling. Despite the infamous Bill Gates and Larry Ellison college dropout legends, the lack of “qualifications” for my friend seems to be a psychological threat to Conan.

Now I would have titled this blog “my confession”, but I already did that story . This blog is about my undergraduate alma mater, DeVry University. Now DeVry is informally known (by my friends) as the “1-800 school”. It is resides amongst the infomercials and lore of late-night commercials. But as they say in the Bible “You have…done good to me”.

Ok, so my highly paraphrased Biblical quote may be too edited to be relevant but in this instance, I maintain my right to declare a certain degree of literary license. In the two-years, eight-months it took me to obtain my Bachelor of Science degree, DeVry was the most cost effective and efficienct path to a higher paying job. Regardless of the frequency and candor of my friends ridicule.

When I was young, I always did well in school. And then adolescence took hold of me. Not only did hair start to grow in weird places, my grades dropped dramatically. Throughout the time school mattered, I sucked. I graduated from a school in a town of 1000 people and a class of 83 in a position of…well, I have no idea what my rank was, nor of what the future held.

Being a high-school principal, my dad, Aristotle, was not going to let me shovel roofs during the winters of Minnesota for a living. As I had no redeemable high-school attributes, no school was going to let me in. I distinctly remember my pleading, high-school principal dad, sitting in the living room of our house, begging a sales guy to let me into DeVry. Imagine a 1-800 school and commissioned sales guy, arguing with a professional educator about even allowing me to pay them tuition to let me into the strip-mall-based institute.

But whilst listening to a recent NPR story and in consideration of my experience ,I began to consider a profound concept as epitomized by a quote from this story: ““The name of the school you go to is not going to decide how happy you are for the rest of your life.” Abigail Wetzel, prep school senior”.. And how I can attest to this concept. My friend Conan can even take it further…it’s all about the person.

And one last point. Here is the chart of DeVry’s stock. It worked for me and it worked for its investors.