the cat and mouse | past present future
me myself iArchive for August, 2007
Red Sox haiku
I’m sure this wouldn’t catch on here in Boston!
I hate the Red Sox.
They clog traffic WAY too much.
Leave Boston, Red Sox.
Top 25 Changes in the Ways We Travel
From online booking and paperless tickets to those frustrating TSA screening lines, the travel landscape has shifted dramatically over the past quarter-century.
The USA TODAY travel team picks 25 pivotal changes that transformed the way we travel.
1 Online booking
Computer geeks with an affinity for alphabet-soup fare codes could access flight information as early as the mid-1980s. But PC Travel’s nationwide debut in 1994 helped jump-start the growth of online booking sites such as Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz and dozens of others — including Priceline and its revolutionary “name your own price” concept. This year, Internet sales will represent more than half of all travel bookings;
Tim Dillon, USA TODAY
2 TSA airport security
Created after 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration drastically altered the carry-on rules. Now passengers wait in line, shoeless, jacketless and clutching toiletry-filled transparent baggies.
3 Airline e-tickets
Ticketless air travel began in October 1993, when ValuJet, a predecessor of AirTran, sold the first paperless airline ticket. A family from Washington state bought the first paperless tickets ever sold via the Internet from Alaska Airlines in December 1995.
4 Roll-aboard luggage
Working out of his garage in 1987, Northwest Airlines pilot Robert Plath affixed wheels and a pull-out handle to a suitcase, creating the first rolling, vertical carry-on. Available only to the airline industry at first, he mass-marketed his Travelpro Rollaboard in 1991.
5 Smoke-free flights
Northwest Airlines became the first major U.S. carrier to ban smoking on its North American flights in 1988. At the same time, a federal regulation took effect to bar lighting up on flights of less than two hours. In 1995, Delta was the first to ban smoking on all flights.
Handout
6 Boutique hotel chains
In 1983, Bill Kimpton opened his second San Francisco hotel, effectively launching the USA’s first boutique lodging group. Kimpton Hotels jump-started the move toward high style, personalized service and individual design in small- to medium-size urban lodgings.
Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
7 Airports as malls
Pittsburgh’s airport pioneered a revolutionary concept in 1992: guaranteed street pricing in its shops and restaurants. This brought in major chains and led to the “mallification” of U.S. airports.
8 Indian casinos
Once considered illicit outlets for crooked mobsters, casinos spread nationwide after a 1988 federal law sanctioned Indian gaming on reservations and tribal land. Today, about 40% of the nation’s 562 tribes run gaming operations in 28 states.
Handout
9 GPS car-navigation systems
We were lost, and now we’re found, thanks to these all-knowing devices, which began popping up in cars in the 1990s. Tapping U.S. satellite signals, they offer befuddled travelers turn-by-turn directions.
10 Self-service ticketing kiosks
Do-it-yourself ticketing kiosks started appearing in airports in 1994, although Southwest had a rudimentary self-ticketing machine as early as 1979.
Pierre Verdy, AFP/Getty
11 Airbus A380 SuperJumbo
This mammoth airliner, introduced this year with a capacity of 853 passengers, ended the Boeing 747’s 38-year reign as the world’s largest passenger jet.
12 Airline code-sharing
Begun in the mid-1980s, it allowed one airline to sell seats on flights operated by partner airlines. As a result, passengers could book flights on their preferred carrier and accrue its frequent-flier miles without ever actually boarding one of its planes.
Handout
13 Seat-back entertainment systems
When Northwest Airlines tested the first in-seat video system in 1988, it launched an arms race in seat-back entertainment that continues with the rollout of video-on-demand and live TV.
14 Yield management
Yield management — dirty words to travelers who discover that their seatmate paid half as much as they did — was developed in the mid-1980s by American Airlines and now is used universally by airlines, hotels and rental car companies. It allows them to adjust prices in real time based on various factors affecting demand.
George Frey, Bloomberg News
15 The Mirage, Las Vegas
Las Vegas tourism was sagging when Steve Wynn opened the $630 million, 3,049-room Mirage casino/hotel — The Strip’s first mega-resort — in 1989. It revived Sin City and helped propel it into the most-visited city in the USA.
16 Westin’s Heavenly Bed
Westin Hotels scored an overnight sensation in 1999 when it introduced the pillow-top mattress shrouded in three high-thread-count cotton sheets and topped with a down blanket, duvet, comforter and five goose-feather pillows. Other major lodging chains soon beefed up their own boudoirs.
17 Trip Advisor
Tens of millions of consumers got to voice their views on where to stay and what to do after TripAdvisor created its Internet forum in 2000. The website set the standard for user reviews of hotels, restaurants and attractions.
18 Flights without meals
Airline passengers suddenly faced in-flight hunger pangs when on Sept. 14, 2001, America West said it would stop serving meals because of 9/11 security measures. Others soon eliminated free coach-class meals to save costs.
Handout
19 Sovereign of the Seas
Royal Caribbean reinvented the cruise business in 1988 with the launch of what is often billed as the world’s first mega-ship. It featured unprecedented resort-like amenities and carried a then-astounding 2,852 passengers.
20 Ascent of low-cost airlines
The low-cost concept, with its simple fare structure, single passenger class, limited in-flight service and use of secondary airports, soared when Southwest Airlines expanded nationwide in the early 1990s. Low-cost carriers now fly worldwide.
21 Affinity credit cards
American Airlines and Citibank revolutionized the way we earn miles in 1987 with the first mile-earning credit card. The basic concept, 1 mile for every dollar charged, still is the rule. It allowed even non-!frequent fliers to accrue miles.
Al Behrman, AP
22 High-tech roller coasters
The inverted coaster, pioneered at Six Flags Great America in 1992, literally turned theme parks’ biggest attractions upside down — and spawned a new generation of !stomach-churning scream machines.
23 Queen Mary 2
The age of grand ocean liners was over. Or so people thought before Cunard brazenly (and successfully) launched the 2,592-passenger Queen Mary 2, the largest, tallest and longest ocean liner ever, in 2004.
24 Flying beds
Air France introduced the first 180-degree flat-bed seats in its first-class compartments in 1995. Four years later, British Airways was the first airline to install beds in business class.
Mike Tsukamoto, USA TODAY
25 End of commerical supersonic travel
Doomed by high fuel costs and environmental opposition, the Concorde made its last flight in 2003 after more than three decades of service. It remains an icon of aviation design and engineering.
Source: USA TODAY reporting and writing by Laura Bly, Jayne Clark, Dan Reed, Jerry Shriver, Gene Sloan and Gary Stoller. Photo research by Kevin Eans, USA TODAY.
6-month post-Katrina statistics
At the six-month point in the storm recovery process in Biloxi, here were the available numbers:
- 3,167 – number of students in Biloxi public schools when classes resumed Sept. 26 (compared to 6,125 enrolled pre-storm). Five months after the storm, enrollment was at 4,321.
- $54,795 – amount of gaming tax city would be collecting per day if casinos were operating ($20 million a year; 35 percent of city’s annual operating revenue)
- $92,000 – amount city agreed to pay in July 2005 for a $10
million business interruption insurance policy in the
event casinos were shut down by a storm - $500,000 – amount of gaming tax state lost each day Biloxi casinos after Katrina.
- More than 2.08 million cubic yards – amount of storm debris that had been removed from city streets and public rights-of-way since the storm. This amount of debris would cover a football field with and stand more than 97 stories high. City leaders estimate that about 75 percent of the debris had been removed six months after the storm.
- More than 5,000 – total number of building and repair permits the city had issued five months after the storm.
- $50 million – initial estimate on cost of removing debris from city rights of way (number will increase with removal of debris from private property, which is in the offing)
- 52 – Number of confirmed storm fatalities in Biloxi, as reported Jan. 31 by Harrison County Gary T. Hargrove. Of the 53 confirmed fatalities in Biloxi, a figure that includes one unidentified male, Hargrove said the average age was 58, with youngest being 22 and oldest, 90; and 14 were females and 39 were males.
- Sale taxes generated in Dec ‘04: $1.169 million
- Sale taxes generated in Dec. ‘05: $948,122
In Nature’s Casino
Statistics from The New York Times Magazine:
$110,000,000,000: damages from U.S. weather disasters in 2005
790,000: insurance claims from Hurricane Andrew
$7,000,000,000,000: of insured coastal property nationwide
85%: California homeowners without earthquake insurance
$40,600,000,000: paid by insurers for damage caused by Hurricane Katrina
1,200,000: homeowners’ insurance claims for Katrina
99%: those claims which have been settled
$15,700,000,000: in Katrina-related federal flood insurance claims
$8,000,000,000: in insured losses from U.S. tornadoes and related weather events in 2006
$5,210,000,000: damages from a single 1973 tornado in Georgia (in 2007 dollars)
678,906: acres destroyed by California wildfires in 2006
$11,800,000,000: in insured damages from the 1989 San Francisco earthquake (in 2007 dollars)
Matilda’s song
EMpress q TAZZA bean, she IS as cute AS a bean.
The capitalized stuff is where the stresses are. You’d have to hear it to appreciate it!
“Champion Q Tazza Bean” is Matilda’s made-up champion name, like the ones the dog-show dogs have.
Michael Vick
David Von Drehle of Time says:
…A number of people have argued that the punishment is far too harsh, given that pit bulls have been bred over several centuries to fight and that, after all, these are just dogs in a world where worse cruelties are suffered by humans. And why should a killer of dogs go to prison while butchers of hogs go to the fair?
All good points. Perfect consistency may be too much to expect, however, from our veneer of civilization. The Vick case isn’t about children of farming; it is about suffering and death as entertainment. A modern gladiator, of all people, ought to know what’s wrong with that.
