Motley Fool Post …

Motley Fool Post of the Day: Apple

National Review: Remember Ruby Ridge. This article reminded me of the story I read yesterday about the Houston police arresting hundreds of teenagers for loitering in a parking lot.

This is cool. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review is keeping a travel blog during his recent vacation. I’m not sure that the reverse-chronological format works well for a traveblogue since most people like to read about trips all at once from start to finish. I think this format may work if the page is designed to better accommodate the nature of a travelogue, which is very much like a diary. It’s difficult to jump into a travelogue in the middle without going back to read all the entries that came before the current one.

Pravda.ru: The Crescent and the Cross: Whither goeth the Muslim Crescent

CNN Money: Video-game stocks on fire. Interesting. I have a couple of PS2 games I bought that I haven’t even played yet. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of time on my part, a lack of interest in spending hours learning a new game, or a combination of both; but I can safely say that I am not a hard-core gamer and fall well outside the target demographic of who the video game industry relies on for revenue.

Blogs are aggregating. Pretty soon they’ll start breeding and then we’ll be in for some trouble…

Space.com: How to Become an Astronaut

Airline Rant: Critics decry airline loan board. I’ll say it again. The money being given to the airlines needs to be accounted for. How is it being used and where is it going? Using it to shove a competitor out of the market is not a fair use. Using it to pad the executive management’s pockets also is not a good use. Using it to maintain a fully-operational regional airline that is continually rated for good service is.

I have flown on Vanguard, America West and National. Vanguard flew new planes with courteous and competent flight attendants. Their flights were on time and inexpensive. I’ve flown on America West so many times in the past five years I have enough frequent flier miles to pay for 2 round-trip tickets, but I am reluctant to use them just yet. America West has one of the oldest fleets in the airline industry because they regularly buy older jets from other airlines and repaint them. Almost every AW flight I’ve been on has been pretty bad. On a red-eye flight from San Francisco to Detroit about four years ago the heat was stuck on high and everyone in the plane was sweating and removing as much clothing as possible. The flight attendants said there was nothing they could do about the temperature. National Airlines is slightly better than America West, but they also fly older planes and many of the terminals they use at some airports are very inconvenient because the larger airlines have monopolized the newer/better terminals.

The truth is that frequent travelers prefer the smaller airlines (like Southwest and JetBlue) because they are simply much better-run companies than the large airlines. But because the larger airlines have locked up most of the metro airports (i.e., own most of the terminals) in the country, people are forced to sometimes book with them. The smaller airlines are then left with slim pickings: smaller regional airports and older, run-down and inconvenient terminals at metro airports.

Posted by Cameron Barrett at August 21, 2002 11:46 PM

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