Airline Food

There are at least fifteen things that routinely bother me about travel via airlines.

Just getting through the TSA security mess....usually gets me peppy and negative.  The idiot questions asked by the scanning my passport usually bother me.  The pricing of any food or drink at the airport bother me.  The uncomfortable seating arrangements and knee room bother me.  The delays which occur in good weather or bad weather.  I even get negative about the walking distance between leaving plane A at gate 6 in terminal one.....and trying to cross over to gate 12 in terminal two....in twenty-two minutes and just barely making it before they close the door (an often-repeating Atlanta and Philly issue).

Then I come to the food onboard planes today.  Since August of 1977 (when the Air Force sent me on my first trip to basic training) to today....I can truthfully say that I've only had two decent meals or dinners in that entire time frame.  The other two-hundred dinners were all crap.

The Air Force put me on a cargo plane one day, and rather than the traditional cheap meats or ham sandwich box.....they put in four big pieces of deep-fried chicken, from the local chow-hall operation.  It was some of the best chicken I've had in my life, and sipping a Coke as refreshment.....I still regard that dinner as one of the better ones.

The other one was a two-hour flight from Luxembourg City to Paris.....where Lux Air pulled out a box with five-star deli sandwich, a couple of great cookies, and some fantastic pudding.  An extra fatty situation?  Oh yeah.  But it was actually worth eating.

The problem with the whole airline food situation is that it has to be done for roughly $3, fit onto a tray, be heatable, and meet some basic nutritional guidelines.  Once you add all of these up.....it's impossible to come to a decent conclusion.

I get around this problem today....mostly by eating a dinner or lunch prior to getting onboard.  I've given up.  Yeah, I admit it......you can't get on the plane and have any expectations of a decent plate of airline food.  I've even gotten to bringing my own cookies with me.

Would it make any difference if suddenly some airline offered a mini Pizza Hut pizza with their travel deal?  I'm not sure.  Would it drive me to fly a certain airline, if I knew they all offered Domino's pizza slices?  Maybe.  I'd probably sit there and debate the cost of the ticket, and just how much it'd mean in value.

Are we improving any with these airline dinners?  No.  I can truthfully say after thirty-odd years of travel.....there's absolutely zero improvement.  That's the strange thing.  We have perhaps....peaked, and cannot get any better.  That....in some ways....ought to worry you.

Fingerprinting?

I follow the business news a good bit, and there's this odd story that appeared there....which won't really be displayed on CNN, ABC or even Fox News.  It's about this screwed up business regulation in Venezuela....which will come into play shortly....requiring you as a consumer to display your fingerprint....to buy groceries and consumables.

Odd?

Well....here's the basic story.

Venezuela has been going down the tubes economically for two decades.  An irrational government....always on the push for wealth distribution....has gotten to the bottom of the barrel.  So if you were a storefront in any significant urban area of Venezuela....you've had government dimwits arrive and tell you what you can sell items for....unrelated to what you paid for the items to start with.

Naturally, you'd ask stupid questions about their knowledge over profits and operating costs.  They respond that they know better and suggest that they might be able to shut you down.

After a while....instead of offering five different toilet paper options in the store....you start to offer only one option.... some rough cheap paper.  Folks start to negotiate....buying stuff on the black market....creating a hidden market where taxation isn't working and common essentials aren't being sold.

To battle this....Venezuela is going to start a new trend....finger-printing at all grocery and store-fronts.  You buy six jugs of milk....swipe your fingerprints as you buy them.....the government guy notes your purchase and knows your consumption level.  You go and buy forty jugs of milk....swipe your fingerprints.....a government guy comes by the house and asks how you are consuming this (you try to avoid talking about re-selling it at a higher cost and profiting off the dealing).  All of this....leading to fines or jail?

Upsetting?  Yeah, a number of Venezuela folks are asking stupid questions and wondering what company is involved....how they profited off this deal....how much the technology will cost at their local Piggly Wiggly....and where this will lead onto.

A silly use of technology?  You'd have to attach audit experts onto the mess.....consider judges and fines.....and have some expected outcome.  It's silly....but we've developed as a society where it's actually acceptable.

Modern-Day Pandoras Box

Yesterday, there was an odd announcement by the Department of Transportation.....suggesting potential regulations coming up shortly, and forcing cars manufactured in the US....to have a broadcast capability.

Yeah....this means your car would broadcast out your speed, direction, and location.  Acting with a GPS satellite.....it'd tell a network where you were....ID your car by some method (maybe the tag number or the serial number of the car).....and note your progress.

Speeding?  Well....it wouldn't take an idiot to filter out the location and figure that you were in a 45-mph zone and doing 51-mph.  Ticket from a network viewer?  Very likely.

Why they need to move in this direction?  They weren't exactly talking about in the announcement.  I suspect they have the capability and simply believe it's the best direction in the future to go.  Kinda like me knowing what's best for my neighbors, my peers, and my buddies.

What the article didn't really discuss.....was how the government would receive the data....from across 3.79 million square miles.

First, you'd have to consider the transmission capability onboard a car.  Unless you were sending signals back to a satellite....it'd be practically impossible to cover more than fifty-percent of the US.  Vast areas of Alaska, Montana, California and Idaho simply wouldn't be covered.  Maybe ninety-five percent of Maryland and Delaware might be possible.  Maybe sixty-percent of Alabama might be put under some collection device.

Second....all of this would have to go into some giant data collection system.  Just getting a contract generated to cover this requirement.....you can figure a twenty-billion-dollar contract to set up the initial stage, with receivers on all interstates and US highways.  State highways and county roads?  Maybe down the road with stage two.

Third...how would they control the privacy of the data?  All it'd take is one idiot kid from Wales breaking into their database, and suddenly a hundred-thousand cars could disappear from the display in a matter of seconds.

A Pandoras Box?  Yeah.  Happening shortly?  I can see this delayed for a year or two, but by 2020....it's likely going to be implemented.....with thousands of Americans figuring ways to disable their car's beacon, and facing some kind of fine by the state cops for violating federal law.  Pretty sad way of society evolving.

How White Flight Occurs

The news media throws around various terms and just figures that most folks understand what they mean.  When they do give a basic definition....it's so marginal in terms of description, that I think most folks are still puzzled.  So I'll throw up the term....."white flight".

These are the basic steps that create white flight.

You start with one key event.  It might be a murder....an assault....or some vicious robbery gone-wrong....that triggers a town of twenty-thousand people to start to evaluate their safety.  It might have nothing to do with blacks, whites, Latinos, or any minority. It might involve the big-name school principal firing a favored teacher or football coach.  It might involve a massive change in the city council where you find that your council member openly stole thousands each year and gave contracts to his brother-in-law.

So instead of a ratio of five-people-moving-out and six-people-moving-in as the standard for your town....you quietly find over a two or four year period that it's now ten-people-moving-out and seven-people-moving-in.  Some houses are now sold at a discount price....say $15k less than the average, just for the owners to vacate and leave.

Then you start to notice at Sunday School.....as your peers discuss they are looking at properties in a development sixteen miles away and might be leaving this church.  You ask for reasons and you end up wasting an entire hour listening to one guy dump on the local politics, the local cops, the local crime, and the local economy.  He might have excessive reasons, and acting on impulse, but his facts are what is reported in the local paper.

You start to notice that your local grocery has a few new people on the staff....because the old crew have moved onto a new operation just outside of town, near the new development.

The school has some troubles with discipline.....fights and drugs start to get mentioned more often now.

So ten years into this episode....the town is now assessed at 18,500....having lost 1,500 residents over a decade.  The mayor wants infrastructure programs....which means more taxes and more fine generation (by your friendly cops).  The mayor thinks if they can just fix up this park....widen this road....or renew this part of town.....things will change.

The increased taxation simply irks the remaining residents of town.  A new police chief arrives because the old guy wasn't given a pay-raise like he expected and he found a better job elsewhere.  The fire chief does the same deal.

Robbery occurs more often and neighborhood watch groups are now becoming the norm.

The city council flips over one year with almost all new players....talking of "change".  They can't define the change but they will bring it to the city.  Naturally, this all revolves around more taxes, more expenditures, and more programs funded by the city, the county, the state, or the federal government.

A decade later, the city is now 14,500....having lost 5,500 over a twenty-year period.  Several neighborhoods are now crime-infested and heavily connected to drugs.  The cops come out to the school once a month to arrest one or two students for selling weed.

By this point, you kinda add up the statistical average for whites and "others".....finding that sixty-percent of the white population from twenty years ago have left.  Your Latino population has now taken over eight-percent of the city population and figures heavily into any city election.  Minority political figures into every election now.

Big-name business operations that used to bring in substantial city tax revenue?  Gone.  You depend on gas stations, drug stores, and your local Wal-Mart.

The development urban area that attracted a number of the white population over the past two decades?  It's got it's own Wal-Mart, and it's own gas stations.  The new urban development now has people with decent jobs....who buy items involving taxation, and generate funding for the new urban area to grow and put in new parks and infrastructure.  They hire better qualified cops and routinely prosecute anyone of a serious violation.  They keep their new urban area under constant review....making the folks who moved there happier than the folks who remained in the old town.

Stagnation settles into the old town.  They can't attract better business operations or better pay.  At this point, white flight has reached an epic proportion.  You can't reverse this trend.  You can't solve this trend.  Staying in the white flight town?  That ought to be your least of choices.  You ought to actually think of packing up and moving your family away....maybe to a whole new state....and just start fresh.  But you won't do that....because you are anchored to a dream of living in the place where you grew up.  Those who move on....survive.  Those who stay....accept stagnation as the norm.

That's white flight, and it's going on daily in America.  

The Burger King Story

When I joined the Air Force in August of 1977....the finance guys asked me what I wanted for a state of residence.....which translated over into state taxes.  I didn't really grasp the question, but just naturally answered Alabama.  So for the next three years, I paid Alabama state taxes.  I doubt if I ever paid more than $300 a year....because a young airman just doesn't make that much anyway.

When I got to Tacoma, Washington in 1980, they let me know right away that Washington was one of those states without a state income tax, and it'd be smart to change your status.  I didn't really think much about it......but around a year later as I was getting ready to leave the region, I changed my status to a Washington resident.  For the remainder of my career, I was a Washington resident and paid no state taxes.

Around 1989, I came to arrive in Arizona, and this topic came up in a finance briefing.  They tossed up a slide of what a E6 and a O3 would pay per year for various states.  For Bama, I would have paid around $950.  For Kentucky, it was closer to $1300.  They were encouraging folks to figure some method of getting Texas residency (that was popular then) and pay no states taxes.  It simply made sense.

While at the Pentagon in 2010 to 2013.....I came to work around a number of Army personnel, who mostly all claimed Texas as their state of residence.  So they paid no state income tax.

I bring this up....because today.....Burger King announced that it was buying Hortons of Canada....a Bar-B-Q chain....and moving their headquarters to Canada.  The US corporate rate of taxation is around 38-percent, while Canada is around 15-percent.  Various news idiots are giving two or three different rates for each, which makes it awful confusing.  The bottom line is that BK will save millions by shifting the headquarters there.

Naturally, on the Business Channel....a couple of congressmen and senators are all upset and talking about business operations not being patriotic and paying their fair share of taxes.  I kinda sat there and wondered who blessed them to come up with a "fair-share" number and say that's ok and fair.

I don't have much of a problem with this corporate mentality.  It's their right.  If you want to make it a legal mess....just tell them they can't move anywhere, period.  While you do that.....also make up a rule that congressmen and senators need to keep their residence back in their home state and actually just maintain a hotel room while living in DC.

If you look around....there's around five or six states which are deemed as harsh places for any company to set up a headquarters.  There's around a dozen states (like Texas and Alabama for example)....where the state goes way out of its way to talk folks into moving their business operation into their states....mostly by lowering all corporate taxation at the state level.  I don't see congress or the senate jumping into this business or trying to put a fist down on Texas being openly friendly to attracting new companies.

Where does all this lead onto?  I sat there one day and figured that over a twenty-two year career.....I probably saved around $20,000 that went into my pocket.....rather than the state tax revenue bucket of Alabama. Basically a new pickup.  For a company like Burger King, what they'd save over twenty years....probably would amount to way over a billion dollars.  It means a good bit if you think about it.

The Fort Lee Story

An episode occurred yesterday (Monday) at Fort Lee Army Post.  Basically, a Sgt First Class (roughly fourteen years of service reported via one media site)....got into a tirade at the organizational headquarters.

No one says much over what triggered the fit of hostility, nor will they say if she was under treatment for anything, or any anti-depression pills.

Cops were called because of the outrage being shown.  They arrived to find this gal locked in the office area, with her own handgun (not an Army issue weapon as you might suspect).

After a few minutes of talk.....she killed herself.

The Army is investigating the episode.

What some have said is that she only deployed to Iraq once over the past decade....back in 2007....for roughly a year.  Beyond that....no other deployments reported.

Over the past couple of years.....most of the shooting episodes around Army posts have involved men.  It's the first that I know of....involving a woman.

Around twenty years ago....I was in a unit and we had a thirty-five year-old gal who was married.  She went home early one day....finding her husband (a contractor) in the house with some other gal.  Yeah, in a compromising position.

Our associate went into some tirade and fit that went involved her kicking the husband out of the husband....then throwing all his clothing and property out of the house.  Cops came, and they simply stood there waiting for her to simmer down. Well....it took around forty-five minutes for her to reach some point of cooling off, with a massive amount of personal property of the husband destroyed.

Health-wise....the cops were a bit worried over this gal, and took her to the base clinic....where they gave her some kind of injection and knocked her out for at least twelve hours.

By the next day.....she was back up, peppy, and prepared to destroy more property of the husband.  It took a good bit of talking by the First Sgt to calm her down, and around twelve more hours on the second day before they'd release.

She ended up spending weeks under the watchful eye of a mental health expert....before reaching a point where she was finally in control of her senses.  She admitted a week later in office chatter that occurred....that she just wasn't herself and some fit of rage had taken control of her mind.

The husband?  She ended up divorcing him....as I was told later.

Maybe the Army will get to the bottom of this episode at Fort Lee, but I'm guessing it'll involve some things that they don't want to discuss in public.  So, we might never know the trigger to her fit of rage.

After thirty-odd years of hanging around military individuals and bases/posts.....I came to some point of realizing that we have a lot of pressure built up within some folks, and they simply use military discipline to contain their rage and fits.  Strong minds.....contain vast thoughts of destruction and harm....even to one's self.

It was one of the odd things that I eventually figured out about life in the military.  There's lots of positives, and this small handful of negatives.  And somehow, most of the time.....it generally works out OK.  In this case?  Well....no.

The Robot Future

Here this month of August....the Pew Research Center....a respected research group....came out with a report that projects within the next decade that a lusty hot robot gal will be available for guys, for a price.

Yeah, it kinda means that a guy with ample income.....could put down the cash and buy himself a bedroom gal, strictly for physical needs, and forget the need of a regular wife/girlfriend.

It invites various discussion about where this is going.  All you need is five guys out of a hundred to go to the robot gal for all their physical needs, and mankind is in some type of trouble.  Added to this way of thinking....it also means that a guy could pick up on a robot guy if he wanted lusty male activity and avoid a relationship entirely.

It's a bold new world ahead in the next couple of decades.  The question of ethics will arise and demand some attention by the public and government authorities.  Might we go and make human to robot relationships legal?  Somewhere by 2040....I'll bet that several states have approved such marriages, and you start to notice a handful of such relationships.

Negative concepts among society over this development?  I'm betting that political figures from both parties will attach themselves to the idea and try to get folks to twist this into a political debate.

All of this will lead companies to think over models and develop models to fit the general public requirements: the Woman Woman model, the Thai model, the blonde-bombshell type, and the seven-foot tall model that waddles around with seven-inch high heels.

I can't say if this is positive or negative.  Society is on a constant change mentality.  Eventually, everything is acceptable.  And this robot thing is only a temporary moment of the changes ahead.