According to a YouGov.com survey reported by NBC News …
Survey says: 4 in 10 Americans wouldn’t mind being publicly weighed at the airport.
The results suggest that a once-unthinkable concept of differential fares based on size could become a fact of life for fliers.
Here are some verbatims:
Over the weekend, a friend got squeezed on a flight from BWI to LAX.
Not “bumped” … “squeezed” … by a plump plus-sizer overflowing the adjacent seat.
My trim, yoga-inclined friend suggested that I reprise my posts about airlines’ pricing … hoping that the airlines would get the message this time around.
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It started awhile back when I posted Why don’t airlines charge more for these bags?
Specifically, I suggested that airlines charge passengers by weight: a base ticket price for the first 175 pounds and then $75 for each 50 pounds (or portion thereof) over the limit.
I thought I was on safe ground since a survey done for the travel website Skyscanner reported that 76% of travelers said airlines should charge overweight passengers more if they didn’t fit in a seat.
But, the idea went over like a lead-butted balloon.
Turns out that, as usual, we were just a bit ahead of the times.
Later, we reported that Samoa Air became the first airline to start charging by the pound.
For details, see Samoa Air: Pricing by weight is the ‘concept of the future’
Now, even politically correcct academicians are hopping on the scale. A Norwegian economist has suggested — in a prestigious academic journal — a “pay what you weigh” pricing plan that “would bring health, financial and environmental dividends.”
Here’s the skinny on his program …
OK, here’s a test for you …
Rank the the following by the odds that somebody who is in the group or who is exposed to the risk is likely to die.
Make #1 the highest risk of dying in the next year; make #7 the lowest risk circumstance
And the answer is …
We’re not talking NSA tracking, we’re talking ordinary old cyber-criminals intercepting messages, seizing account numbers and passwords, and taking remote control of cell phones.
According to Knowledge @ Wharton …
Nowadays, more Americans are expected to access the Internet through a mobile device than a PC.
And, 45% of surveyed users do not see cybersecurity on their mobile devices as a threat in the same way as they see it on their computers.
The 55% couldn’t be more wrong.
Here’s why …
As Gomer Pyle would say: “Surprise, surprise, surprise”.
The Baltimore Sun reports that Baltimore has logged 96 homicides so far this year … a 30% increase over last year.
To put that number in perspective:
Last year, Baltimore’s murder rate was 5th in the country … a rate higher than Chicago’s; trailing only Detroit, New Orleans, Newark and St. Louis.
During the same period, New York City logged 54 murders.
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Here’s a rhetorical question: What’s behind the surge?
According to the Washington Post: Conservatives give better commencement addresses than liberals.
Drawing on a sample of 48 speeches — 30 by conservatives, 18 by liberals — the Post concludes that the right-leaning speakers stand out for five reasons …
Hackers have figured out that anybody who is willing to shell out 5 bucks for a cup of coffee have money to burn.
So, shouldn’t be a big surprise that hackers are going right after Starbucks frequenters.
Here’s the scoop on the hack …
Since Baltimore has been in the news, here’s a flashback from the you can’t make this stuff up file …
There’s a notorious gang – the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) — that is, one could say, well represented in the Baltimore prison population.
Well, court documents have been filed in a massive racketeering case accusing 13 female corrections officers of colluding with the BGF — seven male inmates and several outside gang members.
Colluding may be a gross understatement.
Corrections officers allegedly smuggled contraband such as cellphones, drugs, and weapons to BGFers, and turned a blind eye on the BGF leaders running the outside gang from prison.
You know, garden variety collusion between guards and prisoners.
But, it turns out that several of the guards are also accused of being literally “in bed” with the BGF inmates.
Four of the officers became pregnant with prison gang leader Tavon White’s baby.
One of them got pregnant twice.
Say, what?
The web of relationships got sufficiently complicated that the Baltimore Sun developed an extraordinary infographic.
Don’t squint, below I’ll walk you through it and give you the link.
OK, here’s a key to the info graphic …
Back in the very old days, the Cleveland Browns had a placekicker named Lou “The Toe” Groza.
He didn’t kick soccer-style. He was an overweight “toe kicker” who played tackle when he wasn’t kicking.
Despite all of that, he earned another nickname: “Mr. Automatic” by rarely missing an extra point.
You see, kicking an extra point wasn’t a gimme in those days.
These days, every NFL kicker is Mr. Automatic.
In 2014, NFL kickers converted 99.3% of all extra point attempts.
NFL owners are looking to change that … to put some excitement back into the extra point.
Of course, in this case, BYOB means Bring Your Own Balls
Yesterday, I posed the question: Why didn’t the NFL take the deflategate opportunity to ditch its wacky rule that allows each team to bring & use it’s own balls.
My argument, simply stated: The rule is nuts.
MLB pitchers don’t bring their own balls.
NBA shooters don’t call for their favorite balls when they step to the line.
The NFL rule is what nuns call an occasion to sin.
Put mere mortals in those situations, and guess what they’re gonna do.
You got it: SIN.
So, eliminate the temptation, right?
I got curious and searched for some background on the BYOB rule …
In the words of Yahoo Sports:
The NFL took deflate-gate very seriously, hammering the New England Patriots with unheard of punishment in the matter of deflated footballs.
The league announced Monday that quarterback Tom Brady was suspended four games, the team was fined $1 million and will lose its 2016 first-round draft pick and a fourth-round pick in 2017.
That’s a huge punishment considering there was no evidence Brady was directly involved and the Patriots’ ownership and coach Bill Belichick weren’t involved.
Say, what?
Here’s why I think the punishment fits the crime (or, is maybe a tad on the light side) …
Her are the top %, according to the National Center for Education Studies
Since my courses center on problem solving, I’m glad to see that it tops the list.
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I’ve long opined that disadvantaged kids from tough homes and neighborhoods would benefit from boarding schools that dislocate them from their challenging environments and provide them with a constructive, comprehensive learning and social experience.
What I didn’t know was that this education model is already in place in a few locales and is slowly being spread to others.
Click to view photo essay
One of the pioneering public boarding schools is DC’s SEED Foundation Charter School …
Yesterday, we looked at the numbers re: Baltimore City school’s spending …
Summary: Over $16,000 per student … top 4 (or higher, depending on the study) in the country … with a student to teacher ratio of about 15 to 1 … and a student to “adult” ratio of about 8 to 1.
Not bad.
While researching the post, I stumbled on an article in Business Insider:
How a Baltimore school that only accepts poor students has a 100% college acceptance rate.
The article profiles Baltimore’s Cristo Rey High School which has achieved a 100% college acceptance rate among graduates despite taking only students from disadvantaged neighborhoods
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How does Cristo Rey do it?
A largely unchallenged claim in the past week is that the way to fix many of Baltimore’s inner city problems is to spend more on education.
Makes sense until you look at the numbers.
Based on 2010 Census numbers, Baltimore City spent almost $16, 000 per student … more recent analyses peg the number even higher.
That spending level ranks Baltimore City 4th among school districts with at least 40,000 students … more recent data reflecting an infusion of additional Fed funds pushes the ranking up to #2, trailing only NYC.
Let’s put those numbers into context …
All the hoopla surrounding the Apple Watch launch reminded me of an ad campaign run by a company called Blendtec.
According to George Parker of AdScam ….
At a conference a couple of years ago. GE and their agency, BBDO, made a presentation of their new “Imagination” campaign.
After showing some nice TV spots and explaining that they’d spent $300 million on media over the last year, they proudly declared that brand awareness had increased substantially.
This generated polite applause.
Next up was the Marketing Director of blender manufacturer Blendtec who proceeded to blend:
He then put up a single slide showing that every time they posted a self-produced, ten dollar video on YouTube in their long-running “Will It Blend” campaign (which to-date has had more than 220 million views,) sales went up by an accurately measurable percentage.
Understandably, the crowd went nuts.
The point being, GE spent hundreds of millions and couldn’t quantify with any certainty what they had achieved for all that money.
Blendtec spent pennies and achieved consistently significant and measurable results.
Below is the links to the Blendtec iPhone videos… worth watching.
A couple of year’s ago, I wrote a post that probably stunned loyal readers.
The post praised Obama — Michelle that is.
She gave the kick ass speech that I was hoping the Obamas would deliver everywhere, all the time.
Ironically, the speech was given at Bowie State University … a few miles from Baltimore.
Unfortunately, Mrs. O decided a war on Twinlies was more important than cultural leadership.
Still the speech is worth a listen.
Here’s a flashback…
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I haven’t been a big Michelle Obama fan.
Never recovered from her “first time I’m proud to be an American” snit … and totally turned off by her hypocritical lifestyle of the rich & famous routine.
Biggest deal: I’ve oft said that she and her husband have squandered an opportunity to talk frankly to black kids in a way that only they can.
They’ve got the cred to push family values, individual responsibility and the importance of education.
Except for a few lines in a few speeches, they’ve come up prtetty empty.
That is, until last week when the First Lady gave a great commencement address at Bowie State University.
She encouraged the graduates to promote the importance of education in the black community.
According to the Washington Post, she layered a tough-love cultural commentary with statistics … one in three African American students drop out of high school … only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 have a college degree.
Here are a couple of the high impact sound bites from her speech:
The Homa Files 