Arrived in Chicago on Monday afternoon to find out that the flight to Albuquerque had been cancelled by American Airlines. No, there was no other way to get to Albuquerque, not via Dallas or Denver, not via another airline, not any way. Luggage could not be found immediately so I spent the night in a hotel near the airport. Toothbrush and paste was provided by the hotel. Tuesday morning the flight left for Albuquerque and it wasn’t quite full, which left me wondering what’s cheaper for an airline: to cancel a flight and put a few people up in a hotel that they are getting on the cheap – the room at the hotel might cost most people $200 but AA is billed only $50 for it – or to fly half-empty.
I did have a wonderful time in Europe. My first visit to Köln in 13 years was great. People are so friendly there and the beer is the best in the world – just ask Jon. I had not been to the little town in Austria even longer. I am guessing since 1984.
More about my impressions when I feel better…
Upon arrival in Albuquerque I discovered that all of the luggage was already there and had been routed via Dallas… One duffel was wet on the outside, which had me worried about the 722 recorder and my EOS 20D which had been packed inside,gucci purses, another had a wheel broken off (takes a lot to do that to a Tumi!), but at this point I was not about to find an airline representative to complain. I found the car that was to take me back to Santa Fe and got the hell out of Dodge.
What made things worse is that I got some kind of devil-bug somewhere and have been down and out all week. In fact today is the first day that I feel a little better.
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November 30th, 2009
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EcoVelo » Blog Archive » More Cyclists = Safer Cycling
Lower cycling fatalities always seem to follow increasing cycling shares. From Tom Vanderbilt’s How We Drive blog:
Over at BikePortland, there were some interesting numbers from the PDOT: “In 2008,gucci purses, there were 140 “traffic injuries” to individuals on bicycles. That’s down from 196 in 2007 and it’s the lowest number since the survey was taken in 1999. The same goes for pedestrian injuries; there were 123 in 2008, down from 191 in 2007. There was also a major drop in the amount of individuals injured while operating an automobile; the survey reports 4,428 injured, compared to 5,429 in 2007.”
Read the full story
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November 30th, 2009
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(Via Click Opera) Continue reading HERE.
And:
Students were asked to choose between two imaginary worlds; in the first they would earn $50,000 a year while the average for everybody else would be $25,000, while in the second they would earn $100,000 against an average of $250,000. Conventional economics would suggest that any rational individual would choose the latter option since they would be twice as well off. Actually, a majority plumped for the former; they were happier to be poorer if that meant they were higher in the pecking order. Interestingly, the same did not apply when the researchers looked at holidays. In one world, students would have two weeks off while others had one week’,gucci purses;s vacation; in the second they would have four weeks off and everybody else would have eight. This time only 20% of the students plumped for the first option, suggesting that they valued extra leisure more highly than they valued extra income.
If you knew you were going to die in a year, which would you value more highly – money or time? What if you had a month or a week? What if you have 40 or 50 years. Does it make a difference how long you have?
I am not surprised by these findings, but I don’t necessarily agree with Lord Layard’s reasons for happiness. Taste, which we acquire from our environment – and the whole social context in which we live? I don’t think so. I think happiness is more personal in nature. Influenced by the social context for sure, but not necessarily a result of it.
But what is happiness? Here’s a man who thinks he has some answers: ‘People in the West have got no happier in the last 50 years. They have become much richer, they work much less, they have longer holidays, they travel more, they live longer, and they are healthier. But they are no happier. This shocking fact should be the starting point for much of our social science.’ The speaker is economist Richard Layard (Lord Layard to his peers). Layard believes that ‘happiness depends on a lot more than your purchasing power. It depends on your tastes, which you acquire from your environment ??“ and on the whole social context in which you live’. Layard compiled data collected in the US by the General Social Survey and the Gallup Organisation which asked people to rate their own levels of happiness. The results are shown in the diagram. Broadly similar results were found in Europe and Japan; despite a 6-fold rise in income per head, the Japanese show no change in happiness levels since 1950.
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November 16th, 2009
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