Today is the Russian Orthodox Christmas. Due to some calendar shenanigans Jesus gets to celebrate his birthday again. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate today!
A Russian believer crosses herself during an Orthodox Christmas service at Christ The Savior Cathedral in Moscow, early Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010. Christmas falls on Jan. 7 for Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, Russia and other Orthodox churches that use the old Julian calendar instead of the 16th-century Gregorian calendar adopted by Catholics and Protestants and commonly used in secular life around the world.
Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, center, attends an Orthodox Christmas service in Moscow's Christ The Savior Cathedral, in Moscow, Russia, late Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010. Continue reading →
Only five months after first being reported on this blog the famous Kansas City pothole is no longer with us.
Over its short but storied life this pothole brought joy and adventure to children, small animals and many drivers, as well as plenty of material for no less than 5 posts on this blog.
Let me preface this by saying: I despise ugly video-bloggers. If you don’t look like this but still have something important to say, please do everyone a favor and type it; your wife lied to you when she said you were handsome, you are not. That said, my charity participation gives me a temporary excuse to use any means possible to collect the money and help out the people with prostate cancer.
So far my team has almost $500 collected and even more pledged. Thanks to your generous support and your sudden unexplained interest in Google Ads on this website I collected $50 so far and another $90 was donated to me and the team as a direct result of my various forms of begging for money on Facebook, Twitter and in person. As a cheap person I feel your pain, but extend your hand and feel the pain of prostate cancer (not there…little lower…still lower…to the left…right here…ooooh) and you will understand why I defaced my own face by growing a mustache.
As the Month of Movember progressed along, my uncanny resemblance of a certain celebrity became obvious.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-dD-hSPgc
I am sure after seeing this you immediately recognized my mustache-double, but below is a clue for the slow ones among you.
I was on vacation when the whole Kevin Smith – Southwest fiasco happened but I don’t think I am too late to weigh into the situation. I don’t really care how Kevin Smith flies, as far as I am concerned his 1,6 million followers can all pitch in a buck or two and buy him a cargo plane to transport his fat ass around the country. This is not an issue of obesity and what our culture, or doctors, or friends say what a person should look like. For the record I agree with Nuke that being fat is unsightly, uncomfortable, unhealthy and sometimes embarrassing and humiliating. And it makes women wear one-piece swimsuits. I am far from being normal weight myself and every donut moves me a little further away from being moderately overweight, but nevertheless, I wholeheartedly support the Southwest’s “Customer of Size Policy“. (Yes, I know Kevin Smith purchased two tickets, but the discussion moved way past his particular case).
The Policy says:
Why ask large Customers to purchase additional seating?
We could no longer ignore complaints from Customers who traveled without full access to the seat purchased due to encroachment by a large seatmate whose body extended into the neighboring seat. These Customers had uncomfortable (and sometimes painful) travel experiences, and it is our responsibility to seek resolution to prevent this problem.
To demonstrate this point I made a diagram recreating a flight I had few years ago on an unnamed airline. After boarding a plane and taking my seat I was crushed by a person who plopped himself in the seat next to mine.
As you can see in the drawing I (depicted in yellow, filled with healthy foods) fit in the chair with ease, not really much additional room left, but not overflowing the armrests (blue). My neighbor, as you can tell, did not fit in his chair with his ass-cheeks resting on armrests and not even touching the seat cushion. While the guy’s pain in the ass didn’t bother me, his encroachment in my personal space did.
On a plane and elsewhere I use the NFL definition of the goal line to define my personal space, it’s bounded by the “imaginary vertical plane …, which theoretically extends in a great circle around the world and infinitely into space“. The recreation of my flight shows that for my money I was given only about 75% of the personal space due to me, while my seatmate received about 125% of his space for the same pay. It’s obvious that I did not receive and equal value, and while I would’ve considered being inconvenienced by let’s say a disabled vet or an elderly person, this guy was my age and didn’t look unhealthy. Shortly into the flight the stewardess offered him to move into an emergency exit row. While I breathed a sigh of relief (or just breathed for the first time in a while), I don’t know what would’ve happened if the passengers would’ve had to evacuate.
I sincerely hope the Southwest Airlines doesn’t cave in and stand by its policy. I also hope the other airlines will follow. There is no reason innocent people should be sat upon.
The other choice would be to increase the size of the airplane seat but that would cause ticket prices to go up and if the American people were willing to pay more, the would’ve bought first class or double seat in the first place.
The solution to the inconsistent application of policy already exsists:
I am sure the rest of the flying public would enjoy watching someone trying to fit into the test seat.
Next time Kevin Smith shows up at the Southwest counter I hope they taser his fat ass. Just to get even.
Looking back on our trip I think a little more planning would’ve been nice; I did some research but apparently not enough to get us to the right places at the right times. We played it by the ear and I think we ended up fitting as much into the three days we’ve spent in Paris as was possible without it starting to feel like work. We also realized how much we rely on our phones to find our way around, discover places to eat, buy tickets, look at train schedules and subway maps. Since a certain phone company’s charges for the international data plan are incompatible with my sanity, our phones were set to WIFI only, and free WIFI in Paris is not as abundant as I thought. Talk about socialism fail. Having some roaming internet access would’ve been helpful.
People in Paris turned out to be fine. Some of them spoke better English than others, but between their English and the only French phrase I know “I don’t eat six days” (Je ne mange pas six jours) we did fine. There were some things I thought I could’ve resolved better if I knew more French, like I am pretty sure we were screwed by a cab driver but he didn’t respond to my plea about the six days of hunger. Or I wouldn’t have to stare at the chalkboard menus and then just order something so I don’t hold up the line. But mostly we found our way around and with the help of the internet access at the hotel were able to plan our sightseeing and subway trips.
In the end we both loved Paris, its sights, its food, its atmosphere. Three days is not nearly enough to see even a fraction Paris has to offer but it’s enough to make you want to come back.
I am sure every traveler to Paris take a silent oath not to bring back as many photos of the Eiffel Tower as those other losers. Resistance is futile. From the first glimpse of the Tower on our first day we couldn’t stop photographing it until we left town. There will be about 50 photos of it in this post.
