DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Southwest Airlines recently began enforcing a 22-year-old policy of charging obese passengers for a second seat, if they don’t fit into the single seat they purchased a ticket for. Here is the article I read: Southwest to make overweight buy 2 seats; Advocates for obese blast airline’s plan

The article contained a quote that I found especially pithy, for reasons I’ll explain in a bit. David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said: “If you can’t sit in the seat with the arm rest down, then you are taking up more room than you should be. If passengers have supersized themselves and are encroaching on the space of others, fairness says you should be paying for the space.”

I am much enamored of Stempler’s use of the word “supersized,” both for its freshness — it can only have entered the common vocabulary recently, for it has only been a handful of years since McDonald’s began using the term to describe their XXL-size servings — and for its implication that one of the reasons people are obese is that they’ve overindulged in excessive portions of unhealthy foods, e.g. McDonald’s Super Size French Fries.

I am also fond of his use of “encroaching,” and I think everyone should begin using it immediately to describe that which is not First Class. That is, instead of Coach Class, we’ll call it Croach Class. I think “Croach Class” captures the essence of the discomfort that most airlines inflict on everyone on the wrong side of the privacy curtain.

Stempler’s argument appealed to me for reasons beyond linguistics. It seemed logical. But I have to admit my bias; in general I find it difficult to be sympathetic for obese people, because I believe that some of them — OK, maybe I’m naive, most of them — could do something about it. I might be completely wrong, though, so I’ll do what I always do when I don’t know the answer: I’ll look it up.

The Center for Disease Control summarizes the causes of obesity; paraphrasing, they are:

• Obese people eat too much.
• Obese people move too little.
• Obese people had obese parents.

The first two are within the obese person’s ability to change: eat less, move more. And while there are genetic factors involved, the third one sounds like a cop-out. If your genes dictate that your body stores fat in a certain way that makes you predisposed to obesity, then you will have a hard time losing weight, but nothing I’ve read in my research indicated that it’s impossible to lose weight by manipulating caloric i/o. I think that fad diets are, in most cases, misleading and dangerous, and I think that American society’s demand for instant gratification deters most people from becoming healthy. Still, people are not born obese, and for most adults it ought to be possible to not be obese, so far as I have read.

To the CDC’s list of three core causes for obesity, the Surgeon General adds one: they suggest that socioeconomic influences can contribute to obesity. I believe this is true… But on the other hand I also believe that most of the customers of Southwest Airlines can afford to eat less and move more.

(Moving more is a critical aspect of health — read Pete Egoscue for inspiration, especially if your body hurts.)

Anyway, biases aside, I still agreed with Stempler. I thought about it this way: when I go to the grocery store, I pay for the amount of food I buy. If someone else buys more food, they pay more; it’s not a flat-rate plan. If someone can’t fit into one seat on the airplane, then it’s logical that they should buy another one, or upgrade to a class of service that offers additional space if such a thing is available.

You might argue that Southwest was offering a flat-rate plan, because aside from the usual deals and discounts, every passenger paid the same amount regardless of body size, toddler to sumo. But the Southwest policy indicates that the flat-rate nature of the fee schedule was based on the premise that their one size of seat would be an adequate serving for all customers. This turns out not to be the case… and so it seems reasonable of them to charge more for passengers who demand more. If you order a second entree the next time you’re in a restaurant, they will charge you for it.

The counter-argument is that Southwest’s policy is discriminatory. The clearest comparison is with the disabled population: must airlines provide means for wheelchair-bound passengers to fly? Yes, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act. So, is Southwest discriminating against obese passengers by not providing plus-size seats? This is a tough question.

If Southwest charged extra money for wider seats, would they be discriminating against the wider passenger? If Southwest amortized the cost of a few wider seats over all the seats on the plane, are they discriminating against the narrow passengers by forcing them to subsidize the lucky few who are sitting comfortably? If Southwest reserved bigger seats for obese passengers, are they discriminating against non-obese people who would love to have the extra space, and might even be willing to pay more for them?

The ADA requires airlines to provide extra services for disabled passengers. I’m sure these services generate expenses which are not passed along to the disabled passenger. It’s reasonable to assume that all passengers share these expenses, that the expenses are built into the overhead of running the airline in compliance with the law. Should the same service be extended to obese passengers?

Southwest has posted a readable and entertaining FAQ on their seat-usage policy. I am unable to find any such clear statement from the opposition, although I imagine we’ll be hearing courtroom news on the subject before the year is out.

The Duluth Trading Co.’s Longtail T offers a solution to plumber’s butt: “just three inches of shirt body length will keep you in the good graces of your clients and fellow tradesmen.”

So, that should help your concrete guy patch that last crack.

(I am embarrassed to admit I could only come up with that single pun. Submissions are welcome!)

We saw the new Matt Damon espionage thriller, The Bourne Identity. I liked it; I think Damon did a credible job as the spy-with-many-powers-and-amnesia.

I find that plotline tremendously appealing. I guess it feeds my fantasy that I’ll one day discover that I have an immense but unexpected talent, to complement the few talents I really do have, and the many talents I believe I possess even if everyone around me is convinced I’m dreaming.

Yes, TBI shares its premise with The Long Kiss Goodnight, another fun movie. I liked TBI better. And I think Jason Bourne can kick Samantha Caine’s ass, even if Caine can chop celery better than Martin Yan.

I noticed a few bothersome details in the movie. They don’t detract from the story, which is why they bug me — they could have been fixed without consequence.

First: Bourne has amnesia, but learns over a few weeks’ time that he is unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat, knows an alarming amount about guns, and owns a half-dozen passports in different names and a pile of currency from every country in Europe. And, persons unknown to him are trying to execute him. After all that, he asks “Who am I?” Like it’s any big mystery … even the chuckleheads in the back of the theater are thinking, “Haven’t you ever been to the movies? You’re a secret agent!!”

If he’s supposed to be so smart, it should have been completely obvious, even if unbelievable, that he’s an extremely well-trained assassin. It’s as if Bourne flipped open a copy of What Color is Your Parachute, thinking… “OK, I speak seven languages, I like to travel, and I kill people with my hands. It says here I’m perfectly suited for an exciting career in livestock management!”

Second: after a close call, Bourne realizes his enemies are much better informed as to his whereabouts than previously suspected. So, seizing a high-tech counterespionage technique, he makes his companion cut her hair short. Gee, that will really throw everyone off the trail! Especially since Bourne was still lugging around the red shoulder sack that was so incongruously bright it could be seen from space.

I bought some stereo gear from AudioAdvisor recently. At every transaction, I clearly specified that my personal data was not to be shared with anyone. Every sales and service rep cheerfully complied with this request, confirming that my name had been marked “private” in the database.

Today I got some audiophile junk in the mail. This was the second or third piece, and I was finally incensed enough to follow up: as a first step, I called the junk-mailer and asked that my name be removed from the mailing list. I read him the numbers off the back of the catalog, and he said, “oh, you’re not on our list — we rented your name and address from AudioAdvisor.” Err, what?

A call to AudioAdvisor revealed a fatal problem: within their customer service database, my name was already marked “do not sell.” The AA rep was mystified. “Hmm, if your name is marked private, you’d think we wouldn’t sell it.” Indeed. He offered his profound apologies. I offered to take my future business elsewhere.

So, if you’re shopping for stereo or home-theater equipment, I make this recommendation: if you are concerned about the privacy of your personal data, do not do business with Audio Advisor. They do not respect your privacy. Apparently they’d rather make a fast buck pawning your name and address to anyone who asks, than comply with their own privacy policy (which begins, “Audio Advisor, Inc. respects the privacy of all of our visitors and customers.”).

I concede that it’s possible that someone in their IT department made a mistake, or that a software glitch is responsible for my data getting out. But in the end, the result is the same — Audio Advisor makes promises they cannot keep.

Caveat emptor.

Our room at the B&B in Sutter Creek offered the usual amenities: fancy breakfast, gourmet snacks and champagne at happy hour, enough pillows on the bed for a family of Hydras (Hydrae?) and, refreshingly, less than my total annual capacity for cuteness.

The phone policy impressed me immediately: local calls are free and unmetered, and there is no surcharge to access long-distance carriers. Even better, the phones were not hard-wired, so plugging the telco line into my laptop was a breeze.

And although I didn’t use it, the inn offers wireless net access too (albeit for a fee). After witnessing all this convenient technology, I was not surprised to learn that the owner works for Intel.

The nightstand of every room hosted a white-noise machine. I found this to be a nice touch, useful for masking the sounds from the neighboring room. Or our own (ahem!). There were six channels of sound available: surf, stream, rain, waterfall, and one that seemed to be silent except for occasional sounds of skidding tires and then metal impact, glass breaking, etc. I think that was the “blizzard” channel.

Actually the sixth selection was a heartbeat sound, the use of which I do not understand. We took to calling it the “stalker channel.” It was spooky and unnatural — who regularly falls asleep to the sound of an amplified heartbeat? I thought maybe the manufacturer included that sound for use by newborns. But then I realized that no newborn would have arms long enough to reach out of the crib to turn the thing on or off, making it pointless after all.