As IF Times

link Please, Dont Let This Be the Future of Air Travel | Popular Science.

As if.  We know that the idea of cubbyhole hotels has been proved successful in high rent cities like New York and Tokyo.  These are bare bones accommodations which are little more than closet sized sleeping quarters for travellers on a budget.  We are accustomed to seeing Smart cars, which are essentially roller coaster cars with doors and a roof.  But unless I misread human nature entirely, the latest proposal for airplane seats will be an iffy sell.  It will give new meaning to flying ‘standby’.

As can be seen by the photo, people are expected to buy into the notion of being half perched on a saddle scrunched within inches of the next passenger.  We can see the demographic for this type of seating will be huge.  There may be a few exceptions: Anyone over 4 feet 10; Anyone over 92 pounds;  Anyone wearing a skirt; Anyone suffering from hemorrhoids. I understand that the airlines will push a marketing campaign in order to sell this method of travel.  Everyone who boards will be ink branded with a number to correspond with their perching position.  It will be like collecting hand stamps at a fair.  How fun is that! The similarity to herding cattle is purely coincidental.  Since there is no room for any tray tables, there will be two modes of drink offerings for the  passengers.  The first one will be drop down tubes from the overhead area from which riders can take liquids.  The second method will be the carts pushed by the stewards.  Long tubes will be extended to each of the riders like tentacles at a chicken farm.

No one will be able to read or work on a computer, so people will be forced to converse with their seatmates.  Since there will likely be 8 people within 3 feet of you, it will be like a dinner party.  How social!   The hours will just zip by.  And if they think that’s bad, wait until they see how the washrooms are configured.  Let’s just say, don’t wear new shoes on these types of flights.

link Japan warns of extreme nationalism in China row.

What images pop into our heads when we see the word ‘extreme’ used to describe the players in any political conflict?  Are we talking fist pumping, belligerently chanting mobs or are we talking skirmishes amongst meek bureaucrats with bad comb-overs?  We hear this word applied to so many things today, it loses any meaning at all.  It’s like new and improved or hypo-allergenic, the label is useless.  Over the past year or so, the ‘extreme’ description has been particularly worn out in the political world.  For instance, it’s the standard label that’s employed  by liberals when characterizing conservatives.  The criticism of recently elected Republican candidates sponsored by the Tea Party in state primaries relied heavily on the depiction of  extreme.  What does that even mean?

If we’re talking about law and order and the candidate proposes lopping off the hands of thieves, of stoning adulterers, of caning miscreants, well I guess that could qualify as extreme.   If this same candidate proposes that certain social norms be adopted such as head to toe coverage by a drop cloth for all women, or the prohibition by women to drive, the banning of women from schooling or to be seen in daylight, well, some may think that’s extreme also.

Recently, Noam Chomsky, a notorious lefty who thinks that white lines on a black road constitutes racism, expressed his views on the rise of the ‘extreme’ right in America.  http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1597:chomsky-warns-of-the-rise-of-the-extreme-right-in-the-us&catid=37:neighbors-to-the-south&Itemid=56

Our man apparently thinks that the opposition by the masses to wrongheaded and damaging government policies is extremism.  Of course, in the eyes of such as Chomsky, the very idea of having elections as a means of political expression is extreme.  It would be much more expedient to have the rulers issue dictates to the mouth breathing hoi polloi. 

Of course, it’s hard to argue the extreme positions of most conservative candidates for office.  They make easy targets with their deluded notions of self reliance and hard work: of balancing income column A with spending column B and of decreasing the influence of government in peoples’ daily lives.  There are even some conservatives that think laws should not be enforced according to race or ethnicity.  That’s just crazy talkin’!  Surely this is the beginnings of a new Weimar Republic.

Rand Paul, the republican candidate for Kentucky was labelled an extremist for this comment in reference to coal mining in some hills in part of that state,

“…I don´t think anybody will be missing a hill or two here and there…”

This of course is vinegar in the eyes of the environmentalists and so the Sierra Club”s Cathy Duvall, responded thusly,

“…We are working to get the word out that we can’t let these extremists run our government…”

And he probably doesn’t recycle either.

In California, the green nuts have curtailed the flow of water into one of the most fertile parts of that state, endangering people via reduced crop yields and bankruptcy of the farmers because of a small fish called the delta smelt.  It’s possible that allowing fish to take precedence over people may be seen by some as extreme, but I haven’t heard any dare to use that word here.

For the enlightenment of all conservatives, I wouldn’t be too worried about being labelled an extremist especially if it came from liberals.  I’d be more worried that they labelled you a moderate.