Should Southwest Airlines Propose a Jumbo-bum Surcharge?

On our  flight from Portland to Chicago Midway we were boarding with only middle seats still available. We needed to sit towards the front so that we could later rush to our connecting flight to Manchester, N. H. with only minutes to spare. On the first seat available the people on both sides (aisle and window) were spilling over and under the armrests. The rotund lady sitting by the window had her large purse in the seat as if to say it was already claimed territory.  When Janeil asked for the seat the lady then mentioned that there were seats available in the back of the plane.

Janeil spent the whole 5 hours in the seat with her arms locked to her sides because the armrests were occupied. If she had been as clever as Steve Martin in the film Roxanne there are probably 20 retorts  she could have fired at her. Such as, "Did you pay for two seats?"

If people have posterior dimensions that take more than one seat width shouldn't they be surcharged just like excess baggage? Most airlines have a gauge to check the carry-on luggage dimensions. In a like manner the airlines could install a seat at the boarding area that has an alarm indicating when the flab limit has been exceeded. The surcharge would only be required when only middle seats need to be used.

Postscript, we made our connecting flight even though I forgot my coat in the overhead storage bin and had to elbow my way through the departing passengers to retrieve it.

Why don't you buy a canary?

My Nissan Frontier pickup has a cracked exhaust manifold. This means that exhaust gas can leak out between the engine and the muffler. One of the main components of this exhaust is carbon monoxide (CO). It is odorless and invisible. Nut cases who want to commit suicide park their car in a closed garage with the engine running and die. The person doesn’t   feel a thing; they just pass out and quit breathing.  

I’ve decided not to get the problem fixed immediately, the bill would be $410. My temporary solution is to drive with the truck windows down this summer. When it rains I’m going to take the CO detector from the bedroom and put it on the car seat beside me. When I explained this to Janeil her response was, “Why don’t you get a pet canary instead to ride with you? If it passes out before you do, you’ll know you’re in danger.”  

She would really like me to sell the pickup. When I checked with KIA Nissan here in Corvallis they weren’t interested in buying it at any price.  They said it was basically sound, but that it would cost them too much to make it “pretty enough” to sell.

MAYA MYSTERY

Mayan codices

Mayan sculpted glyphs

In the mid 1550’s the Catholic clergy under the direction of Bishop Diego de Landa collected and burned the ancient writings of the Maya in the Mesoamerica region.  These books were in the form of codices written on fig tree bark in the unique Mayan hieroglyphic language.  The Spanish masters felt they were ridding the Mayan people of idolatry.  Innumerable clay and stone artifacts were also smashed and burned.

“Thus, flames devoured the precious Maya books and the flames destroyed the cornerstone of Maya civilization, reduced to ashes the scientific backbone of a highly civilized people and sounded the death knell of independent Maya thought.” (Blom, The Conquest of Yucatan p 109).

The clergy banned the writing of hieroglyphics and within a generation the ability to write and read this remarkable language died.  Fortunately, the clergy could not destroy the writings that were sculpted on the temples, palaces, stela monuments and pyramids that lay hidden under mounds of decay in the Mesoamerican jungles.  When these ancient city-state buildings were discovered and reported by John Lloyd Stephens in 1841, an effort to revive the ancient Mayan writings began.

In the 1950’s the code began to emerge with brilliant work by numerous language “detectives”  This was aided by the discovery of the Dresden codex which had 78 leaves, each 3.5 inches by 8.7 inches, of text and pictures.  Since then the ancient Mayan language is now 90%  recovered with only a few glyphs untranslated. 

Two other mysteries have not yet been solved.  First how did the advanced systems of mathematics, writing, and astronomy seemingly appear fully developed out of thin air in around 600 BC?  Mayan language is one of only five independent systems known to human development.  Secondly, why did the social and political system of city-states that had been successful for 15 centuries suddenly cease to flourish around 900 AD?  The whole region went into a steep, irreversible decline with no more major building projects and no more genealogical chronologies carved.  Perhaps the destroyed codices could have given us the answers of why these kingdoms were abandoned.