How airlines board passengers

They all vary. All do some form of pre boarding for first class, frequent flyers and those with children. Many have some sort of premium coach, such as the very first row in coach boards before the rest.

Virgin America has followed Southwest in using groups, rather then seat assignments. The others assign seats and board by zones. Alaska boards the main cabin in just two zones - row 15 and above, then all rows.

I find this interesting because, while employed by Boeing, I was in a team that built a simulation as part of a process to analyze minimizing the turnaround time of passenger aircraft. Passenger boarding is a big part of that process, but we looked at everything - fueling, cabin cleaning, loading food and water - everything. With the data we had from a major airline, we found that boarding by zones slowed the process. It was best after pre boarding to call all rows. Alaska Airlines did that for a few years recently. According to Cook they now break into two zones, instead.

Airline Reporter reporter Colin Cook in Seattle, WA.

Airline Reporter

Illegal fundraising by the controller of ObamaCare

Kathleen Sibelius has control over implementing ObamaCare. Writing all the regulations. Many of the 2,700 pages of the bill say "The Secretary of HHS shall determine…"

With such power she surely must make a huge effort to be fair. NOT. She is asking affected organizations for pay offs. She calls them donations to help communicate how common people can work their way through the rat's nest of regulation.

IT sure looks bad. "Asking for donations" means "Demanding payoffs."

New York Times

… The Robert Wood Johnson foundation is expected to contribute as much as $10 million, while H&R Block is expected to make a smaller donation of about $500,000, the officials said.

The senior Republican on the Senate health committee, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, said the fund-raising “may be illegal.” He likened it to efforts by the Reagan administration to raise money for rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, after Congress had restricted the use of federal money. Aides to Mr. Alexander said Sunday that he would ask the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, to examine the propriety of the Obama administration’s fund-raising efforts.

Eric Holder doesn't know anything

Attorney General Eric Holder has huge responsibilities as the nation's top law officer. But he doesn't know anything about what his huge chunk of government is doing - so he claims. He answered "I don't know" time after time (someone counted fifty seven times) yesterday to the House Judiciary Committee.

"I don't know."

It was so bad that one of Obama's chief cheerleaders in the media, Dana Milbank, noticed:

Washington Post

Why didn’t his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters’ phone records?

“I do not know,” the attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon, “why that was or was not done. I simply don’t have a factual basis to answer that question.”

Why didn’t the DOJ seek the AP’s cooperation, as the law also requires, before issuing subpoenas?

“I don’t know what happened there,” Holder replied. “I was recused from the case.”

Why, asked the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was the whole matter handled in a manner that appears “contrary to the law and standard procedure”?

“I don’t have a factual basis to answer the questions that you have asked, because I was recused,” the attorney general said.

On and on Holder went: “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . . I would not want to reveal what I know. . . . I don’t know why that didn’t happen. . . . I know nothing, so I’m not in a position really to answer.”

Why such a massive claim of ignorance from one of the most powerful people in Obama's government? Milbank again:

Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms.

Milbank shows clearly that the magic is gone:

But there would be more sympathy, and support, for Holder if he took seriously the lawmakers’ legitimate questions about his department’s abuse of power in the AP case. He may have recused himself from the leak probe that led to the searches of reporters’ phone records (a decision he took so lightly that he didn’t put it in writing), but he isn’t recused from defending the First Amendment.

The Obama IRS scandal affects YOU

The scandal unfolding in President Obama's IRS affects every American - even you.

Obama's IRS has been caught - and admitted - improperly favoring some taxpayers over others. And abusing its trust over confidential information - ProPublica admits that IRS gave it information about some of the Tea Party groups. Breitbart

"But I don't like the Tea Party. I don't care." Will you care when it is you the IRS asks for more information? …. and more… then allows someone to use it against you?

With the grand opening of ObamaCare January 1, 2014 it is the IRS that will dig deeply into both your medical insurance and your income. Byron York explains.

Washington Examiner

And … Here is a round up of the news stories on Eric Holder's IRS scandal for Day 6. Dozens of stories for just one day. TaxProf

Guys, for bone density enjoy one

This is news for me. I have low bone density.

And from RealAge:

How about a beer? Ah, now you're paying attention! The bone-saving secret in brewskis is silicon, a chemical that stimulates collagen production. What's collagen? A protein that makes your bones denser and your joints more flexible. Brews with the most hops and malted barley are the richest in silicon. (Here's another surprising drink for better bones.) Not big on beer? Bananas and brown rice also are silicon-packed.

And dark chocolate, peanuts, walnuts and other sources of zinc.

And impact exercises like pushups and walking. I do those every day.

New blog on complexity

A consulting company System Logic has a new blog on complexity, named On Complexity. It both highlights their work and people and other incidents/approaches.

In their first week they feature an article in Atlantic and Mother Jones about the rising expectation of safety and rising cost of disasters in developed countries.

On Complexity

Google Flu and

Watch the map of flu occurrence in the world Google Flu. But…. it is not documented cases of flu. It is when people do a Google search on the word! What good is keeping track of searches? Google says "search terms are good indicators…" And they show a very good (my term) correlation over the recent years in Brazil on this page.

And dengue - Google Dengue. It's more interesting because it is more limited. At the link the map is live: when you mouse over a country you a bit more data and a link to a page.

The graphic: Google's map of searches for dengue. Follow the link above for the larger, active map.

Socialism, not food processor, caused Venezuela shortages

Venezuela's largest food processing company says it is not the cause of food shortages; that it is producing more food products than last year. The new President Maduro is assuming them of deliberately causing shortages by hoarding. But the socialism of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez screwed up the food chain by fixing prices and other manipulations of the market.

Chavez promised to make Venezuela self sufficient in food. After his long rule it imports 70 per cent of food.

ABC News

ABC News notices Benghazi talking points

ABC News had noticed that something is wrong with the Benghazi attack and there appears to be a coverup!

And The New Yorker too!!

Obama goes to Texas to learn

Gov. Rick Perry will greet Pres. Obama in Texas today. Obama can learn a lot from Texas.

Texas has decent unemployment BLS. Has been growing and adding jobs up 3.1% in 12 months in all eleven major sectors. Texas Economy And has a budget surplus. Texas Tribune

Obama has a lot to learn about budget balancing and growth. His state Illinois's economy is in the dump. 50th of 51 in unemployment. BLS

He couldn't have been talking about Mexico

President Obama went to Mexico last week and had negative things to say about his country's economy and immigration policy and lots of positive things to say about Mexico. But his student audience was wondering what country he was talking about.
Obama praised the open press and the growing middle class. A very sunny situation in Mexico.
But… LA Times

"How nice that he came to give inspiring speeches, but what's happening in Mexico is far from what he talked about today," said Jose Carlos Cruz, a 24-year-old graduate student in international relations who attended the speech. "A really good speech by President Obama, but what Mexico was he talking about?"

The Mexican economy has begun to slow, and the decrease in illegal immigration is more likely a result of demographic changes, the sluggish U.S. economy and the severe dangers of crossing Mexico than of any improvements inside Mexico.

… "Obama is fantastic, but I believe that today he was talking about another country, not ours," said Rosa Castro, 43, a college professor. "My question is: Who wrote Obama's speech? Enrique Peña Nieto's team?"

Middle class growing?

In his speech, Obama praised a growing middle class to which the majority of Mexicans belong. Although it is true that Mexico has a strong manufacturing base that has allowed many Mexicans to prosper, economists say the middle class has been stagnant for years. The World Bank says 49% of the population lives in poverty.

The photo: Plaza de la Constitucion in Mexico City from Wikipedia. Click to enlarge.

Nanny Bloomberg and unsafe Brownsville, Brooklyn

Mail carriers are afraid to enter the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. But Mayor Bloomberg is too busy to notice. He is measuring the size of sweet drinks [Puffington Host] and strutting his stuff with the national problem that gun ownership is legal. NPR

NY Post

Postmen are too scared to deliver letters and packages to one of Brooklyn’s most crime-ravaged neighborhoods, a US Postal Service worker told The Post yesterday.

“The neighborhood is bad,” the worker said outside the Brownsville Station Post Office on Bristol Street. “I wouldn’t want to go into those buildings.”

Snail mail that goes undelivered finds its way back to the post office, where it can stew for several days until a carrier decides to deliver it — or residents are forced to come pick it up.

“Have you seen this neighborhood? It’s on the news every day,” the terrified employee said.

Government health not making people healthier

Megan McArdle is looking at studies that look at whether having Medicaid makes an eligible person healthier then the person who is in similar situation but not eligible. They used more health care services and paid less out of pocket, but there were not healthier!

Daily Beast

Bombshell news out of Oregon today: a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of what happens to people when they gain Medicaid eligibility shows no impact on objective measures of health. Utilization went up, out-of-pocket expenditure went down, and the freqency of depression diagnoses was lower. But on the three important health measures they checked that we can measure objectively--glycated hemoglobin, a measure of blood sugar levels; blood pressure; and cholesterol levels--there was no significant improvement.

I know: sounds boring. Glycated hemoglobin! I might as well be one of the adults on Charlie Brown going wawawawawawa . . . and you fell asleep, didn't you?

But this is huge news if you care about health care policy--and given the huge national experiment we're about to embark on, you'd better. Bear with me.

Read on...

Surprises among the ten wettest cities in US

I get a kick out of this. Wunderground's rules are only one city per state to spread things around.

Florida's representative at #7 is West Palm Beach. Surprise! - 62.33 average inches rainfall per year.

The West Coast is next with #4 Astoria, Oregon - 67.26 inches.

#3 Forks, WA - 99 inches. Poor Forks, the measurement is at Quillayute twelve miles away. But the rain is why Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, based it there and made Forks a tourist destination!

#2 Metlakatla, AK - 101.63 inches.

#1 Hilo, Hawaii - 126.69 inches. It is a lovely place. But it's the proximity of the spectacular active volcano Kilauea about 30 miles away that puts people in hotel rooms, not the beaches. People go to the other side of the island to sunny, dry Kona for lying in the sun.

Quote of the day - Technology vs. Politics

If you want to introduce someone to libertarian thinking, encourage them to try this experiment. Spend a few days reading nothing but technology news. Then spend a few days reading nothing but political news. For the first few days they’ll see an exciting world of innovation and creativity where everything is getting better all the time. In the second period they’ll see a miserable world of cynicism and treachery where everything is falling apart. Then ask them to explain the difference.

- Andrew Zalotocky

From Samizdata

Via Glenn Reynolds Instapundit

China pollution limiting economy

Expatriate executives are leaving China because pollution is ruining their health.

Seattle Times

… There is no official data on the numbers leaving because of pollution, but executive recruitment companies say it is becoming harder to attract top talent to China — both expats and Chinese nationals educated abroad. The European Chamber of Commerce in China says foreign managers leave for many different reasons, but pollution is almost always cited as one of the factors and is becoming a larger concern.

If the polluted skies continue, companies may have to fork out more for salaries or settle for less qualified candidates. Failure to attract the best talent to crucial roles could result in missed commercial opportunities and other missteps.

China’s rapid economic development over the past three decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty but also ravaged the environment as heavy industry burgeoned, electricity demand soared and car ownership became a badge of status for the newly affluent in big cities.

Help medical education in Tanzania

Our niece Raychel is in the Peace Corps in Tanzania. She is working in a regional health center which is collocated with Morogoro School of Public Health Nursing School in Morogoro, 180 km west of the capital Dar es Salaam.
She sees a screaming need for more resources for the nursing students.

She writes:

"For someone taking a quick glance at our library it might seem like there are plenty of books. However, once a person really delves into the books they will soon realize that most of the books are extremely outdated. This can be very discouraging for both students and staff. Imagine trying to learn nursing or clinical medicine from a book written in the 70s. I think you would find that many things have changed!"

So she is raising funds to buy more books.

Learn more about this special project at TZReads. And you can donate, if you choose, on the same page.

Photo from TZReads.org. Click to enlarge.

6 months after Sandy people homeless. Credit to Obama

After six months people have a lot of hurt.

NBC New York

Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection all remain major issues with the summer vacation — and hurricane — seasons almost here again.

"Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well, and some people are up and running almost as if nothing ever happened, and for them it's been fine," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said ahead of the six-month mark. "Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubled up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it's been terrible and horrendous."

Governor Christie gives credit to Obama. I do too. Has Obama noticed the situation?

Christie never imagined he was helping Obama's reelection when he heaped praise on Obama days before the election. He definitely helped Obama. But didn't notice. That's what he says.

Associated Press

The end of entitlement

Robert Samuelson thinks the entitlement mindset is coming to an end. It's assumptions have crumpled the past decades and especially since 2007.

Washington Post

Obamacare is onerous to those who forced it on us

President Obama promised you "If you like the insurance you have you will be able to keep it."

Now his Obamacare is too onerous even for those who forced it on us. Yes, it's Honorable Harry Reid again. He can't stand the thought of being restricted by the laws he forces on you and me.

Democrats in Congress are trying to get their staffs exempted from their favorite part of Obamacare - their substitute for the government mad ate they really want - the requirement to have insurance that fits the government's one-size-doesn't-fit-all mold of Obama's insurance exchanges. Senator Grassley was ever vigilant during the process to make sure Congress had to live by the law it passed. And his was a big challenge. Hero Harry Reid kept forcing his own exemption in. In the end Congressmen and their own staffs had to obey, but their committee staffs had their own loophole.

Last week Honorable Harry and House leader Steny Hoyer were trying to do it again. They got caught and said "Huh?… Us? No…" Do you think this will be their last attempt? We call him Dingy Harry.

Wall Street Journal