THIS MODERN WORLD

As a follow-up to my previous gas prices post, let’s do some arithmetic with our visual aids. This chart :

Plus this chart :



Equals pandering :

Calling the oil issue a matter of national security, President Bush outlined a plan Tuesday to cut gasoline costs and temporarily stopped deposits to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
. . .
The plan calls for making sure consumers and taxpayers are treated fairly, promoting greater fuel efficiency, boosting the U.S. gasoline supply and investing aggressively in gasoline alternatives.

Bush also has ordered a federal investigation into possible cheating, price gouging or illegal manipulation in the gasoline markets.

Bush said consumers must first be treated fairly at the gas pump.

“Americans understand by and large that the price of crude oil is going up and that [gas] prices are going up, but what they don’t want and will not accept is manipulation of the market,” Bush said. “And neither will I.”

The President has so little credibility on this issue that this is just laughable. Expecting oil-millionaire Bush to protect consumers is about as believable of O.J. Simpson’s promise to catch the “real killers”. The President is so untrustworthy on this issue that this whole gambit just makes him look foolish.

What makes Bush look even more foolish is the fact that his “bold” plan was announced at the convention for an ethanol lobbying group :

Next time, maybe you should announce your plans on more neutral ground, Mr. President. Then again, a big chunk of the speech is a love-letter to the ethanol industry anyways, including this hilarious line :

The way I like to put it would be — it’s a good thing when a president can sit there and say, “Gosh, we’ve got a lot of corn. And that means we’re less dependent on foreign sources of oil.”

Gosh, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that agribusinesses giant Archer-Daniels Midland (whose Senior Vice President for Ethanol Sales & Marketing sits on the RFA’s board of directors) has given over $3 million dollars in political “donations” since 2000. I support biological alternatives to fossil fuels, but the idea that the President woke up one day and suddenly cared about energy independence is ludicrous. You’re thirty years late to this party, George, so it pretty clear that the only reason you’re showing up now is because somebody paid you to attend.

Piggybacking on Tom’s post about the ridiculous idea of having a “standing section” on airplanes, the magazine scans reminded me of where this idea might have originated. On the left you’ll see the standing chair prototype from the post below and on the right is a couple of grainy screenshots from the 50’s sci-fi classic “This Island Earth”. Do those chairs on the spaceship look familiar?

When this movie got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment a few years back, one of the robots joked “Our chair technology is lightyears ahead of yours.” That may be true, but we’re catching up quickly. Now if we could only find a better way to fend off those pesky mutant attacks.

According to the Times this morning, Airbus is experimenting with ways to make air travel even more closely resemble a rush hour subway ride:

The airlines have come up with a new answer to an old question: How many passengers can be squeezed into economy class?

A lot more, it turns out, especially if an idea still in the early stage should catch on: standing-room-only “seats.”

Airbus has been quietly pitching the standing-room-only option to Asian carriers, though none have agreed to it yet. Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.

Yes, you read that right. A standing section, as the Times illustrates with this helpful graphic:

I’ve done a few cartoons about the indignities of air travel over the years — both pre- and post-9/11 — but I have to admit, the concept of a standing section on airplanes never occurred to me.

Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that the idea is exactly “taking off” (ha! ha! humor is my business!) with airlines, at least so far:

The two Asian airlines seen as the most likely to buy a large plane for short-haul flights, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, are lukewarm about the Airbus plan.

“Airbus had talked with us about an 800-seat configuration for domestic flights,” said Rob Henderson, a spokesman for All Nippon Airways. “It does not fit with our present plans going forward.”

That doesn’t mean that anyone is spending a whole lot of time worrying about how to make steerage class passengers more comfortable, of course.

But even short of that option, carriers have been slipping another row or two of seats into coach by exploiting stronger, lighter materials developed by seat manufacturers that allow for slimmer seatbacks. The thinner seats theoretically could be used to give passengers more legroom but, in practice, the airlines have been keeping the amount of space between rows the same, to accommodate additional rows.

The result is an additional 6 seats on a typical Boeing 737, for a total of 156, and as many as 12 new seats on a Boeing 757, for a total of 200.

* * *
“We make the seats thinner,” said Alexander Pozzi, the director for research and development at Weber Aircraft, a seat manufacturer in Gainesville, Tex. “The airlines keep pitching them closer and closer together. We just try to make them as comfortable as we can.”

* * *
One of the first to use the thinner seats in coach was American Airlines, which refitted its economy-class section seven years ago with an early version made by the German manufacturer Recaro.

“Those seats were indeed thinner than the ones they replaced, allowing more knee and legroom,” Tim Smith, a spokesman for American, said. American actually removed two rows in coach, adding about two inches of legroom, when it installed the new seats. It promoted the change with a campaign called “More Room Throughout Coach.”

But two years later, to cut costs, American slid the seats closer together and ended its “More Room” program without fanfare.

* * *

Boeing is under similar pressure to squeeze more seats onto its newest aircraft, the midsize Boeing 787. Some airlines are planning to space the seats just 30 inches apart from front to back, or about one inch less than the current average.

And rather than installing eight seats across the two aisles, which would afford passengers additional elbow room, more than half of Boeing’s airline customers have opted for a nine-abreast configuration in the main cabin, said Blake Emery, a marketing director at Boeing. Even so, he said, “It will still be as comfortable as any economy-class section today.”

I suppose that last bit is technically true, in the sense that economy class sections today are not remotely comfortable to begin with, so squeezing in another seat will not make them any more so.

We’ve come a long way since the luxurious novelty of jet travel was first introduced…

__________

Digby:

Suppose your local police department suddenly threw out all the rules and started acting “crazy” on the theory that the criminals would get scared and stay home. Would that actually make your town safer or more dangerous?

This is such a deeply immature view that I honestly don’t know these influential middle aged men are even allowed to drive much less be taken seriously on foreign policy. The United States is a superpower. We do not need to “act crazy.”

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