Airlines and Cable Networks, two of our most popular industries today.

If you ignore the Banks.

Sign up for Cable and you get more channels than you need or want. You’ve been bundled.

Get on an Airline and nothing is included in the price of your ticket. You’ve been unbundled.

And yet, as a consumer, it all feels the same.

What's Not To Like?

I’m not saying we should regulate them.

That would be too good.

Shakespeare had it right, even in 1600 he could see these guys coming.

To be or not to be– that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And, by opposing, end them.

- Hamlet

It is entirely possible that Airlines will soon revoke the law of diminishing returns.

And I’m not talking about their profits, but instead their ability to come up with new ways to tack on charges.

United Airlines has just begun to offer a new ‘service’, which they’ve dubbed Premier Line.

Board the airplane sooner and get earlier access to overhead bin space with Premier Line. You’ll also enjoy the benefits of priority check-in and priority security, where available. Premier Line is now offered in all United® and United Express® airports in the U.S.

So United will now charge you to board the aircraft earlier than your seat-mates. They should more honestly call it ‘Front Of The Line’, but that would invoke images of class warfare.

There Is Really No End In Sight

They’ve figured out that as more people bring along carry-on baggage, overhead bin space is becoming a scarce resource, and passengers  will pay for a leg-up so to speak.

And how much will they pay? The ad says it is ‘starting’ at $9, but we know that’s a teaser.

So I checked it out on my favorite San Francisco to London flight. In that real world case the actual charge $39 per passenger, one-way.

That doesn’t really guarantee you anything except the opportunity to stand closer to the door.

I’m not sure how many passengers will jump at this option, but I think there would be a larger market for the opportunity to get off the plane earlier.

For a brief moment in High School when I had an inspiring English teacher I thought I would become a writer.

It was a very brief moment.

But what goes around comes around.

So today I’d like offer some assistance to the writers of Mad Men, the TV series that has now been nominated for 17 Emmy Awards. Obviously these guys need my help, and they have ever since the first season.

The last episode of Season 1 contains two scenes that have become iconic.

The first is Don Draper’s marketing pitch to Kodak in which he coins the term Carousel for the gizmo that holds the slides on the top of their newly introduced home projector. Rather than talk about the product itself he conjures up what has become the Kodak Moment, as he uses pictures of his own family to illustrate the campaign.

“nostalgia…takes us to a place we ache to go again…it’s not called the wheel, it’s called the Carousel…let’s us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again…to a place we know we are loved”

It’s a brilliant re-creation of what may have happened in real life. If you haven’t seen it, click here, and spend a few minutes being amazed. The characterization of the two geeks who want to talk about their wheel and the hardware is so spot on, it’s perhaps just as good as the Draper portrayal.

Don Draper Pitches A Shutout For Kodak

As with all great marketing men, Draper is the first to fall for his own spiel. On the way home after that performance he visualizes being warmed into the bosom of his own family. Since he had previously announced to his wife and kids that he would not be spending Thanksgiving with Betty’s family it’s heartwarming to see him change his mind and be reunited.

Unsurprisingly, when he arrives home the house is empty and we realize the warm family scene we just witnessed happened only in his imagination. At this point the second iconic scene take place as Draper sits alone in the house as the Episode and the Season fades out to the music of Bob Dylan’s haunting “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right”. Click here for this segment.

Not The Ending He Imagined

The Kodak scene has become famous enough to inspire a number of parodies. The Dylan ending garnered enough attention to now be included in the history of the song itself.

But is that good enough?

Here’s how the final scene would have played out with my involvement. Not a big change, but I think you’ll agree we’ve stepped it up a notch.

And here it is … we replace Dylan and Don’t Think Twice with Joni Mitchell and The Circle Game, whose lyrics are even more appropriate given the situation.

And the seasons they go ’round and ’round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We’re captive on the carousel of time

We can’t return we can only look behind

From where we came

And go round and round and round

In the circle game

I know, I know. I should have listened to my High School English teacher.

Actually … I did.

Final Note: Although I’m officially retired now, the Mad Men writers should know that I will consider all serious offers.

Talk about being “in the zone”.

The final episode of Mad Men (Season 1) shows Don Draper coining the word Carousel for the gizmo that holds the slides on Kodak’s slide projector. And creating the Kodak Moment campaign to sell memories instead of hardware.

Which got me thinking about what could top this bit of genius marketing.

It would have to be getting people to pay for something they don’t use.

Two examples come to mind: Propane and Cellphone Plans.

I was at a friends home the other night and he was using his BBQ. I noticed that he had one of those recycleable propane tanks that you return when it gets low and exchange it for a new, filled up, tank. I hadn’t thought about that product before because I take my propane tank to a local station where they just top up my own tank when it gets low.

A little thought will reveal the brillance of the recycleable tank, which is that you are always paying for propane you don’t use. Since nobody can take the chance that they will run out of propane in the middle of their BBQ, that tank gets returned long before it’s empty. In my own case I only pay for the propane that actually ‘tops up’ my tank.

OK, that’s a bit of a rip-off, but we’re not talking big bucks and it’s hard to get mad at the guys who sell propane.

Cellphone Carriers are another story altogether. We hate these guys before the opening credits even come up.

They do the same thing as the propane guys, but it happens with bigger bucks and it’s every month. Plus, did I mention their service sucks.

When you sign up for a cellphone ‘plan’ you have to pick your ‘number of minutes’. Same idea, pay for something you don’t use. Because they charge confiscatory prices if you go over your limit, you are forced to buy more minutes than you think you might ever use.

And in the immortal words of Adam Carolla, ‘They don’t even give you a reach-around’.

Turns out a Verizon Moment is one of those minutes you pay for, but don’t use.

Don Draper would be in awe.

Finally, proof positive that the world is going to sh*t.

The Economist, to prove a point, has linked to an article in The Onion.

The matter of love, literature and taste is a silly minefield—one that often says more about how we brand ourselves than about what is essential for romantic compatibility.

Source – The Economist

The Economist Line "How We Brand Ourselves" Links to The Onion

What’s even more ironic, is that the linked Onion ‘article’ could just have easily made fun of someone holding up a copy of The Economist instead of Pynchon’s The Crying Of Lot 49 to make their lifestyle statement.

Its fire-engine-red logo peeks out of fashionable handbags and from the back pockets of designer jeans. Bankers read it in first-class seats. Hipsters read it on the subway on their way to work. It’s The Economist.

Source

If all this seems too silly and confusing, count yourself lucky that we didn’t slip in a reference to The New York Review of Books.

Note: And last but certainly not least, click here for an insider’s guide on how to keep ‘current’ with your Economist subscription by treating each issue like a bottle of fine wine.

Full disclosure right off the bat: I’m a total Google Fan-Boy, even though in my case the term “boy” stopped being appropriate over 50 years ago.

Nevertheless.

I’ve talked before about how Google changed my life, and the life of virtually everyone else on this planet, by ‘organizing the world’s information’ and making it available. But when you have huge changes you also have large unintended consequences.

One of those is the fact of too much information (about ourselves) becoming publicly available. If you have more of your life behind you than ahead of you it’s not as bad as if you have most of your life still to come.

Eric Schmidt, CEO And Resident Adult At Google

So at first blush, Eric Schmidt’s offhand prediction last week seemed a stroke of brilliance.

He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.

Source

It’s a nice try Eric, but this genie’s already out of the bottle.

Way out.

To me it sounds like Schmidt’s got some bright anthropologists on retainer and is proposing that some sort of digital walkabout for our young people will make the problem go away. But the real point is that this is an issue for everyone, not just our kids.

Spend a few minutes actually thinking about his idea and you quickly come to realize how out of control things have become for most normal (non-geek) people. This new reality can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.

“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions,” he elaborates. “They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”

Let’s say you’re walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, “we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.” Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are … If you need milk and there’s a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you’ve been reading about took place on the next block.

Source

Meanwhile, our future is undoubtedly known to those same anthropologists whispering in Schmidt’s ear.  It’s that we will all have to adapt. And, some of us will be better able to adapt than others. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Once again, winners and losers.

In my own case, I’m lovin’ it.

And I have only one word for the rest of you…

Just One Word

Encryption.

Once again we will attempt to bring clarity to an obscure topic.

Should traffic fines be calculated based on the driver’s income?

Aroused by our last post, readers have bombarded us with their thoughts regarding the $1,000,000 fine levied on a speeder in Switzerland last week.

Smoking Is Not Always Your Biggest Problem

After doing some research I discovered there’s more than just class warfare going on in the European countries that have in place a system called the Day-Fine.

A day-fine or day fine or unit fine is a unit of fine payment that, above a minimum fine, is based on the offender’s daily personal income. A crime is punished with incarceration for a determined number of days, or with fines … Jurisdictions employing the day-fine include Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Croatia, Germany, Mexico, and Macao.

Source

So, theoretically, the penalty is a certain number of days in jail or a fine instead. What will set off our right-wing friends at this point is the philosophical position adopted by the Europeans which says that incarceration is actually a financial punishment. In effect it prevents the scofflaw from working while they are in jail and not collecting their salary.

The next logical step is then to calculate a financial substitute for jail-time based on what the perp would be making while incarcerated.

And of course the European bureaucrats have this stuff nailed:

Usually, the day-fine is one half of daily disposable income. The daily disposable income is considered to be one 60th part of the person’s monthly mean income during the year, after taxes, social security payments and a basic living allowance of €255 per month have been deducted. In addition, every person for whose upkeep the fined person is responsible decreases the amount of daily fine by €3. The income of the person is calculated on the basis of the latest taxation data.

Source

Who could argue with that?

So my answer to the question of whether fines should be based on income?

Wait for it…

Why the f*ck not?

And while I’m at it, I’ll throw in my opinion that Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy should be dropped. The argument from Repubs these days is that this will kill our small business entrepreneurs and destroy jobs. Well all you Rush Conservatives,  how about this stat:

Republicans … say Mr. Obama is about to spring a big tax increase on many small-business owners who file their taxes as individuals. Analyses from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization, show that less than 3 percent of filers with small-business income pay at the top two income tax rates, and many of those are doctors and lawyers in partnerships.

Source

Now if we could just exempt the doctors, it would be perfect.

It’s a pity our blog isn’t more popular in Sweden.

Just a few days ago we reported on a license plate ‘hack‘ that reduces your vulnerability to being spotted by speed cameras. It might have saved a (very) rich Swedish man his $1,000,000 fine.

Record speeding fine of £650,000 given to motorist in Switzerland. Swedish man receives highest possible penalty calculated on basis of his income and speed of 300kph.

Source

Switzerland calculates speeding fines using a formula based on the income of the motorists and the severity of the speed. And in this case we are talking about some serious speed.

Benoît Dumas, a police officer in the region where the six-litre Mercedes SLS was stopped, said: “He needed over half a kilometre of road to come to a halt.”

According to prosecutors he is now facing the highest possible penalty of 300 days of fines at £2,166 a day – a total of £650,000.

But even more amazing is the fact that the speed camera which captured his foul deed was disguised as a block of cheese!

Yes Indeed, It's A Cheese-Cam

I guess if you are going 300 kph you wouldn’t smell anything cheesy until it’s too late.

Please pass the crackers.

It’s always nice when we beat the “Grey Lady” to a major story.

OK, this isn’t really a major story, but we’ll wallow in the victory of our scoop.

Last month we wrote that Cheap Knock-Offs Are Giving Fine Counterfeits A Bad Name. And almost three weeks later, here is the NY Times’ lede paragraph,

After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton handbags, criminals are discovering there is money to be made in faking the more ordinary — like $295 Kooba bags and $140 Ugg boots. In California, the authorities recently seized a shipment of counterfeit Angel Soft toilet paper.

Source

The Times devoted column inches to ho-hum items like sunglasses, sneakers, and handbags.

But Who Really Cares About This Dreck?

Meanwhile, we had already focused on the much more intriguing category of Cheap Plonk.

The Plonk (Left) Even Sports A Photocopied Label

Once again authenticating our taste and sophistication.

To say nothing of news-forward copy.