Tag: bad ideas

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Tan Mom Has an Airport Meltdown, Gets Shipped Off to Detox

June 14, 2013 at 4:31 PM | by | Comments (0)

We're not sure whether it's OK to file this story under celebrity travel, since the celebrity in question is quite rightly and quite accurately described by local news outlets as a "social media pariah"? We're very sure that it counts as alcohol travel, so it's not as if we're going to pass on the story. But just for accuracy's sake, what do you guys think? Yes or no on the celebrity travel part?

"Tan Mom" Patricia Krentcil - this is the one who took her daughter to a tanning facility and then was evicerated for weeks by the Internet - had a layover at MSP. She decided to leave the airport so she could have a cigarette, because of course she did. For some reason when she came back in she had trouble getting past security. Cue total melt down at TSA agents.

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Hey, Who's Up for a Series of Crushing European Airport Strikes?

June 12, 2013 at 6:21 PM | by | Comments (0)

It's the season of airport strikes, during which unions - maybe justifiably, maybe not - burn whatever sympathy the public has for them by grinding airports to a halt. Every single time some group of airport or airline workers tries something like this, travelers followed by huge swaths of the public turn against the strikers. And yet here we are, all together, again.

This time it's a strike by French air traffic controllers. First the walkout resulted in the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights in France—60 percent of the country's flights—and then it began cascading across Europe.

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Will the New Google Maps Destroy the Fun of Travel?

May 29, 2013 at 4:54 PM | by | Comment (1)

Forbes has a nice little post about the new version of Google Maps that's getting rolled out. Apparently it has all kinds of neat features. There is a new interface that pops up information cards whenever you search for an address. On the card are options to save the location, get directions, see the Street View, and so on. There are options for comparing trip versions—should you hop on a bus or drive—and a smoother, more detailed map. Slick.

And then at the very bottom of the post there's a mention about how the new Google Maps version has new algorithms for directing users to restaurants and other facilities. Google will compile everything it knows about you—your clicks and preferences, and you social networks, and what you mention over email—to shape the personalize the information it shows you just like it does with search results.

Theoretically users will get to see more of what they prefer, and less of what they don't. Concludes Forbes: "very cool."

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8 Travel Safety Tips to Avoid Getting Mugged

May 20, 2013 at 2:22 PM | by | Comments (0)

We were robbed. It may have happened just over a year ago, but we still live with the effects (like a fear that comes while biking and we hear a moped motor approaching). Read the full story, but also take away whatever knowledge you can from our horrible experience in order to prevent it happening to you while away from home.

Only a few days ago, Lifehacker posted a brilliant list of tips for travelers toting nice cameras, including how to deter would-be thieves. In this vein, we're revisiting our own 8 safety tips to avoid being mugged abroad:

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One Very Easy, Borderline Insane Way to Get Kicked Off a Flight

May 14, 2013 at 11:15 AM | by | Comments (0)

There's a distinct difference between "fan" and "stan." A fan has a normal affection for a product, person, or somesuch. A stan? Well, they're different. They fall into the batshit category. They go too far. They can be dangerous.

That's how American Airlines crew could categorize the passenger they had to remove from a recent flight from LA to JFK.

A woman, obviously Whitney Houston's biggest fan, repeatedly sang her "I Will Always Love You" song for hours on end, before passengers had had enough.

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Seth Rogen Knows All About High-Altitude Hangovers

April 15, 2013 at 4:25 PM | by | Comments (0)

Here's a video clip of Seth Rogen talking about hangover flying on Conan O'Brien from earlier this month. Given the staggering number of ways that this is directly in our wheelhouse—celebrity travel, booze travel, a full post we once did about hangover clauses in airline tickets, etc—it's almost embaressing that we missed it when it went up.

In fairness to us, we were probably drunk.

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Hey, Who's Up for the Inevitable April Fools' Day Travel Gags?

April 1, 2013 at 4:17 PM | by | Comments (0)

Someday, someone will explain to us the mirth to be found in having the Internet become useless every year on April 1st. It's not that we harbor any hostility toward people who write things that are false but plausible, and who then giggle when people belie—actually, no. Those people are ridiculous and they make the world a worse place to live.

There was maybe a marginal justification for their existence when the Internet was younger. Back then April Fools' Day pranks were the web advertising equivalent of Superbowl commercials. But now that the White House is posting pranks the whole thing is just grating.

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Bad Idea: Theme Park to Be Built over Osama Bin Laden Compound

Where: Pakistan
March 6, 2013 at 9:51 AM | by | Comments (0)

Yes, you read correctly. There are indeed official plans for a theme park—one filled with roller coasters and frivolity—to take the place of the Abbottabad compound in which former al Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, spent his last few hours.

In an effort to boost tourism, the government of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has plans to spend $30 million on the park that will draw visitors to the city for a more light-hearted reason. Abbottabad is considered one of the most beautiful places in Pakistan and we've hinted before that this place might take off.

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The Air India Pilot YouTube Rap That's Going Viral

February 25, 2013 at 3:09 PM | by | Comments (0)

Very quickly: an Air India pilot dressed himself up in his uniform, and then filmed himself rapping about how Air India sucks, and then put the video up on YouTube. How do you think that went for him? No cheating.

If you answered "obviously he was forced to write an apology and now will face disciplinary action, because employees don't get to post themselves trashing their employers on YouTube," congratulations, you're a more astute observer of organizational dynamics than is this guy. Who has flown airplanes. Filled with people inside of them. For a living.

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Man Slaps Crying Toddler on Delta Flight, Gets Slapped with Assault Charges

February 18, 2013 at 2:32 PM | by | Comment (1)

For some reason there are a lot of travel politics stories floating around today, not a few of them about the tourism industry. But as much as we'd like to spend a few paragraphs unpacking the recent industry-related discoveries made in Yemen and India and Bangkok—that persistent crime and open violence tend to dampen tourism revenue—we've got to talk about this moron who allegedly slapped a crying toddler as the Delta plane they were aboard was descending into Atlanta. Not his toddler, incidentally.

The facts as reported are pretty straightforward. Joe Rickey Hundley was on a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta. He was sharing a row with Jessica Bennett and her 2-year-old toddler. As the plane dropped altitude Bennett's toddler started crying and wouldn't stop. Heated words were exchanged—Bennett claims Hundley used a racial slur, a charge he denies but that a witness confirms—and eventually Hundley slapped the kid.

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Titanic II Could Actually Become a Reality

January 10, 2013 at 1:28 PM | by | Comments (2)

Some wise guy in Australia with too much money on his hands thinks it is a good idea to relaunch a replica of the world's most famous "unsinkable" ship, Titanic. This sounds like it might be a disaster of, well, Titanic proportions.

The full story: Aussie mining tycoon Clive Palmer has the desire to recreate, in perfect scale and to extreme detail, Titanic II. You see, he owns a shipping line called Blue Star Line and he's doing this entire stunt with the help of his own company. Even the plans to build the replica ship have commenced in Finland and a Chinese ship-building company has been secured. If all goes well, the ship will embark on its maiden voyage sometime in 2016 from Southhampton to New York, serving as the line's flagship vessel.

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Leave It to a Conspiracy Theorist to Fight with the TSA

January 9, 2013 at 10:09 AM | by | Comments (0)

Radio host Alex Jones is more or less unrivaled as America's most listened-to wacky conspiracy theorist. The things beamed into his brain aren't always the same things beamed into ours. He's linked the United States government to the Oklahoma City bombing, to the September 11 attacks, and to a conspiracy to lobotomize children with fluoridated water.

Here's a video of him wandering around town dressed as the Joker and explaining to the camera that Obama, the New World Order, and vaccines are all evil. Within the conspiracy theory world, he's long been involved in an on-again off-again fight with another conspiracy theorist, David Icke, because Icke insists that the Earth is controlled by shapeshifting lizards. Jones thinks that the Icke conspiracy theory is part of a conspiracy to undermine conspiracy theories, because that's the problem with it.

All of which brings us to the topic of Jones and the TSA. Technically it brings us back to the topic, since we already covered it a few years ago during that Playboy model groping fiasco.

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