Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 94 Editor's Choice: 19
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sorry, i second the vote against IAD
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know Dulles is a work by a master and looks pretty from afar, but it's built on a totally inhuman scale. When you're waiting out on the roadway for a taxi or a shuttle, the whole structure just feels like it's looming over you, waiting to crush you. Inside, the huge high ceilings have the effect of dwarfing all of the check-in desks and other quotidian structures -- it's like you're living in a shanty town built in the shell of an abandonned cathedral. Plus concrete does not age well. I do love the "mobile lounges", though, inefficient as they are, and will miss them when the new underground rail system goes into operation.
Two really schizophrenic airports are BWI and SFO. SFO's new international terminal is airy and gorgeous, whereas the older wings are ratty and grubby. BWI's newer terminals (the barely-occupied international terminal E and the brand new Southwest A/B terminal) aren't masterpieces, but feel spacious and comfortable, while the rest of the airport is a crowded warren. I like Buffalo -- the whole terminal is practically brand new, built in 1997, but some of the paneling and other materials are already showing their age -- not a good sign.
jf
PS to one of the complaints about Heathrow: If you take a cab from Heathrow to the center of London, you're a sucker. You can take an express train for less than $40 or the subway for less than $10. You have to walk forever to get to the station, but you have to walk forever to get anywhere at LHR, including the taxi stands, so it's not that different...
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the extent of hamas' electoral victory from last year...
[Read the article: Spinning the disaster in Gaza]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...can be overstated.
Basically, in the elections to the Palestinian legislature, everyone had two votes. In one, which determine half the seats, you just chose which party you liked best. Hamas won this but it was very close (44 percent to 41 percent).
Each voter also had to cast votes for their local representatives. In these races, Fatah was unable to settle on a list of candidates, so there were too many Fatah candidates running; the Fatah vote was spread out, to Hamas' benefit. That's why Hamas ended up with such a landslide overall (74 legislative seats vs. Fatah's 45).
Not that Hamas doesn't have substantial popular support, but it made that support go further thanks to its discipline and Fatah's chaotic incompetence. Emblematic of a lot of things, really.
This is only peripherally related to the article itself, but I also wince when I see refrences to Hamas' "landslide victory." With the same voting support that was actually displayed in the election, Fatah probably could have cobbled together a pro-Oslo front with smaller parties if it had just had a decent campaign strategist.
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The mom angle is a red herring
[Read the article: My new roommate arrived ... with mom attached!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I totally understand why this narrative is dominated by the fact that the intruder is the sublettor's mother. After all, it seems to hint at some very odd, codependent relationship that is uncomfortable-making. In addition, if, as I'm guessing, the people involved are all college-age or just post-college, it's hard to think of someone who's a generation older than you as a fellow adult; instead you tend to think them as someone like your own parents. (Heck, it's hard for me to think of them any other way, and I'm ten years out of college.)
But in fact the reality of the situation can be distilled very succinctly in a way that makes the mother-daughter relationship irrelevant:
You accepted one person as a sublettor in your apartment.
You got two people.
Seriously, what if the new roommate had shown up with her boyfriend, and announced that he'd be staying there until he found his own place, which would happen soon, they hoped? Or if she had a friend with her who would be "crashing for a few days", but who then never left? You'd probably be much quicker cracking the whip.
Your sublettor and her mother will try to argue that the mother-daughter relationship makes this different. It does not. You agreed to one sublettor; you got two of them, presumably paying one sublettor's rent. If you make it clear on those terms, and stick to that narrative, hopefully you can resolve the situation. Good luck.
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arbitrary regional/mainline divide
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the weird things about the prevalence of "regional" flights on longer routes is how it's now kind of hard to predict when you'll get what. Last summer I flew from Baltimore to Minneapolis and back The first leg of my outbound trip was BWI to Philadelphia -- a route I was shocked discover even existed, considering it can be covered by train in an hour -- and was further stunned to find was served by a 737 (half empty, natch). Coming back, the first leg was a 2+ hour flight from MSP to Charlotte -- and was on a tiny RJ operated by America West Express.