"Ten hours, a day later. That's customer service from American Airlines."

About two weeks ago, my wife, son and I went to La Guardia for an American Airlines flight to Chicago. We arrived at 5:30am for a 7:30 flight. The flight was canceled. We waited in a line that snaked around the entire terminal from 5:30 until 10:30 before we got to speak to an AA clerk. 5 hours in line just to speak with someone about booking a new flight. La Guardia is so crowded that people could not get their luggage in the door. It makes bus terminals look posh. It felt like I imagine the Soviet Union was, maybe worse. The sooner American Airlines goes out of business, the better. The next day, after much time spent on the phone with AA, we got our tickets transfered to Air China (our destination) and went to JFK terminal 1. Beautiful, airy terminal, easy parking, no hassle check-in - the exact opposite of the experience at La Guardia. I have never had a problem at JFK.

As for the Dreamliner - the name is stupid. The plane doesn't look nearly as shark-like as the "artist's impressions" did. It looks like any other plane, with a sharper nose. Let's hope the plastic tail doesn't break off.

Congratulations on your new job. I sincerely hope it pays more than $17,000 per year. That's not a salary, that's an insult.

I completely agree with you about over-reliance on AC. It is almost always overdone, especially in this country. In my sealed building workplace, I freeze. In malls, I freeze. I live in a suburban house and we leave the windows open all summer. We love to feel the breeze coming in, the sound of the wind in the trees. We are shaded by large trees, so it doesn't get that hot. It isn't a matter of nostalgia - its a matter of wanting to feel the air circulating naturally and wanting to hear natural sounds. If necessary, we turn on fans. It feels good to sweat a little and feel the evaporation from the wind. The only problem with having our windows open at night is listening to the inevitable whine of the neighbor's central air, which, typically, is on even when it's 75 degrees. I much prefer the sound of crickets, which, toward the fall, will easily drown it out.

The day I look to Oprah or a self-help book for advice is the day I will beyond all help, having descended into senility or dementia.

I just finished "The Meaning of Life" by Terry Eagleton. I strongly recommend it. He goes into Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Beckett, Marx, Wittgenstein, as well as Buddhism, Taosim and Christianity. He does so with considerable humor. It is not a terribly long book, considering the subject. I won't give away his conclusion, but it mirrors what I said in previous posts, which just goes to show how smart he is.

Thanks for your letter which is not only true, but elegant.

The headline says it all - "We are meant to be here". Unless, of course, an astoroid just happens to hit earth next week and destroy all life. In that case, we were not meant to be here.

I fail to see any connection between "the laws of the universe" and meaning and purpose in human life. The moon goes around the earth, the earth around the sun, the sun converts hydrogen into helium - all according to laws of the universe, but these have nothing whatever to do with meaning or lack of meaning in human life. There is simply no connection. We need the sun's energy to exist, but the sun does not shine for us. All life, including human, is simply a photo-chemical byproduct of processes like light energy from the sun acting on the earth's surface. Our sense of purpose comes from millions of years of intense evolution which has the survival of our genes as its sole purpose. Where did this will to survive and reproduce come from? Probably it is a feature of the evolutionary process itself. A self-sustaining chemical reaction. There is no need whatever for "God" or "purpose". I suspect that millions of years of evolution in which we have the strong "purpose" to survive shaped our thinking so that we feel everything must have an ultimate purpose; this is not the case.

"For many of us it seems, it is inconceivable that the miracle of human existence is a random accident. For some reason, the randomness, the accidental-ness (if I can say that), negates meaning for these poor unimaginative souls"

Meaning and purpose are human categories that have evolved to help us survive. Man can intend to go to the moon, but the moon does not intend to go around earth. To say "we are meant to be here" implies that something outside humans - "God" or "the laws of the universe" wanted to create us. Man creates meaning and purpose as survival tools. Man created God as a survival tool. But no God or law of the universe "wants" us to exist - our will to exist comes from ourselves. Life started accidentally, but we are the product of millions of years of evolution, in which organisms have the sole purpose of surviving to pass on their genes. What started accidentally has now been shaped by millions of years of purpose-driven evolution. Meaning is therefore founded on meaninglessness, like the painting of the church floating hundreds of feet above solid rock. That meaning is, at root, meaningless in no way detracts from its value. In fact, it leaves us free to construct whatever meaning we wish for human life. If it were not this way, we would be slaves to some God or some non-human purpose.