Whose Faulty Vision

Pre-paid Taxis

While I’m talking about business travel…the Cincinnati airport has the wonderful innovation of pre-paid taxis. At the airport, you can pre-pay a round trip (to and from the airport), even with the drop-off of one end and the pick-up at the other in different places. It’s a flat fee, not based on a meter, and you can put it on your credit card. It’s incredibly convenient; I love not having to worry about cash to pay the taxi driver. Also, it’s cheaper–at least, my trip back to the airport came out a bit cheaper than the meter. The driver didn’t run the meter for the trip from the airport, so I dunno there.

Funny thing, though. The only other places I’ve been where you can pre-pay taxis at the airport are places where the taxis have a reputation for ripping off Western tourists, so pre-paying is a way of making the Westerners feel safer. I’m speaking here of Costa Rica and Mumbai–in both places, my guidebook warned about the risk of getting ripped off if you get into a taxi without pre-paying.

So now I’m wondering if the Cincinnati taxis had a similarly unsavory reputation.

Catering to business travelers

A few words of advice to any hotel planning to try to attract business travelers: We like outlets in our rooms. Lots of outlets. That are easy to find, not hidden behind the leg of a desk or something. And there should be at least one that’s accessible from the bed, for those of us who like to work in bed.

Also, Wi-Fi, ideally free, is a must.

Ancient Titans

King Leonidas (from “300″) and Beowulf (from, um, “Beowulf”) should meet sometime. Beowulf would shout “I! Am! Beowulf!”, and Leonidas would answer, “This! Is! Sparta!”, and they’d go back and forth like that for a little while. Then they’d pull out their enormous dicks and smack each other around with them.

Back from Thanksgiving

I’m back from Ithaca! Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving.

More Security Theater

The NYC transit authority has a long-running campaign encouraging people to report “suspicious behavior” to the police, in the name of preventing terrorism. The theme is, “If you see something, say something.”

A little while back, they added a fresh bunch of posters: “Last year, 1,944 New Yorkers saw something and said something.” Notable for its absence is any mention of how many of those events actually resulted in a terrorist attack being prevented. I’d guess–hell, I’d bet money–that the reason is that the number is zero. Just more security theater.

“Everyone” or No One?

There are two different ad campaigns running right now that make the same fundamental mistake: they claim that “everyone” is doing something that I strongly suspect no one is actually doing. Now, I have nothing against hyperbolic claims in advertising. They can be a lot of fun. (I love the Axe ads, for instance, which take the basic premise of all men’s deodorant/cologne ads and dial it up to 11.) But your hyperbole has to be based in a grain of truth, or you just look ridiculous. If you claim that “everyone” is doing something, then someone has to be doing it.

The first is the TV show “Good Day New York”. They made up an incredibly stupid-looking dance, “do the Good Day”, and they’re running TV and outdoor ads claiming that “everyone’s doing it”. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that anyone’s doing this incredibly stupid-looking dance.

The second, and this is even more egregious because it’s a major advertiser that should know better, is McDonald’s. They’re running ads claiming that “everyone is talking about” their coffee. Come on. It’s possible that out in the heartland somewhere, conversations are routinely started with, “Hey, have you tried the delicious coffee they sell at McDonald’s?” But I really doubt it. McDonald’s isn’t the kind of brand people talk about like that; it’s too ubiquitous. People talk about brands that they’ve discovered, where they want to let their friends in on the secret. Nobody discovers McDonald’s.

If you run ads using claims that nobody’s going to believe, you’re just wasting your money.

Movie Theaters Fight Back

So now that I have a plasma TV and a Blu-Ray player, it’s pretty hard to justify going to movies in the theater anymore. The price of two movie tickets comes close to the price of *buying* the movie in Blu-Ray, and renting of course is much cheaper than that. With my setup, picture quality for Blu-Ray movies is about as good as the theater (for good prints well-projected), or better (for cases where the print is scratched, or the projectionist is doing something wrong). And of course the overall experience is better–no waiting in line, nobody coughing all the way through, food that is both cheaper and higher-quality, and so on.

But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. “Beowulf” looks like a good movie of the sort that I’d probably say “eh, I want to see it, but I’ll wait for the Blu-Ray.” But they’re offering it in 3-D. As far as I know, there’s no way to get a plasma TV to do the newfangled polarized 3-D, so my only option for seeing it in 3-D is the theater. And I bet it’s kickass–the Nightmare Before Christmas re-release had really impressive 3-D all the way through. So I may have to go see it in the theater.

I wonder if we’ll see more of this, as movie companies try to lure home theater types back into the movie theaters? I wouldn’t be surprised.