Christmas - Airfares, Decoration Innovation, and Carol of the Bells

Another Christmas came and went. I did my usual trek to Florida to visit family. I had to pay more for my flight this year. The best I could find for round trip was $324 from Delta. Last year I was able to book a trip for $236 from Continental. For 2001 Christmas, I was able to get a round trip ticket for $127, the cheapest Texas to Florida fair that I was ever able to get. Since that was just after 9/11, I guess that was to be expected. I actually got lucky that year. Originally, the best fare I could get was with American Airlines for $234. But in early December, they informed me that they had to make an adjustment to my schedule. Because of the changes, they allowed me to cancel with a full refund. Before canceling, I booked this super low fare with Southwest.

Around my Father's neighborhood, I noticed a lot of new Christmas decorations such as inflatable Santas/snowmen and spiral light Christmas trees. Also many people had those now common icicle lights. In the last ten years, there seems to have been a lot of decoration innovation. It has almost been as impressive as chip technology. I wonder if there's a Moore's law for Christmas decorations. Just think what our neighborhoods will look like in Christmas 2010...

Only heard my favorite Christmas carol ("Carol of the Bells") a few times. I heard a few versions of this such as "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I haven't heard any versions of "Carol of the Bells" that I didn't like. Luckily, I haven't heard any jazz, country or Jamaican versions. I'm not sure exactly why I like it. It has sort of a climatic feel, like my favorite rock song "Sweet Madam Blue" or another song I like, Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die". I found a few bits of history about this song here.

I was trying to think of the Seinfeld Christmas episodes. The only ones that come to mind are the Festivus one and the nipple one where Elaine mails out Christmas cards with her picture taken by Kramer that accidentally shows a nipple. I don't think they ever had any heavy Christmas shows like some sitcoms. In fact, I don't think they had any episodes concentrating heavily on any holiday. I think it was probably for the best. That way it never got too sentimental. They did a good job at keeping the series away from serious topics or soapish relationships. I'm glad they did.

Perpetuation of the Species

Also over the holidays I saw the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen" staring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt. It was a family type of movie that was pretty good. Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt play the parents of 12 children who try to find a balance between careers and family.

This movie had me thinking about the reasons for wanting a family (large or small): perpetuation of the species, parental instincts, religious duty, civic duty, family duty, loneliness, love. So far, none of these have been enough for me.

Humans are the first species that can actually decide about having children or not. Luckily, most humans still decide to have children. It does seem as standards of living increase, the family size on average does go down. I guess some of this has to do with better access to birth control. But I wonder if it's more related to education and higher logical thinking.

Also, I wonder if you disregard education and standards of living, does average family size decrease when there is less religion? Seems like religious people will use less birth control and avoid abortion which should increase family size. But disregarding this, other factors seem like it should increase family size like faith and religious duty.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer falls in love with Jerry's girlfriend, Pam. It turned out that Pam didn't want children. Also in this episode, Elaine questions her want for children. She meets a man who also admits to not wanting children. I think the line "perpetuation of the species" was a line that Jerry gave to Elaine when they talked about this question.

It seems Seinfeld is the longest running sitcom where none of the main characters were the father or mother of a child during some point in the series. Was this one more example of their selfishness? Is not wanting children selfish?...

Red Lights and When "To Go"

Last month I had some interesting experiences with red lights.

There's this one traffic light that I go through every Saturday morning between jogging and Starbucks. The first problem happened one Saturday morning as I was stopped at that light waiting for it to turn green. I was first in line and as I was waiting, a fire truck came from behind blaring its sirens. There were a few cars beside and behind me. It seemed that it needed to go through the intersection, so I looked both ways for clearing, and went through the red light. As I got through the intersection, I pulled to the side and looked in my rear view mirror. The fire truck ended up taking a right at the intersection in the side lane so I didn't need to run the red light after all. Then I remembered the cameras at the intersection. I'm not sure if those cameras are to ticket red light runners or for traffic monitoring. That got me nervous, but it's been over a month and no ticket has appeared in my mail. I think I did the right thing, but it might not look that way in the cameras...

The other problem at this light is that in the last few weeks it has been taking way too long to turn green. The traffic around 8:00am on a Saturday is very minimal. There's no reason why that light should stay red for more then one or two minutes. Twice it has taken around 5 minutes. Both times there were several cars waiting so it shouldn't have been a case of the sensor not being triggered. In these cases, however, I wasn't the first in line so I didn't have to decide whether to run the light or not. There's been construction around this intersection so I guess it's timing must have gotten off. No one in front of me made the decision to run it.

This brings up the interesting question of how long you should wait for a light to turn green. If the intersection is not busy and the light is not turning green, what should a motorist do? I wonder what the law says about this. This could be another case where there could be a legitimate reason for running a red light. I suppose one thing that could be done to be totally safe from a ticket is to take a right at the light and then do a u-turn.

Getting caught while doing something fairly innocent reminds me of the Seinfeld episode in which the Seinfeld team can't find their car in a mall parking garage. As Jerry and Kramer were walking around in there, Jerry had to use the facilities. Kramer warned Jerry of the bad health consequences of holding it in and convinced him to go in the corner of the garage. Jerry finally conceded and tried to discreetly do his business. As he finished, the garage police just happened to catch him.

Like Jerry, I thought I had a good reason to "break the rules", but the police saw it differently. However, I've been lucky. So far it looks like I got away with no ticket.

posted by Ken on 3:09 PM permalink and comments  

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