| Now at Hotels: The $250 Cigarette
Dan Cole checked out of his Connecticut hotel early on a Saturday morning last month and found an unwelcome surprise. The Courtyard Marriott Hartford-Farmington had slapped him with a $250 charge for smoking in his nonsmoking room. Mr. Cole is a smoker but insists he didn't light up in the room. He got busted, he thinks, for throwing a few cigarette butts he had stowed in his pants pocket into the room's trash. He pleaded his case to the front desk, but the clerk refused to take off the charge. The next day, Mr. Cole fired off a series of increasingly exasperated emails to customer service and the general manager. "Would you like me to take a polygraph to prove to you that I am not a liar?" he emailed Chris O'Donnell, the hotel's general manager. Mr. Cole is among the growing crowd of smokers ensnared by hotels' new and more stringent no-smoking policies.
Independent mechanic will be downshifting
Jack Pearson of Harrodsburg is one of a vanishing breed: the independent automobile mechanic. If you are old enough -- and lucky enough -- to have known a good one, you may feel a tinge of sadness at the silent passing of an era when nearly every community had a Jack Pearson operating a garage on the corner. Some were gifted men who could nearly always diagnose a problem by listening closely to the engine or transmission. A few used a piece of garden hose, or a stick with one end on the engine and the other held next to an ear, as a physician uses a stethoscope. Most had grease on their hands, but they knew you by your first name and could fix your car and still leave you with a few dollars for groceries and house payments. "We're in the same boat -- and it's a very big boat -- that the country store was in, about all gone," Pearson said.
Afghanistan:Manley Report
First of all I would like to say I have lost two family members in Afghanistan, and that if I was able to re-join Princess Pat. over there I would, only because I feel obligated to help my fellow soldiers. That said, this mission is one that would go on forever. It doesn't really matter how much stability is brought to the region, as soon as western countries leave, it will again become ruled by Islamist warlords. There is a lot of money to be made in the poppy fields and as long as that remains true, the warlords will return. Now the reasons we went in there in the first place I am sure time will show were false as well. You cannot claim we are there to protect womens rights etc. because if thats what we are doing there we have a few hundred more countries to occupy over there.
Don't say no-no to the Nano
Here's some exciting news: The world's cheapest car will soon be hitting the roads of India. Tata Motors recently unveiled the Nano, a car that will surely make many middle-class people happy, particularly Hyundai owners, who will now feel like they're driving luxury cars. .
AUSTRALIA: Telstra's powerful result
And expected full-year growth in earnings before interest and tax has been upgraded from between 5% and 7% to between 6% and 8%. Trujillo says his big structural and technological re-make of the giant telco is on track, and Telstra's December half numbers indicate that Trujillo's hugely ambitious re-make of the former monopoly is producing an accelerating shift in the group's revenue and profit base, across from old fixed line services to new technologies. Retail services sales growth -- sales to external consumers, business and government customers -- was an impressive 7.6 per cent in the half, and Telstra's overall domestic revenue growth of 5.9% was world-class, beating groups including Spain's Telefonica (4.3 %) China Telecom (2.8%), AT&T (2.6%) and France Telecom (1.9%).
Hazlewood Rebooted
Lost treasures from the psychedelic cowboy whom rock snobs love to love.Jody Rosenposted Jan. 30, 2008We Should Be Whispering All the TimeA new album from the Magnetic Fields.Jody Rosenposted Jan. 15, 2008The Best Jazz Albums of 2007Mingus, Hancock, Lovano, Friedlander …Fred Kaplanposted Dec. 18, 2007Search for more music box articlesSubscribe to the music box RSS feedView our complete music box archive .
|
