Bryan at Arguing with Signposts talks about the asinine Wright Amendment, a provision of federal law that prohibits Southwest Airlines from serving most of the United States for passengers headed to or from Dallas’ Love Field. There’s more details on the back-and-forth lobbying here and here (registration required for both), and background on the Wright amendment in this Virginia Postrel op-ed; I have to say it’s downright odd (for me, at least) to be in the position of agreeing with Trent Lott’s position on an issue.

It’s probably not good when your boss reads something in the newspaper he doesn’t like:

President Bush said Thursday that he had been surprised to learn in the newspaper of his administration’s decision last week to require Americans to have passports to enter the country from Mexico or Canada by 2008. He said he had asked the State and Homeland Security Departments to look into other means of tightening border security.

I’m not at all convinced that passports are really any more secure than driver’s licenses anyway; my passport (from September 1998) doesn’t have any biometric data on it whatsoever, and neither does my 2004-vintage driver’s license. That said, I’m not sure that requiring passports will increase delays at the border—checking a passport shouldn’t take any more time than checking any other photo ID, unless for some reason the government insists on stamping the passport.

Well, I made it back safe and sound from Chicago, despite initially forgetting (1) checkout was at 11 am instead of noon and (2) my flight was at 1:10 pm instead of 1:40 pm when I decided to sleep in this morning—I figured if I was spending $164 a night for a bed (and surprisingly little else, beyond gratis high-speed internet that was only free because of my newfound Silver HHonors status), it had better be used as much as possible.

The flights were uneventful—I dozed through much of the flight from O’Hare to Atlanta, and managed to read all of Lewis Black’s book Nothing’s Sacred during the rest of the trip, since I felt unmotivated to continue with Empires of Light for now. Despite the storms the day I left, everything was just fine at home.

Jackson isn’t the only city that’s dealing with honoring a civil rights legend by renaming its airport; Maryland legislators are currently working on legislation to rename Baltimore-Washington International Airport (which more serves Baltimore than Washington, since it’s a pain in the butt to get to downtown Washington from the north, but that’s neither here nor there) to honor deceased supreme court justice Thurgood Marshall.

Which is all well and good, but the current compromise name, “Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport,” has the word “international” in exactly the wrong place; it modifies “airport,” not “Thurgood Marshall.” Heck, if Newark and Washington National survived their name changes to include geographically-nonspecific nonsense, I think BWI would get along just fine as Thurgood Marshall International. Besides which, TMI would be a really great airport code.

I finally made it to Chicago after missing my connection in Atlanta due to the nasty storms out by the Jackson airport delaying my flight to Atlanta. In five minutes in the lobby, I ran into five different political scientists I know (four of whom actually recognized me), two of whom are named Chris. For a change, the folks at the Palmer House actually honored my request to be near the elevator (I guess finally making Silver HHonors membership has its privileges), but then again that may have just been a coincidence.

Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with Dirk tonight; then I can get organized for my panel tomorrow morning and my discussant gig Friday morning, so I’ll be free to work on the “things to do in Chicago” list Kelly gave me Friday night most of the rest of my time here.

Final thoughts on New Orleans:

• Both Mike Munger and Dan Drezner have slightly more substantive posts about the panel.
• The “most unlikely sighting of a URL” award for my visit goes to John Brown’s New Orleans Sidewalk Astronomy, which was set up right next to our table at Café du Monde. It was a perfect evening for stargazing; perhaps we should have partaken.
• I do have a few photos from my stroll around New Orleans today; maybe I’ll post them at some point.
• We missed TigerHawk by 48 hours or so.

Sigh. Now back to the grind.

Today, I decided to continue to semi-unwind in New Orleans rather than driving straight back to Jackson. I think I ended up walking around downtown and the French Quarter for about four hours, although I spent much of that time at the D-Day Museum (excellent, and well worth the $14, even though I’d had the history of it before when I visited Normandy with my dad in 1990) and the aquarium (my five-year-old cousin probably would have enjoyed it, but I couldn’t exclude the $16 admission from my evaluation of the clearly kid-geared presentation; the jellyfish were neat, however). Also worth seeing is the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial, an interesting piece of public art on the riverwalk just downriver from the aquarium.

Had I decided to play tourist before 10 a.m. this morning—or if I’d realized that her cell number was in my cell phone before I was calling my dad on the way back to Jackson—I probably could have had the company of TLLJ, who I believe had similar plans for the day, although the simple pleasure of wandering about alone with one’s own thoughts should never be discounted.

Stephen Karlson and Stephen Bainbridge are not looking forward to their inaugural Airbus A380 flights; quoth Bainbridge:

Now for the really bad news. You’ll only check in with 500 other passengers if the plane is configured with large first and business class sections. A discounter could cram over 840 coach passengers into the [expeltive deleted] thing if it wanted! Can you imagine the wait to get off it? Or to get your luggage at baggage claim.

Thankfully, those of us in flyover country won’t be seeing these behemoths at Jackson-Evers International Airport anytime soon.

This week’s Economist looks at the public introduction of Airbus’ new A380 super-jumbo and the efforts of rival Boeing to come up with a different strategy based on its 7E7 Dreamliner. My gut feeling is that Airbus is banking on the continued success of legacy-style long-haul “hub-and-spoke” travel, which makes sense in developing markets, while Boeing is expecting the 7E7 to succeed in the transatlantic market between smaller destinations.

Meanwhile, the European Union and United States have agreed to keep the subsidies dispute outside the WTO process, at least for the time being. And, in other Boeing news, the airline is ending production of the Boeing 717, the latest (and last) incarnation of the DC-9/MD-80 series of aircraft; Stephen Karlson has some brief thoughts on the matter.

Update (from RKP):A quick expansion on Chris's point: if you want to read about the emergence of air taxis and point-to-point air travel, I highly recommend Free Flight by James Fallows. I'm not an aviation enthusiast, but just a guy that spent WAY too many hours on airplanes for a few years. The possibility of being able to fly out of an airport near the house with minimal fuss, and in an Eclipse 500 jet, has a lot of appeal.

James Joyner rounds up the latest aviation news, including lower fares on Delta, reduced service on Independence Air, and new Southwest service to Pittsburgh (already served by low-fare carrier airTran). I suppose this is good news for most air travellers—but if I still have to go via Atlanta to fly anywhere on Delta, no thanks.

Apparently Norm Mineta can’t figure out why the legacy airlines are in such big trouble. (þ Brian J. Noggle)

He could save us taxpayers a bit of money by just reading Virginia Postrel’s weblog. More succinctly: U.S. Airways sucks monkey balls, and they’re tightwad scum too.

The trip back home was nice and painless. Southwest may get a lot more of my business in the future. Now off to catch up on my TiVo viewing and get a sound night’s sleep in my own bed.

Flying back from Long Island today, the security guy at MacArthur airport (I’m not sure whether he was with the TSA or not) checked the expiration date on my Tennessee driver’s license. He told me that it had expired. I pointed out the extension sticker on the back, and he let me through. He told me that if the license had actually been expired, I would have had to go back to the counter, presumably to present further proof that I was indeed the person I claimed to be.

God forbid that someone fly with an expired driver’s license.

The Texas Department of Transportation plans to install free WiFi hotspots at all of its highway rest areas, after a pilot project at 4 rest stops along U.S. 287 found them to be a hit with the motoring public.

Mark A.R. Kleiman thinks Airbus is a pretty honest name for the company’s aircraft. Considering that economy-class air travel is essentially equivalent to riding Greyhound these days (with the exception that the hassle at the airport replaces getting drooled on by hobos), Boeing might be due for a name change as well.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by both the Boeing 717 and the service provided by AirTran on my recent trip to Pennsylvania. The aircraft (a semi-decent regional jet service to and from DFW from Memphis, and a 1930s-tech prop plane in and out of Lawton that made me feel like I was living a World War II-era propaganda film) and service provided by American Eagle on my less-recent trip to Oklahoma, however, left much to be desired. These combined experiences have done little to entice me back to employing economy class air travel for any voluntary trip of less than 1000 miles.

I just got back from a day-long excursion to Jackson, with the twin goals of scoping out apartment complexes and showing one parental unit around the Millsaps campus. Fun but tiring.

Being at the ass-end of a CDMA 1X wireless link is even worse than dialup (about the same throughput, but around 400 ms latency on pings). But at least it’s (cough) free and easy, at least until my phone battery drains and I need to recharge it…

I think I’m home tonight. I may even get to stay in the same place for more than two days. The Big Hooding in less than 48 hrs.

Had a very nice visit at “the best college in [the state]” today* as my undergrad student escort proclaimed it, and had no reason to disagree with her assessment. Nice faculty (even if I’d be half the department), nice salary, nice teaching load (3–3), nice location (the prospect of a Rebel season ticket renewal is a definite plus), good students (whose idol-worship compares favorably with some ex-colleagues’ acolytes, and who didn’t even require a plaintive “Bueller?”), BMOC status, travel money, Division III competition against one of the alma maters. What more could a political scientist want?

Oh, yeah, tenure (the one thing the job doesn’t come with a shot at, at least not unless I were to get the tenure-track position when it is advertised in the fall)… which at TBCITS might actually mean something, contra the inactions of Mississippi’s illustrious IHL. (I mean, as long as the kids are getting their learn on, who cares about the faculty?)

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will have time to deal with the bloody R&R and the damned impeachment paper and the thrice-cursed Hillary (Clinton, not Duff) piece. Then I’ll be stoked for Year II of “Chris on the Market.”

I’m off for an interview in two hours. But, in the meantime, check out Dan Drezner’s post on the impending takeover of Newsworld International by Al Gore. Because what CBC’s “National” needed to be a rip-roaring success south of the border was the one-two excitement punch of Peter Mansbridge and Al Gore. (Of course, it might also help if they didn’t talk about Canada for 90% of the show…)

Also, a data point for you: on the way here (a state capital within a leisurely drive of Memphis, Tenn.), I passed not one, but two, hotels prominently featuring high-speed Internet access on their billboards—at the same exit. Pretty amazing considering almost nobody would have thought high-speed Internet was a needed hotel amenity even three years ago (and I still visit major hotels that have no high-speed access in most rooms—or, rather, pass them up in favor of other hotels, as the case may be).

I’m back in Oxvegas; however, since I didn’t get much sleep the past two nights, I’m probably just going to watch some stuff I TiVo’d (or perhaps I should refer to it as “stuff TiVo TiVo’d for me”) while I was gone and generally zonk out.

I need to get to bed in a few minutes, since I have an appointment with an American Eagle plane at oh-dark-thirty. So I’ll leave you to ponder this Dan Drezner post and the linked article on Larry Diamond’s experiences in Iraq attempting to promote democracy there.

More when I’m safe and sound back in Oxvegas, sometime late Tuesday.

I’ve arrived safe and sound in Chi-town. Illinois has to be the most boring state in the nation; the whole state is flat as a pancake as soon as you get north of Mount Vernon (where I-64 crosses the state on its way between Louisville and St. Louis), and it doesn’t get more exciting until you can see the Sears Tower about 300 miles (500 km) later.

I even tried going a different way than usual (“Surely this lake on the map means topography nearby,” I thought erroneously), and all I got for my effort was an extra hour of staring at endless farmland, although I at least got off I-57—in other words, at least the flat, boring farmland was different flat, boring farmland. (From Effingham, I took Ill. 32 to Ill. 121 to Decatur, then took U.S. 51 north to Bloomington, then I-55 into Chicago.)

Speaking of Effingham, that giant cross is just freaky. Say what you will about Southern Baptists, but at least they have the good taste not to inflict something so immensely gaudy on the motoring public (preferring, instead, giant fields of tiny crosses or trinities of smaller crosses that aren’t hazards to unsuspecting amateur pilots).

Now, off to get me a light dinner and to finish getting junk out of my car.

Josh Barro (one of the Harvard Republicans) points out the reason only one person died when the City of New Orleans derailed near Yazoo City yesterday: practically nobody was aboard:

[The train carried 68 passengers and 12 crewmembers.] That works out to 7.56 passengers per car and 5.67 passengers per crew member. Perhaps unsurprisingly, few passengers are enticed by a train that can take them from New Orleans to Chicago in just 19 hours and 5 minutes. If this train is any indication of ridership on Amtrak’s routes outside metropolitan corridors, it’s no wonder its director says it needs a $1.8 billion dollar subsidy to continue operating in 2005.

They particularly aren’t enticed by a train that costs $182 to ride round-trip, $320 if you want to ride on the lower level, and a whopping $520 if you want to have a bed to sleep in. By contrast, you can fly non-stop round-trip to Chicago from New Orleans next weekend for $398… or, if you’re willing to do some advance planning, you can fly round-trip for $244 over a weekend in May. Not to mention that your trip will be almost 17 hours shorter in duration.

Or, you can ride Greyhound, completely unsubsidized,* for $138 round trip—and, if you pick the right bus, it doesn’t take much more time than the Amtrak train.

Update: * Both Stephen Karlson and a reader point out that there is a gross subsidy to the highway system (i.e. almost all highways are paid for by the state and federal governments); my point was, however, that the net subsidy is essentially zero, as all highway spending in the United States (except expenditures on low-volume local streets, which are usually supplemented by local property taxes—such streets would be necessary even in a less car-dependent society, mind you) comes from state and federal motor fuel taxes, which are borne by highway users such as Greyhound; in fact, highway taxes also pay much of the budget of the Federal Transit Administration, which is responsible for mass transit in urban areas. Apologies for any confusion.

According to this HealthDay article, San Antonio, TX, “has the highest rate of binge drinking—imbibing till you’re drunk—in the entire United States.”

Congratulations, San Antonio! I certainly tried to do my part while I was there.

The rest of the top ten: Grand Forks, ND; Milwaukee, WI; Austin, TX; Sioux Falls, SD; Davenport, IA; Cedar Rapids, IA; Duluth, MN; Lincoln, NE; and Springfield, MA.

Will Baude today heard of the Peabody ducks for the first time.

I’ll count this as the tie-breaker for the Memphis Schelling point. I had two votes for the gates of Graceland, and two votes for the lobby of the Peabody.

You have heard of Graceland, right, Will?