NYTimes.com: Continental Cuts 3,000 Jobs as It Grounds Planes

Continental Airlines said Thursday that it would cut 3,000 jobs and retire 67 Boeing aircraft from its fleet, becoming the latest airline to announce capacity reductions in the face of high prices for jet fuel.

Today, it's Continental.  Yesterday, United.  Other airlines have gone bankrupt.  Airlines are trying to curb losses by cutting back on employees and reducing size of their fleets.   Airline troubles are being blamed on rising fuel costs and a slowing economy.

Can the airline industry recover from this latest challenge?  It seems to me that this time things may be spiraling out of control.  Lower capacity and higher fuel costs means higher fares for passengers.  Higher fares cause a decrease in demand as passengers seek alternatives or reduce travel.  Lower demand means excess capacity.  Airlines cut capacity, causing the cycle to continue.

At some point an equilibrium will be reached with fewer airlines, fewer cities served, and higher costs.  With fuel costs high it may be prohibitively expensive for new startup airlines to emerge in the future to service routes that have been dropped by the existing airlines.  Perhaps this is the breaking point for the airline industry.

From NYTimes.com: 36 Hours in Cartagena, Colombia

Still on my list of places to visit.

From CNN.com: Hello Kitty named Japan tourism ambassador

Hello Kitty, Japan's ubiquitous ambassador of cute, has built up an impressive resume over the years. Global marketing phenom. Fashion diva. Pop culture icon.

Now the moonfaced feline can add "government envoy" to the list.

Why is Hello Kitty settling for tourism ambassador?  We should hire her to finish out George W. Bush's term.  She'd probably do a better job getting the Saudis to pump more oil, bring peace to the Middle East, and finding Osama bin Laden.

Reaction from Hello Kitty Hell.

From CNN.com: Travel writer tells newspaper he plagiarized, dealt drugs

Thomas Kohnstamm, who has written a book on his misadventures, also said he didn't travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because "they didn't pay me enough," The Daily Telegraph reported.

"I wrote the book in San Francisco [California]," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

I almost bought this book!  I've been interested in traveling to Colombia for a while and the Lonely Planet guide book served us pretty well on the New Zealand trip that I was on.

It also says in the story that Lonely Planet didn't pay enough so he dealt drugs on the side to get by.

Facts and Myths about BODIES: The Exhibition

MYTH: These people donated their bodies freely to science.
FACT: These are unclaimed bodies of real people. These people DID NOT consent to having their bodies used after their death. They DID NOT KNOW their bodies were going to be dissected and exhibited for profit.

MYTH: These people died of natural causes.
FACT: These people are all individuals who appear to be young, fit, and have died in the prime of their lives. Natural cause deaths would lead you to find older bodies, with certain characteristics spinal curvature, etc. that would reflect their age.

Myth: These bodies were obtained from a medical university in China.
FACT: There is NO medical school associated with the back alley shop processing these bodies for exhibition. Nobody will certify, nor provide documents, that these are not executed political prisoners, which is most likely the source in China. Political prisoners are people who may disagree with the views of the government or are persecuted for practicing their religion, be it Muslim, Christianity, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhism etc.

Myth: These bodies were obtained legally.
FACT: The New York Attorney General, and US Customs are investigating the importation of the these bodies. There is reason to believe Premier Exhibitions intentionally misled customs officials on shipping documents. These real bodies were labeled by Premier Exhibitions on their customs documents as "plastic models for medical training." Both claims, as pertains to this exhibit, are false.

Myth: The exhibit is scientific and educational.
FACT: The education director for the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh resigned under protest of this display in her facility. Any aspect of the human experience could be called educational. Indeed the human body and its parts are beautiful and wondrous. Can we suspend our ethics for the sake of education? If these were all black people, or all Jewish, or unclaimed remains from Katrina, the descriptor "educational" would not even be considered. The truth is, this exhibit is a huge money maker for the Museum Center and Premier Exhibitions.

FACT: The Cincinnati Museum Center wants to sell this as an "educational experience" to Cincinnati. This same show is in Las Vegas, and shopping malls in other cities, marketed as entertainment. Ohio Magazine has ads for this exhibit with the byline: "All for fun... fun for all!"

Myth: Every city has received this exhibit well.
FACT: The city of San Francisco banned this exhibit. Legislation was introduced in Washington state to do the same. Protest movements have risen in every city where this exhibit has travelled in a growing national movement against these type of Body exhibits.

FACT: The Archdiocese of Cincinnati has urged their schools to boycott the exhibit.
FACT: Premier Exhibitions made $30 million off these dead people, and are to make millions more in Cincinnati.
FACT: These are REAL people...
FACT: These are REAL people who did not know their bodies were going to be used in this way.
FACT: These are REAL people who did not know they were going to be dissected and shown for profit.
FACT: These are REAL people who did not have free choice of what happened to their remains.
FACT: These REAL people DO NOT HAVE A VOICE in what is happening to them now.

From LATimes: Governor's high-flying commute draws flak

Schwarzenegger has eschewed living in Sacramento, preferring his Brentwood mansion and traveling back and forth in his private jet. Some question his concern for the environment.

After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Brentwood mansion.

That's an approximately 780 mile round trip daily commute by private jet.  That's about 3 hours of commuting.

The governor's Gulfstream jet does nearly as much damage to the environment in one hour as a small car does in a year, according to figures compiled by the Helium Report, an online publication for buyers of luxury items.

Schwarzenegger doesn't have to do this.  He could have moved his family to Sacramento like every other governor before him.  The rich and powerful shouldn't get a pass because they can afford to do this.

I thought this following paragraph was kind of amusing in light of the Spitzer scandal:

The governor rarely sleeps now in the $62,000-a-year hotel penthouse paid for by a tax-exempt charitable foundation. But in the early years of his administration, Schwarzenegger spent most weeknights there, working late, receiving visitors and playing chess, former aides said.

So "playing chess" is what they're calling it these days.

UPDATE: For the latest news, please visit Boycott Bodies the Exhibition

Summary: ABC News 20/20 report states that Premier Exhibitions, the company producing the Bodies the Exhibition currently shown at Museum Center may be using executed prisoners.  New York's Attorney General has opened an investigation.  Subpoena's have been issued today.

From Kansas City Star: More questions raised about origins of bodies on exhibit

However, the focus of the "20/20" report, airing at 9 tonight on KMBC-TV, is on discoveries that Ross made during a recent visit to China. In an interview Thursday, Ross said that university officials in Dalian told him that, contrary to Premier's assertions, they were not the sole supplier of cadavers to "Bodies: The Exhibition." That show is Premier's highest-profile anatomical exhibition and has just begun a seven-month run at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

"We found in fact they don't come from the university but from a company on the outskirts of town in a series of ramshackle warehouses on a dirt road," Ross said. "It's run by somebody who's a professor at the university, but it's not the business of the university. The question is, where does he get the bodies?"

Ross said he visited the compound briefly, before officials ejected him and his crew, and interviewed a former employee who said that at least a third of the cadavers he processed were bodies of executed prisoners. That's an allegation human rights groups have made about anatomical traveling shows and one that Premier has repeatedly denied. In 2006, Arnie Geller, the CEO of Premier, told The New York Times, "We traced the whole process. None of these would be executed prisoners."

Ross said that's what a Premier official told him, too. But he said the ex-employee is certain of the corpses' provenance, "because he was involved in going around China picking them up.

From WCPO Channel 9 Cincinnati 11:00PM 2/14/08 News:
"The Bodies exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center has drawn thousands of curious visitors since it opened this month but a new ABC investigation reports an underground black market is providing the bodies."

From Good Morning America 7:30AM 2/15/08
New York Attorney General is probing Premier Exhibitions and has issues subpoenas today.

From ABCNews.com: Exclusive: Secret Trade in Chinese Bodies

In an interview to be aired Friday on the ABC News program "20/20," Dr. Gunther von Hagens also says an underground black market is providing bodies to Chinese companies that export them to the U.S. and Europe, despite a 2006 Chinese law prohibiting the export of human bodies for commercial purposes.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was investigating the allegations.

Von Hagens says he had to cremate several bodies he received in China after detecting injuries that led him to suspect they had been executed prisoners.

"There is now no way for me any more to work with specimens in China," said von Hagens, who says his company in China now only deals with animal specimens.

What is Bodies the Exhibition?

Coming to a museum near you! Katrina Victims Bodies on Display! Twenty African African-American, unclaimed and unknown victims of this hurricane tragedy are artistically dissected and posed in lifelike educational exhibits.  See a body's muscles as they ripple from the exertion of running away from a breaking levee.  See a cross-section of a drowning victim's lung to see how much water it can hold before death. Examine the impact of alcohol on a liver of a drunk homeless person. It's a moving and educational experience!

This exhibit does not exist, thankfully, not because there aren't unclaimed victims of Katrina.  There are still about 100 unclaimed Katrina victims that are still refrigerated, awaiting burial.  It does not exist because of the staggering outcry an exhibition like this would bring.  The public would collectively say that showing the dead in this manner is undignified and against the customs of all cultures.

Since the dawn of time, humankind has always treated the dead with respect.  This respect is so important that the breaking of this is taboo, a shocking and horrific deed.  The imagery of an American soldier being dragged through the streets or a body of a young black man hung from a tree is unbearable and has mobilized people into action to change the course of history.

Add race or religion to this mix and you'd have a total inferno.  Just the thought of displaying twenty dead African African-Americans without their consent is unfathomable.  How about twenty dissected and unclaimed Jews? How would you feel?  How about twenty Chinese?

Wait. Twenty Chinese?  Twenty Chinese on display without their consent.

Where's the outrage?

Bodies: the Exhibition, opening February 1, 2008 at Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, is just such an exhibition.

Preserved and dissected Chinese bodies are being put on display without their consent. Premier Exhibitions, Inc. chief medical advisor, Dr. Roy Glover, states in a letter to the Columbus Dispatch September 24, 2007:

"We have legal documentation and representation that confirms that only the bodies of people who are deceased from natural causes have been included in the exhibition and have been acquired by legal means with the highest of ethical standards."

It is standard practice not only throughout Asia but also here in the United States for unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to medical schools for education, the core of our exhibition."

(bold text- my emphasis)

If you died today, would you volunteer to be stripped of your skin, pumped up with liquid plastic, cut up, and posed in a museum display?  Maybe, yes, maybe no. But at least that would be YOUR choice.  By using "unclaimed and unidentified bodies" Premier Exhibitions, Inc. clearly does not get consent from the dead.  These bodies are condemned to a lifetime of traveling to shopping malls in the name of "education" as part of this freakish sideshow. 

Premier Exhibitions, Inc. states that it's common for "unclaimed and unidentified bodies to be offered to medical schools for education".  But before Premier Exhibitions, Inc. brought this show to "educate" the masses in Cincinnati, this show had traveled to these noted centers of higher learning:

Las Vegas: Tropicana Resort & Casino
New York, South Street Seaport (Dining & Entertainment Center)
San Diego, University Towne Center (Mall)
Columbus, OH, Easton Market (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Framingham, MA (Mall- Exhibit in was in a closed CompUSA)
Durham, NC, Streets at Southpoint (Mall)

Shopping malls and a casino.  If you donated your body to science, would you expect it to be seen at a casino? 

Let's be clear that this is a for profit show. Premier Exhibitions, Inc. is a publicly traded company with shareholders to answer to. The Cincinnati Museum Center believes this exhibit combined with the previous Pirates exhibit will create the "busiest 12 months in Museum Center history."  Traveling exhibitions like this are big business in the same tradition as carnivals and freakshows of the 19th century.  Bodies, the Exhibition is now one of a number of competing traveling exhibitions in the country.

Museums with higher ethical standards will not allow exhibits such as this. The City of San Francisco has already banned this type of exhibition and the State of Washington has a law in the works that would do the same.

Showcasing the deceased in this manner without their permission is wrong.  Charging money and profiting from unclaimed bodies is even worse.  Is it not our duty as humanity to care for those who are less fortunate?  I think one of the saddest things is to leave this world alone and to have no one to mourn or even to remember you.  Instead of giving dignity, respect, or even pity, we've turned these unfortunate souls into museum displays to roam our country for profit as property for their owners.

Consent is critical.  If consent doesn't matter then we'd be harvesting organs from all the dead to save the living.

It is educational, but the Nazi's experimented on Jews in the name of education.  That's not right .

Ethics are important not some thing to be skirted.

Let's end this now and take a stand here in Cincinnati and let the world know that it is not right and not ethical to show unclaimed bodies without their informed consent.  That it is wrong to show the dead for profit.  We are better than this, as Cincinnatians, as Americans, as humanity.

Boycott Bodies the Exhibition Cincinnati website

Resources and more information:

News and Opinion
SeattlePI.com: If only these bodies could talk
NYTimes: China Turns Out Mummified Bodies for Displays
The Epoch Times: 'BODIES . . . The Exhibit' is Gruesome Show of Unidentified Dead
NYTimes: Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste
SeattlePI.com: Education or freak show? 'Bodies ... The Exhibition' cashes in on our own curiosity
Pittsburgh Post Gazette: China 'Bodies' exhibit raises hackles here
RedOrbit: Museum Plans to Open Corpse Show in Fla.
SeattlePI.com: $10,000 reward posted to find who stole kidney from display
SeattlePI.com: First Person: Exploiting the poor beyond death

Cincinnati specific articles
From WCPO.com: Bodies ...The Exhibition Draws Criticism (VIDEO)
From WCPO.com: Bodies ...The Exhibition Draws Criticism (Story)
Cincinnati Enquirer: Archbishop says no to 'Bodies' exhibit
Cincinnati Enquirer: 'Bodies' exhibits troubling ethical issues
Cincinnati Enquirer: Exhibit to show real bodies
DocGrubb's opinion piece
Cincinnati Enquirer: Bizarre 'Bodies' left me queasy

Protest and Information Sites
Stop Body Worlds and other exhibits of plasticized bodies
The Anti-BODIES Virtual Protest Site
No Bodies 4 Profit
seattlechatclub.org: The Mystery of the Crying Cadavers