Our friend Jim, whom you might know as author James Finn Garner (Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Recut Madness), offers a most interesting idea. He writes:

I got on a crowded elevator at Northwestern Hospital. As everyone entered, they had to stop and check to see if their floor had been pressed already, but no one could really see anyway, because there were too many people and they all had to cram in to block the panel. This created a logjam, and more confusion, which created a bigger logjam.

Now, watch Otis run away with my idea.

Jim, who had absolutely nothing to do with the video (’Elevator,” by the rapper Florida), is also the creator of the baseball poetry site, Bardball.com and has his own terrific Blog.

As most everyone knows, American Airlines recently announced that it will soon begin charging most passengers $15 for their first piece of checked luggage and $25 for their second piece. Other airlines may soon follow American’s lead. This move has been triggered by the high cost of fuel.

The heavier the plane, the more fuel necessary to carry it from Point A to Point B. Thus, there is a certain logic to attaching a fee to something that adds weight to the aircraft. But is it fair to focus solely on the weight of the checked luggage?

Ampolo has a better, er different idea. If weight is the issue, why not charge each passenger by the pound? The PPP (Pounds Per Passenger) fee would be the sum of the passenger’s body weight, carry-on bag(s), and checked luggage. This is not only fair, it provides incentives to reduce one’s own weight in addition to the weight of one’s luggage. Call it the “Lighter than Air Diet.” (The airlines have already started us on this diet by eliminating meals.)

Of course there is a more obvious solution to the airline crisis. The highly profitable oil companies should buy the struggling airlines. Our guess is that the purchase price would be attractive. Certainly the cost of fuel would be dramatically reduced as the company sold its own jet fuel to itself.

Speaking of travel, here’s a brief video from Japan to transport you to the weekend.

Have a great weekend, and if you have any thoughts on airlines and luggage or airline service and/or ticket prices, please comment below.

Although it might be hard to believe, Mr. and Mrs. Ampolo have non-Ampolo occupations, avocations, and hobbies. It’s Mrs. Ampolo here today, and I want to share something I discovered during one of my offline adventures over the weekend.

As author of a mystery series (you can check out my website to learn more about that) where my amateur detective, Jane Wheel, works as an antiques picker/junk dealer, I often do research on the weekends. That research consists of attending garage sales, conducted house sales, etc.—anywhere an abandoned object might offer a story or a bad guy might rummage for a murder weapon.

At this weekend’s sale, I picked up an old dictionary—I can never resist vintage reference books. A 1946 “Modern Webster Dictionary and Word Book” with a disclaimer that it is not related to “Webster’s Dictionary”, published by the Haskin Service, Washington, D.C. it has some delightful features. In addition to the A to Z business of a regular dictionary, it features “new words” entering the mainstream. Boondoggle, Fascism, Jitterbug, Reich, Robot and Wirephoto are a few that show how representative a time capsule vocabulary can be. Also, and even more intriguing, I think, is a section in the back which covers the most beautiful words and the ugliest words. Just the subjective nature of such a section in a reference book is something to ponder and relish.

Here are the words they consider beautiful: Melody, Eloquence, Modesty, Honor, Heaven, Hope, Purity, Splendor, Virtue, Faith, Nobility, Love, Harmony, Adoration, Innocence, Joy, Sympathy, Divine, Happiness.

And the ugliest words of 1946? Jazz, plump, gripe, treachery, sap, cacophony, plutocrat, flatulent, phlegmatic, nasty, victuals, and fetch.

This, of course, begs today’s question. For the Ampolo lexicon of 2008, what words would you include as most beautiful and ugliest in the English language?

For most beautiful, I would vote for peace, lily-of-the-valley, and murmuring.

Ugliest? Well, I don’t even like to type the words I find gross.

Henry James opined: “Summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

How about you? One word or two. Most beautiful or ugliest. Please share.

On this Memorial Day, we thought it appropriate to tell you about two excellent not-for-profit organizations dedicated to veterans and servicemen and women on active duty and their families. There are, obviously, a legion of similar worthy organizations that can be found via Google or Charity Navigator by typing in select keywords. Whatever your position on our military involvement abroad, these organizations can always use your support.

*The Fisher House Foundation
Fisher House offers several services, but is best known for being a kind of Ronald McDonald House for the families of wounded soldiers. The program is a unique private-public partnership that supports America’s military in their time of need. The program recognizes the special sacrifices of our men and women in uniform and the hardships of military service by meeting a humanitarian need beyond that normally provided by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. There is at least one Fisher House at every major military medical center to assist families in need and to ensure that they are provided with the comforts of home in a supportive environment. Annually, the Fisher House program serves more than 10,000 families, and have made available nearly 2.5 million days of lodging to family members since the program originated in 1990. Here is a brief video:

*Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America
Founded in June 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) Is the nation’s first and largest group dedicated to the Troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those Troops and Veterans.IAVA’s mission is to improve the lives of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families.More than 1.5 million American troops have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, and thousands have been deployed multiple times. IAVA addresses critical issues facing new veterans and their families, including mental health, Traumatic Brain Injury, a stretched VA system, inadequate health coverage for national guardsmen and reservists, and outdated GI Bill educational benefits. IAVA is dedicated to educating the public about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, advocating on behalf of those who have served, and fostering a community for troops, veterans, and their families.

You may have seen IAVA director Paul Rieckhoff on the PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer or MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Here’s a brief video about IAVA’s work.

In his Wednesday column, “Imbalances of Power,” the New York Times‘ Tom Friedman wrote:

More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned on this administration is not the failure to make Iraq work, as devastating as that has been. It will be one with much broader balance-of-power implications — the failure after 9/11 to put in place an effective energy policy.

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

We at Ampolo don’t want to be too long-winded here, but, as the following short video that we particularly like makes clear, there are alternatives to oil. The video also shows that creativity itself has tremendous power when harnessed in this fashion. (Don’t be put off by the narrator’s foreign accent. It only takes a few seconds to understand him.)

Our thanks to Seth Stevenson of the online magazine Slate for drawing our attention to this in his recent feature on the Clio Awards for best commercials of 2008.

We don’t want to spoil the video for you, but if it moves you to want to know more about the subject, come back and click on website 1 or website 2.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend. Drive safely…and at 55 m.p.h. on the highway.

And if you have the energy, send us a comment.