The United Airline assault on a passenger is just another symptom of authoritarianism

[hunter]

58. My wife and I once got stuck at O'Hare with a kid in diapers.

When you run out of diapers and clean clothes for your kid, and your luggage is god-knows-where, then you start to get a little desperate.

There's only so much you can do with an airport sink and paper towels.

I felt sorry for our fellow travelers once we were on planes, three in all, taking an absurdly convoluted path to Los Angeles. We really did stink, and our kid was very cranky and gassy too.

I noticed something shopping at Ikea recently... They have complimentary disposable diapers in their restrooms. That would have helped quite a bit.

I hate flying, and it's even worse now because the seats I can afford are so close together that my knees hit the seat in front of me. I can either leave my feet dangling, the passenger in front of me thinking I'm kicking the seat on purpose, or sit sort of sideways legs intruding on the aisle or someone's personal space, or very worst of both, "man-spreading." Whatever I do, nobody else is happy.

Just as bad, I have some phobias about flying. I don't like being trapped in a pressurized cigar tube 30,000 feet above the earth. With all civilized forms of transport you can open the windows.

When I was a kid we traveled from Los Angeles to Europe, first on train, then on ship. That was awesome, you really get a sense of the scale of this good Earth.

Airliners are isolating.