The Daily Parker

Three projects and a head cold have robbed me of time and energy this week. I've only got a few minutes this afternoon to list some of the more interesting things I've read in the past day:

• Andrew Sullivan had two back-to-back posts this morning looking at Obama's strategy at the Democratic Convention and admiring him as a Tory leader for America.
• Ta-Nahesi Coates dug into Obama's role as a post-racial figure and how he stumbled over Trayvon Martin.
• Jared Bernstein wrote last week on whether Americans really do want smaller government, as did former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.
• The Economist summarized how airlines screwed themselves by trying to screw travel agents. (Being the Economist, they put it more politely.)

OK, back to the mines...

From the annals of "why didn't I think of that?", an app that keeps track of where you've been so you can go somewhere else instead:

[Art student Tom] Loois’s final project ended up being a smartphone app called BlankWays, which charts your progress through the city, noting which paths you’ve come down before and suggesting itineraries to cover new ground. The app indicates and measures which parts of the city you’ve traveled, and which you haven't.

Loois isn’t the first person to meticulously chart his travel through the city. There’s a guy in New York who has made it his goal to walk every single block in the five boroughs. (It’s supposed to take him two years.) And technology corporations like Google and Apple regularly keep track of their clients’ movements. But Loois’ app will make it easy for everyone to do so, on a street by street scale, just for fun. He claims that he's not consistently late as a result of the detours, but we're not so sure - filling in those white spaces looks like it could become an obsession.

This also explains why people with Asperger's will take over the world soon...

It just never gets old:

Yesterday I showed Alfonso Soriano stealing third. Here's the result:

Man, those were great seats. $80 at Petco; $251 at Wrigley; $450 at New Yankee.

My last one this morning is the last one I took of Petco Park:

Now if only the Cubs had won...

The 30-Park Geas took me to Petco Park last night, where the 4th-place Padres beat the 4th-place Cubs:

I thought the park was OK. Like some of the other 21st-century parks, it seemed to lack character. It felt more corporate than, say, Camden Yards or even AT&T Park. The fans seemed to agree, as only about 27,000 showed up (out of a capacity of over 42,000.

But the lack of demand for seats let me get an 8th-row field box for under $80. And that, in turn, let me get photos like this one of Alfonso Soriano stealing 3rd:

Or this one of Travis Wood pitching:

I'm now up the coast, at my folks' house. More photos tomorrow.

I'm in San Diego for tonight's Cubs game. Both teams are near the bottom of their divisions, and both have had solid losing streaks lately, so this should be a fascinating game.

While here, I took the advice of one of my oldest-surviving friends—really, she'd inflict violence if I said how long we've known each other—and went over to Coronado for lunch at Alexander's Pizza. Good advice; it was one of the best slices of pie I've had in years.

Coming back, I couldn't help notice this passing by:

That is littorally huge an amphibious transport dock, the USS Green Bay, designed to carry a battalion of 800 marines hither and yon. Apparently it's heading home, to Naval Base San Diego.

Via Gulliver, airlines earned $22.6 bn from ancillary fees in 2011 (pdf), up 66% from 2009:

Once largely limited to low fare airlines, ancillary revenue is now a priority for many airlines worldwide, and the Review announced today shows how far the industry’s approach to ancillary revenue has developed in recent years.

Jay Sorensen, President of IdeaWorksCompany, says: “Our first report into ancillary revenue was issued in 2007, when only 23 airlines worldwide disclosed ancillary revenue activity in financial filings, and the result was a modest €1.72 billion ($2.45 billion). Four years later, 50 airlines today disclose ancillary revenue activity of €18.23 billion ($22.6 billion). It’s clear that airlines recognize the importance of ancillary revenue and are developing increasingly innovative ways to generate this.”

"Increasingly innovative." Nice. Anyone remember this ditty from Fascinating Aida, which now applies as much to United as it did to Ryanair?

Despite the obviousness of USAirways acquiring it as American Airlines' only hope for survival, apparently some AMR executives are having a Walter Mitty moment:

A source familiar with the situation said AMR sees itself as an acquirer in potential mergers and at least five airlines -- US Airways Group Inc., JetBlue Airways Corp, Alaska Air Group, Republic Airways' Frontier Airlines, and Virgin America -- will be considered.

American has faced mounting pressure from vocal members of its creditors committee, led by its largest labor unions, who have argued that a merger with US Airways would give the combined carrier a strong network to compete with rivals beefed up by their own mergers. US Airways has expressed interest in a merger and has been courting AMR's creditors.

The problem, one will see immediately, is that AMR doesn't have the resources to take over another airline. And the ones they listed are regional, medium-sized, or discount airlines, not at all likely to help American get out of bankruptcy. Virgin just has to be a joke, of course. Not that there haven't been mergers between Americans and Virgins in the past—I just don't think Richard Branson will put out for Tom Horton in the near future.

Possibly this is just posturing by AMR executives. I hope so. Because if not, USAirways won't buy American, and American will die, and I'll have to fly United. And that would really suck.

Last week the California senate voted 21-16 vote to approve $8 bn in funding for a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Naturally there will be some privateering and incompetence, because this is America:

Until the end of last year, SNCF, the developer of one of the world's most successful high-speed rail systems, proposed that the state use competitive bidding to partner with it or another foreign operator rather than rely on construction engineers to design a sophisticated network for 200-mph trains.

The approach, the French company said, would help the California High-Speed Rail Authority identify a profitable route, hold down building costs, develop realistic ridership forecasts and attract private investors — a requirement of a $9-billion bond measure approved by voters in 2008.

But SNCF couldn't get its ideas — including considering a more direct north-south route along the Central Valley's Interstate 5 corridor — out of the station.

Instead, the rail authority continued to concentrate planning in the hands of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a giant New York City-based engineering and construction management firm. Although they have occasionally consulted with high-speed railways, officials decided that hiring an experienced operator and seeking private investors would have to wait until after the $68-billion system was partially built.

But whenever it gets going, the data seem pretty clear: it will hurt the airlines even while getting more Californians traveling:

Earlier this year a pair of Dutch researchers analyzed the passenger market between London and Paris in recent years and found that high-speed rail has been far and away the dominant travel choice in the corridor. Using these findings, they extrapolated that if California's train can make the full trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about 3 hours, it will capture roughly a third of business travelers and about 40 percent of the leisure market.

A more recent study, set for publication in the September issue of the journal Transport Policy, suggests that high-speed rail will not only cut into the air market but actually create its own travel demand. The researchers found that more total travelers — air and rail together — existed in various corridors after high-speed rail service began in the country. That means either people saw the service and decided to take trips they otherwise wouldn't have or they shifted from driving to train-riding. The former would be great for California's economy; the latter, a relief to its congested highways.

The change was particularly pronounced in the Barcelona-Madrid corridor. Here the researchers estimate an additional 394,000 travelers in the post-bullet train era — an 8 percent rise from earlier times. That's a good sign for California. The Barcelona-Madrid trip is relatively equidistant to Los Angeles-San Francisco: 314 miles to 348 miles as the crow flies, respectively. The travel time by rail is also comparable, in the neighborhood of 3 hours in each case.

The study also found that opening the Chunnel has shifted travel patterns between the UK and the Continent, getting more people traveling even as fewer people fly.

So who's really behind the opposition to HSR? Can't guess.

Before Saturday's game at Citi Field, I wandered around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the 1939 World's Fair (and an alien spaceship crash in 1997):

About two dozen kids played in the fountain and in the spray blown off it:

(The post title comes by way of Aimee Mann.)