So, let’s review the bidding.
- You and your friend are flying to Myrtle Beach to do some golfing. Sounds like fun; have a good time!
- Oops! Your regular carrier cancels your flight! Well, that’s all right: they get you a flight on another airline. So, you fly off…
- …and your plane promptly loses both engines because of a flock of what were likely geese*. And, oh, look, there’s the Hudson River.
- Fortunately, your captain today is Chesley B. Sullenberger III, who proceeds to demonstrate that he’s just that good. So you manage to actually walk away from a forced water landing in the middle of winter. Don’t buy any more lottery tickets, by the way - and look both ways while crossing the street from now on. You’ve used up your quota of luck for a while.
- All of this means that you never actually make it to Myrtle Beach.
- And so, when you eventually get around to calling your original carrier to cancel your return trip, guess what happens?
That’s right! Spirit Airlines charges you a $90 cancellation fee! See also here.
(pause)
You know, in some cultures the response to this would be to lock the customer service representative in a room with a gun and expect him to do the honorable thing. I’m not saying that this is the right solution - but it’s probably the one that Spirit Airlines might end up wishing that it could pursue…
Crossposted at Moe Lane.
*Just thought that I’d point out to all of my readers on the East Coast that the Canada geese population is back at a level that would sustain some hunting. Just pointing that out.
It's just policy.
phxg Monday, January 19th at 2:08PM EST (link)It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
Not exactly good optics, there
Reaper0Bot0 (formerly Han_Pritcher) Monday, January 19th at 2:21PM EST (link)But, in fairness, that probably is there policy. They’ll probably get their money, though at the cost of pissing off some people. I doubt it’ll be worth it.
Oh, btw Moe, you DID hear that the Hollywood is about to make a film version of The Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Do we really know how bad this is gonna suck? My money is on Gary Busey as Hari Seldon and Carrot Top as Gaal Dornick. Seems par for the course.
I’m a lying troll.
Dare I say "par for the course"??
From ME to You Monday, January 19th at 2:50PM EST (link)Unfortunately the low level employee probably does not have the authority to waive the fee! With the resultant negative publicity Spirit Airlines will have to to some fancy “tap dancing” to blunt the effect on the bottom line!
RE: Foundation movie…I agree…this movie will rot! It will be turned into a leftist diatribe showing how “superior” leftist ideals are and how “evil” conservatives are trying to take over the world.
If they made it a trilogy...
Moe Lane Monday, January 19th at 3:01PM EST (link)…no, it would still suck that way; the story doesn’t really lend itself to popcorn cinema. This is something that cries out for a BBC miniseries format, or maybe Sci-Fi: with the latter, you’d get all the B-listers who’d throw their heart into it because they’re doing ASIMOV’S FOUNDATION TRILOGY. But that won’t happen.
Oh, heck, give it to Michael Bay and at least we’ll get some pretty explosions out of it.
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Psychohistory will make it great. That, and robots.
phxg Monday, January 19th at 3:06PM EST (link)nt
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
I take it that you didn't see "I, Robot."
Moe Lane Monday, January 19th at 3:12PM EST (link)My wife refuses utterly to see that film, mostly because she’s a roboticist herself.
She gave full points to the robots in Sky Captain, though.
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After Bicentennial Man, I won't get NEAR I, Robot (nt)
Neil Stevens Monday, January 19th at 3:13PM EST (link)Want to run for conservatives? Give.
There Is No Crisis
Hell yes I watched it. Multiple times and sober to boot.
phxg Monday, January 19th at 3:22PM EST (link)So few movies are great anymore that my level of tolerance to the changes and mutations of the original idea has become quite low.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
foundation series is a weird one
LJ "Beaglescout" Miller Monday, January 19th at 3:44PM EST (link)If you think about the books for a while you realize that the whole purpose of the foundation people is to bring the shattered pieces of empire back under the benevolent oversight of the central nanny state. The nanny state provides everything that people “need.” There is no marketplace. There are no new inventions except those thought up by government projects. It’s a statist vision of the future that repels me, even as the story itself tries to convince me I’d like it.
“Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.”
I've read the series multiple times and...
rocketeer Monday, January 19th at 4:18PM EST (link)I think your assessment is half-right, and the half you are right about is scarier than you said.
There is lots of innovation in the galaxy, but only in the apparently wild-west that constitutes the Foundation. In the ancient Empire there is stasis, and there is only what amounts to superstition outside of both.
As the series rounds to the book Second Foundation, you see a touch of magic (mind control) of a freak known as “the Mule”, and that the universe really *is* controlled by elites, a sort-of battle of mind control powers. Benevolent, godlike of course. The nannies don’t want your economics. They want you to be transformed (Hmm, what did Michelle O say that Obama was going to demand from you?), and if you get too close to knowing the truth you get mind wiped.
By the time he wrote Second Foundation Asimov wanted to kill the series but his editors wouldn’t let him. In the 70s/80s he decided to meld the robot novel series and the Foundation series so that there was a third power, a Gaia (bringing science, religion and magic together in one whoop-de-do). Eventually Gaia wins, so that the galaxy can be safe from invasion from other galaxies.
Asimov is and was a good writer, but this plot wrapup by him is lame. Perhaps this great atheist became religious later in his life but wouldn’t acknowledge anyone else’s ideas. But I digress into my own opinions here.
Where the series touches on innovation, it is to say that technological advance occurs only outside of the failing Galactic Empire.
–
Never buy a dog and bark for yourself: ‘Slippery’ Jim DiGriz
Moe is right!!!
From ME to You Monday, January 19th at 3:15PM EST (link)The scope of any one book of the Foundation Trilogy goes beyond anything a single film could adequately cover.
A Sci-Fi venture would get my vote because I think their technical production values would be better than the BBC’s but I think the BBC (apart from their strange accent) would beget better script writing.
(EOT)
I wouldn't be surprised at Morgan Freeman as Seldon
Neil Stevens Monday, January 19th at 3:13PM EST (link)I’d love Michael Keaton as Salvor Hardin, making trouble for all those pesky Encyclopedists. But does he even do movies anymore?
Now who’d be a good Mule?
Oh, and Natalie Portman as Bliss, please.
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Freedman as Seldon, yeah.
Moe Lane Monday, January 19th at 3:18PM EST (link)Voice of God, and all that.
I want to say Ed Norton as the Mule, but maybe Johnny Dep?
Heh. Tim Burton doing the Foundation movies.
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Danny Elfman as the Mule! (nt)
Neil Stevens Monday, January 19th at 3:20PM EST (link)Want to run for conservatives? Give.
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It's a musical role after all (nt)
Neil Stevens Monday, January 19th at 3:21PM EST (link)Want to run for conservatives? Give.
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We're probably threadjacking.
Moe Lane Monday, January 19th at 3:42PM EST (link)I’ve started a new thread about this all the way over here.
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Ben Kingsly as Seldon
phxg Monday, January 19th at 3:26PM EST (link)Josh Hartnett for the Mule.
I may just need to see Lucky Number Slevin tonite.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
I like Ben Kingsley
Neil Stevens Monday, January 19th at 3:27PM EST (link)He was actually my first thought for the Mule, but yeah he’d be a good Seldon too.
I’m hindered by being well detached from Hollywood and not even knowing who the active actors are these days, heh.
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Same here. My current CoD World at War addiction is severe. nt
phxg Monday, January 19th at 3:34PM EST (link)It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. –Aristotle
These are the people that voted for Obama
jeffstone Monday, January 19th at 2:28PM EST (link)Apparently these people cannot think.
Flight 1549 has been on every news channel and every non-news channel’s newsbreaks.
But, you have to be able to think, to think that there is only one Flight 1549. Let alone to think that charging anyone that was aboard for anything is a bad idea.
Spirit Airlines???
Lamplighter331 Monday, January 19th at 2:48PM EST (link)Who the BLEEP (thank you Governor Blago) is Spirit Airlines?
Moe,
Let’s look on the bright side, maybe they refunded the bag fee.
“We make war that we may live in peace.”
–Aristotle–
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
—George Orwell—
It's Simple - This Airline Will Go Out of Business Over This (nt)
IJB Monday, January 19th at 3:29PM EST (link)You heard it here first.