Spending time at the Dallas-Fort-Worth Airport (DFW)

I spent the afternoon at Dallas-Fort-Worth Airport, unsuccessfully trying to get on a standby flight, then waiting for my originally scheduled flight. While I waited, I walked about, amazed at the size of the airport. The airport stretches as far as the eye can see. Gazing out of the terminal, you can see several control towers in the distance. A woman at the information booth told me that DFW covers more ground than Manhattan. I had a difficult time believing it, but it turns out that it's true. I learned here that DFW covers more than 29.8 square miles (18,076 acres), whereas Manhattan covers only 22.96 square miles. The airport is so big, that it is necessary to travel between terminals on an elaborate tram system ("Skylink" covers a 5-mile route at speeds of up to 35 mph). The vast grounds of DFW are lone-star-attitudeoverwhelming, but so is the interior. It's an entire city, staffed with 60,000 employees. There must be hundreds of restaurants and stores. Including this one, called "Lone Star Attitude." I noticed this store because I sat across from it waiting for my standby flight. It was a bit creepy, looking at the cows dressed up in human clothes. I think I'll get over it, but I did wonder whether this was an effective form of marketing. Perhaps only in Texas. cow-mannequins [Photos by Erich Vieth]

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Don’t buy Girl Scout cookies

Today, an acquaintance (I’ll call her “Laura”) asked me if I would buy some Girl Scout cookies from her daughter’s troop. I told her “No thank you.” 

It’s not that I don’t enjoy eating Girl Scout cookies (I do enjoy Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies).   It’s not that I generally oppose the activities of Girl Scouts.  I approve of much of what Girl Scouts do. 

Here’s what triggered this post. Laura told me that the average box of cookies sells for three dollars and that the average profit for each box of cookies is only fifty cents.  Hmmmm. 

Therefore, I can support their Girl Scouts to the same extent by handing $5 directly to the local troop or by buying $30 worth of cookies.  Unless you think that eating cookies is an especially good thing, it makes much more sense to simply hand the local troop $5.  Then again, eating cookies, especially a lot of cookies, is not a good thing.  Cookies consist largely of refined carbohydrates and sugars.  These are exactly the kinds of ingredients that invite obesity.  Are the Girl Scouts concerned about obesity?  Very much so (so am I), yet they continue to rely on cookie sales to fund their activities.

But let’s go back to the money for a moment.  If you click here, you can see it stated that “all of the revenue” from cookie sales “stays with the local Girl Scout council that sponsors the sale.”  The official site carefully …

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