If the USPS, UPS, FedEx, et al. all charge for their services based on weight, why don't the airlines?

Check out this interesting report:

America's growing waistlines are hurting the bottom lines of airline companies as the extra pounds on passengers are causing a drag on planes. Heavier fliers have created heftier fuel costs, according to the government study.

Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight of Americans, the federal agency estimated in a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

...

The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide were released into the air, according to the study.

And that's just for one year!

Check out the full story at Feds: Obesity Raising Airline Fuel Costs.




And in other news... my new panorama camera and lens have arrived and I've been figuring out how to use them effectively. I'm very excited by this, especially being able to shoot panoramas as fast as I can pull the trigger.

The Nikon D70 is a digital SLR camera with no lens to push out when it's turned on, which means it's instantly ready to shoot. Also, it has a huge buffer so I can hold down the shutter and have it go click-click-click-click-click ad nauseum.

It may turn out better panoramas than the Panoscan, but I'm not sure yet. The images are not nearly as sharp, however some people have given me some hints about making them better in Photoshop, so we'll see. It might also be possible to buy a better lens to help that.

Yesterday I shot a hand-held pano in just a few seconds, ran it through a stitcher program and got decent results. Not perfect, but not bad at all for my very first attempt without a tripod!