Posted on: Saturday, December 6, 2008
go! isn't feeling much aloha
By David Shapiro
While we await the arrival of Santa and Barack Obama, there's still plenty of fodder for a "flASHback" on the week's news that amused and confused:
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lloyd King is outraged that go! airlines wants to change its name to Aloha. I don't blame him. It's like the Big Bad Wolf changing his name to Grandma.
Local Democrats will hold a VIP gala to celebrate Obama's inauguration, and the dress is "island elegant." For men, that means T-shirts with tuxedos printed on, and for women, tank tops that say, "Proud to be Awesome."
Visitors are touring the Honolulu school Obama attended, the condo he lived in, the ice cream parlor he scooped for and the hospital where conspiracists say he wasn't born. Nothing funny yet, but the nasty e-mails I'll get from conspiracists will be.
A California company is proposing a $1 billion network of battery stations to charge electric cars in Hawai'i. Costco will amp up your ride for only $750 million if you don't mind waiting in long lines.
Convicted child molester Frank Lefrandt Jr. fled to avoid prison just as child sex offender Michael Andrew Stephens was captured in Mexico after 15 years on the lam. This isn't how we want to balance our exports and imports.
A national report gave Hawai'i a C-minus in preparing high school students for college. We'd do better if they weren't so picky about reading, math and science.
A travel survey picked Hawai'i as the top dream escape, ahead of London, Paris, Aruba, New York City, Las Vegas, Jamaica, Rome, the Bahamas and Tahiti. If dreams were airplane tickets, our economy would soar.
The University of Hawai'i-Hilo hopes to become a research center for NASA missions to the moon because of the island's lunar-like landscape. And they've got plenty of pakalolo to negate the effects of gravity.
HMSA has a new way for patients to consult with doctors by computer. That's definitely how I'm getting my next prostate exam.
June Jones finished a 1-11 season at SMU with a 28-12 loss to Southern Miss while the rebuilding UH Warriors claimed a bowl berth without him. You know what they say in Texas — big hat, no cattle.
And the quote of the week ... from Prosecutor Peter Carlisle on how people are drinking at home instead of going to bars in the bad economy: "It leads to less carnage on the highways, but can lead to more carnage on the domestic environment." Carnage was always market neutral.
Reach David Shapiro at dave@volcanicash.net.
