Daily Archives: May 15, 2006

Is United Airlines bailing out on Chicago?

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UAL-logo14.gifLong-suffering United Airlines’ first quarter of operations after emergence from its three-year hike through chapter 11 was not particularly impressive. The Chicago-based carrier reported a loss of $306 million (excluding a one-time, emergence-from-chapter 11 accounting gain) that compared with a net loss of $302 million a year earlier (also excluding reorganization items). Revenue for the quarter rose 14% to $4.47 billion from $3.92 billion a year earlier.
Despite that desultory performance, United is already playing the professional sports franchise game of threatening to move its long-time Chicago-area headquarters to friendlier (and presumably better subsidized) environs, such as Denver. Although one is tempted to suggest that Chicago might be better off by saying “good riddance” to the troubled airline, late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien observed late last week that Chicago really doesn’t have much to worry about:

“United Airlines might be leaving the city of Chicago. The good news is that they will be leaving from O’Hare so they will not depart for another six years.”

A new way of training a Triple Crown champ?

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Barbaro.jpgKentucky Derby winner Barbaro is the latest hope to become the first winner of horseracing’s Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978. If he does, this NY Sunday Times article reports that the unusual training regimen that his owners have adopted for Barbaro may harken a new standard in training 3-year-olds for the demanding trio of races:

[Barbaro trainer Michael] Matz says he thinks he can succeed where six horses in the last nine years, from Silver Charm to Smarty Jones, failed after coming so close to horse racing immortality. He has thrown out a regimen that has been regarded by trainers as commandments etched in stone, opting instead for a new schedule, forged by his own personal setback and inspired by a brilliant colt.
While most trainers organize training to maximize fitness and build race readiness, Mr. Matz has given Barbaro an unusual amount of rest between races in his budding career. Trainers usually prefer to have their horses experienced in having dirt kicked in their face, maneuvering through crowded fields and reacting to adversity before they run in the Triple Crown races, beyond being in shape.
Barbaro, though, ran only five times before winning the Derby, and started his career only when Mr. Matz decided he was ready, in October, relatively late for a horse with Triple Crown ambitions. [. . .]

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Posner on domestic intelligence

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posner6.jpgSeventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner has carved out a niche as an expert on intelligence issues (see previous posts here and here), and his new book on intelligence issues — Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform ( Rowman & Littlefield 2006) — will be published next week.
In this Opinion Journal op-ed, Judge Posner notes that the Bush Administration continues to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic by burying domestic intelligence operations in the FBI, which is a criminal-investigation agency, rather than a domestic intelligence agency that is focused on intelligence gathering:

[B]urying our principal assets for detecting terrorist plots that unfold within the U.S. in a criminal-investigation agency–the FBI–is unsound. We are the only major country that does this. The U.K.’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, works closely with Scotland Yard, Britain’s counterpart to the FBI. But it is not part of Scotland Yard.

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