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Delta Airlines 1800-299-7264 Flight Change Policy

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

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Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

…e airport we learned that our savvier co-passengers had already filled the Delta flight that was our only alternative. I assumed that the system would somehow take care of us—we had paid good money and followed every rule—until our travel agent called with frantic instructions: “You must make this connection. Bribe two Delta passengers! Pay them each $500 for their seat!” A Delta representative sincerely apologized: they couldn’t facilitate briber…

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Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

…. The common claim that hell has been on the outs in America since at least 1800 is simply untrue. If anything, 1800 represented a turning point in the other direction. The idea of universal salvation had appealed to both elites like Chauncy and common folk in the late-1700s. The promise that all humans would eventually be saved represented an extreme backlash against the dominant Calvinist notion that God chose only some for heaven. Universal sal…

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Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

…omen have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppression? As far as who feels marginalized in the specific context of a typical commercial flight, consider that separation of sexes is far more common in traditional religious environments. Doe…

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Hajj Journal: The Journey Begins and Ends

…act, several Africans were in their native dress. Okay, so maybe they will change on the plane. Well, about four and a half hours into the flight, they announce over the speaker that we will be passing over the mikat in about five minutes. How cool is that? Well, I thought it was cool and that some of these guys would be rushing to the toilet. But no, not one single soul changed outwardly. Disembarking from the plane onto waiting buses, we are soo…

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Everything Was Better When We Had God In Our Schools

…rsity freshman James Heer grabbed a .45 caliber handgun from the room of a Delta Tau Delta fraternity brother and shot and killed his fraternity brother Jack McKeown, 21, an Ohio State senior. 1950s • July 22, 1950, New York City, New York. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the wrist and abdomen at the Public School 141 dance during an argument with a former classmate. • November 27, 1951, New York City, New York. David Brooks, a 15-year-old student,…

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Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us

…d gathering—on his way to a lurching belly-flop in an adjoining field. But Flight, like most of the other religiously-themed scripts to which Washington agrees to lend his star power, is no Kirk Cameron morality play. As in The Book of Eli, in which Washington played a post-apocalyptic loner who creates a trail of gore during a violent spiritual pursuit of the lone remaining copy of the Bible, the celluloid preaching in Flight is rated R. In addit…

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What Does a Moral Economy Look Like for the 99 Percent?

…y left the airport and began marching a mile to the headquarters of Alaska Airlines. I think the photo does a great job of embodying the energy of the budding movement—clergy and workers from a diversity of backgrounds and faiths. To me, the picture reinforces a key argument of the book: this is a moral fight. For nine months leading up to the rally, organizers had been meeting people at the airport and in the community, coaxing them to take on an…

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Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

A few years back, Chris Rock dropped a nice spoken word ditty called No Sex in the Champagne Room. I am 100% sure Father David Dueppen, a priest in Miami, Florida, has never heard it. Why? Because not only did he spend $1800 dollars in the champagne room of a club called Porky’s, but he also had a sexual relationship with the stripper he spent the money on, Beatrice Hernandez. And if that weren’t fascinating enough, she claims that he promised he…

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