Forget the sweary ice bucket challenge toddler and mind-traumatising ISIS war terrors, the news story that matters today is the one of the United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver, which was diverted after two passengers got into a real, physical altercation on a loaded plane.

In case you’ve been asleep or working as a living statue for 22 hours straight, what happened was that one passenger (a man) was using his laptop computer for an unspecified activity, and had employed a crafty device called The Knee Defender. This accessory attaches to the tray table and stops the seat in front reclining. Passenger two (a woman), tried to recline, spotted his subterfuge and got a flight attendant to ask him to remove it.

The man refused, the woman threw a glass of water over him, and they were both taken to Chicago, where they were ejected from the flight and left there to think about what they’d done. Reports that the incident sparked an unlikely but passionate romance are yet to surface, but wouldn’t that be cool?

The Right to Recline debate has spectacularly sidetracked the internet. Should anyone on a plane be allowed to recline their seat and just sprawl out like we’re in our third hour at a Chinese opium den? Or should we all sit as God intended, straight-backed and with heads held high, so as to be closer to heaven? 

Shandy Pockets are at last plunging into the debate, having weighed up the arguments for literally an amount of time. And we come down heavily (just like the back of our seats onto an unsuspecting pensioner) on the RIGHT TO RECLINE.

Listen, sonny Jim, we’ve (usually) paid for that seat, so damn skippy we’re going to use it to its full potential, and manipulate the full range of kinetic variables at our whim, come hell or holy water. And there ain’t no computer nerd going to get in our way with their gadget sneakery. So we get into a fist fight and are ejected from the plane? Well, jokes on you, knee boy, because I DON’T HAVE A PROPER JOB AND I CAN GET THROWN OFF AS MANY PLANES AS YOU CARE TO BE STUBBORN ON.

And the moral objections to reclining your seat? There’s a tall guy behind you: listen bud, all the women on the dating sites I frequent all want men over 6’3”, so you win some, you lose some, and it’s time for your chin to reacquaint itself with your knees. Small child or, say, a Peruvian dwarf behind you? Reclining your seat puts otherwise unreachable items – the tray table, the touch screen entertainment centre – right into their sweaty grasps and they should be thankful. Let’s cut the bullroar and just cut to the quick: it doesn’t matter who’s behind you, because the beauty is that THEY CAN ALSO JUST RECLINE THEIR SEAT and we can all fly together in a semi-recumbent orgy of slouch, no water, laptops or unlikely romances necessary.

Just back that thing back up when we’re all eating. It gets messy and consuming food while not bolt upright is a bit, you know, continental for our taste.

The internet is a-buzz with talk about the internet, and some of it about how expensive it is to SEE the internet in certain hotel chains. Among the lead accusers is the champion of hotel consumers, Hotel Chatter, who publish an annual list of which hotel chains charge the most for wi-fi and why (fhy).
    This fiscal outrage is all well and good, and the more hotels that let us download illegal copies of current cinema releases, the better for everyone, n'est-ce pas? Only a layman and a communist would argue FOR hotel internet charges.
So, please step forward one Daniel Edward Craig, a hotelier of unknown repute, who puts forward a case for the daylight robbery of his long-suffering clientele. Get ready to froth at the mouth like an in-room cappucino as he, er, sets out a pretty sensible defence of the whole thing, actually. Some of the arguments are a bit, "Well, we're not as bad as airlines!" but on the whole you can kind of see his point. See what I mean HERE. Marriott can probably still go suck it, though.

The trouble with the elite level of first class cabins is that they're just a bit POKEY, right? I mean, all you get is some sumptuously luxurious pod away from the grinding of teeth in Economy and that's all well and good, but it's hardly SPACIOUS, is it?
Well, if you're a space-loving, globe-hopping Emir who lives in Abu Dhabi but likes to do his weekly shop at Harrods, then don't worry, Etihad Airways has your back. Their new A380 has this cabin called The Residence, and it's essentially a swanky apartment on a plane.
Forget sharing a cabin, even if it is with other wealthy Emirs shopping at Harrods. Who wants to have to sit with THEM? For a mere (a mere/emir, geddit?) $20,000 for an eight hour flight (for now, it's just the Abu Dhabi-London route), you can have a living room, bedroom, and a private bathroom with a shower, measuring a total of 125 square feet. The Residences also have a private butler, specially trained by Savoy Hotels. IN THE SKY.
You can't upgrade, use reward miles or blackmail the cabin crew. The only way to get into this space is to pay cold, hard currency. Hello, incomprehensibly wealthy sheiks and Kanye West. If you care to see what it looks like and never fly again out of crippling envy and status anxiety, then feel free to peruse the gallery (butler - artist's impression):

Much as we're anti lists on SP, we do sometimes get overwhelmed by the urge to catalogue, so imagine our delight this morning on logging onto The Guardian website, where a new toy awaited to help us with our morning's displacement activities. Their widget allows you to tally up your total visits to each country (we just put 100 for the country we live in - the UK for this exercise) and then it creates a colour-and-size coded globe to produce a quantitative map. GO HERE to try it yourself. Ours looked like this: 

You know us here at Shandy Pockets. We're not materialistic. But we'd sell our own (insert relative worth about £30/$50) to get our hands on these retro Flight Tag art prints by Neil Stevens. If we had an office, we'd definitely be buying these up to line the walls with. You can see the full range HERE,  and join us in wondering why poor Montreal is the only one that's being discounted at the moment...

It's a little early to be hinting at Christmas gifts, but that's not going to stop us lusting after this print of a vintage air routes map (a steal at only $25?), which comes to us via the amazing David Rumsey Map Collection (www.davidrumsey.com).

Click on the image for the full size.

Its description reads: "Map in full color with drawings of interesting features in the United States. Below the main map is an elevation profile with lines leading up to the point along the route noted below. The profile delineates the states, mileage and the height of the features on the profile. The route of the airplane is shown in blue and includes an airplane making the trip. Surround the map and profile are drawings of natural features and cities throughout the United States."

The map also shows that "Mason Menefee made the trip starting April 25, 1930, from Los Angeles to St. Louis."

Sorry if you're a map lover and that website just claimed your day...