I think of myself as being pretty travel-savvy, but there are some travel scams in this article I hadn’t heard of before: Top 10 Worst Travel Scams.

Thanks to Andrea Gold on the MeCo listserv for the pointer!

A decade or so ago, an unemployed 30-something screenwriter named Bill Geerhart thought he’d have some fun by posing as a 10-year-old named Billy who had lots of questions he wanted to ask of famous and infamous people, from serial killers to celebrity lawyers. He actually got replies to his letters, which he collected and just now published as a book called Little Billy’s Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child’s Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered.

BoingBoing got permission to run some of them, and they are just priceless. My favorites are from the National Hobo Association and the CEO of Caesars Palace, who basically says gambling is a losing proposition, if fun to do.

Thanks to the incomparable Patti Digh at 37 Days for the pointer.

Holding meetings outside the U.S. has its own challenges — so many that we have a whole special supplement and section on our Web site to help planners navigate their way. But how much thought has gone into accommodating differences in webinars and other types of virtual events that attract an international audience? That’s what webinar expert Ken Molay tackles in this post: Don’t Give Green Hats In China (and yes, he does tell you why green hats aren’t a good thing in China, which is good because I was wicked curious).

We should have seen this one coming: Now facing potential fines of up to $27,500 per passenger for planes that end up waiting on the runway for more than three hours, some airlines say they’d rather cancel flights. Of course they would, at $5 million for a full 757, that’s a lot of cash per plane in delay fees (the article doesn’t say how much a cancellation would cost).

There has to be a better solution. Such as, maybe, “doing a better job of scheduling flights and crews,” as a U.S. Transportation Department spokesman suggested in the article?

It may be an ad, but it’s a fun one:

On second thought, maybe you should try it at your next banquet — it’d be a showstopper for sure.

Even though Up in the Air didn’t score big in the Oscars, the road warriors mindset it portrays is one that pretty much every meeting manager can relate to. But when I read this editorial in yesterday’s Boston Globe, I thought it might be going a bit too far to actually praise jet lag. But who could argue with this sentiment?

“My own theory is that jet lag begins not in midair but the moment one sets foot in the airport. Checking in, passing through security, drifting toward the departure gate - all stages in a glorious slippage of identity. As you hover along the concourse, eyes a-flicker, your tastes and habits fall away. You are between states, between countries: Unwonted pleasures recommend themselves. You buy an expensive magazine about cars, despite having no interest in cars. At 9:30 in the morning you find yourself eating a plate of General Gao’s chicken. Who are you?”

Been there, done that. I think author James Parker is right after all — we should embrace it all as part of the human experience. Or something. Anyway, it’s a great read.

From ASAE’s Acronym blog comes the results of a new association executive study. Here’s the interesting meetings-related piece of it:

“Where execs were most wrong, though, was predicted in the first economic study we did after the economy soured in early 2009, when we got responses from 8,500 members of 97 diverse associations. The data from that study suggested that there would not be a mass movement from face-to-face meetings to online events. This was contrary to the expectations of association execs, 61% of whom were expecting revenue from online education to increase. In actuality, only 33% reported in 2010 that such revenue had increased.”

That’s about what I would have predicted (she says, with perfect hindsight).

Frankly, Blunch doesn’t come close to it for me (that would be Barf Bed and Breakfast, though maybe a B&B doesn’t count as a restaurant?), but check out this post about bad restaurant names on Serious Eats. There are some doozies in the comments, but it could put you off your feed if you peruse it over lunch.

Thanks to Patti Shock for the pointer!

Thanks to Lara for the pointer to this site: 3floz.com, which offers TSA-sized health and beauty products “for those who travel, those who are curious, and those who can’t commit.”

If I ever run out of the Mary Kay samples my neighbor gave me, I’ll give this site a shot.

I’m sure you heard about how hot dogs can be a serious choking hazard for kids (how did we all survive our childhoods, anyway??). Well, thanks to the good folks at Fast Company, the hot dog has been redesigned for safety, if not visual temptingness.

Mm, mm good.