About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Why Rail Transit Systems Fail

Rail transit only makes sense in the largest cities, with concentrated downtown districts. Most rail transit is built to serve the downtown business districts in cities. But the days when downtowns functioned as the primary centers of employment are long gone. Since about 1955, when people and office equipment began taking up more space, most new jobs have been created in industrial parks and small office parks–areas outside of downtown. Now, less than 10 percent of the nation’s employment in metropolitan areas is located in the old central business districts. So for more than 90 percent of commuters, rail transit isn’t an option. Yet this fact is not an argument for extending rail transit into the suburbs. Employment outside of downtown areas is spread too thin to support rail transit. And any system serving the…

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Whether you believe in such things or not, this is just too good…

Jewish Miracle Fish Believed To Warn Of Apocaplyse An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle. Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has revealed himself in fish form. According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew. Read the whole thing. My favorite part? Stand-up comedians have already incorporated the carp into their comedy routines at weddings. One gefilte company has considered changing it’s…

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TSA: Promoting Your Safety, Scolding You For Your Ideas

Those of you who have been visiting this site since the summer know that I have been very skeptical of the federal government’s efforts at ‘airline security.’ Basically, my position has been that the TSA is filled with un-serious people who are asking us to give up liberties while doing little that actually protects us. Now here comes a story that really chills me. A TSA employee slipped a note into a passenger’s baggage, questioning his patriotism: “Don’t appreciate your anti-American attitude!” was neatly hand written on the standard notice TSA places inside all the bags that screeners open. “This security person decided to let me board, but not before scolding me for being un-American,” Goldberg told Reuters in an interview. It’s one thing to throw out ideas like probable cause in the name of…

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