When I was in college in Massachusetts, Jet Blue Airways was considered the affordable airline. You could fly from city to city for less than a train ride would cost. But with the company’s Monday announcement that it would start charging $7 for a blanket and pillow set, that image may be changing.

Jet Blue officials have said that the move is not just to sustain profits in hard times — they’re being environmentally friendly by doing away with millions of disposable in-flight pillows, and probably millions of gallons of water that go to washing those blankets.

This from the AFP:

JetBlue in its marketing strategy for the new, seven-dollar surcharge said they have created “The World’s Cleanest” travel pillow and blanket kit, made from “a fabric that blocks all micro-toxins … such as dust mites, mold spores, pollen and pet dander.”

The “take-home travel kit” fits in a carrying case “for use on future trips,” the airline said in a statement.

“Replacing our old, recycled pillows and blankets with this state-of-the-art, high-quality take home kit is an eco-conscious, health-conscious and customer-conscious decision,” said JetBlue Airways General Manager of Product Development Brett Muney.

Skeptics may scoff, but the airline does have an entire section of its web page dedicated to its “green” strategy. The site includes a Carbon Footprint Calculator and lists steps the airline is taking to reduce its own footprint, including doing away with in-flight magazines, eliminating paper tickets and offering smaller boarding passes, installing lighter aircraft seats and LED lighting, and recycling spent jet fuel and oil and oil/fuel filters.

No doubt many of these moves are also driven by economics. But, as the airline industry struggles, could “going green” also help cut costs?

I’m getting nostalgia for the olden days, when headsets and drinks were free, when every seat had a pillow and blanket. It’s strange, but I even miss those mushy in-flight meals.

As I discovered recently on my trip to Chicago, flying has become a mind-numbing strategic maze that starts when you pack your suitcase.

The way I figure — why would I carry a pillow and blanket on the plane when all I’m allowed is one personal item and one carry-on, which are both already holding most of the stuff which used to go in my second suitcase since each additional bag became $15 to check in?

Maybe I’ll just avoid red-eye flights from now on. Or — anyone know of some really good books?

image: Jet Blue Airways via nytimes.com.

I hesitated whether to post this one, but figured, why not.

Paris Hilton has made an actually pretty funny video for Funny or Die in response to a McCain campaign ad that compared her to Barack Obama. Or Barack Obama to her. Whatever.

For some reason I can’t embed non-YouTube videos using Wordpress, so view the video here.

She already has celebrity status, an energy policy, good looks and that girl power quality. Plus, she’s up to her ears in the biggest campaign factor: MONEY.

AND, she can sing! Well, sort of.

So… loves it?

While we’re on the subject of embarrassing Facebook photos, here’s a notorious culprit: beer pong.

JV Games was all set to release a virtual version of the game for Nintendo Wii as the first game in its new Frat Party Games series. But, as Time Magazine reported last week, parents and others complained.

So, the name of the game was changed to “Pong Toss” and the virtual sport altered so players now toss balls into “pixelated cups of water,” according to Time.

Also called “beirut” back East, beer pong is immensely popular among college students, including at my alma mater, where beirut tournaments were weekend events.

The game involves two sets of six or ten plastic cups filled with beer arranged in triangular formation on opposite sides of a table (or an old door, if you’re out of tables). Players standing on opposite sides of the table try to land a ping pong ball into the other team’s cups. If the ball lands in one team’s beer-filled cup, a member of that team has to drink it.

Seems we had a similar debate about Grand Theft Auto IV in April between video game enthusiasts (often teenage boys), and parents and other responsible adults who don’t want the virtual world to influence real-world behavior. With GTA-IV, it was shooting cops and propositioning hookers. With Beer Pong, it’s underage drinking, or just getting drunk in general.

The name change and the water-filled cups may have placated some critics, but underage kids playing Pong Toss won’t easily forget its origins. Beer pong by any other name would still get you wasted.

(Hat tip to Rich Figel, who noted this story on Addicted To on Friday.)

Apparently, young Americans aren’t the only ones struggling with finances, relationships, career choices and feelings of college nostalgia — twenty-somethings are also experiencing the dreaded QLC in Mumbai.

This is from the Daily News and Analysis, an Indian publication geared towards young people and the country’s fastest growing English language newspaper, according to Wikipedia:

Commonly associated with people between the ages of 21 and 29, quarter life crisis is often marked by insecurity, loneliness and confused notions of identity. Often, there’s a yearning to reunite with college friends. For those who haven’t made the cut in terms of money or career, it suggests a need for financial independence.

In this phase, people are constantly seeking — chalking out careers, trying to build oneself as a brand, entering into new relationships, sustaining existing ones, or dodging the pressure to tie the knot.

…

Says Shikha Pandey, 23, who lives by herself in Mumbai, and works with a television channel: “Financial independence is crucial for me now. I get stressed, but I also feel that if I am not stressed at this age there’s something wrong with me.”

Oh, Shikha Pandey, I know the feeling…

This is for everyone whose Facebook page has ever included emoticons, a list of 300 of their favorite movies, suggestive pictures of themselves in Halloween costumes, Dashboard Confessional lyrics, or “mermaids” and “terrible 80s music” under the Interests sections of their profiles.

As someone who is guilty of at least two of the above, I want to know — is it time for us to “grow up” on Facebook?

As the massive social networking site has evolved and exploded — more than tripling its user numbers from 24 million last year to 90 million this year — it’s changing from a place where you could keep in touch with (or stalk) your college buddies to a mine field of strange people from your past, potential employers, co-workers, your boss — even parents.

There is nothing ostensibly wrong with “friending” someone you work with. I’m “friends” both on Facebook AND in the real world with plenty of my co-workers and people I meet professionally. (And I know many of them read this blog — hi!)

But Facebook friendship isn’t always easy; and it’s not always the more the merrier. Quarterlifers need to be aware that as their networks change from college and high school pals to include people with whom you need to maintain a professional decorum in the real, non-online world, the entire purpose of Facebook shifts.

It’s especially difficult for young journalists who don’t want their personal history, friends’ wacky wall comments and especially political views out there for everyone to see. A friend told me recently that she had been friended by several people she’d interviewed for stories. She didn’t want to turn them down lest they take offense.

You have to decide whether Facebook is a place to stay in touch with friends OR a site for networking with professional types who could potentially offer you a job — or who are in the position to make decisions about your current one. I don’t believe it can be both. Info you might deem absolutely vital for friends — relationship status, photos from recent parties — I don’t think you’d want all that on display for your boss. But if both are visiting your page….

How to strike a balance?

First off, here’s a hilarious and useful list from Express Night Out on “How to Maintain Your (Relative) Cool on Facebook.” The list of tips includes such gems as:

» Don’t get too angst-y and existential on us (yes, English majors, we’re talking to you). If we have to Google your interests you’ll seem intellectual and cool, but if it’s not in the top three on the search results list we’ll know you don’t really know what it is either. And being interested in “spontaneity” is an oxymoron.

Or how about this one:

» Feel free to mock the political and religious views categories. (i.e. Religious views: David Sedaris). Just know you’ll be judged by people, such as God.

(For the record, my Religious Views read: “Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.”)

If your Facebook page is turning into more of a professional networking site than a social one, my advice would be to do a thorough editing of your profile — not SO thorough that you wipe away your whole personality, but enough so that it’s interesting but professional. Take down or un-tag yourself from questionable photos. List your actual age and hometown — not 106 years old and from Reykjavik, Iceland. If your ego simply can’t part with your wall comments, employ Limited Profile when needed.

You’re 25 and working now, and it’s not unreasonable that your Facebook page represent that. So for God’s sake, take down those Dashboard Confessional lyrics.