And another thing …

Good idea of the week: With Congress offering a $15 billion bailout to airlines and the president urging Americans to “get back on board,” reader Peter Dufour of Old Town, who rightly wonders why we’re paying for unfilled seats instead of getting paid to fill them, suggests an incentive-based program in which the consumer and the government split the fare of that feared “first flight.”

Mr. Dufour says he’d like such a deal on tickets to Florida this winter, but, given his ability to identify the most direct route to the solution of a problem, we think he’s more needed in Washington.

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Bad idea of the week: The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Beatles fans will remember him) says the antidote to global terrorism is his plan to summon 40,000 yogis who will meditate into being a spiritual force field that will repel hatred from the world’s collective conscience. All he needs, he says, are a few “peace-loving billionaires in America” to pick up the $1 billion tab for expenses. For added karma, he suggests a cut in the capital-gains tax.

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As Halloween nears, costume shops throughout the nation report that get-ups with a patriotic theme – Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty, Betsy Ross – are flying out the door and that sales of firefighter and other rescue worker outfits rival the traditional favorites of witches, vampires and pirates. According to a spokesman for Spencer Gifts, one of the largest retailers of trick-or-treat accoutrements, the only requests for Osama bin Laden masks have come from reporters looking not for a costume but for a ghoulish story.

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Even though there is no proof that the terrorists entered the United States from Canada, the search for a fresh angle has taken many journalists to remote stretches of the border, where they hike through the trackless forest, cross over illegally at some forlorn point and, from behind a tree some 50 feet on the other side, file a scathing story

on how easy is was to breach security. This activity has become so commonplace that border officials of both countries say they now spend more time flushing reporters out of the underbrush than they spend looking for bad guys.

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Another story of which we’ve seen quite enough seems to come out of every news outlet with a local airport to cover. It goes something like this: A traveler boarding an aircraft has a nail file, pocketknife, razor or other item of contraband in his or her carry-on; the traveler does not divulge the presence of this item, nor do airport personnel detect it; upon reaching his or her destination, the traveler seeks out the first available reporter and whines about how he or she is shocked and dismayed by this security lapse. A suggestion to these travelers: Next time, walk.

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Speaking of traveling, National Geographic’s Traveler magazine is about to publish a special issue featuring its list of the top 50 “Places of a Lifetime” to visit in America and Maine’s Baxter State Park, naturally, made the cut. Just how our state’s wilderness gem will be presented to readers the world over remains to be seen, but considering how the advance press release describes Charleston, S.C. (“This Southern heiress charms, but keeps her suitors at bay)” and the Mississippi River (“America’s mythically historic stream of consciousness”), we shudder in anticipation.