So it's refreshing to see an airport take control of its own destiny. In Orlando, a city that stands to lose a great deal from the coming slowdown in tourism and convention business, the airport (coded MCO) wants to help passengers save money flying there. So it has uploaded page of the latest airfare specials flying there.

It makes sense, and it's so simple you have to wonder why your airport isn't doing it to stimulate business. Many smaller American airports are floundering as the major airlines yank service. But if airport authorities do all they can to help keep the planes full, the airlines will be less likely to suspend service. If they go, the airports, which depend on landing fees that are built into the cost of every ticket, will go into the budget hole.

Beyond belief, it's starting to become fashionable to visit places for the enjoyment of watching the local menfolk brandish deadly weapons. In Italy, soldiers in body armor were recently deployed to stand vigil around potential terrorist sites. The Financial Times reports that in Rome, where a thousand of them appeared this summer, patrolmen quickly became tourist fodder in their own right.

It's not just in Italy, either. There is almost no other reason to visit the border between North and South Korea than to gaze in admiration at the trigger-happy sentries who mill along the DMZ, and yet each day of the week, coach tourists make the day-trip from Seoul to do just such a thing. (Of course, it doesn't always work out -- in July, one clueless tourist was shot dead by North Korean soldiers after she wandered away from her border resort.)

Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie, an emblem for oppression and woe when it was a militarized link between East and West Berlin, is now a tacky tourist ghetto where visitors pose for snapshots with actors dressed in fake army getups. Old-timers are outraged -- there's no museum there to supply context.

And why not? Cops are plentiful, intentionally conspicuous, and above all, free to admire. And often, their style varies as much as the cultures they protect. These days, a locale's demonstrations of defense says as much about its modern society as its cuisine.

What happens in Vegas may stay there, but these days, the problem is how to get there in the first place.

McCarran Airport, Vegas' major entry point, reported its biggest year-on-year drop since after 9/11. And Southwest Airlines, the rare profitable airline which recently said it wouldn't need to tighten its flight schedule, reversed course and said 13 flights, or about 5% of its Las Vegas seats, would be eliminated starting in January. Considering Southwest is one of the most reliable feeder of tourist traffic to the Strip, that's quite a blow.

To further put it in perspective, as of Sept. 2, Vegas had 81 flights from U.S. Airways daily. A year ago, it had 141.

The pain, though, is mostly for hoteliers and airlines. Tourists are starting to see a real benefit to the growing malaise. On Tuesday, Arthur Frommer wrote about seeing an ad for a two-night Planet Hollywood package for $149 per person that came with either $100 back or two free show tickets. When he called to book, he told the receptionist it was still too expensive. And just like that, he was offered the same deal for two people at $249 total. That's desperation.

Earlier this summer, casinos were low-balling tourists with archaic rates like $33 to $55 a room. Even now, prices on the Strip are sliding southward (the Sahara for $24, the Tropicana, $46, both quoted through a Hotels.com promotion) and rooms off the Strip are so low (like $20 at the Plaza Hotel off Fremont Street), they're virtually tragic.

When John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, wildlife lovers cringed for two reasons. The first is that she seems like just the kind of smart, young leader who has battled corruption and government waste that could get not so environmentally friendly Republicans elected. The second is that Palin herself has been on the side of hunters instead of wildlife watchers--even when the fiscal numbers are not on hunting's side.

Palin--in addition to vowing to sue to stop the listing Polar Bears as an endangered species--has put the weight of the state behind defeating a ballot measure that would have limited the aerial shooting of wolves. Nationwide aerial hunting has been banned since 1972's Airborne Hunting Act, but Alaska gets around that by saying the hunters are working for the state to control predators. The idea is to produce more moose and caribou to hunt.

The Alaska Fish and Game Department has been allowing aerial wolf hunting--even though voters said no to it twice--for since 2003. (The legislature later overturned the voters' decision.) But this time Alaskans voted 92,781 to 74,124 to allow it.

It's interesting to think about how cities compete for tourists. Apart from spending billions of dollars on advertising, fighting to host World's Fairs and the Olympics, and desperately organizing major events, almost every aspect of a city's infrastructure could be seen as part of a bid for the tourist buck. Police? Handy for keeping the tourists safe. Public transportation? Offers a cheap way for the tourists to get around. Sports teams? Keeps the tourists happy while they're here and gives them handy souvenirs to take home!

I thought about this recently when I read about the town of Zheleznovodsk, Russia. Home to the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the town seems to have long been casting about for a sense of identity. On the one hand, it is noted for the healing powers of its mineral springs; then again, so are many other towns in the Caucasus Mountains region, where it is located. Not long ago, it hit on the idea of using the iconic enema, the delivery system for many of its healing mineral treatments, as a sign of its civic pride. The first step was posters that stated "Let's beat constipation and sloppiness with enemas!" The signs hung in the local spa and garnered a fair bit of attention.

Buoyed by the success of their enema poster campaign, the spa commissioned a sculpture. Costing $42,000, Mashuk-Akva's enema statue shows an 800-pound bronze bulb-style enema being carried by three Botticelli-esque angels. While the sculptor admits to a certain irony in her finished work, the director of the spa considers it to be an utterly non-ironic symbol of the region. It remains to be seen if Zheleznovodsk's new sculpture will become a cultural icon or will end up being a washout. Regardless, the next time I take a trip, I'm going to give a long, hard look at Russia, the land of the golden enema!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. The more he thinks about it, the more he's impressed with Zheleznovodsk. Come to think of it, maybe New York needs an enema!

When I was fourteen or so, my family and I spent almost a month tooling around Europe. Apart from certain miseries associated with putting six people in a cramped BMW and the fact that my sister Ella had a terrible smell for the whole summer (we later discovered that she'd jammed a piece of sponge up her nose), we had a great time. We were exploring foreign lands, the dollar was really strong, and the U.S. government was footing a big chunk of the bill, as my dad was officially there on business. What's not to like?

In retrospect, I guess I was something of an ugly American. While I've since learned to become a little less obvious when wandering abroad, my pictures from that summer show a scrawny kid with a too-short haircut, too-high kneesocks, ugly shorts and loud Hawaiian shirts. Although I remember being very easygoing and polite, it's likely that my sisters and I spent much of our time bitching about everything. After all, we were all in our teens, we were spending way too much time together, and, well, we're American.

That some businesses are working on space tourism isn't that new, but something that really caught my attention recently is that university researchers are studying this? It's not just NASA and members of The Jetsons fan club.

A report on this subject by two professors was recently announced by the University of Delaware. The authors, Fred DeMicco, of UD, and Silvia Ciccarelli, from the University of Rome La Sapiena, co-wrote "Outer Space as a New Frontier for Hospitality and Tourism." They would know -- Ciccarelli is a consultant to the Italian Association of Aerospace Industries, and DeMicco is an ARAMARK Chair in the University of Delaware's Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management Program. (Aramark is an international company specializing in food services for stadiums, arenas, campuses, businesses, schools and someday... space stations?)

So who will be traveling in outer space, two years from now? We'll give you the scoop. (Quick, someone bookmark this story and check back in two years and see if this pans out)