These days you can book most anything on the Internet, but you had better have a calculator handy. Psychologists have lots of fun talking about how easily people get taken by deals that sound better than they really are.

There’s a reason things are priced at $11.95 rather than $12 and there’s a reason more people will take a “buy one get one free” deal at $60 rather than “buy one at $40 and get the second one half price.” (Hint, you’re paying the same total price either way.)

For whatever reason, we have financial triggers in our brain that allow us to be easily manipulated, fooled, bamboozled, or confused. This is especially evident when it comes to frequent flyer mile scams. Hundreds of thousands of people will pay an annual fee for a credit card that earns them mileage without ever pulling out a calculator to figure out whether they will actually come out ahead or not. Here’s how you know. A mile is worth about a penny. So if you spend $75 for an annual fee, you must charge $7,500 in one year just to break even. If you get 15,000 bonus miles for signing up, however, it’s a deal no matter what. Take the deal, use it for a year, then cancel it unless you are going to rack up a lot of charges on it in year two.

No scam compares to the one I just received from Continental Airlines in today’s e-mail, however. Word for word, here is the offer:

“Transfer miles between OnePass accounts all year long with MilePass and help someone else get a head start on reward travel. For a small service fee of $7.50 per 500 miles, you can transfer your miles to another OnePass account.”

Got a calculator? (There’s one on your computer, actually, but it’s probably kind of a pain to use and you have to look under programs/accessories.) Here’s what you’ll find. That “small service fee” of $7.50 per 500 miles means $15 per 1,000 miles. That’s a penny and a half for each mile, which is more than the miles are actually worth to start with. If you transferred the 25,000 miles it would take for a domestic flight, assuming you could even get one for when you wanted it, that transfer would cost you $375. Might I suggest buying a round-trip ticket instead? You’ll probably spend less than $375 and you will still have your miles.

Every month or two I see some inaccurate statistic in the news about how only one in ten Americans has a passport, usually followed by some smug remark about how much more enlightened and well-traveled the writer’s home country is in comparison.

A short piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal quoted the U.S. State department as saying that “27% of U.S. Citizens have valid passports.” This fact won’t get indexed by search engines since the WSJ’s web site is a closed system, but maybe if I note it here some correct info will start getting into the press.

The thing is, it was only 22 percent just last year. As I’ve always said, the U.S. number is misleading because Americans could visit Canada, Mexico, and half the Caribbean holding nothing but a birth certificate or driver’s license. Add that to a very large and diverse homeland and it meant a huge chunk of real estate was available to us for vacation without going through the hassle and expense of getting a passport. Compare that to much of Europe where you’re in a new country as soon as you cross a river or ski to the other side of a mountain.

This Northern Hemisphere mobilty is now changing though in this age of hyper-security and movement tracking. Soon we will have to have a passport for those places too–as it stands now, at the beginning of 2007. That has spurred a lot of applications from people who have traveled around for years without one. Maybe that will spur them to go beyond our back yard. Time will tell.

By the way, Lonely Planet has a book out called Don’t Let the World Pass You By! 52 Reasons to Have a Passport. If you’re looking for justification on spending that $97 for a passport (or you need to convince a parent or spouse to pay for it), you’ll have plenty of ammo with that book.

It’s not exactly front-page news in most parts of the world, but big trouble is brewing in Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu again. Pity the poor traveler who isn’t paying attention, for wandering about after curfew time could result in getting shot by police.

This isn’t some random flare-up of course. Things have been dicey for quite a while in Nepal. It’s especially upsetting to me as this has always been near the top of my list when I get the inevitable question about my favorite places in the world. I did a three-week Annapurna Circuit trek when things were calmer and that will always be one of my travel highlights.

What it boils down to is there’s a king nobody likes, a violent Maoist opposition that nobody likes, and a few cool heads in the middle that are starting to speak up and march in protest. Unless a leader emerges who can unite these factions, it could get a lot more ugly before it gets settled. If you want to hike the Himilayas, India is looking like a better bet these days…

USATODAY.com – Northwest drops legroom fee for top fliers

Northwest’s plan to charge everyone an extra $15 for exit row and bulkhead seats has hit major resistance (gee what a surprise) and they have partially backed off. The problem is, you have to be an elite frequent flyer to wriggle out of the fee. Us peons who don’t fly 25,000 miles a year on business are out of luck still.

At least they listened to the people who are spending the most money with them. “The changes answer letters, e-mails and hundreds of Internet postings protesting Northwest’s month-old pricing plan.”

Ten tips for booking award travel

This article on the always-helpful site SmarterTravel gives you the lowdown on how to actually use your frequent flyer miles. Despite having a gazillion miles on Continental, I totally struck out trying to use those miles to go to Argentina this summer, despite trying since December. So some of these tips I take with a grain of salt. Yes, it’s nice that they post availability, but if there are ZERO seats available for months on end on a certain route, that’s not exactly helpful.

There are some useful ones in here, however, that you may not have thought of. First of all, did you know you can start booking mileage trips 330 days ahead? Who knows where this number comes from, but I know what I’ll be doing in August–for June of 2007.

This is probably the best advice for those of us who aren’t business road warriors, in terms of it actually working:

“Certain days and destinations are more popular than others for travel, so you’ll have a tougher time booking award travel at those times. The most popular requests include Chicago, New York, Las Vegas, Florida, and the Caribbean.”

In other words, you’ll be competing with hoards of paying customers to find any seat to a beach destination during Christmastime or spring break, but if you can travel to Mexico in the summer or to Europe in the winter, you’ll have better luck redeeming your miles.”