Then perhaps you can explain to the assembled crowd why I've had three so-called "TSA Approved" locks cut off my baggage over the last few years.

I see this very early entry to the public Internet is sadly missing from the article. CFN (https://wiki.case.edu/Cleveland_Freenet) provided message boards, IRC, USENet, MUDs/MOOs, and just about every other service provided by the fledgling Internet was there, including email (with gateways to FIDO, CIS, and a few others), to anybody with a modem, for free. The FreePort software was also published under (I believe) a 4-clause BSD license, giving rise to myriad offspring, some of which might still be around (though hopefully not running FreePort anymore).

...or am I the only one around who remembers that totally cheesy, yet elementary schoolkid riveting, post-apocalyptic edutainment show "Tomes and Talismans"

EVE Online trailers in the middle of Battlestar Galactica. Can't target your advertising any better than that.
End of line.

I can honestly say you win either way. The electricity/cost savings of containment will pay for itself regardless of where you put the doors. That said, whether you choose to go HAC or CAC is really choosing between different trade-offs.

HAC (The APC method): Seemed to be cheaper and easier to install. Since the hot aisle is being contained, if something happens to your coolers, you have a longer ride-through time as there's a much larger volume of cold air to draw from. However, at least when I got out of the business, HAC *required* the use of in-row cooling, and with APC, that meant water in your rows. Europeans don't seem to mind that, but Americans do (which provided an opening for Emerson's XD phase-change systems, dunno if APC has an equivalent or not yet). I personally wouldn't be too keen on having to spend more than a few minutes inside that hot aisle, either.

CAC (The Emerson method): Seemed to be more expensive, especially in refit scenarios (they appeared to be more focused on winning the big "green-field" jobs more than upgrading old sites), but it can usually leverage existing CRAC units, so you could potentially save enough there to make it competitive, as well as avoid vendor lock-in. The whole room becomes the equivalent of a hot aisle, but convection and the building's HVAC can somewhat mitigate that, so it'll still be uncomfortable working behind a rack, it doesn't feel quite the sauna that an HAC system does. Depending on whose CRAC equipment you buy (or already have), EC plug fans and VSD-driven blowers can save even more money if properly configured.

Other: I've seen the "Tower of Cool" or "chimney" style system, and flat out hate it. They look like a great idea on the face of it: much cheaper, faster installation, able to use building HVAC, etc. But let's be honest. Your servers are designed for front-to-rear airflow. So are the SANs, NASs, TBUs, rack UPSs, and practically everything else you've put in your datacenter, apart from those screwball Cisco routers that have a side-to-side pattern (Seriously... what WERE they thinking on that one???). Why would you then try to establish an upwards-pointed airflow that's got a giant suction hose at the center of the rack's roof, where it can just as easily pull cold air from the front (starving your systems) as it does hot air from the back?

Personally, I like cold aisle better. If I'm going to be spending two hours sitting behind a server because I can't do something via remote (forced into untangling the network cable rat's nest, perhaps), I like the idea of being merely uncomfortable and a bit sweaty than dripping buckets while cursing the bean-counters who forced me to lay off the PFY two months ago. There are also some neat controllers that work with CRAC units to establish just the right amount of airflow to fully feed the row and manage their output, so if running five CRACs at 50% is more power efficient than running three at 100%, that's what they do. I know folks who like hot aisle better. It's more fun for them to show-off their prize datacenter since all the areas you'd want to see (unless you're the one responsible for power strips or cable management) are cool.