From an accompanying article:
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.
I believe this is called “shaping the discourse.”
I’m generally not a whiny consumer, and I will always recognize the phenomenal benefits of mobile technology over the flaws of its providers.
That said, my billing relationship with Sprint Wireless is increasingly fraught. I’d like to treat their bills like any other - glance over an email once a month and let the money slide out of my bank account with a quiet sigh - but they insist on trying to extract undeserved premiums from me.
Take, for instance, the latest: when I was home for Mother’s Day weekend, I upgraded from my Palm Pre to a Nexus S 4G. The guys at the store, for all their good humor, had to call HQ several times to get me the right price. Then, when my monthly bill came, Sprint had the audacity to charge me an $18 “Device Upgrade Fee.”
This is not a lot of money, and it took only a few minutes with a CSR named James to get it stricken from my bill. But it’s the fact that it was there in the first place that galls.
I drop $200 on Sprint every month, and every month it seems like they’re working harder to erode my trust than anything else.
Not a good business model, Sprint. Get your shit together.
People are awesome. Thanks for confirming, New York Times!
(In the latest social-media-ruins-everything-forever article.)
My first year out of college I worked at the university I graduate from, so I was still more of less in the academic rhythm. The summer was quiet. Then, professors and students started to trickle back, leading to a frenzy of activity through the middle of the semester, followed by a winter lull and another peak of activity in the spring.
Since then, I’ve spent a couple of years working in the corporate world, and the academic rhythm that I grew accustomed to over seventeen (!) years has more or less faded away.
Observing the whole back-to-school phenomenon as a nonparticipant feels weird. It’s remarkably commercial; “school” is almost an afterthought.
For some (strange? maybe not in TX) reason, my apartment building doesn’t offer recycling pickup.
My old office was a short walk from my place, so I’d occasionally bring a big bag of recyclables and dispose of them at work. Nowadays I have a complex commute involving a bus and a bike, so I’ve developed a new recycling system: every couple of weeks, I sneak across the street to one of the offices nearby and deposit my recyclables in their recycling bin.
As I do this, I often imagine being stopped by one of the office dwellers or a cop driving by. So far, my guerrilla environmentalism has gone undisturbed.
An x-ray shows the internal workings of the Barbie Video Girl Doll.
