Month: January 2009

OMG, Like, LOL!

YouTube comments are infamously the most inane drivel found anywhere in the entire history of humanity’s written communication. In particular, I’ve always been bothered (to the extent I ever read YouTube comments) by the egotism implicit in the “discussion.”  Commenters make their primary purpose communicating to others their unique expertise in any subject, and hence their unique qualification to judge it.  With nobody caring what anyone else has written, and instead focusing only on showcasing their own knowledge, showmanship wholly replaces any semblance of commentary.

Hence, when I read about artist Steve Lambert’s project reading aloud YouTube comments, I did not expect to be impressed.

I was impressed.

While playing a video of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, performers read aloud comments that were earlier posted in response to the same video.

The juxtaposition of this beautiful piece of music in a classic performance with the jarring inhumanity of the modern responses makes the result inexplicably enthralling.

(via Kottke)

“Cozy” and a “Great Bargain”

I love the online marketing I see for apartments.  Consider this ad from the first page of Boston apartment listings on Craigslist (at the time I happened to look, of course):

We haven’t seen lower prices at this luxury high-rise. Call today!
1 month free
$1,890 / month

…

Effective rent only $1911 per month after free rent special on 12 month lease.

If the regular rent is $1,890 and there’s one month free, that’s effectively $1,735, not $1,911.  That’s a difference of $176.  I feel like there’s a great chance one’s hypothetical security deposit would get lost in that mathematical shuffle pretty quickly.

Death by Towel

The paper towel dispenser in my office is the kind with a bit of towel hanging down for you to pull.  Pulling it dispenses one sheet, and gets another started for the next person.  When there’s no towel hanging down to pull, one refers to the helpful knob on the side labeled:

FOR EMERGENCY FEED, TURN KNOB

Aren’t we being a little dramatic?  What emergency, exactly, do the manufacturers envision?  Moreover, what if I need a towel in a non-emergency situation?  There is no knob for “non-emergency manual feed” nor any instruction for emergency towel acquisition if the towel is already hanging there properly.

Did someone really consider the simple phrase “MANUAL FEED” insufficient instruction for that knob?

Best Telemarketing Call Ever

My personal award for most awkward telemarketing tactics has lately been going exclusively to the Boston Ballet.  I love them artistically, but administratively they struggle with the idea that they do not need to encourage me to buy a subscription when I already have one.  At one point last year I fielded two calls in the same day from their marketers, both of whom were entirely taken aback at my assurances that I had already paid for my subscription to the upcoming season.

This week, the Boston Pops has surpassed the Ballet to receive my highly exclusive award.

They’ve been calling a lot in the last few weeks, but through the marvel of modern technology I’ve been quietly ignoring them.  Tonight, I had a message waiting for me when I got home.

I here use the word “message” more loosely than perhaps one normally would.  I had, rather, an audio recording of what it’s like inside the Pops’ call center when a marketer thinks he has hung up but, in fact, has not.

Enthralled, and wondering how long it could possibly go on, I let play a couple minutes of Mr. Telemarkter flirting with Ms. Telemarketer regarding her upcoming vacation (during which she will be visiting Canada), before giving up and deleting the message.

The Oscar for “most awkward telemarketing tactics” is yours, good sir.  I congratulate you.  (And I still won’t be answering your call tomorrow.)

Dress Rehearsal

While running various errands yesterday, I found myself near the corner of Chestnut Hill Avenue and Beacon Street in Brighton, where I saw a couple people jog around the corner from Chestnut Hill onto Beacon, heading east.  They were not remarkable in any way.

Later, a couple more people rounded the same corner in the same direction, also running, and also looking wholly unremarkable.

Soon thereafter, several more people ran around the corner, followed some time later by others, and those people by others.

At some point I began to reflect that a statistically unlikely number of people were all running in the same direction (but not quite at the same time) on the same streets, and then that a statistically unlikely number of them were wearing jackets with the John Hancock logo on the back.

Like the answer to a riddle, the pieces fell into place: they were all running the Boston Marathon route!  John Hancock Financial Services is the event’s main sponsor.

My question, then, is this: is it normal for 30 people to all be training for the Marathon on any arbitrarily selected Saturday near the beginning of January (for an event in April), or was this some specially scheduled training event?

Apple IS the Future

In the Doctor Who episode Silence in the Library, The Doctor takes Donna to the 51st century where humans have built a library “so big it doesn’t need a name” — an entire planet filled with books.   Throughout the episode, he finds himself checking The Library’s computer system via a terminal that looks suspiciously familiar:

A 51st Century Keyboard

A 51st Century Keyboard

That’s right, it’s Apple’s current model of wireless keyboard, which I was touching with my own hand at the very moment the image came on the screen.  Apple’s design is so flawless that it will last fully 3,000 years.

Philosophical Programming

A colleague just shared this gem with me:

Starting with two premises — that all software contains bugs and that all software can be built with fewer lines of code — one can inductively prove that all programs can be reduced to a single line of code that doesn’t work.

Nudity in Real-Time Cartography

We’re working on adding the real-time locations of buses to our Boston University Maps application, and I thought I remembered reading about a taxi company that had a live map of its taxis’ locations.  I Googled “live taxi locations” and got this as the first result:

Live nude web girl cams reviews.

Eh.  Close enough.

Food for Thought

From The Big Bang Theory:

Stephanie: So, how was your day?
Leonard:  You know… I’m a physicist, so I thought about stuff.

Stephanie:  That’s it?
Leonard:  I wrote some of it down…

I’ve gotten paid repeatedly before for walking around the block, since I declared (honestly) that I was thinking about a problem as I did so.

Modern society is awesome.