On certain major highways you will find toll booths lined in a row and manned by state employees and/or state owned electronic systems. Each lane on the highway has its own notification of toll post sign to alert drivers of the upcoming slow down & pay requirement. There are two kinds of signs. One, red…
Inserting ‘bye,’ ‘talk to you later,’ ‘later,’ and other conversation closing formalities at the end of an answering machine message is an awkward thing to do because the person being addressed isn’t there to reply likewise. And message leavers know this, but they persist with closing formalities, because even though it’s awkward, closing with the…
I think blind people on city streets are incredible. It never ceases to amaze me how they know which bus to get on, which stop to get off. I’ll bet their visualization of the city in their heads is far more interesting than what we see. Or, if they’ve been blind their whole lives, they…
It used to be that when you saw people talking alone, you knew right away that they were interesting people. When this happens now, it’s far more likely that the person is talking into a cell phone or headset. The ease of pinpointing skewed reality processors is lost. I trust they will develop other methods…
In all the landscaped grass areas on campus there are these tiny signs stuck into the ground resembling the kinds of flower identification cards you would expect to find in a greenhouse. Except these signs are bright yellow with black ink printed: CAUTION Pesticide Application Keep Off. There is also a diagram (in the style…
Today rained. There were lots of umbrellas out. Umbrellas give me a kick. I think they’re nice. It’s as if they were extracted from a long lost romantic period in history and deposited at the feet of our cell phone technobabble society. spiral dial phones–>touch tone–>cordless. vinyl–>cassette–>cd and yet umbrellas have stood the test of…
I’ve never understood the logic behind this: “Eat everything on your plate. There are people in this world who are starving.” Yes, well, knowing they would finish my plate if they were here doesn’t make me want to finish it on their behalf. Wiping the plate clean won’t make them any less hungry. A phrase…
You know those fliers with little tabs cut out on the bottom with contact info? I wonder if it ever occurs to some of the people who pin them on flier walls that it might be advantageous for them to rip a couple of the tabs off. If they did this, perusing people might take…
I can’t stand the idea, which some people take for granted, that the dangerousness of a drug has a correlation with the severity of the punishment dealt to individuals who have broken the laws which prohibit the drug’s use. In fact I’m so at odds with this mind stance that I doubt if I could…
American standard urinals could learn some things from their peers in France. There are some urinals in France which are as tall as the ones we’re accustomed to but which continue down to the floor. Not only this, but individual urinals are not defined because an entire wall in the restroom is covered with the…