The primary reasons devices like Apple’s iPod have taken off (besides aesthetics) is their size and capacity. Portable CD players are much bulkier, and in order to carry a large library of music you need to carry several discs. You can condense your music onto MP3 discs which helps, but it comes at the cost of battery hours.
In an effort to travel light today, I left the player at home. Being the social observer I am, I cannot help but over-hear the odd conversation on the bus, especially when it’s surrounding you by fairly loud speaking people. Sometime the conversation is one you just don’t want to hear, for example the other night I over-heard two drug dealers discussion cocaine transactions. Lovely.
Today I heard a nugget of wisdom from a high school student’s father, via the student himself of course: There are two jobs that anywhere you go in the world will always be needed – doctors and garbage-men. Obvious? Yes. Profound? Well, I think so.
Alright, this has made the rounds a few times, but it’s still funny:
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will
make the sivil servants jump with joy.
The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v"
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontai= ning "o u" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted in ze forst plas!
Just for the curiouser geeks, that last sentence fails a spell check with the exception of three words.
On a sad personal note, I was recently out in the country and it seems that the property owner for the section of forest behind my parent’s home has taken upon himself to drive a very large machine through and mulch an angry looking swath through the trees. The reasons for this are unknown as of yet, but it is quite the eyesore.
Beyond what seems to be a senseless destruction of nature, much of the trees that are now just… missing… I spent my youth exploring and building forts in. In fact, the remnants of one of my old forts was just narrowly missed by this large machine. One of the forts built by our old neighbor was actually totally ground to bits by this machine.
The fort that was narrowly missed was actually built between three trees with a large post added in to make up a forth and make square the originally triangular structure. One of the trees that made this configuration up is now missing and a large portion of the of platform went with it.
I don’t expect to go through life without changes, I’m just saddened to see the forest of my childhood ripped apart and now changed forever.
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