Hamster Wheel of the Day

Why do the most ill-prepared, ass-backward people seek your help when you are about to close for the day?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Finger-Popping Pimp Hand of Adam Smith

Music is powerful. It helps us learn things (think of the Alphabet Song or anything from Schoolhouse Rock). It recalls memories of events past, both specific and vague. For me, I see myself walking past WIMPE (the former nickname for Campus Recreation Center - East at the University of Illinois) on my way back to Allen Hall whenever I listen to Hearing Aid by They Might Be Giants. Music can lift our spirits or drive us deeper into despair. Because music has such an impact, I argue advertisers use music, popular music especially, to subconsciously feed our society's runaway consumerism. Once upon a time, advertisers used to commission songwriters to produce songs specific for the product they wanted to sell. The jingles for Alka-Seltzer® and Tootsie Rolls® come immediately to mind for me, but there were thousands of jingles for the thousands of products advertised on television and radio. In the last fifteen years, most advertisers stopped writing jingles, choosing instead to cull ...
Read more

Debunking the Old Green Myth

I came across this editorial in a Facebook post. So far, searches to find the original author have come up short, but versions of the parable below have appeared in social media since 2012. Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment. The woman apologized to the young girl and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days." The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations." The older lady said that she was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing' in its day. The older lady went on to explain, "Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use th...
Read more

A Possible Solution to Discriminatory Currency

I was at a drive through ATM this evening. Waiting for the transaction to finish processing, I read this sign posted under the screen (next to a jack for standard headphones or earbuds): AUDITORY ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED The first thing that went through my mind when I read that was, "Why would a blind person use a drive through ATM?" Next, I thought about how U.S. currency discriminates against the blind and visually impaired. I remember reading several articles over the last few years about the new anti-counterfeiting measures they added to the redesigned currency: color changing ink, watermarks, microprinting, and the little magnetic strips that have the bill's denomination written on it. In these articles I remembered how some people still have issues with the currency because every bill in circulation is exactly the same size. Other countries, I believe, have different sized bills so you can tell them apart without looking at them. Euros come in...
Read more