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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 ...
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... By Any Other Name

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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...
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