Wired has an article I was reading while in transit to Maine about a person named Alex Roy who attempted, and succeeded, to break the unofficial coast-to-coast land speed record. He took a souped up BMW from Manhattan to the Santa Monica pier in an insane 31 hours, 4 minutes. Do the math and that works out to an average speed of about 95 m.p.h. That's average speed. In order to make the average that high, you need to put the pedal to the metal when you can (up to 150 m.p.h.) to make up for time lost getting gas, in traffic, and pretending to be an average driver when passing speedtraps. That's why the speed record is unofficial - making it official would probably land you in jail pretty quick. The article has all kinds of interesting asides about the meticulous planning, his failed previous attempts, how he got started on this in the first place, and - most importantly - how one avoids getting hammered by the cops.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Reasons to Hate Cellphone Carriers
Wired has an article entitled "10 Reasons to Hate Cellphone Carriers." Without any difficulty they managed to stretch it to 14, and the comments at the end include many more. I'd say that, yes, cellphone carriers suck. Everyone knows it, everyone's experienced it, everyone's effected by it. Even if you are saying to yourself, "Gosh, my cellphone (and, by extension, carrier) doesn't seem all that bad," you should be aware of all the things that can be done with cellphones in other countries, for substantially less money than in the U.S. Most people don't know how backwards it is here.
As a way to fight back, I suggest backing Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-MN) bill that would substantially improve consumer rights when it comes to cell carriers.