Although it may be a noble goal in their minds, I’m not sure why it is necessary for a city to spend so much of their time continually eliminating parking spaces. Aren’t there bigger actual problems to deal with?
While the theory that fewer parking spaces make people more inclined to walk or use other forms of transportation may sound good, eradicating parking does not actually accomplish this. There are still just as many or more cars today than there were yesterday, so there is just as much or need for parking. If people have been ingenious enough to create parking spaces from the unused space in the planter strip — keeping their cars off the road and leaving more land available for other purposes — it follows that the city should be singing their praises. It doesn’t follow that “if everybody pays, everybody wins”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I have a different definition of “winning”.
There are a few products in the marketplace that invoke a bizarre, nauseating reflex upon contact with our brains. These products, such as frozen bananas, are incredibly puzzling as the more they are contemplated, the more it becomes clear that their existence must solely be to invoke this bizarre, nauseating reaction. Why else could frozen bananas exist? Who could possibly be benefiting from crystallized precut chunks of curved yellow fruit? Worse still, who are the people being suckered into buying these bags of prepeeled, presliced, flash-frozen bananas? With fresh bananas readily available in all parts of the country and selling at retail for less than $0.39/lb., an amazing amount of labor in peeling bananas would be required before prepared frozen bananas would even remotely make economic sense. Has our society really deteriorated so much that we no longer have the time or patience to “pull tab here” on fresh bananas?
The Defense Department mistakenly shipped secret nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan more than 18 months ago and did not learn that the items were missing until late last week [...]
Officials with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan’s fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters. [...] It was unclear yesterday how the two very different items were mixed up at a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Utah for the win! Seriously, how do you mix up batteries and nuclear weapon parts? One has dimensions comparable to a breadbox and the other is the size of my under-counter refrigerator. Come on, people!
Although I’m definitely a fan of the online DVD rental service Netflix, they have again disappointed me today. The website offers the option to put your memership “on hold”, which will temporarily stop Netflix from billing and mailing movies to you. On the surface, it looks like Netflix really cares about its customers by offering this extra convenience. From my point of view, however, this is really a selfish policy whose only purpose is to boost the company’s bottom line.
Let’s say you are a Netflix member whose billing date is at the beginning of the month. You are about to go on a two-week vacation, so you place your account on hold today and set the service to resume in two week. You’ve already paid for movies for the two weeks of your vacation, but, by placing your account hold, have elected to stop their delivery. In order to actually give you what you’ve already paid for, Netflix should move your billing date two weeks ahead to make up for the time that you will not be receiving movies. Netflix doesn’t do this. Unless your billing date is during your vacation, you gain nothing. The worst part is that you actually increase your risk of financial liabilities for the zero benefit you receive: Your account will be charged $20 per disc for any movies that aren’t received by Netflix within seven days of placing your account on hold. So basically, if you try to be an organized person and place you account on hold but then forget to mail those three discs back before you go on vacation, you’ve just given Netflix $60 for absolutely nothing.
I telephoned Netflix customer service to verify I correctly understood the account hold policy, which I did. Confronted with this information, the representative couldn’t tell me why I would want to place my account on hold.
Last night at dinner, I reached for a fortune cookie (like I frequently do) and found a most disturbing surprise within:
SAFE COMMUNITIES
Utah Republicans: Leadership that Delivers (… in bed)
What is this, communist China? I don’t think it’s appropriate to find this message inside of a fortune cookie anywhere, let alone one on campus. We can’t even enjoy our food in peace anymore. Politics have gone so far as to invade even our desserts! Is there nowhere safe from their unrelenting, tireless grip?