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May 29, 2004

LauraFries.com's thoughts: France 'fries' cell phone use in theatres with a <a href="http://news.com.com/France+fries+cell+p... >>

I Broke Ya Nokia

Fifteen minutes into the movie Mean Girls, this woman strolls into the movie theatre, pressing an infant to her chest with one hand, and a cell phone to her ear with the other. She shuffles across an entire aisle full of people to get to her seat (which happens to be my aisle), crosses in front of me, then plops down right next to me to continue her conversation. The baby coos at me. I shoot a dirty look at it in the dark.

I could probably have tapped the woman on the shoulder and asked her to be quiet, ensuring two hours of mutual scowling awkwardness between us.

Or (I actually thought), if I wanted to do it guerilla-style, I could have discreetly turned on my SH066PL2A cell phone jamming device.

Sitting in the theater, I didn't know whether such devices were commercially available, but listening to the woman babble, I thought, "Wow. What a retail coup that would be! Cell phone jamming!"

Some quick Google-fu reveals that, although illegal in the U.S., jamming is pretty popular across the Atlantic. This Slate article says it won't stay underground for long, even here. (U.S. customers are the biggest foreign market for the personal jamming devices, according to the article.)

I think if I had access to such a technology, I couldn't bring myself to use it. But I wonder. And I wonder what society will do when our ability to intrude on the "private" spaces of total strangers gets even more virtual.

mthompson-sig.gif
Posted May 29, 2004 at 11:48 | Comments (2) | Permasnark
File under: Society/Culture

May 27, 2004

Gavin's thoughts: I suppose it doesn't really shed much light on Obama, but here's another one to file under Jack R... >>

Politician With a Halo

This New Yorker article, essentially a hagiography of an Illinois politician, brought out in me a cynicism about the American political process I didn't even know I had. The politician in question, Barack Obama, is half-black, grew up in Middle America, rose from modest circumstances to become a star at Harvard and teach law at UChicago, and claims to want to practice clean, civil, on-the-issues politics. Why am I so skeptical of this guy? Some grafs:

Abner Mikva told me,