Voicemail, You're Not Wanted...

From Farhad Manjoo, of Slate:

The bill of particulars is damning. Unlike your e-mail inbox, voice mail is impossible to skim: If your phone tells you that you've got five new messages, you've got no choice but to listen to at least a bit of each one before you can decide what to do with it. In a user-interface decision that I suspect might violate some subclause of the Geneva Conventions, your voice-mail system insists on making you listen to the same instructional prompts between each message. But wait, is it 9 to archive and 7 to skip, or is that the way the work phone does it? I couldn't tell you, because every voice-mail system seems to have settled on different numbers to activate its main functions. It's an absurdly backward mode of human-computer interaction.

In other words, someone out there with some smarts has realized how much voice mail sucks. The Intern (that lovable goat) will be delighted to hear it.

Forward-thinking or Goatish?

Consider the following:

A scholar is giving a presentation on, I don't know, the mating habits of bullfrogs in New Zealand. In the middle of his lecture, the unthinkable happens: his cell phone rings (maybe it plays the William Tell Overture). The entire audience shifts in their seats as that familiar mixture of disdain and embarrassment fills the place.

THEN HE TAKES THE CALL, informing the crowd, "I'm sorry, one second...It's my wife; my child is disabled..." The crowd murmurs. Everyone is thinking, "Oh, okay..."

Then my intern--very interested in the mating habits of anything--says to her friend, "You know, a cell phone does not possess the utility to excuse him interrupting this lecture. In the pre-cellphone age, anything that child may have needed would have just worked itself out. Or it would have been too serious for that cellphone to solve anything."

Everyone seated around her leans away, fiddles with their note-taking materials or, ironically, checks their cellphones to distract themselves.

What say you, readers? Is my intern on to something or is she just an insufferable (though lovable) goat?

Yasir?

Is it just me or is Bill Cosby starting to look like the late Yasir Arafat? Please spare me any comments about the fact that Cosby voted for a "secret Muslim."

Update: The intern who brings me sugar-free energy drinks and tasty protein bars disagrees with this post entirely. However, she asserts that Arafat is the father of my brother and his (our) uncle. Probably not in that order.