DUMBING DOWN

I'm sure their own senator is more familiar with their potential than the rest of us. What next, though, chewing gum while walking?

In fact, the proposed legislation includes wearing an ipod while crossing the street. The claim is that people who text or listen to ipods while crossing the street endanger themselves or others. They said one boy was killed crossing the street while listening to his ipod, when a truck backing up crushed him--he couldn't hear the back up signal on the truck.

for me it isn't so much the BRB and LOLs, it's the en1 crap.

Yeah . . . and 2 for to, two and too.

That's interesting.

Well, then texting in malls while walking... (a now famous video showing the pitfalls of that).

Yeah, one of the vignettes of the radio broadcast was of a woman who was talking to an interviewer, and texting, while walking through a mall. She walked right into a concrete pillar.

We have the video on a thread here.. back in a bit.

Or maybe this is two videos. The one I saw was a woman texting while walking and then quickly flopping into a mall pool and quickly getting back out.
I'm interested in all this as a past interested person about public safety in landscape design. There's a famous guy, who worked up swell urban fountain designs, based on the idea of here it is, be careful and have fun, concept was about known danger. I'm plotzing on his name. I eventually got tired of his name, shame on me.

All right, it's Lawrence Halprin, the link a mere wisp of his importance a while ago. He was very influential at some point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Halprin

But I always thought it was more a matter of convenience. So, I'll confess to using the abbreviations when texting on my impossibly tiny phone with the impossibly tiny buttons -- i.e., 'Luv 2 c u l8tr'. (Give me a full-size keyboard, however, and that becomes 'Love to see you later'.)

So, for some I think it depends on the device.

But, back to your main concern, the BBC reported on a study that addresses this very thing a couple of years ago.

I'll bet you cannot read much in the analog display world either. In fact most people cannot, and historically most people have not been able to. In truth, analog displays (as they relate to the various forms of measurement) are losing relevance given digital displays.

Analog clocks or watches will likely be with us for hundreds of years to come for reasons of style.

The same for physical books.

Gas fireplaces are far more efficent and convenient than their wood burning kin, and yet many people insist on having the latter.

Pick me up YYYY (Sexagesimal) / BSF Witworth sized spark plugs for my external combustion engine when you're at Pep Boys.

did you check the muffler bearing?

I need to check the dwell after setting the point gap, only I can't find my strobe and the vacuum advance has a leak.

are you gonna synchronize the carburetors...?

Some technological antiques will not be available or will be very expensive, but thinks like analog watches and books will not need to be preserved, they will continue to be manufactured...and probably cost, relatively speaking, more than they do today.

Well if I do not then the vacuum will be unequal and it will not run smoothly. I'll get out my murcury tubes!

Additionally, on large displays such as those at electrical generating statios, analogue displays are crucially important, because operators can look at an array of dials to see if they are in normal ranges, whereas looking at the same array of digital readouts would require them to make a decision on each display as to whether or not the number displayed is in normal range. This is true not just in electrical generating stations, but it is most commonly seen there.

Damn. I've been in power plant operating rooms and never noticed. On the other hand, they've been radically updated since that part of my working life.