ctrl.altered.mind

Scott Adams, best known as the author of Dilbert, posted an account of an exasperating plane journey he had recently, on the Dilbert blog today:

Yesterday I was flying across the country. My biggest fear when flying isn’t that the jet might crash; it’s that I might end up sitting next to the World’s Most Annoying Man for five hours. Theoretically, such a person exists. I mean, SOMEONE has to be the most annoying man in the world. And there’s a good chance that he flies. After yesterday, I’m reasonably sure that he looks like Mr. Clean on crack, and he was sitting next to me in seat 3D.

As you know, when people use headphones, they talk too loudly because they can’t hear themselves. I learned that this phenomenon extends to nasal sounds in the sniff-snort category. Mr. Clean on crack was rocking out to his iPod and sniff-snorting so loudly every few seconds that the flight crew kept looking out the window to see if a pterodactyl was attacking the fuselage.

Oh, I’m just getting started…

The complete essay is humorous in a way only Adams can be, but it has also managed to instill a deep fear in my mind. After all, the 0.056547619-fortnight-long plane ride(s) I shall be experiencing (each way) a month from now - I’m going back home for a vacation - are going to be much longer than what Adams has had to endure in a single sitting. The excruciation that results from restricted motion over such long periods of time is simply exponential, in a way that can not be described to someone who has not experienced anything beyond a domestic flight. I’ll be preparing for the onset of boredom with books, music, and the anticipation of a good in-flight movie selection, but nothing can prepare you to handle the misfortune of having the World’s Most Annoying Man by your side. Please include me in your prayers.

You know you’re using Google a bit too much when you accidentally discover seemingly feckless (but then, not quite) features. However, the fact that this is a feature probably proves that Google’s search queries see these patterns all the time.

Searching for a celebrity’s feature returns a result with the correct answer, like ‘Elizabeth Hurley - eyes‘ for example. It probably helps to have Google keep track of a world of cosmetic vicissitude.

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”

– Western Union internal memo, 1876.

Born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell was the son and grandson of authorities in elocution and the correction of speech. Educated to pursue a career in the same specialty, his knowledge of the nature of sound led him not only to teach the deaf, but also to invent the telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell’s notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.”