When I got back from work today, the postman had delivered two delights. One is this collection of David Remnick’s journalism. He’s such a graceful writer — the kind that leaves you staring at a sentence and wondering how anything can be so succinctly elegant.
The other delight is Bob Dylan’s new album, Modern Times. It’s astonishingly original and fresh, with some tracks (Thunder on the Mountain, The Levee’s Gonna Break) which remind one of why rock music changed the world.
British employers are being warned they could face multi-million-pound legal actions from BlackBerry-addicted staff on a similar scale as class law-suits taken against tobacco companies.
Research by the University of Northampton has revealed that one-third of BlackBerry users showed signs of addictive behaviour similar to an alcoholic being unable to pass a pub without a drink.
The report found that some BlackBerry users displayed textbook addictive symptoms – denial, withdrawal and antisocial behaviour – and that time with their families was being taken up with BlackBerry-checking, even at the dinner table.
Professor Nada Kakabadse, joint author of the study, said that lawsuits were a growing issue for employers who were being sued for failing in their duty of care to staff and in following health and safety guidelines.
In one case in the US, a female business consultant claimed that her marriage fell apart because she was constantly checking messages. She ended up losing custody of her children and sued her employer for damages.
“Enlightened companies that issue BlackBerrys as standard like pen and paper should also have policies on how to use them, so that people can use technology in a way that doesn’t have an addictive side,” said Professor Kakabadse of Northampton Business School.
The BlackBerry backlash has already begun in the US, where firms are settling out of court to avoid negative publicity.
[Source.]
I’ve had a BlackBerry for well over a year. It is by far the most useful gadget I’ve ever owned. But I don’t recognise any of these symptoms. Could it be that most BlackBerry users haven’t figured out how to filter their mail? In my case, the only mail that reaches my phone comes from:
Everything else goes to my computer, as usual. The result: really important email reaches me instantly. Everything else has to wait until I’m at a computer.
This is from a series of images provided by NASA of the latest Shuttle mission. The laptop on the left looks like an IBM Thinkpad. Hmmm… wonder if it’s running XP.
… and living to tell the tale. Fascinating piece by the New York Times Business Travel correspondent, Joe Sharkey.
SÃO JOSE DOS CAMPOS, Brazil, Oct. 1 — It had been an uneventful, comfortable flight.
With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves.
Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.
And then the three words I will never forget. “We’ve been hit,” said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet.
“Hit? By what?” I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot-tall winglet was supposed to be.
And so began the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life. I would be told time and again in the next few days that nobody ever survives a midair collision. I was lucky to be alive — and only later would I learn that the 155 people aboard the Boeing 737 on a domestic flight that seems to have clipped us were not.
Investigators are still trying to sort out what happened, and how — our smaller jet managed to stay aloft while a 737 that is longer, wider and more than three times as heavy, fell from the sky nose first.
But at 3:59 last Friday afternoon, all I could see, all I knew, was that part of the wing was gone. And it was clear that the situation was worsening in a hurry. The leading edge of the wing was losing rivets, and starting to peel back.
Amazingly, no one panicked. The pilots calmly starting scanning their controls and maps for signs of a nearby airport, or, out their window, a place to come down…
Steve Bell’s cartoon in the Guardian of September 28. Note top right-hand corner. What can this mean?
Later… Mystery solved. James M, from whom nothing is hidden, writes:
In his speech to the Labour Party BrownNoseFest [Clinton] introduced the word Ubuntu as expressive the interelationships of people and their circumstances in South Africa. He also mentioned the software connection.