In country
Read my Daily Page review of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum exhibit "In the Belly of the Dragon: Life and Death in I Corps."
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Number, please
Last fall our two-year phone contract with U.S. Cellular was up, and Ereck and I decided to make the great leap to Cingular. We changed carriers largely because we thought the phones offered by U.S. Cellular were lame.
Making the switch proved ghastly. Thanks to a mistake that was entirely mine -- I transferred our phone numbers to Cingular a few days before our U.S. Cellular obligation ended -- we were billed hefty early-termination fees. And then all sorts of inexplicable charges appeared on our first Cingular bill. It looked as though we might be out hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
A few phone calls fixed all that. A very sympathetic U.S. Cellular representative waived our cancellation fees after minimal pleading from yours truly ("We hope someday you'll come back to U.S. Cellular," she said), and a Cingular representative agreed that the charges on our bill were inexplicable, and removed them.
Now, months later, having recovered from the trauma of the change, and not to be totally geeky about this -- but I love my new phone, the impossibly complicated Cingular 8125 (pictured). I'll spare you an exhaustive description. I do want to tell you, though, that not only can I make and receive calls with this thing (I like that in a phone), but I also, thanks to the built-in Wi-Fi, can surf the Internet while I am lying in bed, on my side.
Regular readers already know I have quirky sleeping habits. Time to add another one: Now I can serenely peruse gawker.com as I drift off.
Last fall our two-year phone contract with U.S. Cellular was up, and Ereck and I decided to make the great leap to Cingular. We changed carriers largely because we thought the phones offered by U.S. Cellular were lame.
Making the switch proved ghastly. Thanks to a mistake that was entirely mine -- I transferred our phone numbers to Cingular a few days before our U.S. Cellular obligation ended -- we were billed hefty early-termination fees. And then all sorts of inexplicable charges appeared on our first Cingular bill. It looked as though we might be out hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
A few phone calls fixed all that. A very sympathetic U.S. Cellular representative waived our cancellation fees after minimal pleading from yours truly ("We hope someday you'll come back to U.S. Cellular," she said), and a Cingular representative agreed that the charges on our bill were inexplicable, and removed them.
Now, months later, having recovered from the trauma of the change, and not to be totally geeky about this -- but I love my new phone, the impossibly complicated Cingular 8125 (pictured). I'll spare you an exhaustive description. I do want to tell you, though, that not only can I make and receive calls with this thing (I like that in a phone), but I also, thanks to the built-in Wi-Fi, can surf the Internet while I am lying in bed, on my side.
Regular readers already know I have quirky sleeping habits. Time to add another one: Now I can serenely peruse gawker.com as I drift off.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Go Maroons
I was confused by the lead of New York Times scribe David Brooks' Feb. 4 column: "Last fall, I taught a political theory course at Duke University, as part of my lifelong quest to teach at every college I never could have gotten into out of high school."
Now, David Brooks went to the University of Chicago. It's true, of course, that the U of C is less selective than places like Harvard, Princeton and Duke. (Some say the U of C is less selective because U of C students select themselves, which is as sexy as it sounds.)
But I think Brooks is selling his alma mater short. As a Chicago man myself, I would take umbrage if I weren't preoccupied with reciting favorite passages from the Melian Dialogue.
As for what a guy with a bachelor's degree is doing teaching political theory at Duke, that is the power of journalism, and a loophole I'd be happy to jump through myself.
I was confused by the lead of New York Times scribe David Brooks' Feb. 4 column: "Last fall, I taught a political theory course at Duke University, as part of my lifelong quest to teach at every college I never could have gotten into out of high school."
Now, David Brooks went to the University of Chicago. It's true, of course, that the U of C is less selective than places like Harvard, Princeton and Duke. (Some say the U of C is less selective because U of C students select themselves, which is as sexy as it sounds.)
But I think Brooks is selling his alma mater short. As a Chicago man myself, I would take umbrage if I weren't preoccupied with reciting favorite passages from the Melian Dialogue.
As for what a guy with a bachelor's degree is doing teaching political theory at Duke, that is the power of journalism, and a loophole I'd be happy to jump through myself.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Good word
"Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on 'em. That's what the Statue of Bigotry says."
-- Lou Reed
"Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I'll piss on 'em. That's what the Statue of Bigotry says."
-- Lou Reed
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