morgannels

As Eric and others have described, Apple fanatics (long known for their level-headed reasonability) have become hysterical about the fact the Apple‘s new iPod nano gets scratched if it’s not properly protected. That a piece of plastic (and no matter how slickly styled it is, no matter how much it will enhance your life, the nano is just a piece of plastic) will get scratched in a pocket with keys, change, etc. shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even the most dedicated Apple loyalist.

Knowing all of the forgoing, I decided, when I received my own nano, to go to the local Apple store and pick up a case for it. I ordered my nano a couple of weeks after they were first available, and it took a few weeks to be shipped, so I figured cases would be widely available by now. It turns out that the Apple stores don’t carry anything that can be used to protect a nano. You can order nano cases through Apple’s Web store, but the delivery times run from one to six weeks. And a search of the Web for nano cases from third parties was no more successful. I couldn’t find anything being released any earlier than next week, and several cases weren’t available until November.

So though I have little sympathy for someone who’s surprised that plastic stuffed into their pockets gets scratched, I’m puzzled by Apple’s decision to sell a piece of plastic that was meant to be stuffed into pockets months before the appropriate protection would be available. Perhaps this is just another example of Apple’s weirdly sadomasochistic relationship with its most devoted customers, but I’m surprised to find that such an odd little neurosis has survived Apple’s transformation from a niche computer maker into a mainstream consumer electronics company.

Was there a credible bomb threat to New York City’s subway system or not? The warning, coming as it did in the midst of a week full of continuing bad news for the Bush Administration, would be easily dismissed as politically motivated, except that the Department of Homeland Security are among those suggesting that the intelligence behind the threat isn’t credible. That seems somehow backwards.

But credible threat or not, there has been much discussion of how frightened New Yorkers should be. Someone (apparently from Wichita) wrote:

I’m sure that many New Yorkers are aware of a bomb threat. I’m also sure that many are in deep denial. If they weren’t in denial they’d be looking hard for jobs elsewhere right now.

I really can’t see getting all worked up over this or any other threat, regardless of its credibility–certainly not to the point of ever leaving New York. The way I see it is that riding the subway is orders of magnitude safer than driving, so much so that even if there were a suicide bombing on the subway every day, the average subway rider would probably still be statistically safer than the average automobile commuter. (As an aside, how many people have been killed by, say, drunk drivers since September 10, 2001? Where’s the War on Drunk Driving? What is it about global terror that’s so much more compelling than, say, global AIDS? Why are we so worried about the few hundred that might be killed by terrorists, but not, say, the thousands or even millions who are far more likely to be killed by a bird flu pandemic? Why are some deaths more compelling than others?)

Or as another New Yorker put it:

Yeah, that’s our dream: to move to Wichita and spend our weekend nights watching Clem and Cletus blow up gophers. Especially now that their crystal meth is drying up, I’ll give Cowtown a miss and take my chances with the suicide bombers.

It’s amusing to me that terrorism is effective not against those who have been or might be harmed by it, but by those who face no danger whatsoever. That is, as they say, when the terrorists have won.

My new iPod nano seems to have run afoul of Chinese authorities before I even got to use it. Could it be because of Apple’s counter-revolutionary capitalization scheme? Should I be worried?

Harper’s “Weekly Review” is a handy condensation of all of the horrors and giddiness of a world winding to a whimpering conclusion. This week’s edition is another such catalog. After noting that Harriet Miers “has allegedly described Bush as ‘brilliant,'” that “Dr. David Nabarro, the United Nations representative in charge of coordinating the response to bird flu, said that a bird flu pandemic could kill from 5 to 150 million people. ‘It’s like a combination of global warming and HIV/AIDS,’ he said, ‘ten times faster,'” and that “A Fresno, California, man who stabbed a cross-dressing man to death with a pair of scissors was sentenced to only four years in prison after his attorneys argued that the murder was the result of ‘gay panic,'” it finishes with this:

The Danish Air Force paid a Santa 31,175 kroner after the noise from fighter jets frightened his reindeer, Rudolph, to death. A suicide bomber in Oklahoma blew himself up at a Sooners game, the Marines were recruiting on Craigslist, and Burt Bacharach was recording a protest album with Dr. Dre. “Burt’s pissed,” explained a friend.

Burt’s pissed. Truly the end is nigh.

“And our father gave us… I can’t really say tough love, ’cause with tough love there’s, you know, love.”

I’m sorry that I can’t give proper attribution for this quote, both because I’d like the speaker to receive recognition for their brilliance and because I’d like you to be able to fully appreciate how darkly funny it is. But even without attribution, I think it’s pretty damned funny.