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Smart phone can walk dog

Published 4:08 pm Friday, July 9, 2010

It’s summertime and the opinions are easy:

  • “Tech companies are working on applications for smart phones that will allow pedestrians to more safely use their devices.” Thank goodness. Because watching where you’re going and being engaged in your actual surroundings is for losers.

    • (Travis Bogard, a big-wig at the company that makes Bluetooth earpieces, welcomed the technological advancement with this observation: “I don’t think we are going to eliminate people from walking into things outright, and of course we want people to be responsible, but what we’re trying to do is eliminate the friction point … and give the user back a little mental bandwidth.” Sounds like somebody’s mental bandwidth has walked into few things outright).

  • “Pennsylvania tests wine vending machines”: This is to get around a state law that forbids the sale of wine in grocery stores. After swiping their ID and looking into a camera, customers must blow into a breath sensor. State employees remotely monitor the machines.

    • Mmmm, a communal supermarket Breathalyser makes a fingerprint-covered ATM screen seem positively germ-free. But it turns out the technology is such that a person can breathe 12 inches from the device, rather than touch their lips to it. Which, at first Rose blush, sounds better. But then when you think about people, some possibly inebriated, blowing their breath hard enough so it will travel a foot, it doesn’t sound better at all.

  • “Long delays on tarmacs fall as steep fines for airlines kick in”: Sometimes things actually work the way they’re supposed to.

    • “Bankruptcy-ending confirmation hearing for Texas Rangers set for July 22”: It’s complicated and controversial, and the club celebrated by trading for pitcher Cliff Lee. Ownership had a deal in place for $575 million, but attorneys for lenders in the bankruptcy case said the team can do better than that and scuttled the sale.

    How did the mighty Rangers get to this point? Most media reports don’t mention any background. Didn’t insane pre-recession salaries have something to do with it?

    The Dow Jones Newswires remembers, and reports: “Under the Rangers’ proposed sale, the Ryan-Greenberg group would pay $304 million in cash and assume a host of liabilities, including $45 million owed to current and former players such as Alex Rodriguez and Michael Young.”

    Tom Hicks, who bought the Rangers for $250 million in 1998, and declared the bankruptcy in May, personally negotiated Rodriguez’ 10-year, $252 million contract.

    We just don’t want Hicks to be forgotten when we harken back to the age of McMansions, Hummers and other unsustainable things.

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