She lost me at Burger King

by ma_shimaro

English Professor: I Was Booted From Starbucks Over Bagel Linguistics
[Via The Consumerist]

For some customers, Starbucks’ very particular lexicon is a source of anxiety and possibly even anger. But it wasn’t having to order a “venti” or a “tall” that drove a NYC college professor into an argument at a Manhattan Starbucks over the weekend. Instead, it was her refusal to tell an employee what she didn’t want on her bagel.

“I just wanted a multigrain bagel,” the woman told The NY Post. “I refused to say ‘without butter or cheese.’ When you go to Burger King, you don’t have to list the six things you don’t want… Linguistically, it’s stupid, and I’m a stickler for correct English.”

According to the professor, she was then told she wouldn’t get anything at all unless she specified that she wanted neither butter nor cheese on her bagel.

“I yelled, ‘I want my multigrain bagel!’” she said. “The barista said, ‘You’re not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!’”

The debate escalated to the point where the manager contacted the police. The professor says the officers told her they would have to arrest her if she refused to leave.

The Post also spoke to a Starbucks employee who witnessed the incident. “She would not answer. It was a reasonable question,” the worker said. “She called [the barista] an a–hole.”

Could this situation have been resolved better by the employee and manager? Was the professor just causing a scene? Would you like butter or cheese on that?

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Sometimes it is very easy to tell who is being the officious jerk and who snaps by being set upon by forces outside their control. Here, we have an NYC professor abusing a person serving her. Standard He said-She said. Can we determine who was eally the jerk here?

Well, when someone states that they were standing up for English, that they are as tickler for linguistics, they had better demonstrate some of that. Yet she states “When you go to Burger King, you don’t have to list the six things you don’t want.” What??

If I want a hamburger at Burger King with nothing on it, I have to say I want a hamburger with nothing on it. I have to say “Hamburger. Plain.” So, is she such a stickler when she orders a plain hamburger at Burger King.

If she had simply said exactly what she has to say at Burger King there would have been no problem at Starbucks. “Bagel. Plain.”

The fact that she did not do so, that she escalated the order into a yelling match that required police action tells me what type of person she was in the store.

This really does sound like a very bad version of a great Seinfeld episode. Maybe there is a bagel nazi. “No bagel for you!!” But the story itself displays a pretty unreasonable customer who admits doing the yelling.

QED Jerk

Discussion forums as a social network

New Apple Support Communities social network to replace Discussions
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple has teased a forthcoming “major upgrade” to its online forums, with the existing Apple Discussions set to become the new Apple Support Communities, a social network where users can assist one another.

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Discussion forums are sort of a social network so actually adding some real functionality here could be really useful. I’ll be checking it out.

Are people stupider today or smarter?

In an earlier post on a new Antennagate, the commenters got into a discussion baout how the current generation is more stupid than previous ones, being unable to do its multiplication tables, etc.

I guess he never heard of the Flynn effect. Standardized tests have to be re-calibrated and renormalized every so often. Why? Because people do better on them as time goes on – the average score goes up.

A test where the mean is standardized at 100 will result in a mean of 110 after about 30 years. So the tests are renormalized, since, by definition 100 is average.

So, by these tests, an average person from 1950 who took today’s test would get a score of 80 and an average person today would be 110 in 1950. If your grandfather took the today’s test back in the 30s or so, he would have be viewed as needing special education.

Other measures of cognitive function have seen similar increases.

Now most of these changes are seen in the low end of the curve. That is, people from the high end are not getting seeing large increases so much as people at the low end are. Thus the average goes up.

There are a lot of explanations about why this is happening but one thing is for certain – these results do not support the hypothesis that people are getting stupider.

This actually opens up the discussion about what is intelligence and what the metrics for it should be. Because, as the comments tries to advocate, a smaller vocabulary means that someone is stupider. I would not say that is obvious. First, it is not obvious that the vocabularies are really different or that the methods that were used to examine that accurately captured the full vocabulary usage of the population.

Reality is much more complex than simply People are more stupid today. Some interesting recent work indicates that young people who have been playing video games, texting and surfing the internet their entire lives have brains that are wired quite differently than previous generations – not stupid just different.

Will this latest antennagate get as much play as the iPhone’s?

Antennagate hits Verizon’s Android Motorola Droid 2
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple’s efforts to describe the antenna problems associated with iPhone 4 as an engineering issue facing all phone makers is getting a little help from Motorola, which has released Droid 2 to a series of complaints from users regarding poor signal.

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We will have to see how widespread this is or not but the fact that all the review phones sent to Engadget had the problem should be worrisome. And this happens even when the phone is not held at all.

Of course, no one is claiming that there are dropped calls. Only that the bars are not reading accurately. Juts like the iPhone. But the media made such a big deal about this that the CEO of Apple had to call an emergency press conference to deal with it.

In a fair world, I would expect something similar when it hits an Android model. I’m not going to hold my breath.

Swiping your iPhone

Latest Apple hire could signal NFC capabilities in future iPhones
[Via AppleInsider]

More evidence that Apple is interested in adding near-field communication technology to its future portable devices, allowing users to have their iPhone act as a wallet for transactions, has come in the form of a new hire.

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Instead of having a whole bunch of little cards hanging from your keychain to use at the grocery store or service station or whatever, you could just use your iPhone. But it could also read tags form items, opening up all sorts of possibilities for getting information without having to enter it by hand.

Could be lots of fun.

A ten-fold increase in public housing applications leads 60 to hospitals

~30,000 Storm Atlanta Parking Lot To Get Public Housing Apps
[Via The Consumerist]

The last time public housing rosters were opened up, the city got 2,400 apps. This time, they thought maybe 10,000 would show up. Instead, an estimated 30,000 people descended on an Atlanta parking lot last week so they could pick up an application for public housing. 60 had to be taken to the hospital after fights or just from heat exhaustion. It was 90-100 degrees. And this is just to get on a waiting list. To get an actual voucher can take 8-10 more years.

Judging by the video, city officials elected to distribute the applications by standing on top of a car and handing them out one by one to the hundreds of grabbing hands that surrounded them.

Logistics fail. Why not set up a series of distribution points around the city?

MORE: Crowds Chase Scarce Housing Vouchers [WSJ]

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This looks like something from the developing world. 30,000 people trying to get on a waiting list for 445 vouchers. Some camped out for 3 days in sweltering heat – I would expect most of the people hospitalized were from heat exhaustion. I’m amazed no one died. 30,000 standing in the Georgia heat is a prescription for some real health problems.

But the incredible thing is that the city that was doing this – East Point, Georgia – only has a population of 43,000. People were driving down from all over to get a chance, even if they might have to wait 8 years to get in.

Obviously, handing out the applications by hand was a logistical nightmare. CHicago had something similar earlier this summer but did it online. 215,000 people applied. 40,000 of those will be chosen to go into a lottery for the few spots available.

Researchers do more than research – performing a sea rescue

from NOAA

NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson Rescues Downed Pilot
[Via NOAA News Releases]

While conducting mapping surveys west of Key West, Fla. the evening of August 14, the NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson heard a radio report from the U.S. Coast Guard that a small aircraft with one person aboard had crashed in the water about 30 miles away from the vessel. The crew of the Thomas Jefferson immediately contacted the Coast Guard to advise they would help with the search and rescue operation and proceeded to steam toward the reported position.

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This is not your typical NOAA press release. The ship responded to the cry for help, used their knowledge of ocean currents and effected a rescue of the downed pilot.

Take a closer look at the figure. They calculated the drift for 4 hours and set up the search pattern from that point but they found him almost exactly 3 hours from when contact was lost. He was short of where they expected but on a direct line from where he was reported down and where they expected him.

If you notice, their path took them on a directly parallel course to the drift path they calculated. Quite a success. And very accurate calculations. I guess the Theory of Relativity is worth something, since we have GPS devices that can so accurately place the ship where it needed to go.