Monday, October 14, 2002

How Dumb Is Microsoft? Microsoft posted and subsequently removed its own version of Apple's switch campaign. But in contrast to the way that they normally steal ideas, they actually tried to add their own twists: Rather than confusing the issues by sharing many stories as Apple does, Microsoft only shares a single story. Microsoft's switcher is anonymous. Her story sounds more scripted than Apple's switchers: "My recommendation is to go straight to Windows XP Professional; the extra features for mobile users are worth it. See Which Edition is Right for You? for more information." She seems to have coincidentally posed in exactly the same way for a stock photograph available through Getty Images. What are the odds? Apple has pages of stories of Windows users switching to Macintoshes. Microsoft, on the other hand, can only counter with a single story that, to all appearances, is fabricated. I thought they were supposed to be good at marketing. 8:08:01 PM     What do you think? ()

How Do You Treat Waitresses? One of the things that I learned from my father (and my father-in-law in the all too brief time that I knew him) was that how you treat waiters and waitresses, and especially how you tip, is one of the best measures of you as a man (or woman, though that didn't apply in my case). I have found myself dining with people who view a tip as a grudging reward for good service rather than as payment for a service rendered, painstakingly calculating fifteen percent of the bill before the sales tax. It's mortifying. If you can't afford to tip graciously and generously at a restaurant, then you can't afford to eat at that restaurant. There have been occasions where I have picked up a check just to prevent such undertipping. This is echoed in Salon's review of Alison Owing's Hey Waitress!: These days, when I go out to eat, I watch for these missteps almost obsessively, horrified when friends or acquaintances fail to say even "hello" to a friendly "Can I take your order?" You can tell a lot about people by the way they treat a waitress. Most of these women are paid $2 an hour by their legal employers so their livelihood depends on tips, the generosity of strangers who happen to sit in their sections. Therefore, as you might logically imagine, most try hard to do their job well. It's always interesting when rich people tip badly, and they do it just as often as the poor. According to the ladies of Hey, Waitress!, Jesse Jackson had notably poor manners. Vernon Jordan and Yul Brynner were sweet as could be. Liza Minnelli stiffed one New York waitress. Arthur Miller left her only a quarter. Jimmy Carter tipped well and asked for a doggy bag. His waitress thought that was weirdly beneath a president. I knew I liked Jimmy Carter for a reason. But the final words on the matter, which I hope everyone will heed whenever they dine out, are the instructions that one of the waitresses interviewed in the book gave her husband: You will sit very quietly. You will give your order, completely, clearly, succinctly. You will never harass the waitron and will be very grateful and tip twenty percent even if she forgot your order completely. Maybe she's having a bad day. 6:09:11 PM     What do you think? ()

How Would One Develop a Universal System of Measurement? Speaking of dogma, in The Measure of All Things, Ken Alder takes a long look at the creation one of the central dogmas of modern science: the metric system. In an attempt to replace measures that were based on things like the distance from a king's nose to his thumb, the French sought to develop a "universal" system of measurement: "In June 1792 -- in the dying days of the French monarchy, as the world began to revolve around a new promise of revolutionary equality -- two astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary quest," Ken Alder writes in the opening sentence of his highly original new book. "Their hope was that all the world's peoples would henceforth use the globe as their common standard of measure." The new unit of measurement, to be called the meter, was to equal exactly one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. From that unit of distance and some of the properties of water at sea level, a complete system of measurement was developed that is now "officially employed by every nation except the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia." But though international in its applicability, it is not quite universal. The bases on which it is founded (the distance from the Equator to the North Pole, the freezing and boiling points, volume and mass of water at sea level, etc.) are inextricably earthbound. This book sounds like it continues the tradition of Dava Sobel's Longitude (the tale of the invention of a chronometer accurate enough to measure longitude at sea) and Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (the tale of the surveying of the border between colonial Pennsylvania and Maryland), both of which are set in about the same time as the events of The Measure of All Things. They are fascinating tales, and this sounds as though it may be as well. 8:45:30 AM     What do you think? ()

© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist. Last update: 11/2/03; 10:29:41 AM.

Links

Weblog Roll

Currently Reading