Convenience and Controversy in Adams Morgan
By Bret Schulte and Don Oldenburg
August 30, 2002

It's a masterpiece of convenience in the drive-through age. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that the Tik Tok Easy Shop is brought to you by those who spawned fast food.

Did I say I love dehumanizing technology? Yes I did. And it seems my enthusiasm isn't shared by the people of Washington, D. C., who received, black-monolith like, the sudden gift of the steely RoboShop in their neighborhood. With none of the residents discovering the possibilities of large bones as weapons or transmogrifying into floating fetuses with large, black eyes, they have taken offense at the automaton and called for its removal.

Authorities listening to the cries from the tribe may hold the upper hand: When permits were filed for the automated convenience store, the requests were for operating a vending machine. But the contraption also has foundations and a large storage space, making it much more than a simple Coke dispensing machine. Will this be the death-blow to McDonald's experiment? (Yes, Mickey D's is testing the Easy Shop with an eye on starting an automated store market.)

Despite thinking that a strike against McDonald's is a strike against greedy capitalism, I'm somewhat saddened watching this idea failing to catch on, specially since it fulfilled one of my parameters to call it successful: as some teenager noticed while commenting "[there's] some stuff in there you might not want to buy in a store," the Easy Shop can sell you condoms wihtout giving you a wise look or attempting a witty remark.

I'm linking to the printer-friendly version of the article as opossed to the thing itself because the Washington Post website gives an "unable to locate the page you requested" error for that page. Stupid newspapers; can't tell them to fix their older content since they make their money from selling those articles through their on-line archives.

{Update: September 23, 2002}

The Post seems to have fixed their archives, so I'm restoring the link to the article instead of the printer-friendly version.

Nu Shortcuts in School R 2 Much 4 Teachers
By Jennifer 8. Lee
September 19, 2002

As more teenagers socialize online, teachers are finding that Internet English is popping up with increasing frequency in schoolwork.

With the constant use of "b4, u, r," and such other shorthand, necessary for quick communication thru instant messaging and e-mail, kiddies are now using it as their standard written English. This was bound to happen and should have come as no surprise to anyone. Anyone but teachers finding the on-line equivalent of CB lingo off-line.

As more and more teenagers socialize online, middle school and high school teachers... are increasingly seeing a breezy form of Internet English jump from e-mail into schoolwork. To their dismay, teachers say that papers are being written with shortened words, improper capitalization and punctuation, and characters like &, $ and @.

Some innovative minds have decided to take this creeping "dyslexia" and run with it as a chance to teach the kiddies about the evolution of language. "[Erika V. Karres, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who trains student teachers] shows students how English has evolved since Shakespeare's time. 'Imagine Langston Hughes's writing in quick texting instead of "Langston writing,"' she said. 'It makes teaching and learning so exciting.'"

But frankly, I'm on the side of the language gestapo, which is discouraging "Generation Text" from using their newfangled shorthand on paper by taking out points for every use of it in essays and exams. Being familiar with such punishment (which at my school was used for plain old grammatical errors), I can vouch for its effectiveness. Yet, the way kids behave these days with the aplomb of Bart Simpson, simply taking points off grades could prove insufficient. A few lashes with a bamboo cane, though, and they may even start using "before, you, are," and other full-lenght words in their on-line interactions, no matter if they take longer to type.