Observe an excerpt from this story, which ran under the headline Rural colleges push iPod use for lectures on CNN.com March 20:
But here in the antebellum capital of Georgia
students listening to iPods might just as well be studying for calculus class as rocking out to Coldplay ' after the school's educators worked to find more strategic uses for the popular digital music and video players.
Obviously, this is a problem. In the institutions that are supposed to train future generations of Americans who will lead our nation, authorities are promoting, and the liberal academic establishment is harboring, the dangerous, insipid notion that Coldplay rocks.
Also, they are promoting the use of iPods, which, if you listen to a chorus of social critics, pose more of a danger to our society than communism, terrorists and the designated-hitter rule combined.
First, there's the threat to our bodies. Apparently, and I personally find this shocking, if you listen to your iPod too loudly for extended periods of time, you could lose your hearing.
At least, that's what a Louisiana man claimed in a lawsuit he filed against Apple. In response, the millions of iPod users stated: WHAT?! WAIT LET ME TAKE OUT MY HEADPHONES! OK what now? iPods pause cheering moss? I don't even know what that means. Hey
have you heard this new Coldplay album? It sucks.
However, the Louisiana man seems to be operating on faulty logic, because most iPod listeners seem to be young people, who ' as evidenced by the speed they drive and the amount they drink ' are clearly invincible.
Still, the social critics say, iPods pose a larger threat ' they keep us from talking to our neighbors.
Personally, I never needed an iPod to help keep me from talking to my neighbors. My very first neighbors were a very nice old couple who I never once said a single word to on account of my being less than one year old. Even if I'd had the ability to talk to them, I wouldn't have because I was too busy engaging in that favorite pastimes of babies everywhere: trying to swallow inappropriate objects.
I didn't talk to my next set of neighbors ' still without the help of an iPod ' because I don't think they wanted to talk to me or the rest of my family anyhow. This was evidenced by the fact that their yard was filled with large, angry dogs and, when they repainted their house, they decided not to do the side facing us.
The only time we talked to them was when my mom would get up in the middle of the night, walk to the front door and kindly ask their son to turn off his #$%*& car stereo, which he usually operated at a volume similar to those guys who blast Nelly from their modified Dodge Neons on Court Street while dressed like the prime minister of New Tchotchistan.
Well, the social critics say, maybe you didn't want to talk to your neighbors anyway, but what about people on the bus. No one ever talks to strangers on the bus anymore, they say.
I did try to talk to a stranger on the bus once. Well actually, he was pretty much just talking loudly in general and I made the mistake of making eye contact with him.
So, we had a conversation, consisting of him expelling a lot of spittle in my face while making loud exclamations ending in G?you know? and me nodding my head and saying, Mmm-hmmm.
Our topic on the bus was: the bus. He didn't like it, or the route, or the driver, or the people who picked the route and hired the driver, and pretty much everyone else on the bus, too. Thankfully, after a few stops he told us all that the judge would give him his license back soon and then got off, after which everyone on the bus heaved a sigh of relief and then subsequently shuddered at the thought of him operating a car.
The point is: social critics are usually full of it. Still, this torrent of bad PR for Apple did have an effect on me, and I decided not to buy an iPod.
I got an off-brand instead.
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Noah Blundo
Warning: iPods cause social criticism
