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Closed-Caption Cover-Up

Sometimes my role as a Luddite assists in my more prominent role as defender of the underdog. In this instance, the underdogs in question are users of television's closed-captioning feature. (This group consists of the hearing impaired, viewers of any BBC series, and hammered fans in loud sports bars.)

I was watching a VHS tape of the final episode of the sadly ignored sitcom, Andy Barker, P.I. No, I don't have TiVo or DVR. Yes, I could've watched the episode ("The Lady Varnishes") online, but since a friend had been kind enough to record it for me, I felt obliged to watch the tape.

Unfortunately, my friend is even more technologically inept than me, and the recording's sound quality was dreadful. More than once, I had to revert to those trusty closed captions to catch a particularly garbled word.

Imagine my shock, then, when reviewing a scene in subtitle mode, to read that the background music was Def Leppard's "Photograph." Any student of mid-80's top-40 hard rock—and I include myself in these shameful ranks—could instantly recognize the actual audio, "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by Scorpions.

Oh, sure, maybe the episode was submitted for captioning before the music had been switched. Or maybe that caption guy just likes to sneak in the word "def" as often as possible. Well, let it be known: I'm watching you, caption guy. And I'm watching you with the captions on.

A Magazine You Can Read in Your Underwear

I've been spammed for a lot of things that I neither need nor want. Out of all the junk I've received, however, I can think of nothing I want less than Blogger & Podcaster magazine. Finally, a print magazine worth leaving my computer for!

And it is apparently part of a trend, as I received this email on the same day that Boing Boing wrote about dubious net-to-paper daily Boston Now. I don't think that I can top the Boing Boing commenter who wrote "their slogan should be 'Bringing you yesterday's news tomorrow."

B&P—why not give them a snappy acronym—says that you can get the print magazine and podcast from their homepage. I hope that the podcast isn't just some dude reading the magazine.

The High Cost of Free Parking

Slate has a nice column about Donald Shoup's pathbreaking book The High Cost of Free Parking, called "Why Parking Your Car Is More Environmentally Destructive Than Driving It."

Urban on-street parking is almost always underpriced, which is why you can almost never find a spot. In many cases, it would be better to have no on-street parking at all, freeing up that real estate for expanded homes, shops and cafes or additional driving lanes.

Clearly, the New York City administration could stand to read Shoup's book. A new study out illustrates much unnecesssary  parking and driving in New York, including this factoid:

The average cost of parking on-street at a meter is $1.73 compared with $21 to $27 (depending on duration) for off-street parking in the Manhattan central business district.

I made a really big joystick.

So about a month ago, the curator of the i am 8 bit art show, Jon Gibson, commissoned me to make a giant, working, Atari 2600 joystick. I said yes, but, honestly, I wasn't 100% certain I could do it. But, I did! For once, this is not a post about what a big failure I am! I made the joystick 15x the size of the actual one, worked with a skilled cabinetmaker named Dan Fill to make those nice big round holes, wired it all up, and it works. Last night we unveiled it at the opening of the show, hooked up to an Atari projected on the outside wall of the gallery. And boy, did it get the crap beat out of it. Hundreds of happy, drunk, art-and-old videogame lovers were there to hop on, stomp the button and yank that stick around. That's why I made it, so I can't complain, but oh man was it hard seeing scrapes and footprints all over the finish I was fussing over like an effete furniture restorer not three hours before. Still, it's a great, fun show and I'm excited to just be a part of it. There's a writeup here and a bunch of pictures of all the amazing art here. Oh, and I later found out that there's an even bigger Atari joystick made by a Mary Flanagan. I think it's in the UK. So I really made the most Secondest Biggest Atari 2600 Joystick.

Take A Look at the Smartest Breasts in Town

This image came from the website for Allergan Silicone Breast Implants.

I have nothing to add.

(Via Heaneyland!)

Beer Goes With Everything

A study by the Cardiff University Violence and Society Research Group found that the price of beer correlates with the number of violence-related injuries.

A follow-up study should be done to check birth rates against a nine-month delay of beer prices.

(Via MindHacks)

Who Knew?

This whole time, underneath those filthy old Manhattan streets, there were gorgeous hardwood floors!

The sociology of transit

I've been reading about urban planning and transportation lately and thought I'd share an observation gleaned from a couple of books—namely, The Geography of Nowhere by Howard Kunstler and How Cities Work by Alex Marshall. The observation goes something like this: seemingly simple changes to city streets or pathways can change entire ways of living. In the same way that removing a particular insect can spark a chain of events that ultimately transforms the "natural" world, the design of roads, trains, and city spaces can radically alter the social environment — the way people live.

One of the very few cities to fully recognize this in the U.S. is Portland, Oregon. For a couple of decades now, Portland has been working toward stopping sprawl and encouraging mass transit. In a way, you could say it's becoming "New York-ified."

To discourage driving downtown, Portland's regional government has reducing parking and increased the cost. People who can't afford the new rates now take light rail to work. Alex Marshall interviewed a typical commuter—a middle-aged woman—who, at first, hated the public rail.

"I didn't want to ride it at all. I didn't like being so close to other people... But now I really like it...It's turned me into a reader. I didn't used to read at all, but now I read about 20 books a month. I've become so accustomed to using the MAX [light rail] that now I forget I have a car."

As Marshall writes, Portland's policies have not only changed how this woman gets to work, it has given her a new hobby and a new comfort amid strangers. While surrounded by a standing-room-only car filled with workers, execs, and kids from all walks of life, she now feels at ease.

Portland's planners have also encouraged the co-mingling of retail and residential buildings. We New Yorkers tend to take this for granted, but mixing retail and residential allows us to do our shopping by walking—saving the time, expense, noise, and pollutants associated with driving. By walking, we stay in better shape and also benefit from a safer and more vibrant street life. Areas where commercial is separated from residential building tend to be the lifeless and scary after shops or offices close for the day. Think Wall Street in the 1980s.

The Geography of Nowhere is the more entertaining of the two books; Kunstler is funnier and a better wordsmith. But How Cities Work, by focusing on transportation, arguably brings us closer to the truth.

Kunstler is an advocate of "New Urbanism," a school of planniing that focus on aesthetics and ignores the radical force that is transportation. New Urbanists purport to build community by bringing back front porches and sidewalks, hiding garages, and planning small shopping areas within walking distance of neighborhoods.

But Marshall cuts to the heart of the problem with the New Urbanist critique:

The classic suburban home with the double-wide garage doors facing the street is a symbol of suburban banality and the triumph of the car. But in an automobile-dominated setting, this is an appropriate an honest way to build.... If you don't like houses with garage doors on their front, then you have to change the overall transportation system... Putting alleys and garages behind houses will not magically create a streetcar system. It will just mean that residents have sacrificed both their front and back yards for the sake of appearances.... Hiding the driveway is a kind of urban puritanism, hiding the real workings of our society.

Kinda like astroturf.

The Curious Tale of the Advertising Illness

In response to my post about autism and TV, reader Bernardo tipped me off to this story from China Daily about autistic kids' penchant for reciting advertising:

"Liang Liang, come here to use the washroom," asked the teacher, but the five-year-old boy astonished his teacher with an advertisement punch line "frequent urination, urgent urination, and delayed urination."

Liang Liang, who keeps himself in fashion of the latest advertisements by frequently speaking them out, is a kid suffering autism in Qiseguang Children Potentiality Exploration Center in Northeast China's Jilin Province. A lot of other kids in the center suffering from the same disease do not like to talk much, but once they open their mouths, it's usually an advertisement line.

I guess this shouldn't be all that surprising. Advertising is designed to stick in your brain... and if you don't have a firm grasp on social parameters, whatever sticks in your brain is likely what you'll repeat.

Are old houses really built to last?

This is the second of two interviews about obsolescence. Part one focuses on planned obsolescence and consumer products.

While it's often said that consumer products—from electronic devices to Ikea furniture—are "made to break," a little over a year ago I started wondering about buildings. Do real estate interests, I wondered, plan for obsolescence in the same way product designers do?

At the time, I was partaking of the great American dream: buying a house. In Brooklyn, there was very little my sweetie and I could afford. We knew we were going to be an as-of-yet-ungentrified neighborhood, but we had a choice between old "fixer-upper" brownstones or new construction. While new construction appeared to be the most economical route, I wasn't so sure. Though I know next to nothing about construction, the new places I visited struck me as the architectural equivalent of Ikea bookshelves. I saw sheetrocked walls that looked like they'd been left out in the rain, poorly aligned doors, and uneven floorboards—really shoddy work. On the other hand, the old brownstones had sloped floors, cracked plaster, and decades of dirt and grime.

Ultimately, we got lucky and snagged a 100 year-old limestone that was heads and shoulders above everything else in our price range. But in the year that we've spent working on the house, I keep coming back to the question: are old houses really built better than new ones, or is there just a lot of nostalgic thinking going around?

To find out, I talked to Robert Zagaroli, associate professor of architectural technology at New York City College of Technology. Born and bred in Brookyn, Mr. Zagaroli—a working architect—knows more than a thing or two about brownstone restoration.

STAY FREE! (CARRIE McLAREN): You often hear people say that old houses are built better than new ones, but is that true?

ROBERT ZAGAROLI: It's a cliché, but brownstones truly were built to last. New construction tends to be cheaper in two senses: it costs less and is lower quality. Today, it's perfectly legal to build with half-inch gypsum board, but most people can put their fist through it. If the house gets wet or moldy, the walls can't handle the wear and tear.

The standard in brownstones was plaster. You still have plaster walls in 200-year-old houses because plaster is very durable. The materials used in 18th and 19th century construction lasted longer: plaster, brick, and wood from old-growth forests. Today, the labor doesn't exist to install those products. The technology has changed. All wood now is farmed. There is no old-growth forest to tear down, so the wood industry has harvested trees for the last 30 years. It plants fast-growing trees, but the wood shrinks and therefore it's not as reliable, not as durable, not as sturdy, accurate, or dimensionally accurate. Newer wood has a shorter shelf life.

STAY FREE!: Why isn't the labor there?

ZAGAROLI: Economics. A mason can't afford to live in New York City. The economy doesn't support it. It's like the problem that New York City has with police and firemen. Many of the police and firemen don't live in the city boundaries because they don't earn enough. It would be incredibly expensive to build a brownstone today. We don't lay brick walls anymore. We only use brick for facing or re-surfacing. Today, it's concrete block or metal stud. Metal stud is very economical --  it's lighter than concrete, so the shipping, trucking, and manufacturing costs are less. And it's very green, because aluminum and other metals can be recycled or reused.

STAY FREE!: Do buildings have shorter lifespans now than they had in the 1940s or 1950s?

ZAGAROLI: New York buildings have a shorter shelf life in retail and office spaces. Office spaces don't have the same tenant for more than five or 10 years. But, yes, there's also a lower expectation for construction materials; they simply have to meet the building code. The New York City building code, which is going to be revised again shortly, is really minimal.
    You know the polyester stucco that you see on the lot line walls of buildings? That's a brand new building material, but it has a very short shelf life. Within 10 years you're going to need to rebuild that surface. If you build with brick, it'll be 50 years before you even need to touch it.

STAY FREE!: Is the building code still mostly geared to safety issues? Does it include any environmental concerns?

ZAGAROLI: The building code is concerned with the health and life-safety of the residents, not environmental matters. The LEED certification program [a rating system for green building] is intended to fill that gap, but LEED is voluntary.

STAY FREE!: Are buildings designed with a lifespan in mind, like consumer products?

ZAGAROLI: That's something manufacturers deal with more than builders. Whoever makes the materials for your roof determines the lifespan and warranty. A flat roof is traditionally a tar-paper roof, which is quite durable: it lasts about 15 years. There's a newer technology, a rubber membrane, that a typical manufacturer will guarantee for 25 years.

STAY FREE!: I read that big box stores are designed to last no more than 25 years . . .

ZAGAROLI: I believe that. Retail stores are never designed to last more than 20 years, and even 20 years is a long time. The Fisher Family built all the stores for the Gap and Banana Republic stores on a 7- or 10-year plan, because the company never wants a Gap to look old. If Home Depot is building stores on a 20-year lifespan, does that mean they're going to get out of the business in 20 years? It's possible. I think Blockbuster has that strategy. “We'll be in business 20 years, make our money, plan an exit strategy, and sell our properties." Other institutions sneak into real estate that way. McDonald's has done that.

STAY FREE!: Steel or brick should last longer than wood construction, but a study of non-residential buildings in Minneapolis found the opposite was true: buildings made of wood survived longer than brick. It turned out that the building materials were largely irrelevant. Places were destroyed because the neighborhood changed or they needed to serve a different purpose—not because of failing construction.

ZAGAROLI: In New York City, where I come from, zoning trumps everything. If a neighborhood gets rezoned, the stock of buildings is up for grabs. You can see that in New York City. The structure of a building becomes irrelevant if planners don't value it. Buildings in SOHO or DUMBO are made of steel or concrete, which have incredibly long lifespans. There, zoning boards and city planners have rezoned manufacturing districts into residential, and it's cost-effective to keep those old structures because it's a less-invasive use: there is less wear-and-tear in residential. In a city that values keeping populations where they are, those structures are going to be more valuable. But in a city like Minneapolis, which is trying to reinvent itself, planners may want to wipe the slate clean and create low-income housing.

STAY FREE!: I've read that people will sometimes buy a house and then demolish it to create something more suited to their taste. Is there any architectural fashion that stands out for you as being a financial sinkhole?

ZAGAROLI: I think, as a trend: stainless steel kitchens. Already we're hearing from consumers who see a 10-year-old renovation and groan, "urgh! I can't clean stainless steel. I don't want that kitchen; it's so 90s!" Stainless steel is the new avocado green. What smarter people are saying now is, "Let me build a neutral kitchen. This way the next person can buy what they want."

STAY FREE!: I tend to go for vintage looks, not because I don't like modern stuff, but because I don't want to have to redo my bathroom in 10 years.

ZAGAROLI: Newer developers that want to do buildings with a timeless look are going with an Art Deco style. It's clean, it's geometric, people like it. I like to build modernist; most of my architecture friends do too. But people don't like living in modernist buildings. They say there's too much glass. It's too harsh, too cold.

STAY FREE!: Hell, who wants to clean all of those windows?! I can see why Deco would be popular because it has some of the advantages of modern design and yet still has a kind of retro appeal. I think one reason people like a “vintage" look is because, unconsciously, they associate it with durability, with something that lasts and maintains value. It's not so throwaway. Even modern fixtures and furniture often have faux finishes to make them look antique.

STAY FREE!: Do you have any thoughts about the future of building in Brooklyn?

ZAGAROLI: In New York, I see a growth pattern that centers on the World Trade Center site. So imagine concentric circles radiating out and you get an idea of how development is expanding. There are more people coming here now; there's a lot of growth. There's been rezoning throughout Brooklyn; downtown Brooklyn is the third business district in New York City, after midtown Manhattan and downtown Manhattan. In downtown Brooklyn there's going to be six to eight 60-story buildings in the next 10 to 20 years. It's the next skyscraper district.

The Wall Street Journal on Planned Obsolescence (2002)

Commenters have raised some good questions about the veracity of author Giles Slade's claims, so I thought I'd post this 2002 article on planned obsolescence from those radical rabble-rousers at the Wall Street Journal.

As of Tuesday, July 16, 2002                      

Companies Slash Warranties, Rendering Gadgets Disposable

By JANE SPENCER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A combination of shorter warranties and design changes means that
buyers of even relatively expensive gadgets now have little choice
but to throw them in the trash if anything breaks.

In the past year Dell Computer has slashed warranty periods from
three years to one. Apple Computer's hot iPod digital-music player
comes with only a 90-day warranty. And Sony requires purchasers to
register to get a full year of support on a Clie organizer --
otherwise, they, too, get 90 days. In addition, many contracts on new
consumer electronics are riddled with strict conditions: The one-year
warranty on RCA digital camcorders, for example, covers only labor
costs for 90 days.

Even if people want to pay for repairs out of their own pockets, some
gadget makers are cutting off that option as well. Many hand-held
organizers from companies such as Handspring, Palm and
Hewlett-Packard have built-in rechargeable batteries that generally
can't be replaced without sending the entire unit back to the
company. (Typical cost: $120.) Two earlier Palm models, the V and Vx,
were actually glued shut; the heat required to open them risks
damaging the unit. Some Qualcomm cellphones also have batteries that
are sealed inside the unit. But sealed units aren't limited to the
small portable realm. VCRs throughout the '80s were built with a
removable bottom plate. Now, they are typically made out of one
plastic shell that is tricky to open even for a professional.

"We joke that we design landfills," says Darren Blum, a senior
industrial engineer at Pentagram Design, which builds portable
devices and computers for companies like H-P.

It's the latest chapter in the story of planned obsolescence, the
term coined to describe the trend of building things not to last. As
tech companies focus on pumping out new models, they aren't doing as
much to help customers retain their current ones. They spend less
time on product testing, and offer customers less help when the
products break or malfunction. The result: Many cellphones, PDAs and
other gadgets are essentially becoming disposable devices.

The pace of new-product development plays a big role. Palm, for
example, introduced just six new PDA models from 1996 to 1999. Since
then, it has come out with 16 new models. As the time allotted to
designing electronics has dropped from years to weeks, testing
cycles, too, have been compressed. "No one that I know exhaustively
tests anything that's built," says Prabha Gopinath, executive vice
president at TestQuest, which creates testing software used by
Handspring, Palm, Motorola and Nokia. "That goes for PDAs,
cellphones, any software that's out there."

Manufacturers say they do extensive testing and add that prices on
gadgets have dropped so much that it's cheaper to buy new than pay
for repairs. Between 1990 and 2001, average cellphone prices dropped
from $600 to $162. The average price of a CD player fell from $220 to
$85 over the same period.

But the newer the product, the shorter the life span: A
black-and-white TV sold in 1979 lasted for about 12 years; today, a
cutting-edge LCD-screen TV is replaced after five. Laptop computers
need to be fixed every 16 months on average, while hand-held
organizers last an estimated two years.

Faster than Peanut Butter

Kareem Shehata, an engineering student from Ontario, Canada, goes
through Palm organizers faster than he goes through jars of peanut
butter. He has had seven Palms in the past three years. One was
"flaky," he says, and worked only if he shook it. Several developed
"this digitizer schizophrenia thing" where the screen wouldn't
register his stylus taps. Mr. Shehata opened up his seventh Palm and
temporarily fixed a loose component with a piece of Scotch tape, but
eventually, that one choked too. Palm replaced six of his broken
hand-helds with refurbished units, since the failures began under
warranty .

Warranty lengths tend to be standard within product categories. But
some lesser-known companies are offering longer warranties to ease
concerns about the reliability of their products. Budget PC maker
Atlas Micro offers a three-year warranty on most parts, and a
lifetime guarantee on labor. On the flip side, established companies
may try to leverage their brand image to get away with unusually
short warranties . Apple's iPod digital-music player offers just 90
days -- against a full year for many lesser-known MP3 makers.

Sony adds extra hurdles, requiring some hand-held customers to jump
online and click through a battery of questions about their
electronics-buying habits in order to get a full year of support.

Tech companies have taken the area of product support, once a
standard service, and turned it into something customers have to pay
extra for. The result is the current boom in the extended-warranty
industry, with profits going to tech companies and the retailers that
administer these programs.

High Repair Costs

Another way tech companies encourage upgrades is by setting repair
costs prohibitively high. At Palm, getting a replacement for a
cracked screen costs $125 -- even though Web-based repair companies
like GetHighTech.com manage to fix them for closer to $50. The site
also offers videos and guides to help users make basic repairs on
their units. STNECorp.com, another Web outfit, offers life-extending
repairs for Palms like button replacements.

But few customers know about these sites. In the end, many simply
decide it's easier to buy a newer-model gadget than run the service
gauntlet thrown down by the tech companies.

Updated July 16, 2002

Free The Primate One!

The bankruptcy of an animal sanctuary might have left Heisl, a 26-year-old chimp, homeless and destined for vivisection if it weren't for the intervention of a businessman who donated £3,400 for his care and feeding. Alas, an inconceivably stupid Catch-22 may prevent the donation from saving the chimp: Heisl needs a guardian to manage the money but, under Austrian law, a guardian can only be appointed to a person. And so we end up with a well-intentioned lawsuit bound for a crushing defeat:

A group of world leading primatologists argue that ... Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court.

The lawsuit rests on the genetic similarity between chimps and humans and recent research that demonstrates higher-order behaviors such as use of tools and peacemaking. It does not appear to reconcile this with the not-insignificant possibility that the plaintiff may fling poo at the judge even if the case is going reasonably well.

So a case will go forward to establish that chimps are entitled to fundamental human rights. Which inevitably means that Alberto Gonzales will file an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the United States to argue that even if the chimps are entitled to human rights, the government has the right to set the terms of detention or execution without intervention from the courts.

Via Monkeywire

Cover the Ears of Sensitive Young Stay-Free Blog Readers

Wait, "reblogging" is an accepted verb? Whew, good. I was afraid I'd be accused of stealing or being too lazy to think of my own stuff. Anyhoo: This clip—further evidence of why David Lynch is one of the greatest humans of our lifetime—comes to us via worldofwonder.net, who were tipped off by "Chris," who I am guessing is the videographer, which I believe is a modern, gender-neutral term meaning "cameraman" (oh, you kids and your new words!), and for the love of Pete won't you give us the link already!

Headlines from Consumerist

I've been meaning to reblog several items from the very fine Consumerist for weeks now, so let's just get 'em out all out there at once:

Rule of thumb: when you buy something with a rebate, don't expect to ever get it.
Best Buy uses a "secret" website to screw in-store customers
Sprint ranks customers on a Scale From $ to $$$$$
Mall of America to Double in Size
How to Fight Companies Online And Win
How to Be a Customer Service Ninja

WAL-MART POWER TRIO:

New Yorkers defeat Wal-Mart - for good!

Remember the pet food scare from a couple of weeks ago? Over a week later, the pet food was STILL on Wal-Mart shelves.

Wal-mart Borrows Your Car Without Asking
Another reason to NOT let Wal-Mart change the oil on your car

Are consumer products made to break? An interview with author Giles Slade

The following interview is part one of a two-part series on planned obsolescence. The second -- about housing construction -- will be posted next week is now online here.

Last year my sweetie and I inherited a microwave from the previous owners of our new (old) house. The microwave looked like a serious piece of equipment, not a cheap plastic number, but wouldn't power on. For months, we let it sit in the kitchen. When we finally managed to deal with it, our first instinct was, naturally, to toss it and buy a new one.

Sure, why not: we could buy a new oven for the same price as fixing the old. Though the new one was perhaps even more likely to break quickly, we could at least leave the old one on the curb, rather than lugging it to the repair shop. When the new one broke we could always, you know, buy yet another.

As it happens, I was internally debating this when I picked up Giles Slade's illuminating history Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America. Within the first two pages, Slade makes it very clear that microwave ovens are only the the tip of the iceberg when it comes to electronics that common sense tells us to discard. And discard, we do. From cell phones to PCs to computer monitors and televisions, every year sees an exponential rise in the number of machines tossed into landfills. In 2003, over 63 million working PCs were trashed, In 2004, that number jumped to 315 million. The same trend holds over a wide array of consumer electronics.

The reasons behind this are many and complex, but Slade hones in on one: companies profit more when products have shorter lifespans - because they sell more products that way. This is no conspiracy theory but, rather, simple economics. Small wonder, then, that product lifespans are shrinking across the board. In 1997, a PC was expected to last 4 or 5 years; by 2003, only two years, and today the life expectancy is even less. ; today, average life expectancy is two or three years.

As Made to Break documents, planned obsolescence is neither theoretical nor new. In fact, throughout the early half of the 20th century, business leaders openly promoted planned obsolescence in one form or another, calling it "creative destruction," "progressive obsolescence" or "adulteration."

To find out more, I tracked down Slade and talked to him by phone in late 2006.

STAY FREE!: How did book come about?

GILES SLADE: I came back to North America from teaching in the Arab Emirates after 9/11, and every interaction I had in public was very curt, very rude. I wondered where that shortness developed and ultimately became convinced that it has to do with our attitudes toward material culture.

STAY FREE!: Business people in the 1920s and up through the 1950s talked openly about planned obsolescence in trade publications. Are they less likely to talk about it now?

GILES SLADE: They call it different things now: "death dating" or "product lifespan." It's an established strategy. When a junior industrial designer is assigned to a work site and tasked with designing a product, one of the first questions is: How long is this thing going to last? How long does the competition last? How long is the warranty? This kind of planning is common knowledge among     design teams.

STAY FREE!: Yeah, I noticed when web surfing that a business school included "product obsolescence" in a course description. One of your critics on the internet, though, wrote, "I'm an industrial designer and I've never heard this!" What do you make of that?

GILES SLADE: The British designer known for creating the iPod, Jonathan Ive, probably didn't have anything to do with the battery inside the iPod. His job was to make the iPod beautiful. But Tony Fadell, the guy in charge of the engineering team and a top executive of Apple, knew very well that the battery would fail after 11 months; it would've been his decision to put it inside, where it couldn't be replaced. On large projects, tasks can be very specialized. But Steve Jobs clearly knows about this. He said in an interview that people should buy a new iPod every year. The old ones scratch very easily, so they don't look as nice after use.

STAY FREE!: Do you have proof that it's intentional?

GILES SLADE: No, but there's currently a class-action lawsuit against Apple in California, focused on the video screens being so easily scratched. The same group filed a lawsuit about the battery life and won a huge settlement from Apple.

STAY FREE!: You discussed Levittown‚ the pioneering housing development on Long Island‚ and how home builders began applying mass production techniques to real estate development in the 1940s. Could you talk a bit about that?

GILES SLADE: William Jaird Levitt said Levittown was just like a Ford Motor plant, except the stationary line was spread across a subdivision. Everything that wasn't immediately cost-effective was eliminated: porches, basements, even sidewalks. In order to sell these houses, they filled them full of brand new appliances—washers and dryers, new refrigerators and stoves. They built the houses to last 20 years, but after 5 years or so, the appliances would break down. Still, the houses were built very well. And many of the buyers were first-time home owners, so they put a lot of sweat equity into them. They added value to houses in a way that defeats obsolescence. The carports were not garages, so they'd wall them in and make it a real garage. They would put in fireplaces or...

STAY FREE!: Add a porch?

GILES SLADE: Sure, add a porch. Build up the roof. Those places go for a lot of money now.

STAY FREE!: Forgive my ignorance, but what does removing the basement do structurally to a house?

GILES SLADE: Frank Lloyd Wright hated basements because they weren't cost-effective. He said they don't do anything, they're just negative storage space. So [in Levittown] they poured a concrete step and added copper coil piping into the concrete; instead of radiators they had radiant heat.

STAY FREE!: How does that effect the longevity of the house?

GILES SLADE: It makes the copper coil unserviceable. Once it corrodes, fills up with sludge, or springs a leak, there's not much you can do about it.

STAY FREE!: Has there been much of a debate among contemporary designers and engineers about the lifespans of products they create?

GILES SLADE: Electronics engineers at IEEE conferences frequently present papers about designing for disassembly, making products reusable and less poisonous. Many of those people are at odds with their industry.

STAY FREE!: Even Martha Stewart has complained about planned obsolescence—about the number of cords and chargers required for digital devices. Here in the States, there's no standard for those things. Have other countries tackled this problem?

GILES SLADE: In Germany, there's something called the Institute for NORML that standardizes electronic devices. I think there's something similar in Japan.

STAY FREE!: Have you looked at consumer warranties at all? They seem to be shrinking. I saw some headphones the other day that had a 30-day guarantee!

GILES SLADE: Ha! All I know is that I went to the industrial standards board in Washington and they told me that the standard for durable goods was fixed at three years around the beginning of WWI. I guess that three years came from the three-year product cycle of General Motors. They figured a new GM car would come out every three years, so a car only needed to last three years. The funny thing is that three years now sounds like a long time. The average cell phone lasts only 18 months in North America and maybe 8 months in Japan, Finland, and Norway.

STAY FREE!: Lately I've noticed that inside the box of new electronic products, there's a note saying DO NOT return this item to store; instead, return it directly to manufacturer. I wonder if that is a way discouraging people from returning things in general; the more confusing the process, the less likely people are to do anything about it.

GILES SLADE: There was a watch—"the "Yankee"—called "the watch that made the dollar famous." It was stamped out of steel and came with a lifetime guarantee. All you had to do when the watch stopped was mail it back to the company and it would send you another one free. But because the watch only cost a dollar, only 3 percent of consumers ever took advantage of that offer. I think Apple has the same thing in mind with its takeback program. Most customers would have to write to them, box up the equipment, and pay to ship it. Statistically, very few people take advantage of that.

STAY FREE!: Also, Apple doesn't promote takeback at all. You have to dig for it on their website. Have you looked at repair services and how those have changed?

GILES SLADE: No, but that's an another interesting question. I do know that there is a booming aftermarket industry that has grown up around the iPod. IPods break so often and, after the warranty period, you can't get them serviced from Apple, but you can trade them in. They're very small, so it's easy to chuck them. They are designed to work only for a specified amount of time, which an Apple rep initially said was four years, but then she was challenged on that and said she meant "for years."

STAY FREE!: On Mac blogs, everyone took Apple at its word and published that as a correction. . . . I recently bought a Patagonia coat because it has a lifetime warranty.

GILES SLADE: They say that for Sears' Craftsman tools also. I haven't had a problem with Sears' tools, but I have a Kenmore dryer and it burst into flames! It was still under warranty—it was less than two years old—Sears came and repaired it, but now I'm afraid to use it. I thought Kenmore was a respectable brand but it's just some cheap model that Sears buys in lots and slaps its name on.

STAY FREE!: I have a conspiracy theory. Sometimes I think stores have intentionally bad customer service because it encourages people to buy something new rather than dealing with customer service for a return.

GILES SLADE: I think that's certainly the case with rebate programs. They make it very difficult to actually collect the rebate.

STAY FREE!: When you talk to people about your book, do you notice a generational divide in how older people and younger people feel about these issues?

GILES SLADE: Yes, younger people don't want to hear anything negative about the iPod. I might as well put a turban on and grow a long beard. It comes down to the social value of consumer goods as icons. If I'm saying something negative about your tribe's icon, it's as if I'm attacking you personally. Also, younger people have much less sense that things should last. I find that really disturbing.

STAY FREE!: It makes sense, though. If you're born into a world where things aren't made to last, naturally you won't expect them to.

GILES SLADE: Sure, but then things less than 20 years old become what we think of as antiques. So your sense of duration, of history, of culture has collapsed and evaporated. If your favorite toys are constantly updated and replaced, how is that going to effect your relationships with people? I think you're less likely to have lasting commitments to people, to family, to a country, even. There's a well-known book called Bowling Alone, and I think this is where it comes from. We've become so accustomed to things only lasting for a few years we don't invest in them anymore. We don't see beautiful things like paintings and rugs as lasting.

STAY FREE!: James Twitchell, an historian of advertising, has said that the problem with Americans is not that we're materialistic, but that we're not materialistic enough. We don't genuinely love our things; what we love is exchanging them for newer things.

You write that the rise of computers has led to the rise of information obsolescence. Could you give an example?

GILES SLADE: One way to make electronic products obsolete is to design them to not be backward compatible. Apple changed the operating system on the Nano about a year ago, and it requires an advanced physics degree to put the new operating system on the old Nano, so you can't use iTunes anymore if you have an older model.

STAY FREE!: You've gotten a lot of criticism on the web. Any thoughts on that?

GILES SLADE: I remember being called a "conspiracy theorist" in the Times Literary Supplement and puzzling over it because there's not much that is "theoretical" about my book. It has all been substantiated by people other than me. Online, a particular group of critics started to lump me in with environmentalists, and I started getting a lot of criticism on right-wing blogs. When I started talking about the iPod, technology blogs started going. Apple has an extensive informal network of pro-Apple blogs . . .

STAY FREE!: True, but there are thousands of diehard Mac fans that have no actual connection to the company.

GILES SLADE: Yes, but let me give you an example. There was a leak about conditions at an iPod factory in China. In the week following the leak, reports appeared all over the web saying that a crack investigative team looked into it and found that the rumors weren't true; there was no injustice. Well, a week or so later, all of these claims are in fact confirmed: the workers can't leave the iPod factory, they're working long hours for sweatshop wages. Apple is the champion of creating a spin cycle before anyone knows what's going on. I think they're smarter and more successful than the CIA. I can get the CIA to talk to me but I can't get Apple to.

Prison Break

From ESPN.com:

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thai inmate Samson Sor Siriporn boosted her chances of freedom by beating Japan's Ayaka Miyano to win the vacant women's WBC light flyweight title at the notorious "Bangkok Hilton" prison on Tuesday.

An inmate drug dealer fought a championship bout that was staged in prison, and, by winning, has improved her chances of parole. For real. In other words, now that a felon has shown herself to be not only violent but skillfully violent, she is ready for reintroduction to society.

That ringing you just heard was the phone in FOX's reality TV programming office. Mark Burnett is in talks with the Mississippi Department of Parole to produce Fight For Freedom. (If my guess is wrong, then that idea is © Charles Star, 2007.)