With less than two months until the year-end celebration of commercialism, it’s time to start emailing those wish lists on to the jolly rotund bearded guy up at the North Pole.
After seeing this International Herald Tribune article, I think I know what’s going on my list:
One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.
“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.
Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission - and any others in a 30-foot, or 9-meter, radius.
Can I get one to mount on the car, and another for rail and plane use? Pretty-please?
Yes, I know that they’re illegal, out of the perfectly valid concerns over both the potential for abuse, as well as the need to get calls through in case of emergency. However, considering the number of near-misses I’ve had on the road thanks to folks paying more attention to their phone conversation than to highway conditions….or how grating it can be to be in a packed train car or airplane cabin with a couple of folks talking too loudly on their phones…is it any wonder that a gadget of that sort has such appeal?