i-pod or p-pod? That is the question
Every morning as I embark upon my train journey into the big city I usually share my commute with a carriage populated by predominantly deaf people. It is a very sad state of affairs and I do extend my sympathies to the friends and families of each of these poor souls.
Now this may seem particularly un-PC, if not a bit harsh, but where possible I do tend to avoid them as they are usually quite noisy in a most annoying way. All you can hear is a faint tinny sound coming from their general direction. I usually keep walking into the next carriage (and sometimes the one after that) to see if I can find a randomly occurring enclave of the un-deaf to sit with.
Actually these tedious people are not permanently deaf, it is just a temporary state they assume solely for when they travel. Of course they have all flown off to that nether world far beyond mans' present knowledge, yes, Ipod Land where everyone tunes into their i-pod. For me they may as well be deaf as they have no audible idea of what is going on around them. Their perception of the world is via the not unexceptional senses of sight, touch, and smell - non of which should be sniffed at.
When I'm sat in the window seat and the "deaf" person next to me in aisle seat is not getting off at my station, I find myself putting on a performance of exaggerated arm gestures in the hope that they might detect me in their side vision. They eventually realise that someone is trying to make contact with them, remove their earphones, leaving me with a small window of opportunity to say "can I squeeze past?" I have so far avoided the tactile tactic of arm touching to attract attention as I suspect that this is not only illegal, but constitutes some kind of post modern physical abuse, carries a small jail sentence, and ultimately leads to career ruin.
Unfortunately, this deafness isn't the sole preserve of the train. Many open plan offices now permit the wearing of one earphone connected to an i-pod whilst working at a PC. I believe this phenomenon to be known as "Van Gogh-ing".
Anyway this constant exposure to i-pods got me thinking about that other more important "pod", you know the one - the pea pod. Of course, the trendy marketing types would transform this into "p-pod". In different ways both the p-pod and the i-pod are quite remarkable. The i-pod is a revolution in music storage and listening entertainment. It is amazing that you can carry around thousands of music tracks to listen to at a whim. The vinyl equivalent would need a very large container lorry constantly following you around containing a DJ selecting tracks at your behest, playing them into your headphones on a very long flex. The lorry constantly stopping to unravel the flex from around lamp posts and post boxes. This is why we can never return to the good old days.
The p-pod is of course of equal eminence as it is the plant that launched the genetic age. About 150 years ago it helped Gregor Mendel to decipher the fundamental laws of inheritance. Mendel cross bred more than 29,000 pea plants showing that certain pea based traits displayed very specific patterns of inheritance. He established the concepts of dominant and recessive gene variants, and the two basic laws of how these are transmitted down the generations. The pea thus played a direct part in the field of genetics that ultimately revealed the double helix structure of DNA. Ironically, the DNA structure of the pea itself proved extremely difficult to unravel in any detail until a couple of French scientists developed a technique to do this - it would have to be the French. You can now expect a proliferation of petit pois variants hitting your supermarket shelves over the next few years.
The p-pod does of course carry substantial advantages over the i-pod. Here they are:
- it won't make you deaf
- it is filled with vitamins
- it only comes in green so you don't need to spend ages agonising over colours
- i-pods don't grow on trees, whereas p-pods do grow
- the p-pod carries one "pop" track which pops once, lasts a nano second (p-pod nano! - oh please yourself), cannot be repeated and will certainly not shuffle
- as with the i-pod, you can share the p-pod output with your friends
Obviously your kids' won't respond to any of this, but try your granny - she just might side with you.
Now this may seem particularly un-PC, if not a bit harsh, but where possible I do tend to avoid them as they are usually quite noisy in a most annoying way. All you can hear is a faint tinny sound coming from their general direction. I usually keep walking into the next carriage (and sometimes the one after that) to see if I can find a randomly occurring enclave of the un-deaf to sit with.
Actually these tedious people are not permanently deaf, it is just a temporary state they assume solely for when they travel. Of course they have all flown off to that nether world far beyond mans' present knowledge, yes, Ipod Land where everyone tunes into their i-pod. For me they may as well be deaf as they have no audible idea of what is going on around them. Their perception of the world is via the not unexceptional senses of sight, touch, and smell - non of which should be sniffed at.
When I'm sat in the window seat and the "deaf" person next to me in aisle seat is not getting off at my station, I find myself putting on a performance of exaggerated arm gestures in the hope that they might detect me in their side vision. They eventually realise that someone is trying to make contact with them, remove their earphones, leaving me with a small window of opportunity to say "can I squeeze past?" I have so far avoided the tactile tactic of arm touching to attract attention as I suspect that this is not only illegal, but constitutes some kind of post modern physical abuse, carries a small jail sentence, and ultimately leads to career ruin.
Unfortunately, this deafness isn't the sole preserve of the train. Many open plan offices now permit the wearing of one earphone connected to an i-pod whilst working at a PC. I believe this phenomenon to be known as "Van Gogh-ing".
Anyway this constant exposure to i-pods got me thinking about that other more important "pod", you know the one - the pea pod. Of course, the trendy marketing types would transform this into "p-pod". In different ways both the p-pod and the i-pod are quite remarkable. The i-pod is a revolution in music storage and listening entertainment. It is amazing that you can carry around thousands of music tracks to listen to at a whim. The vinyl equivalent would need a very large container lorry constantly following you around containing a DJ selecting tracks at your behest, playing them into your headphones on a very long flex. The lorry constantly stopping to unravel the flex from around lamp posts and post boxes. This is why we can never return to the good old days.
The p-pod is of course of equal eminence as it is the plant that launched the genetic age. About 150 years ago it helped Gregor Mendel to decipher the fundamental laws of inheritance. Mendel cross bred more than 29,000 pea plants showing that certain pea based traits displayed very specific patterns of inheritance. He established the concepts of dominant and recessive gene variants, and the two basic laws of how these are transmitted down the generations. The pea thus played a direct part in the field of genetics that ultimately revealed the double helix structure of DNA. Ironically, the DNA structure of the pea itself proved extremely difficult to unravel in any detail until a couple of French scientists developed a technique to do this - it would have to be the French. You can now expect a proliferation of petit pois variants hitting your supermarket shelves over the next few years.
The p-pod does of course carry substantial advantages over the i-pod. Here they are:
- it won't make you deaf
- it is filled with vitamins
- it only comes in green so you don't need to spend ages agonising over colours
- i-pods don't grow on trees, whereas p-pods do grow
- the p-pod carries one "pop" track which pops once, lasts a nano second (p-pod nano! - oh please yourself), cannot be repeated and will certainly not shuffle
- as with the i-pod, you can share the p-pod output with your friends
Obviously your kids' won't respond to any of this, but try your granny - she just might side with you.
Labels: pod