Today’s lunchtime news chum brings together some stories about things that are going away:
- Flip Me Over. Car cassette decks, at least as installed by a manufacturer, are going away. The last one was in a 2010 Lexus. Two thoughts on this: As iPods came into prominance, the cassette deck became more useful because it work work better with an adapter than a CD deck could. My Matrix is CD only, meaning I have to use an FM transmitter to play my iPod. Secondly, this made me think back to high school, where my “cassette deck” was a Zenith portable player, with a power adapter built by my friend Mark, and a simple plug to connect it to the car speakers without amplification.
- Unhealthy Military Food. The Army is now color-coding their food lines to teach soldiers to eat healthier. This is aided, of course, by the drill sergents telling them what color to eat. Why did the army need to do this?
“We discovered that when we’re getting these young people, a lot of them have never had any kind of physical activity, They’ve been sitting on couches playing Xbox,” said Jeff Maddy, chief of public information at Fort Leonard Wood. “Parents aren’t teaching these kids how to eat, how to read labels.”
- Science Fairs. It seems that between corporate support drying up and students having less time, science fairs are declining. This, of course, is a bad thing. We need more students to understand the scientific method and how to formulate hypotheses and verify them. We also need to encourage more students to go into mathematics, science, and engineering. As an aside, we always need judges at the California State Science Fair.
- Light Bulbs. As you know, there is a move to more energy efficient CFLs and halogen bulbs. So what are people doing? Stockpiling the old incandescent bulbs. I have no major problems with CFLs, except where I have dimmer switches. Does anyone know if the halogen bulbs work with dimmers?
- Escaping Disney. Disney is expanding into the newborn and justborn market. There really is no escape.
