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Speaking of “things that are shaking but nobody will notice”:

NYPD sets up domestic intelligence unit, infiltrates ethnic neighborhoods

I’m sure they just forgot to mention the unit that was infiltrating Christian churches to watch out for “radical” RW preachers, right?

Clearly he doesn’t drink enough.

End-of-days TJ: Has anyone heard from Baked?

This is random, but what would one call the opposite of a dedicated button? I’m trying to explain to a septuagenarian how to use a cell phone.

@mellbell: Get him or her a Jitterbug.

@Benedick HRH KFC: Too late. He has a Pantech Breeze, which is, I gather, just about the simplest phone offered by a major carrier, but the fact that button functionality is dependent on which menu you’re in is a bridge too far.

@mellbell: I’d say it’s the idea of menus. One button does one thing. It’s either A or B. How can it change?

The Jitterbug completely mimics a land phone: it even has a dial-tone. Oh well.

NojoMom (b. 1934) has owned a Mac for twelve years, and before that, an Apple III, and she still calls when she can’t move a file from one folder to another.

@nojo: @Benedick HRH KFC: People of a certian age, say, about 80, seem to have trouble viewing icons as symbolic of their real-life counterparts. For example, my grandmother at ninety can use an internet appliance we bought her that has a mail icon on a real life button, but make that same button an onscreen object and she is completely lost.

How Benedick is able to grasp it at a full 14 years past my grandmother’s age is beyond me.