Joel's humanistic blog

Wouldn't you know it, today is National Grouch Day on a week in which ToughPigs.com is running a contest to make memes based around Sesame Street pals Ernie and Bert. So I'll make up for not yet linking to their past contests which yielded a trash bin of Oscar the Grouch memes and, a bit farther down the street, a cookie jar of Cookie Monster memes . Both compilations of humorous image-caption combinations include submissions by this very blogger, who may not have found his way to Sesame Street (or won the contests) but was able to indulge in dated references to everything from Atari 2600 games to Arnold Schwarzenegger one-liners to the Lazy Sunday SNL skit.

The current issue of the Queens Chronicle  newspaper has a letter to the editor by yours truly about the latest of the MTA's bad decisions endured by NYC transit riders.  I kept it as concise as possible for print, but on my own blog I can try to expand a bit on why the removal of QR codes was so particularly annoying: It takes a bit of technical know-how to explain what exactly QR codes actually are — they're sort of like an Internet-connected update of bar codes for the wireless age — but their removal eliminated the benefit they had for riders who knew how to use them, without any countervailing gain for those who don't. The QR codes linked to significantly more useful and accurate schedule information than could be conveyed in the static schedules that were phased out for supposedly being too costly to maintain, and can keep access to up-to-date info  without  needing the physical printout to be replaced: each code is tied to a webpage link which not on...