November 8th, 2006
Angry professor responds to a cell phone ringing in class
Here is a technique I haven’t considered. It makes the point. I’m sure that later the student retrieved his phone and traded up to a better one. So all in all, it comes out a win-win event for both parties. But I bet the students turn their phones off now.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I was listening raptly along with a serenely silent packed house in a smallish upstairs room at The Vic, to Tierney Sutton and her trio, when a patron’s cellphone went off. And was answered. And a loud conversation ensued. In the middle of a tune.
I likened the reaction next to something along the lines of the old TV show To Tell The Truth, where after the panel members have made their guesses as to the identity of the three guests, the moderator says And NOW—Will the REAL Lemuel Gengulphus Trotter PLEASE STAND UP?, and then a couple of the ringers bob up and down a bit before the real guy remains standing. In this case I could see four or five of us beginning to get up, and then deciding that the closest one to this egregious beeatch would take care of the job at hand.
Had I been closer I probably would have removed the ‘phone from the woman and deposited it “neatly and discreetly” (as one Lewis L. Lattimer does with the burdens he lifts from your shoulders on the single ancient episode of Bob and Ray’s The Lewis L. Lattimer Human Counseling Hour) in a handy nearby ice bucket, making sure that it was thoroughly submerged. The proximal person from our plebiscitary ballet merely herded the miscreant to the back of the club, where she could still be heard yakking and exclaiming about the reaction she got from the silly touchy people.
I’m tempted to explore a jamming device, which I could concoct. As they say We Have the Technology. It would be illegal of course, but would it be wrong?
Once I nearly completed a gadget to selectively jam an AM station for Alden Ashforth, who was tormented by a family across the street who listened to KWKW at high distorted volumes, opening the doors of their truck to facilitate. The transmitter generated a strong directional signal at 1.333 MHz, and produced a very strong crossmodulation of the normal radio station’s material, along with a 3.3 kHz loud whine the rest of the time. It worked beautifully in lab testing, but as deployment neared the family switched to cassettes, and any jamming of them would have had decidedly deleterious health effects. I remember that at one point Alden was contemplating arranging bullhorns around the perimeter of his house to beam retaliatory material outwards—with Varèse one of the candidate composers.
November 12th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
I think you should make a jammer and make it available for concerts and lectures. I’m sure they’d be a huge hit!!
November 13th, 2006 at 10:17 am
I think jamming devices for mobile phones already exist. Unfortunately they do not seem to be standard equipment in theaters yet…