When cells were called “cellular telephones”

We moved offices last month, and while everyone was in the throes of “Last Flight Out of Saigon”-type packing, I stumbled across these ancient beasts from the memory hole:

SSPX0046%20Old%20School%20phones.jpg

It’s a pile of Motorola MicroTACs and MicroTAC Elites and two Sony Clearnet models from the late 1980s, garnished with a relatively new Qualcomm 2700 (one of the best Qualcomm ever made) and a Samsung N400.

Oh the irony that their photo was taken by a current generation cellphone, one-quarter their size and weight!

Universities want to score too

11 schools are boycotting Maclean’s university ranking guide. It’s a surprise, considering the annual Maclean’s university issue is generally considered THE bible for Canadian parents eager to transform their naive offspring to formidable lawyers and doctors.

What’s more surprising is the schools who are doing the boycott. I had actually expected a sour grapes situation, but there’s some perennial high-scorers on that list. UofT, UBC, UQAM, and my own Mac is on the list, and they typically are at the top of their rankings and enjoy overall good mindshare. It’s telling when your winners claim your contest is inaccurate.

Speaking of which, I have a story of my own brush with Maclean’s. They determine what the best clubs on campus were by sending out a random survey to a few select club organizers. I know this because in our university one organizer received TWO ballots by accident because Maclean’s thought he ran two clubs. Why? His club had an ampersand in its title.

Obviously he nominated his own club and one I was also participating in, and that’s what got published in the in-depth profile for our school. Scientific, eh?

I probably should have said something back then, but I was a lot more cynical and a lot less introspective at the time.