Standing in the way of control!

Funny but real:

Meet Dr. Herman I. Libshitz, a retired radiologist and potential Verizon customer who would like DSL. Sadly, Dr. Libshitz was informed that he could not use his name in his email address or as his user name because it has “shit” in it.He tried his best to escalate the complaint with Verizon, but had little luck. First, he called the help line:

“We called their help line, and got a wonderful young man in the Philippines who told us:

” ‘We can’t install it because your name has - in it.’ “

I asked the doctor how I was going to print that. He said, “Just say it’s a word contained in Libshitz.”

He had no luck with a supervisor, so he called the billing disputes number and reached another supervisor who promised to investigate and have someone contact him because ” the only person who could help was in Tampa, and that man would have to call India to get them to change the computer code.” No one called back.

Finally, he got a letter informing him that he could not use his name as a username because it didn’t comply with Verizon’s policy.

It took calls from the Philadelphia Inquirer to get Verizon to deal with Dr. Libshitz and his “questionable” name, and that’s what bothers him. He told the Inquirer that what he wants “is for these people at least to stand at attention to explain themselves. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to get to Verizon. . . . You cannot get to them. They are insulated from things like this.” Unless you work for a newspaper, that is.

Here’s Verizon’s official response:

“As a general rule (since 2005) Verizon doesn’t allow questionable language in e-mail addresses, but we can, and do, make exceptions based on reasonable requests. The one from Dr. and Mrs. Libshitz certainly is reasonable and we regret the inconvenience and frustration they’ve been caused.”

Daniel Rubin: When your name gets turned against you [Philadelphia Inquirer] (Thanks, Will!)

From: Consumerist 

Popularity: 19% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: OfferForge | kalahari.net | bidorbuy )

Who uses stamps these days? Well, as Time clearly shows, there is still big stamp aficionados out there. They are called philatelists :

Postage stamps of odd shapes and sizes have been around for decades. The Pacific island nation of Tonga released coin- and star-shaped stamps in the 1960s and ’70s; Sierra Leone once produced a kola nut-shaped offering; New Caledonia has had stamps shaped like turtles and other sea mammals. But these days odd shapes alone won’t cut it, which is why national post offices and stamp manufacturers are coming up with new twists on the standard colorful squares and rectangles.

Read on...

Popularity: 12% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: OfferForge | kalahari.net | bidorbuy )

Starting October 1, if you’re flying first class from Dubai to New York on an Emirates Air A380, you’ll have the option of grabbing a hot shower midflight. It’ll cost you $18,000, but some showers are worth it, am I right? “No!” say those party poopers in the environmental lobby.You see, in order to offer every first-class passenger a shower, the airline will have to add one metric tonne of water to its payload, dragging a carbon cost of around 50,000 lbs. per trip.

All part of the luxury experience, right? No one has seen photos of the upcoming A380 first-class cabin, but it is allegedly something on par with the “seven star” Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, and that it makes Singapore Airlines’ front end—with double beds and dining “environments”—look like a dog’s backend.

Sure, an in-air shower might negatively impact the earth in catastrophic and irreversible ways, but think about it this way: the only people who will make use of it come from oil wealth, so they probably wouldn’t give a shit to begin with! [Times UK via Luxurylaunches]

From Gizmodo:

Popularity: 26% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: OfferForge | kalahari.net | bidorbuy )

From WhooHoo blog:

Li Wei is a modern artist from Bejing (China). His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Sometimes it seems that gravity doesn’t work in his world. Just take a look at these amazing photos…

Popularity: 16% [?]

ShareThis

(Sponsor Link: OfferForge | kalahari.net | bidorbuy )