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UMN Usability photos, Arrival in Boston, It's Snowing! US Culture

2 March 2008 - 5:52am — Bevan

I arrived in Boston yesterday afternoon, absolutely exhausted after Usability testing at UMN -- which was amazing. See the report at 9am on Monday to hear why. It was snowing heavily here this morning. Today I need to prepare for my presentation on Scalable Theming and my parts of the Usability presentation, and try open another US bank account.

Here's my photoblog to date:

A few NEW cultural oddities I've noticed in the US since my last visit 5 years ago:

  • Airport pager: "The security threat level... is orange" -- talk about
    fear-mongering. No need for foreign terrorism in the US -- the local authorities are terrorizing plenty enough here!
  • Control-culture doesn't seem to be so severe this trip but is still grating. I think that's more to do with the people and places I'm mingling with though.
  • You can't seem to fill up a bottle with water anywhere. They seem to be getting the idea of 'being green' with recycle bins and signs to conserve hand-drying paper in the toilets and not leave the tap dripping, yet it's difficult NOT to go through several styrofoam, paper or plastic cups, bottles, plates and fast-food trays per day. I wonder how effective the recycling actually is here? Given the amount of extremely cheap "recyclable" materials consumed, and the fact that these materials usually aren't economically worth recycling, I suspect very little of it is actually recycled. Even where recycle bins are present. Meaning all the recycle bins do is make you feel less guilty about being a polluting consumer.
    • Most annoyingly of all for me, I can't fill up a bottle with tap water anywhere except a public bathroom, which 'feels' unhygenic, although probably isn't.