Back in early 1997, I read a great article, The Boor War by John Tierney, in the New York Times Magazine. He used the theories of an economist, Robert Axelrod, to argue for more cranks:
Which is to say, we need more cranks. We need cab passengers to punish noise pollution by refusing to tip drivers who honk. Guests at dinner parties should refuse to sit next to anyone who owns a car alarm. Apartment dwellers who live above wailing cars should contemplate today’s most hotly debated moral question among urban cranks: to egg or not to egg?
I have followed Tierney’s advice and have been ‘cranky’ all my life and I would like to share my most recent adventure, which relates to the purpose of this blog.
When writing the post about MoMA’s new audio tours, I noticed that the company who had created these tours had posted a copy of this article on its website. The version posted is a scanned image of the article in PDF format. PDFs are not very easy to read generally and scanned articles are particularly bad. After grumbling to myself about this lack of ‘accessibility’, I became cranky. That is to say that I found a ‘permanent’ link to the article on the NY Times’ site (Thanks to the New York Times Link Generator!) and forwarded the link to the Sales and Marketing Manager, Kate Patterson, on Acoustiguide’s ‘Contact Us‘ page. Within minutes, I received a polite response thanking me for the tip and promising to add a link to the more accessible version of the article.
Being cranky does not always work, but the times it does certainly make up for the times it doesn’t. I have more stories along these lines and will share them in future posts.
PS. Thank you, Kate.
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