Middlesex Marquee (again)

[jd-science.livejournal.com]

I just sent the following to the Middlesex Bank. I also e-mailed Rebekah about it. Does anyone else ever notice this trend on the marquee but me? It's annoying and depressing.


Hello-

I sent a comment on June 27, 2006 about the scrolling marquee outside your bank. I have not yet heard a response.

This is what I sent you then:

"I live in the Davis Square area and wanted to express my unhappiness with the new scrolling marquee above your bank. This weekend I was sitting in the square with some friends, and within five minutes we saw the words "death" and "kill" repeated several times. This does not seem appropriate at all for large, bright broadcasting in the middle of Davis Square.

I realize that the marquee was just scrolling news headlines, but I don't believe that news headlines - particularly those types of headlines - are really that important to building a truly informed public and in fact contribute to a destructive social atmosphere. If the marquee must be there (which I don't think it great, but I understand you've probably put a lot of money into it), I'd prefer it just to scroll the time, temperature, and maybe sports scores. And please nothing about death, killing, children being bombed, and so forth. We can get enough of that everywhere else."

Today, August 3, I was eating lunch in the square at around 1 pm, and one right after the other, I saw the following headlines scroll across, multiple times:

Iranian Woman Awaits Death By Stoning
New Surgical Procedure for Incontinence
Woman Afraid of Height Dies in Plane Crash
Israeli Bombing Kills 7
Welcome to Davis Square

There was another headline after the stoning that had something to do with death, but I don't exactly remember what it said.

This hardly seems appropriate to be displayed in large orange letters in the middle of Davis Square. Death, destruction, ridiculousness, and hey! Welcome to Davis!

I went into the bank to ask who to talk to about my issues with the sign, and the tellers told me Mr. Smoliss (?) was in charge. I asked if I could talk to him, and they said, “Well, his office is upstairs.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to just walk up and there and knock on the door, so I am writing via the official channel on your website.

At the recent Davis Square Task Force meeting, it was noted that the sign is only allowed, by law, to display the time, temperature, and public service announcements. The president also said he wanted the sign to promote community events and activities.

(for notes, see http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/565301.html)

It hardly seems that what I saw today is in line with any of this. In addition, after all these useless, dramatic headlines were several about mergers and business acquisitions, also not of local community interest.

I would appreciate a response from you about this problem.

Comments

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

My point about increased font size is that it cost me 4 more keystrokes and that that's not an overly high cost, I suspect even if you're working with only a mouth stick to type with, as the cut means you have to deal with at least the click forward and the (either click back or close window/tab).

My point about people not clicking through is actually that people miss content they DO care about due to cuts.

(As well, I'd also say that this post isn't long. 2889 bytes isn't long.)

(Oh, and I'll comment on the sign in a moment, too. :)

[jadelennox]

But you're *not* using a mouthstick -- and as much as your common sense tells you 4 keystrokes isn't a big deal, I'd love to have this conversation after you've spent a week doing all your computer use by adaptive tech. Whereas I *am* using adaptive tech, and I'm absolutely hoarse by day's end. Trust me when I tell you that four more repetitions of "page down" "page down", at the end of a long day of more of the same, is, in fact, an overly high cost.

It seems the end result of this conversation is that your life is made worse by cuts, which I can accept. But what I am saying, like other people in this forum, is that my life is made worse by uncut lengthy text. Can't you accept that your use patterns (never clicking through even fascinating links; using a big-enough monitor optimised for some perfect amount of text; having no cost to multiple pages of text) is not everybody's else's experience?