THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/30/01 -- Vol. 20, No. 22
Big Cheese: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Little Cheese: Evelyn Leeper, evelyn.leeper@excite.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
Millennium Philcon Report (URL)
National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers
Union (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Millennium Philcon Report
My Millennium Philcon (Worldcon) report (including three panel
write-ups by Mark) is available at
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/milphil.htm [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: National Testing and Research Center of the Consumers Union
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I have been a longtime subscriber to Consumer Reports, the
magazine that tests various consumer products and reports the
results. Few appliances do I buy without seeing what the
Consumers Union has to say.
Evelyn noticed that they were going to have a business meeting for
members followed by a tour of their testing labs. The location of
the labs was not too far away, in Yonkers, New York so we decided
to try it. So bright and early on Saturday morning, October 20,
we set out for Yonkers, New York.
They gave instructions in the issue as to how to get to their
labs. Now this is where the rubber meets the road, literally and
figuratively. These guys are experts on the human use of tools
and a set of driving instructions are a tool, right?
The instructions were in part a set of short phrases that should
have been given in a list, but were compacted into a single
sentence without being set off by commas, giving rise to a sort of
run-on sentence that was difficult to read, particularly under the
conditions of driving a car where snap decisions have to be made
"snappedly", to coin a phrase, in the interest of the safety of
their readers. I can understand why they made such a decision to
save space, but they should have given us user-tested
instructions.
As we arrived we pulled into the parking lot. I noticed there
were a large number of Toyotas in the lot. Toyota is, of course,
a car with an extremely good repair record in their magazine. I
would expect that there would be some, but I was surprised by how
many there were. If you have seen Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, imagine
it as if he had made THE TOYOTAS instead, and that is what the lot
looked like. I guess employees and subscribers do believe what
they read in the reports. We parked our Toyota somewhat away from
the others just in case they WERE intending to turn on humans.
As we got out of the card there were lot monitors who handed us
safety rules. Apparently they were on heightened alert since the
September 11 attacks. Photographic ID was required for entrance.
My understanding is that 49 states actually do require a picture
of the person on drivers licenses so photographic IDs are rarely a
problem. The one state that has it only as an option, and makes
you pay for the privilege of a picture on your license, is New
Jersey where photography is considered to be a passing fad. The
result is that Jersey-ites are the largest sub-category of
Americans who get nervous when told that photo-ID is required.
And let me tell you, it is not a good idea to start sweating when
someone asks you for a photo-ID. That is why I have to fly with
my passport hanging around my neck, even for domestic flights.
Well the security people let us by with just a driver's license,
but not before we had to return to the car for Evelyn to put her
purse in the trunk. No purses.
Walking in, they have on the walls pictures of spectacular results
of testing. War correspondents like to display pictures of enemy
planes diving on them to show their courage in the line of duty.
Consumer Reports people do much the same thing, but they have
photos of things like stove fires, exploding tea-kettles, toys
that we could be dropping on the enemy in Afghanistan, that sort
of thing. They have display cases with steam irons that have been
through major meltdowns. That is the sort of decoration they
like. "See, we told you they were dangerous!!!"
We walked to their auditorium. Actually it was their lunch room
which serves double duty as an auditorium. I am sure that is the
sort of touch that appeals to them. On the way you see yourself
walking on floorboard that are numbered. They must have been
testing something. When the test is done, what are they going to
do, rip up the floorboards and replace them? Maybe it is just a
floor wax. "Ajax Floor Wax lasted twice as long but had a nasty
tendency to explode when tread upon by visitors to the labs."
Walking into the auditorium there was a heating urn for coffee.
Curiously, they do not have six brands of coffee. There was only
one, and they didn't tell you what it was. I assume they give you
a good brand, though I am not a coffee drinker so would not be
able to judge. The room was decorated with large mounted posters
of, what else, covers of Consumer Reports Magazine. Even this
turned out to be useful. I saw an older issue that had
information on National Parks and decided to go home and dig out
the article.
I was impressed to see that before the presentation they followed
their own philosophy and tested all the microphones. Science
fiction conventions I go to frequently do not. They did not,
however, test the name plates in front of each of the positions at
the table. Once people were in the seats these tags were
impossible to read from most of the audience. Their use could
have been a little better consumer tested. They were probably
visible only from the roped off seats. They had a section of the
best seats roped off with a ribbon. These seats were for board
members, senior staffers, special visitors, and lifetime members.
I guess that even is consumerism there is an aristocracy.
Next week I will talk about the actual meeting. [-mrl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of
false confidence.
--Jules Feiffer
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