Dear iPad pedestrians, this has to stop

Is the alleged iPad Mini specifically designed for self-absorbed pedestrians?

In my role as Secretary for Apocalypse Avoidance, sometimes it's hard to be kind.

Sometimes, you see, humanity decides to do things at which even Beelzebub might turn up his red nose.

And so it was, last night, as I was walking up San Francisco's Market Street that I discovered a trend I had yet to witness.

It was just before 6 o'clock in the evening and I was on my way to a rendezvous with a deeper destiny, when a man almost walked headlong into me.

This was odd, because San Francisco has relatively wide sidewalks and relatively few people. This is not Manhattan.

And yet this clearly complex human had decided he would walk to the subway -- or to his hydroponic acupressure session -- while reading his iPad.

Indeed, the cover was nicely unwrapped, forming a little stand so that, presumably, he found it easier to clutch.

It's surely one thing when people walk along holding their cell phones. Though once upon a time, I would bump into these lost souls in Manhattan -- literally and deliberately, to see if they'd wake up from the self-centered myopia -- now it seems relatively normal.

Not pleasant exactly, but normal. Like a lying realtor.

It's as if cell phone pedestrians have taken out their little mirr... [Read more]