Word: overheards
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...Overheard in New York (OHinNY) is the brainchild of 30-year-old Morgan Friedman. Empathizing with a conversation a hipster and his girlfriend were having in a cafe in Brooklyn in 2003, Friedman decided that what they were saying was worth writing down. He then published those quotes for the whole world to see. Friedman and his "trusted spies" of five friends combed the streets of New York listening for interesting and entertaining bits of conversation to post on OhinNY. One recent favorite, overheard in downtown Manhattan: A tourist asks a cop for directions, and he replies, "See that naked...
Here's another lesson from London. Human intelligence routinely trumps fancy and often legally problematic surveillance techniques. The key to discovering the plot was apparently a citizen from Britain's diverse Islamic community who, in the days after last summer's bombings in London, overheard something troubling. He contacted authorities. An investigation took root. Imagine: a Muslim man sitting across from a British intelligence official at a café, off hours. They have little in common. Some would say they are natural opponents. But a thread of shared interest leads to the passing of information and, a year later, to saving...
Even as workplaces move toward more open seating, privacy remains a top demand among employees. A Knoll study found that 45% say they do their best work in "their own personal space." The top privacy-related gripe: overheard conversation, particularly from cell-phone shouters. So architects are being exhorted to help muffle cubicle babble. Some advocate loft ceilings, others white noise; a desktop gadget called Babble can broadcast garbled recordings of the user's voice to mask real conversation. "To be honest, I see a lot more people just wearing iPods at their desks," says Dennis Gaffney, co-director...
...national debt, sip a kir on the terrace of the criminally posh Majestic Hotel and watch the glitterati glide past; many of them are housed there for the fortnight But critics can't dawdle - there's a 3:00 screening of that Romanian film that everyone (some guy you overheard on the street) is talking about. If you come home with a tan, you've been playing hooky...
...Harvard International Office, is an orientation program for “students who have not attended school in either the U.S. or Canada.” According to Erinn M.M. Wattie ’06, the Canadian Club decided to try to get the policy changed after one member overheard a representative of the Woodbridge Society, an international students’ group, say, “Why would we invite Canadian students to FIP? We don’t invite Americans.” Wattie, who is a member of the Canadian Club and spearheaded the drive to change...