In light of the overabundance of ipods on college campuses, I choose to count people wearing white earbud headphones. My reasons are as follows:

1. Headphones disconnect people from the world around them. They can be alienating both to their users and those who refrain from using. They prevent contact with community, nature, and life. In other words, they can a Bad Thing. They aren't always a Bad Thing, but they are such an ubiquitous thing on a college campus that they have a large impact on daily life.

2. White earbud headphones have become a highly effective advertising scam. The users of white earbuds advertise for Apple by stating loud and clear, "I have an ipod!" But worse, they don't look like an advertisment. People who might otherwise avoid being a billboard wear ipob headphones and get sucked into advertising without even realizing it. By giving people those distinctive white earbuds for free with any ipod Apple has pulled off a major advertising coup, and that just pisses. me. off.

So I counted white earbuds. I counted them on my busride/walk to campus. I counted for a mere 17 minutes, on a Monday at around 11:30 am, on a route with about average crowd-density. I had limited visibility (through the windows of the bus). I was travelling to a college campus with about 50,000 students.

How many white earbuds did I count? 33. That's almost 2 per minute. Not counting other varieties of headphones. Not counting unconfirmed sightings (several times I thought I saw a pair of white earbuds but could not confirm it due to limitied visibility, poor timing, or too much hair).

33 people advertising for Apple. 33 people disconnected from the world - two of them on bicycles! And this in only 17 minutes.