T rider's card trick doesn't fool Charlie

By Adam Gaffin, Globe Correspondent  |  April 15, 2007

No, don't worry, it won't explode, and radioactive juice won't spill out. But you will keep the card from working. Local computer programmer Kate Rhodes reports on her masukomi.org blog that she wanted to see if she could trim away all of her Charlie Card except for the microchip so she could put it on her key ring; alas, there's a wire antenna around the outer edges of the card, without which the card doesn't work.

Jeff Egnaczyk of Brookline writes on Boonville Blog that he just doesn't get why people get so upset at other people talking on cellphones on the T:

"I really don't get it. It's the exact same thing as having a conversation. People don't think we should all just not talk on the T, right? Actually, it's better than a conversation because you only have to hear half of it.

"It's possible people get upset at others engaging in conversation when they're stuck on the miserable B Line without anything to do. Maybe they get the impression that the person is flaunting his or her importance instead of their wealth. I don't know. It really is a stupid thing to get mad about."

Jennifer Forman Orth is a biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who specializes in invasive species. On her Invasive Species Blog , she reports that UMass has its own nonnative species -- chirping coqui frogs from Puerto Rico that have somehow infested the university's greenhouse:

"Yes, my school has a coqui infestation in the greenhouse. Yes, it annoys me, even though we're in Boston, MA. Yep, I'm worried about climate change too."

Sometimes, you just have to let it go. A woman allegedly offered to have sex with some guy at the BPL main branch for just $15, according to the Boston Police's BPDNews blog. Seemed like a good price to him, so he handed over the money. Only she fled down Boylston. And then he reported the incident to police. They nabbed her and cited him for soliciting sex for a fee.

Like their Boston counterparts, Brookline police now have their own blog for reporting crime (blog.brooklinepolice.com) . But the crimes tend to be less violent than those in Boston:

"The suspect was seen removing money from the coin boxes of certain USA Today newspaper machines. The amount of $4.75 in quarters and $0.75 in nickels and dimes was recovered from the suspect."

Lewis Forman of East Boston wonders about recent incidents involving vehicles plunging off the Leverett Connector loop ramps. On his Webster Street Minutes , he writes:

"With another vehicle falling off the Leverett Connector loop and onto a vehicle 70 feet below, is it now time to say that ramp is extremely unsafe? I'm still grappling with how a 3 1/2- foot (a personal guess) barrier is supposed to stop a vehicle from going over the edge. Even at low speeds, let alone a heavily loaded tractor trailer."

Larry Davidson of Dorchester reports on a recent trip to the South Bay Home Depot. On his Learning Strategies, he writes that he got a sheet of plywood, 4- by-8-feet, and told the guy with the power saw that he needed three squares of 30 inches on a side cut from it:

"Well, this guy looked at my drawing and said, 'The plywood's only 96 inches long, you know. I don't think you can get three 30-inch squares out of that.' "

Find links to the complete items mentioned here at universalhub.com/0415.html. Contact Adam Gaffin at adamg@gaffin.com.