Wednesday evening roundup

Best writing advice ever: don't get people thinking about picking up paper towels.

This article about service in restaurants is based on an interesting assumption: status somehow influences service. Waiters wait on customers, according to this assumption, because they are worthy, not because they are customers. I'd kind of thought that they waited on customers because it was their job, and that no determination of worthiness was required. I know that when I do my job, my esteem of the customer doesn't enter into the picture. I don't think, "this person's a jackass, so I'm not going to try very hard." I bring this up because I've recently read not one article that expressed, either directly or in the retelling, a sense of superiority over people in other professions, as if that one profession in question is there to save the world, is somehow more enlightened, etc. Could we all just get over ourselves and be real? There's really no basis to go slamming other people's career paths.

On a lighter note: popular and unpopular celebrities.