Actually, they weren't that big. And they came out after dark, which made the picture taking harder. But it turns out that Austin is home too a big bat colony, and I schlepped down to the Congress street bridge to check it out.

Only one of the pictures I took turned out OK, and that was after some goofy futzing with levels in Photoshop. The first image is an enlargement of the lower half of the second image:

9:50:23 PM  (comments [])   

This picture turned out to be unexpectedly cool:

Aaaah! I'm crushing me head!

I found myself wondering if I could make a weird little kid's noir mystery picture book with cat toys and a mysterious shadowy killer. But instead you can just have the pictures:

  10:39:08 AM  (comments [])   

This story is a great example of awful journalism. At its core, it's reporting two facts:

• cell phones recycled at places like Staples may be reused or resold instead of recycled into component parts
• the people doing this might make some money while they're doing it

There is one good point hidden among all the dross: they do point out that these refurbed phones are being injected into third world countries that have even crummier recycling infrastructures then we do. But the reality is that, in the US, most people would just throw the damn things away if this service wasn't provided. And if you throw it away, you've just bypassed that nice recycling infrastructure.

Update: It's important to point out that an even better option for recycling your old phone is to donate it so that it can be reprogrammed to dial 911 and be handed out by battered women's shelters as emergency beacons. I wish I could find a link for this, so if any faithful readers have one, please place it in the comments.

Update updated: Skye points out The Wireless Foundation. Yay Skye!  10:17:15 AM  (comments [])