vallierojas: Will free BlackBerry apps make it better? You betcha

The hysteria over the BlackBerry crash in Britain mystified me ? but I love the idea of free apps as compensation

'It is the distant future, the year 2000/We are robots/The world is quite different ever since/The robotic uprising of the late 90s." Despite coming a mere decade plus VAT later than Bret and Jermaine of the Flight of the Conchords predicted, it has been hard to view certain events over the past few weeks as anything other than final confirmation that mankind has conceded all power to the robots. I can't quite bring myself to deal with the excitement some people seem to feel about Siri, which, as far as I can ascertain, is some kind of disease that makes people think it's OK to ask their iPhone the meaning of life and expect an answer.

Instead, I shall focus on the panic last week that apparently gripped the whole of Great Britain when, for a whole handful of days, one's BlackBerry didn't work and so one wasn't able to access one's spam at a moment's notice. Oh, the agonised wails of 140 characters or less that speckled Twitter! I was actually quite surprised when I arrived back in Britain this week not to find some apocalyptic wasteland peopled only by barely clothed skeletons crawling on the ground, clutching their pitifully useless black handsets, while Viggo Mortensen marched grimly onwards, determined to reach that BlackBerry HQ and have his vengeance.

In all honesty, the furore somewhat mystified me. Surely to complain about not being able to receive emails is tantamount to complaining about not being able to work that day. Um, boo hoo?

Anyway, BlackBerry has wisely adopted the prostrate apology pose this week and has announced that, to aid its customers' recovery from post- traumatic stress disorder, it will give them some free apps. Now, this is the kind of compensatory culture I can get down with. Ladies and gentlemen, could you not see that email offer of penile enlargement as soon as it arrived in your inbox last week? Here, play some Texas Hold'em poker this week! I believe this is what is called crap for old rope.

As compensations go, this one's easy to mock, which is clearly why I am doing so, but perhaps this is how one should view life in general. There are so many depressing developments in the world that, at best, maybe half of them are misguided apologies for something else. To whit: "So Britain, you're on the verge of an economic disaster? Never mind, Steps are number one!" "So America, your government is broken and you're in an inextricable decline? Don't worry, The Only Way is Essex is coming to your screens!"

"So Democrats, feeling a bit disillusioned with that whole hopeychangey thing? Well, now that it's the other side that looks likely to have the candidate with the 'difficult religion' issue with the Mormon Mitt Romney, you're the party that has the grass-roots movement in the form of Occupy Wall Street, and President Obama has already spent more than $87m in operating costs for his campaign, which is as much as all of the Republican candidates have raised so far, put together, it looks like you're the new Republicans. Congratulations! Would you like to play some Texas Hold'em poker?"

Dog days at the New York Times

So long, New York Times, it was nice to know you while we did. Perhaps you have not heard but the eminence grise of newspapers is teetering on the verge of a spectacular collapse. Jill Abramson, the paper's sparkling new executive editor and its first female one in its 160 years of existence, has been profiled in possibly the only eminence griser than the newspaper, The New Yorker. Despite being published only on Monday, this interview has already attracted a huge amount of attention in New York. Not for its descriptions of sexism that existed at the paper only decades ago, nor for the odds Abramson has had to overcome, not least when she was nearly crushed under a truck just four years ago ? but for her promise to treat the journalists in the same way that she treats her beloved dog, Scout: "'In one's relationship with dogs and with a newsroom, a generous amount of praise and encouragement goes much better than criticism,' she says," the New Yorker reports.

Abramson has never been a closeted dog lover. Not only is her forthcoming book entitled The Puppy Diaries but her portrait photograph alongside this interview is of her standing proudly alongside the aforementioned Scout, patting his head with a proud little smile.

Yet as a fellow crazy dog lady ? a term some mystifyingly see as an insult ? I cannot but view Abramson's editorial strategy as worrying. Treating one's underlings similarly to the way one treats one's dog is, undoubtedly well-meaning and compassionate. But I know ? and, judging from Abramson's dog-o-philia, she knows, too ? that although one might enter into this relationship with high dreams of you being a stern master, an establisher of boundaries and a commander of respect, the end result is actually the dog being the boss of you, you talking to it in complete sentences in public, every item in your wardrobe being matted with dog hair and a general air of chaos. So fare thee well, New York Times, we'll remember you with the dignity you once commanded. And if you must wee in the flat, please wee on yourself.

Hadley Freeman