Apple's Cheaper, Juicier iPod

As part of a pilot program, Duke University plans to give iPods loaded with school calendars and other information to its 1,800 incoming freshmen. Students can download class materials to listen to anything from audio examples of textbook exercises to Spanish songs.

I happen to still have one of the "Welcome to college!" packages handed out at the beginning of the school year. (To be fair, not to Freshmen exclusively, but I'm not sure any such special program existed.)

Contents:

• One container of Vasoline brand lip balm, cherry flavored, 10 grams.
• One bottle of Scope brand mouthwash, 44 milliliters.
• One bottle hotel shampoo, 1.75 fluid ounces. (Seriously, it has a brand name on the front, but turn it around and you see it was provided by the American Hotel Register Co.)
• One tube of Aquafresh brand toothpaste, 39.6 grams.
• A tiny, tiny bottle of some sort of super concentrated of some sort of concentrated breath freshener stuff, 3.2 milliliters.
• One coupon for fifty cents off an espresso at a campus coffee shop.
• A plastic mug.
• Some bubble gum.

Now perhaps my school simply assumed that its incoming students would be too busy with hurried reality-TV-style hookups to get much use out of a stylish iPod, or that we were all horrible unkempt ogres who needed basic hygenic tools. And I sure did enjoy my gum, and the mug came in handy as I owned no other beverage containers. And, OK, the iPod had yet to be invented the last time I got one of these. But, as if I needed further evidence of the poor choices I've made. I wonder what incoming graduate students get at Duke?