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EcoATMs take old cellphones, MP3 players and tablets in exchange for cash. But the automated kiosks, operating 650 machines in 40 states, are getting bad reviews from police, who are concerned the machines are a magnet for thieves.

The transaction is fairly simple. The machine walks you through the process, scanning your ID to certify you're over 18 and verify your identity. An ecoATM employee inspects the transaction remotely in real time. Once the seller's identity is verified, the kiosk takes the device and assesses its value. You get the cash, and the device is recycled.

The company was purchased in July by Outerwall, formerly called Coinstar, for $350 million. EcoATM officials are hoping the merger will speed the rollout of the machines in more places.

But in Baltimore, officials are trying to ban them.

"I had gotten complaints from the police department that people were stealing cellphones and taking them out to these machines in the county," says Baltimore City Council member Bill Henry.

The region has seen a rise in cellphone thefts. James Green, director of government affairs for the Baltimore Police Department, says ecoATM machines are among many places where stolen phones turn up. Green says law enforcement officials have been in talks with the company.

"We've made some recommendations as to how the data sharing can be improved, and the representatives of ecoATM are working on doing just that," he says.

EcoATM declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement saying they greatly appreciate the constructive engagement with law enforcement and the Baltimore City Council.

The company also has a page on its website dedicated to addressing "misperceptions" about the kiosks, outlining safeguards against the selling of stolen devices as well as how they use information about the individuals and devices in case theft is reported.

Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier is a vocal critic of the machines. Over the summer, she says her department's investigators traced 200 stolen cellphones to one ecoATM machine. When the D.C. police complained, Lanier says the company stopped giving her department information on phones turned in to its machines.

"Because there was some negative publicity around the use of these machines that fence stolen phones, and I was quoted in those articles, they stopped sending us the data," Lanier says.

The company has since resumed sending the information to D.C. police.

In California, the Riverside City Council banned the machines in August at the recommendation of its police chief, citing the same concerns expressed by Baltimore City Council member Henry and law enforcement officials.

EcoATM says on its website that "less than 1 out of every 4,000 devices" it collects are later reported lost or stolen.

I was in a grocery store one night this week when a sturdy young man approached with a smile.

"Do you remember me?" he asked. "Bini."

Bini — Erblin Mehmataj — was a bony-shouldered 9-year-old boy with a full, toothy grin who lived in an Albanian Muslim housing complex in Pristina, where we stayed to cover the war in Kosovo in 1999.

Bini and his friend Vesa were among the kids who would play in the the housing bloc when there were no bombs going off, and sometimes even when there were; which reminded us how war brings everyday life to a grinding, bloody halt, but it cannot stop children from playing.

There's a picture of us with Bini and Vesa, who is the young woman with a tennis racket, which she held as she walked around as a sign of adolescent sophistication, I always thought, and a reminder of normal life. We hit small rubber balls with Vesa and Bini over an imaginary net on a cracked sidewalk.

Bini — Erblin — is doing great now, getting his Ph.D. in math at a prestigious American school.

I've thought of the kids we played with in Pristina over the years, but especially now as another debate is underway over the merits and morality of U.S. military action that's aimed at stopping a war crime.

The Albanian Muslim families we lived among hailed the U.S. bombers overhead, and the British paratroopers who rolled into the housing bloc after the Serb retreat, because they'd lived through years of brutality under Slobodan Milosevic's regime. Human Rights Watch would eventually report that about 500 civilians died in the NATO bombing, and the Milosevic government trumpeted those deaths while Serb paramilitary units reportedly slaughtered more civilians as they withdrew, knowing that America and other NATO states would not risk sending ground troops to stop them.

But the people in our apartment bloc had seen thousands die in what was called "ethnic cleansing" of Muslim areas. They tended to forgive NATO its lethal mistakes — a misguided bomb that fell on a house of innocent people — if they also blew up the Security Police headquarters in which so much brutality had been plotted.

One of the reasons the U.S. did not send troops to Kosovo or Bosnia was that so many Americans said they didn't want another Vietnam or Somalia, just as many now caution that they don't want Syria to become Iraq or even Benghazi, Libya. History seems to serve up an example for any argument. I wonder what, in a landscape already aflame with war, might give the young Binis and Vesas in Syria today a chance to play without fear.

Baz Luhrmann's first movie, Strictly Ballroom, was a cheap, independent romance set in the world of ballroom dancing. The 1992 film became an international hit. Since then, the director, writer and producer has become known for his lavish operatic movies like Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and the recent The Great Gatsby.

Luhrmann's from Australia, where people are rugged and tough. We're from America, where people are dumb and mix up Australia and Austria. So we're going to ask Luhrmann three questions about that other country that he isn't from, Austria.

If the world as we know it comes to an end, will art survive? And if it does, what kinds of stories will be told after the apocalypse? The answer might surprise you.

The lights come up on a group of people around a campfire in the woods, trying to recall all the details of the hilarious Simpsons episode "Cape Feare," a parody of the Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro movies, in which Bart Simpson is stalked by the evil but incompetent Sideshow Bob.

Then one of the group hears a sound in the woods, and all of a sudden guns are drawn. Turns out something bad has happened. Something very, very bad: The electrical grid is down, nuclear plants are imploding, most of the population of the United States has been wiped out.

"I wanted to take a pop-culture narrative and push it past the apocalypse and see what happened," says Anne Washburn. She's the author of Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, an audacious three-act drama that takes place in three different eras: right after the apocalypse, seven years after that, and 75 years farther down the road. The show had its world premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, a notable new-play incubator, and runs at New York's Playwrights Horizons through Oct. 6.

In each of its three acts, Washburn's survivors recount that Simpsons episode, which has become a symbol of all that has been lost, and what hope may be found. And with each retelling, the story changes.

"I was thinking, 'What happens to the story? What's the game of Telephone? What changes, and why does it change?,'" Washburn says. "That was the question. What version led to what version? And who are the people who change a version?"

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