It’s Friday again and therefore time to put the Happy Helmet on. What could be more fun for an American than wallowing in materialism and playing with machines?
This old gold dredge is on the road from Nome, Alaska to the small town of Council.
MIT demonstrates its patriotism by giving us a four-day weekend for Patriot’s Day and I’ll be heading south in the airplane: Saturday to DC (parents/sibs); Sunday to Williamsburg, Virginia (w/parents); Tuesday morning to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (visit Matthew Amster, anthropologist, and Andy Wermuth, documentary filmmaker); Tuesday evening back to Boston (weather permitting; the forecast is a bit ugly). On the way down I hope to repeat a fun flying experience from Monday: asking the Logan Airport tower for a “city tour” clearance. On the way to East Hampton we were able to fly down the Charles River at 1500′, right over Harvard and MIT, then made a right turn to the south in front of the tall buildings of downtown. The only other aircraft in this space normally are the medical helicopters.
It is biking time again. If you’re old and creaky and don’t like biking because it hurts your neck, back, and, uh, butt, I can recommend a recumbent. It is as comfortable as sitting on your living room sofa except that sometimes you fall over sideways onto pavement (recumbents have smaller tires and therefore less angular momentum and therefore less resistance to tipping over). You can pick them up new for $600+ and learn about them in alt.rec.bicycles.recumbent
If you live in the Boston area, I found a bike shop that seems vastly superior to the usual suspects (Wheelworks and IBC): ATA Cycle on Mass Ave near Porter Square in Cambridge (http://www.atabike.com/). They are very fast yet thorough with mechanical work. They have some beautiful mountain bikes for trips through the Middlesex Fells, Lynn Woods, and other local spots.
When you get tired from biking and watch to relax on the sofa, this summer will bring the first crop of HDTVs that have enough holes in the shadow mask to display something like all the pixels in an HDTV signal (1920×1180). Unlike with computer monitors, TV makers don’t tell you how fine the dot pitch can be. The HDTVs sold so far have taken a high-res signal in but aren’t capable of producing anything other than a low-res picture because there aren’t actually enough distinct holes in the metal grille separating the electron gun from the phosphors. Blowing $2500 on a Sony KV-34XBR910 so that you can enjoy every pixel of Laverne and Shirley will provide a much-needed boost to both the US and Japanese economies.
If you’re concerned that America’s maturation into neo-feudalism will tempt the serfs to try to take away some of your hard-earned wealth, consider an armored car from Lincoln, Cadillac, or Mercedes.
Hello again Philip.
‘Neo-Feudalism’ has a nice ring to it, but I don’t think it accurately describes what’s going on. After all, the push isn’t towards an agrarian model of society, but back to an industrial one.
Neo-Victorian might be a better label (with apologies to Neal Stephenson), as the parallels are stronger.
Michael… corporations are and have been neo-feudal systems since the Victorean age. The skeleton of our republic is now fossilizing into a greater neo-feudalism.
If we can manage to leave some trace fossils around, maybe a republic can be recreated. Let’s just hope Jim Baker’s blood is not trapped in amber somewhere.
Patrick,
While I agree that corporations are feudal (an interesting look at this is the SF novel Oath of Fealty, and that our society is becoming increasingly corporatized (giving extra irony to the term ‘freelancer’), corporations are not the whole of society, and I don’t think that the overall structure of society is becoming more feudal.
There are feudal elements to be sure, but those always existed, and never really went away.
Vertical mobility is currently becoming more difficult, but is not being eliminated. A truly feudal society has *no* vertical mobility, by design (even if there is some under certain circumstances, it is quickly swept under the rug).
For example, organization of labor in the victorian era (in response to industrialization) is being paralleled in some ways by global anti-corporatism (unions now being part of the existing power structure), including head-cracking tactics by law-enforcement (private and otherwise).
In short, I think that the parallels with the Victorian era are stronger. The merchant and craft guilds extant in feudal societies simply do not provide a strong parallel in this case, and I think that the same can be said for other factors as well. Feudal societies didn’t have industrialized education, for example.
Sorry for thwe somewhat disorganized version above, I submitted it by accident before I was done. My main points can be discerned though, so I’ll leave it as-is.
If you happen to have a hacksaw and an Oxy-Acetylene torch (or even a hot MAPP torch, although the basic MAPP/Propane torches in sold in your low-end hardware stores don’t have enough “Ooomph” to get all the joints flowing as well as they should), you can also braze together a recumbent fairly quickly from a kid’s BMX bike (saw the rear wheel supports off, invert it and put the pedals out in front) attached to the rear end of a touring bike. Old mild steel bikes work best, brazing better than soldering because it doesn’t kill the temper and there’s less chance of punching a hole in the thin steel. Watch the garage sales and have a recumbent for under $100. Grind the paint off of it and lacquer the shiny metal with cool gold (brass) joints and have a vehicle people will stop you and ask you about.
And most backyard tinkerers have a torch, if you don’t have one this can be a good chance to meet your neighbors.