Neanderpundit

The subject intrigues me and sends me in a lot of different directions.

The James Burke series “Connections” and it’s spawn resonated with me because that has always been the way I think. The whole of human behavior, and the progress of man through the ages, is a constant pattern of behavior- of reaction to forces, of utilization of resources. A non-vicious infinite regression.

If we look at a map of the united states, you can see that the oldest cities are on water. Newport News. New York. Hampton VA. St Augustine. Quincy. Civilization began to spread from those places in North America. The next oldest cities follow inland rivers and lakes. After that, railroads. A great deal- if not all- of the west was settled a whistlestop at a time. Finally, the automobile allowed us to have jobs more than an hours walk or horse ride from our homes, and allowed manufacturers to establish facilities away from water and rail, but by the new highways that sprang up all across the land.
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Some real, old technology.

The Friden Flexowriter.

From the early days on, if you wanted to get information into a computer, or an NC machining center or lathe, you used this.

They also had the ability to do personalized mailings, etc. There was a bare minimum of computational power in this bugger, and by the time this sucker rolled off the line, it had no less than a handful of actual solid state transistors in it, some of them actually used to make simple decisions.

Meeeemreeeeeez.

Yeah, it’s forlorn and dusty. I still use it sometimes to punch out a piece of cose to test soemthing.

Why is it that the cat can stay out all damned night and mroooooows loudly to be let in first thing in the AM….

….only to run to the litterbox to do his odiferous business indoors?

I mean really. With one crapper in the house I often have to water a tree because the wife or daughter are in the can. Why can’t the cat whiz or poo outdoors? Isn’t as if there’s no dirt, or sand.