What is a fluglebinder? OK, it’s a trick question. There is no way you could know the answer unless you happened to see a Tom Cruise movie called “Cocktail.”
Technology
Photo by Lukas from Pexels
A Japanese bullet train • Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash
Is this any way to run a railroad?
Bostonians deserve better. They deserve a better way to travel to their bigger neighbor 200 miles away.
Photo by Matt Mech on Unsplash
Bumping down the information highway
Dear Mr. Computer, I’m thinking about buying a laptop computer.
Ganson's "Machine with Concrete" • Photo by Shervinafshar (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Machines that have a funny bone
Imagine this. A machine made of pulleys and levers that spends its time scooping machine oil from a pool at its base and pouring it over itself. The oil glides sensuously down over the mechanism, back into the pool. Ahhh!
Chickamauga Dam and Peter Palchinsky (Public Domain)
Martyred by technology run amok
On a cold night in April 1928, Stalin’s secret police knocked on the door of Peter Palchinsky’s Leningrad apartment.
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
More exciting spinoffs — this time from the Big Ear
Karl Munchausen called the other day. Karl is Public Relations Officer for the Big Ear Project. As usual, he was trying to drum up media attention for the Big Ear.
Fontana Dam, North Carolina • Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Public Domain)
Industrial age artifacts need not be eyesores
In the autumn of 1728, Samuel Johnson, future author of the famous dictionary, rode with his father from his birthplace at Lichfield in the English Midlands to the university town of Oxford. He was 19 years old.
Photo by Luke Ellis-Craven on Unsplash
Out of the office, but never out of the loop
Later this week, thousands of scientists from around the world will gather in Boston for the [1993] annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They will lug to the meeting laptop computers, modems, fax machines, cellular telephones, beepers. Circuits in and out of Boston will be humming.
Photo by Lomig on Unsplash
Just dial ‘N’ to order an offspring with ‘niceness’
Are you ready for this? Sperm sorting. I’m not kidding.
C. Raymo Sr.'s slide rule • Photo by Tom Raymo
The passing of the venerable slide rule
My father’s slide rule. I found it at the back of a bureau drawer during a recent visit to my mother’s home in Tennessee.