They should name a new shelving unit the Proletärer.
Isn't this already true of car manufacturing in the south?
Is what already true? That workers just joined a union? Or that the south is the new Mexico?
2: the American south is the Mexico of many places not including the American north or Mexico.
Or wait, possibly including the American north.
Yes, the American South is the Mexico (in this sense) of several foreign car companies. Toyota has a plant in Kentucky, and Mercedes has one in Alabama. I'm sure there are other examples too. All non-union, of course.
I blame the proliferation of authentic Mexican restaurants. Bring back Chi Chi's.
wait till they tell you about the civil war.
Sigh. I'm signing a lease on a new huge apartment in Berkeley tomorrow. Now do I have to feel guilty about exploiting my Danville neighbors if I buy from Ikea? Or, wait, if I don't buy from Ikea, doesn't that reduce labor demand in Danville and risk putting them out of work? Fuck! I was so excited!
13: It's rare I can merely read the abstract of a paper and come to so certain a conclusion that I would loathe the author, were I to meet him.
What about the north? Here in Ohio, Honda has a plant in Marysville.
12: I think now that they are unionized you shouldn't feel bad about supporting them. Maybe Sir Kraab could provide a more informed opinion.
Toyota had a joint venture with General Motors called NUMMI. It was really succesful, but Toyota took it over when GM was in crisis and decided to close it, because it was the only unionized plant they had in North America. I recommend the TAL program linked above.
That's right. No-one who flouts the use/mention distinction so cavalierly can be anything other than a scoundrel.
It's rare I can merely read the abstract of a paper and come to so certain a conclusion that I would loathe the author, were I to meet him.
Don't read many abstracts?
Well, except IKEA is actually owned by a Dutch corporation.
But generally, yeah, Sweden's got 9 million people and an organized labor force - so it's probably going to be a better place for those with middle skill jobs to work for the foreseeable future.
Well, except IKEA is actually owned by a Dutch corporation.
Huh, I never knew Ikea was so interesting. Apparently it is still controlled by Ingvar Kamprad, through means that are both obscure and tax-evadingly profitable.
22 -- wow, me neither. Apparently someone got drunk and told the tax lawyers to just come up with the most complex plan imaginable:
The groups of companies that form IKEA are all controlled by INGKA Holding B.V., a Dutch corporation, which in turn is controlled by a tax-exempt, not-for-profit Dutch foundation. The intellectual property of IKEA is controlled by a series of obscure corporations that can be traced to the Netherlands Antilles and to the Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein. INGKA Holding B.V. owns the industrial group Swedwood, which sources the manufacturing of IKEA furniture, the sales companies that run IKEA stores, as well as purchasing and supply functions, and IKEA of Sweden, which is responsible for the design and development of products in the IKEA range. INGKA Holding B.V. is wholly owned by Stichting INGKA Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation registered in Leiden, Netherlands. The logistics center Europe is located in Dortmund, Germany and Asian Logistic center is located in Singapore.
Inter IKEA Systems B.V. in Delft, also in the Netherlands, owns the IKEA concept and trademark, and there is a franchising agreement with every IKEA store in the world. The IKEA Group is the biggest franchisee of Inter IKEA Systems B.V. Inter IKEA Systems B.V. is not owned by INGKA Holding B.V., but by Inter IKEA Holding S.A. registered in Luxembourg,[6] which in turn is controlled by the Interogo Foundation in Liechtenstein. Ingvar Kamprad has confirmed that this foundation is controlled by him and his family.
24: It's all an elaborate front for patent-trolling which brings in the real money.
"A method for assigning Swedish place names to common household items."
Why don't the fucking Finns get off their reindeer stooping butts, forget the mobile phone shit, and make a competing household goods store? With competing employers, Danville might be able to get promoted from Mexico to Argentina or crappy part of Canada.
12: I thought it was Danville, CA too - but it turns out there's another Danville in like, Georgia.
Virginia. Last capital of the Confederacy.
Why don't the fucking Finns get off their reindeer stooping butts, forget the mobile phone shit, and make a competing household goods store?
They make the wood for the furniture.
Danville is on the Dan River, which in my youth was also the name of one of a big textile company there (anyone remember Dan River sheets?). Gone, all gone, now.
This vote is a tremendous piece of good news. Virginia's a "right to work" state (and HQ for the National Right to Work org that's at the heart of many right-wing networks). Southside (the south central part of the state that includes Danville and the equally de-industrialized Martinsville) is so desperate that this IKEA plant with its $8/hour jobs in crap conditions was hailed as a wonderful thing -- and so desperate that I didn't think the union vote would succeed this quickly. Now for a contract...
16: Agreed. In fact, I plan to send a message to IKEA that I'll be shopping there because of this.
They should name a new shelving unit the Proletärer.
This (a) is awesome and (b) should have stimulated a host of such suggestions. This blog used to be so much better.
We would like to believe that the Swedwood management will honor the workers' decision and engage in a fair bargaining process, which will result in a binding agreement that will adequately address all issues and concerns of the workers.I too would like to believe this, but as a former shop steward, I'm not rushing out to buy any cheap furniture I don't need until the ink is dry on a satisfactory agreement. Which, according to that article, it ain't yet.
Mad props to the workers of Danville, though. As ever, if there's any way out of the shit we're in, it'll be the working class that finds it (even if they do think of themselves as middle class).
34. Do IKEA sell bathroom furnishings?
On the subject of "cheap" furniture. Has anyone seen a cost breakdown of an Ikea piece? I mean, an Ikea "wardrobe" is in practice a bunch of pieces of MDF with holes in them and an allen key. And yet it costs the same or more than a vastly nicer second-hand wardrobe made of real wood. It doesn't seem all that cheap, to be honest. So I'm curious how much of the cost of an Ikea product is materials, how much design, how much manufacturing, how much logistics and so on.
||
I'm engaged in a conversation at work around this question: suppose the system collapses entirely to the extent that anybody who survives the ensuing plagues lives in a world where the peasants are kept in line by armed gangs belonging to the local big man. What skill set, if you don't fancy being either a serf or a thug, gives you the best chance of staying alive, fed and relatively unmolested?
I'm thinking maybe pottery. Any suggestions?
|>
re: 37
But that second-hand wardrobe, new, would have cost a lot more than an Ikea one, no? It's not really a fair comparison.
re: 38
I'm hoping there's a vacancy for some sort of sleekit vizier character [or educator for the big man's kids].
Doctor? Healer? Maybe?
41. I think the scenario proposed is beyond that. We're talking Riddley Walker territory here.
38: basically any profession that's also a surname. Potter, yes, but also Smith, Baker, Fisher, Bowyer etc.
Mind you, this theory was suggested to me by my good mate Harry Mezzanine-Tranche, so it's not perfect.
40 sounds plausible. My first idea was scribe, but who are you going to write to?
or educator for the big man's kids
No, no. That puts you in immediate jeopardy if they don't learn, run off, get pregnant, get kidnapped, etc.
(Fresh in my mind because I just heard a story about a man who migrated to the US because his job was so nerve-wracking -- watching the young kids of the big man in his rural, drug-ridden town, and constantly being told that it would be on his head if anything happened to them.)
re: 44
Reproducing lavishly illuminated manuscripts from historick tymes, for the warlords. They might be warlords, but they'll still need their Veblen goods.
||
She is a Tory, but this is quite good:
>
42: The charcoal burners were left alone in Riddley Walker, weren't they?
But that second-hand wardrobe, new, would have cost a lot more than an Ikea one, no? It's not really a fair comparison.
Of course. But my point is, if I want cheap furniture, I'm better off buying second hand and it will still come out cheaper. While there is some genuinely cheap stuff at Ikea, the vast majority of it still seems ridiculously expensive for a few machine-cut slabs of MDF. I don't understand why it still costs so much unless the bulk of the costs are non-obvious to the consumer.
42: The charcoal burners were left alone in Riddley Walker, weren't they?
But that second-hand wardrobe, new, would have cost a lot more than an Ikea one, no? It's not really a fair comparison.
Of course. But my point is, if I want cheap furniture, I'm better off buying second hand and it will still come out cheaper. While there is some genuinely cheap stuff at Ikea, the vast majority of it still seems ridiculously expensive for a few machine-cut slabs of MDF. I don't understand why it still costs so much unless the bulk of the costs are non-obvious to the consumer.
...unless the bulk of the costs are non-obvious to the consumer
Some of it is made by Swedes getting $20 an hour.
47. That is superb. It may also be important, as it directly challenges the assumption that this kind of shit matters.
49.1. Somebody thought of charcoal burner. In the context of a demand for gunpowder, although he hasn't read RW, which is interesting.
re: 48.last
Yeah. I suppose. I like old stuff, so I'm all in favour of buying nice cheap old things. It's why I have 70 year old cameras, a 40 year old guitar amp, and much of my hifi is 20+ years old.
I can see why people buy Ikea stuff, though. Flatpack stuff is easy to transport, and readily available. Searching out good quality second hand stuff takes more work.
It's why I have 70 year old cameras, a 40 year old guitar amp, and much of my hifi is 20+ years old.
Where to you put the USB cable?
Flatpack stuff is easy to transport, and readily available. Searching out good quality second hand stuff takes more work.
Not if you don't have a car. It's all equally inconvenient.
What skill set, if you don't fancy being either a serf or a thug, gives you the best chance of staying alive, fed and relatively unmolested?
Reworking solder with a fire-heated tip.
53.last, and here at least, used stuff of the quality you're talking about isn't necessarily going to be cheaper than Ikea. Sometimes the only way to get something made of real wood (soft pine, but at least not particleboard with laminate) for less than an arm and a leg is to go Ikea.
Not if you don't have a car. It's all equally inconvenient.
This definitely. But even with this, if you're getting multiple things, it is often easier just to go to Ikea once and get it all than to rent or borrow a car several different times to go pick up your used finds.
You can just cruise around looking for discarded couches that you can haul home on your bicycle. Then it's but the matter of a moment to transform those couches into whatever furniture or appliance you need.
The article in 47 is indeed pretty awesome.
Ikea will bring a couch right to your house for a fee that is far less than renting a truck. You just go buy a couch (or sit at home and order a couch) and then some guy in a truck brings it. Plus, the fee is for going to your house, not for how much crap they haul to your house. If you are getting a couch, you may as well get a Fluven and six Flotski.
basically any profession that's also a surname. Potter, yes, but also Smith, Baker, Fisher, Bowyer etc.
If the objective is to have "the best chance of staying alive, fed and relatively unmolested" then most of those won't work. Smiths used to get hobbled - hamstrung, actually - because they were so valuable. And any of those would be vulnerable to punitive taxation/extortion. No, what you want is a skill set that
a) makes you valuable to the local warlord
b) gets you working geographically close to him, so that the defences intended to secure his own life will also protect you
c) doesn't involve physical danger
d) doesn't make you a threat to said warlord
- in other words, not being a vizier or a professional soldier or something
e) makes you, in an undamaged and unmolested state, a useful asset to the warlord next door, who will therefore be motivated not to kill you when he topples your previous suzerain.
I'm thinking either "clerk" or "bard".
Generally speaking, at least here, it's rare that anything but the most crap piece of secondhand furniture will be much cheaper than Ikea. Certainly not from a store; you can get deals on Craigs List and at garage sales. It's kinda weird how expensive secondhand furniture is.
All my second hand furniture (and we have a fair bit of it) is from relatives who bought nicer furniture and gave us their old stuff.
And 47 is very awesome. And now I assume everyone will post about amazing furniture deals they got on Freecycle or whatever.
64: it's completely the reverse here. Second-hand furniture is ludicrously cheap. Like, 8-foot oak dining table for £100 cheap.
Pwned by Halford. Though that wasn't from Freecycle but from Gumtree.
Swiss passport.
Maybe I shouldn't have been too lazy to do a stint in the Swiss military.
That's weird. I have no idea why there would be a national difference in the price of secondhand furniture.
re: 54
Heh. I do have a music streamer connected to the hifi (via ethernet), so not a total luddite.
re: 63
Shit! Bard! I can't sing worth a shit, but I could make a bloody good stab at the lute.
I hew all our furniture from raw oak. Or, if not oak, pieces of car tires and candy wrappers and stuff I find outside.
You can get custom-made sorta-cheap wood furniture oddly cheap if you contact certain Etsy sellers and ask them to make you something.
re: 70
The UK presumably just has vastly more old-shit, in general? And was less rich, 30 or 40 years ago when people might have been tempted to trash it? Speculating.
73: All that stuff has a cat carved into it or something.
71.last: you know, a lot of people want to be bards growing up, but in truth it's a pretty thankless job. You have to move around a lot, play for tiny crowds of ungrateful serfs in dimly lit pigstys, and of course copyright no longer exists so you can't compose original music. Why not get a nice job crushing rocks like your father?
I would guess that if you became the expert on construction and maintenance of the latrines, then you would be widely recognised by everyone, including the warlord, to be someone who performed a vitally necessary function, but in whose duties they envied not at all and had no interest in interfering with. It's good advice to give to any nephews or godchildren you have: "Son, people will never stop shitting".
"Son, people will never stop shitting"
And if they do, you should probably take them to a hospital eventually.
"Son, people will never stop shitting"
...so stop washing your hands and come help me make this salad.
Or they'll end up like that guy in the exhibit at the Mütter Museum.
it's completely the reverse here. Second-hand furniture is ludicrously cheap. Like, 8-foot oak dining table for £100 cheap.
Yeah, this. I got a lovely second hand leather sofa that would have been at least £800 or so new for £100. £100 at Ikea gets you this.
you know, a lot of people want to be bards growing up, but in truth it's a pretty thankless job. You have to move around a lot, play for tiny crowds of ungrateful serfs in dimly lit pigstys, and of course copyright no longer exists so you can't compose original music
Also, you keep getting thumped by fat people who fell into the cauldron when they were babies.
re: 77
On one of the Comic Relief documentaries one of the sleb presenters spent some time with the guy who empties the pit-toilets in Kibera. He was a pretty wealthy guy: sent all his kids to school, had a (relatively speaking) nice house, and no-one hassling him.
Who sells a leather sofa for that cheap unless it has dead kittens for stuffing or something?
71.2: Once again D&D comes to the rescue. Fighters and Barbarians get stabbed with things, Rogues get caught and put in prison, Rangers have to sleep under bushes, Clerics are bullet magnets, Magic-Users don't really exist, but Bards? Comfy life.
"Bard" probably covers modern-day skill sets like "journalist", "novelist", "poet", "blogger", "advertising executive", "screenwriter" and "political columnist" too.
Definitely avoid "telephone sanitiser" though.
Sofas, even nice ones, might actually be the exception. I've had two friends try to get rid of nice leather sofas who failed miserably and had to have them hauled away. It's the difficulty of moving them, coupled with it being the kind of city where you're likely not to know anyone with a truck.
86: A hypothesis. Hooray.
H0: Used furniture prices are not related to the proportion of the population who owns a truck or can apply guilt to the owner of a truck.
86 reveals again the wisdom of 59.
89: an 'ypothesis. Which we is gonna test usin' science, innit.
Who sells a leather sofa for that cheap unless it has dead kittens for stuffing or something?
British people. I suspect another part of the reason might be the relatively size of houses and the preponderance of rental accomodation. I've had to get rid of furniture when downsizing and I'm sure a lot of other people have too.
I did look (at the local housing fixtures recycling store) for any kind of used shelving unit that I could put in the basement. Anything that wasn't actually garbage was far more expensive than buying some metal shelves at the Home Depot.
Speaking of testing using science, there was a BBC headline the other day, "Monkey research can be improved." Which is hardly fair, I mean come on, they're monkeys! How good can their research be?
86: Used furniture is hard to sell, as well, which is why it's weirdly expensive -- I haven't had to sell furniture in years, but my last experience was that it was extremely difficult to sell or get rid of stuff without giving it away and also expensive to buy secondhand stuff. Weird.
Who sells a leather sofa for that cheap unless it has dead kittens for stuffing or something?
It may be that there has been a dramatic change in the popularity of leather sofas. I can't stand them myself and wouldn't pay even £100 for them, but there seem to be a lot on sale. Perhaps we're seeing the aftershock of the Great British Sofa Taste Shift of 1998 or something.
54, 71: Just get hifiwifi. For more information see the hifiwifiwiki.
Probably Morrissey's been sending thugs around.
I've had to get rid of furniture when downsizing and I'm sure a lot of other people have too.
I used to live in a rented house that had a pile of decaying couches behind the garage. We added to the pile when we left because I had roommates who would pick up couches that other people left on the curb. Most of these couches were left on the porch and most of them smelled bad when we got them and worse when we tossed them.
For many years Burning Man provided a great service to the city of San Francisco, as every camp would pick up a few discarded couches off the street to bring out to the desert, and then burn them there rather than bring them home.
Burning a couch in the desert is fine. Burning it on the railroad tracks is apparently a big fucking thing.
Which is hardly fair, I mean come on, they're monkeys! How good can their research be?
I don't know. More research is necessary.
I imagine monkeys work mostly in the field of evolutionary psychology. That and peripatetic nutrition.
They've done most of the ground splattering work on fecal flinging.
http://www.shorpy.com/node/10809?size=_original
You have no idea how disappointed I am that 104 doesn't have a monkey flinging poo.
On a related note, can gmail create an autoreply that is triggered only when an incoming message has a MS Word attachment?
I imagine monkeys work mostly in the field of evolutionary psychology. That and peripatetic nutrition.
And teabag research.
Cosma has assured me that after the Revolution, my irrigation skills will still be valued. (IIRC his family cornered the Irrigation Foreperson position for the village of Shaliz.) It is either that or baker for me. Not just irrigation; drainage would probably be useful in places where it rains.
re: 107
I did wonder who wrote ISO3103.
I got nothing. I knit slowly, and make impressive pieces of lace that might be useful prestige goods very very slowly -- almost certainly not enough to be worth feeding me (I will say that tailor/knitter/weaver is not being sufficiently explored here -- that's all skilled, labor intensive, not backbreaking, and very very necessary). I'm a fair cook, but any decent-sized feudal stronghold would be likely to have better just accidentally.
Depending on the sort of civilizational collapse, if I could get to a good library, I might be able to make myself useful as the first line of training people in archaic skills only left in books -- I do read faster than most, and I'm better than most at turning written instructions into action. But I'd have to get really lucky to get into that spot (like, fall in with the warlord defending the main branch of the NY Public Library as his stronghold).
76.copyright is obviously wrong. As a bard you can write all the new songs you want, they're just going to stay in your village, and even if a traveler braves the ravening labradoodle packs and comes and steals all your best material, it's not like your livelihood is affected.
Plus you can rework all the classic rock for the lute.
111.last: Now I want civilization to fall just to hear the lute version of Stairway to Heaven. I suppose I could just search Youtube, someone must have done it already.
111.2: I'm certain that somebody has already done that for Fleetwood Mac.
Post-collapse, with no cinemas, the big-man will need someone to recite the whole of The Princess Bride from memory. So I'm sorted.
You think there's a post-civilizational niche for someone with the ability to make obvious jokes just a hair faster than the next fastest person?
Is artisan really the way to go? Don't they work really long hours, whereas farmers get to idle part of the year? I bet all of us here could bring our understanding of empirical methods to bear to improve agricultural methods quickly, which would be way useful to that bastard up on the hill.
115: On the veltd, I'd be eaten by a lion for being just a second too slow.
110.last: Now I want civilisation to fall just so I can meet the warlord defending the main branch of the NY Public Library as his stronghold. Spikes along the walls bear the severed heads of people caught putting pencil marks in the margins. I bet this is the deepest secret fantasy of like 98% of librarians. I might be better off heading for the Bodleian; it's closer and already has battlements, which would help from a tactical point of view.
Lacemaking might be a better bet than you think; entire towns in the Middle Ages based their economies on people making lace, and it sold for colossal amounts. It's also probably not a very widespread skill in this modern age, so you could command an even higher rate. Your best bet might be to set yourself up as an instructor in lacemaking, because then your slow personal production rate wouldn't matter so much.
Yeah, I'm not even doing the high-end lace, though -- I do the cheap Irish-peasant version. Low skill, just very labor-intensive.
the Bodleian ... it's closer
Certainly closer for me.
Instructor in lacemaking? Guild mistress, surely? Think big.
Even so. If there's one thing that Hollywood teaches us, it's that a feudal society where Might is Right and Life is Cheap will lead to huge demand for slinky lingerie. Branch out into embroidering surcoats and tabards and bannerets and pennons as well, and I reckon you've got a comfortable niche there.
121 to 119.
120: yes, I'm sure I won't be the only person signing up as a man-at-arms behind the Banner of Bodley. "I will not bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame. Outside the Library, though, it's weapons free..."
There's lots of underground tunnels and chambers and stuff, too. It's quite a handy place for that sort of thing, I'd expect.
Archivists of useful metallurgical, ceramic, electrical, and medical knowledge will remain useful. A generator and reaction vessels for ammonia extraction will cost many sheep.
Life got much more local when the western Roman empire collapsed, it took hundreds of years for knowledge to fade.
I watched a documentary about life in N Korea last night; at one point the ability to make your own hoes got mentioned. This is probably the wrong tone-- I think that falling to even the 1930s technologically is pretty unlikely. A few years of eating mostly oatmeal and dangerous social strife in a few cities will not be all that serious.
123: but not, I was disappointed to discover, a real-life counterpart of the Mendip Stack in Michael Innes' Operation Pax...
re: 124
My wife's father made his own tractor, and their garden [more like a small-holding] has an irrigation system, with water collection, and pumps and things. All of which he made. All over the world there are people like that.
I expect it's somewhat -- understatement -- vain to expect a bunch of book-learned types could contribute as much useful knowledge as we think. Although I'm sure it's not zero, either.
My wife's father made his own tractor
I'm clearly not understanding this, because taken literally it sounds silly. He handfiled engine parts out of steel ingots? I have a hard time picturing something I'd call a tractor that didn't come out of a factory.
Do you mean he modified and repurposed a car or something like that>
What big cranky necessary machine could you master? Megan's irrigating, so: the mill? Shot tower? Vaccine synthesizer?
I keep looking at medieval subsistence techniques and realizing that they won't work with a trashed ecosystem (e.g., monastery fishponds: usually needed fry from a healthy river).
Hard to know how that falls out, ttaM. I can walk out into almost any field and spot errors that either the irrigation staff didn't notice or doesn't give any importance to (mis-matching nozzles, water running out one furrow but not reached the end of the next furrow over). Fixing those is generally worth quite a bit more yield. Only once out of thirty farm visits did I find a guy (Quefrain) who was getting his sets perfect. Nothing about it is difficult, but if the not-well-trained people aren't focused on it, I can add value.
My totally amateurish knowledge of history informs me that the middle ages* were ridiculously litigious.
So in a relapse to medieval times type situation most of the Unfoggetariate should make out just fine.
Except for the patent lawyers, who will be burned at the stake.
*at least in Europe.
That all sounds totally dreary. What's the fun of reverting to the middle ages if you have to be a peasant or a miller or some shit? I'm just going to chop peoples' heads off and see where that leads.
130: Nowadays thanks to tort reform, no matter what sort of injury you or your daughter or your drove of kine has suffered, there's a maximum of 1 bullock in punitive damages.
re: 127
He took an old motorbike engine and part of the front suspension and gearbox from the bike, and then he MacGyvered together more or less from scratch a rear end with rotary blades and things for tilling the soil, and other attachments. It's like a hybrid of a trike and a rotovator/rotary tiller, or a Mad-Max'd up ride-on mower. It's small, but makes it a lot easier for him to dig their garden plot.
I can restore old furniture, that's useful! I'm afraid I'll get drafted to team sex worker without a lot of say in the matter. we sell loads of things in our store that are equal to the price of the highest ikea range but are made of teak cut from old-growth forest in the 60s. some of those boards are like 3 feet wide! I never understand why people will go for ikea vs that.
best I could shoot for post-apocalypse would be translator, I think. ooh, or I could paint flattering portraits with tiny dogs! and flattering paintings of horses!
130: I've thought that, but the issue is getting the job initially. I would love being the judge in our post-collapse community, and I think I'd do a perfectly reasonable job at it compared to most other people, but it's unfortunately the sort of job that almost anyone could do badly, and it's not clear how I'd sell myself to the warlord as being likeliest to do it well.
I have a weakness for Kevin Costner and Don Johnson apocalypse movies. My dream is a mashup of Boy and His Dog, Waterworld, and The Postman, which latter two infuriatingly used to be streamable but aren't any more.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty impatient with apocalyptic thinking. Detriot and New Orleans have already collapsed, very quickly, with refugees resettling at the cost of some pain and loss of life, but not much. The US and western Europe export food. Thinking about feudalism redux is in my mind very much like thinking about the second coming, a way to avoid thinking about which luxuries will go first and how to live with less security. Russia managed, it's not that bad.
Yours in humorless scolding, etc etc
Burning a couch in the desert is fine.
If the desert's too far, there's always Megan's roof.
135: drafted to team sex worker
I'm taking orders for alluring petticoats and bodices.
I've had sex work recommended to me by so many thoughtful strangers over the years that I fear that might prevail. I'm getting older though, maybe I can make the portrait thing work. I can make paint out of ground minerals and so forth. and I can make cloisonné, but we'd need a wicked hot kiln.
re: 134
It's been a while since I saw it, so I can't remember if you can really ride on it properly, or if it functions more like a rotary tiller. It does still have the bike handlebars, front wheel, and so on, and a seat of sorts. Their irrigation system has a few old bathtubs and some tanks, and it collects the run off from the roofs of the tool sheds and the root cellar building in their garden, and there's a little generator and a pump, so they can spray their plot with collected rainwater. It's all quite crude, but functional.
136 -- Be the sellout defender of a corrupt status quo?
137: Oh, it's completely wish fulfillment: what if we didn't have all of these grindingly difficult realistic problems, and could instead focus on something simpler, like growing enough potatoes to live while not being eaten by feral dogs or killed by thugs? Given the choice, the post-apocalyptic option wouldn't actually be attractive, but as a fantasy it is.
The general lack of practical skills and surfeit of lawyers is making the Unfogged commune* sound a lot less appealing.
*Given current events, it should probably be moved to some island fortress in the Pacific.
So in a relapse to medieval times type situation most of the Unfoggetariate should make out just fine.
Oh I don't think so. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Bob could be Master of the Hounds.
Wait, are we talking reversion to the middle ages or postapocalyptic world in which two Canadians wander around looking for beer? I can't tell.
147: or Dog Boy.
In Sir Ector's kennel there was a special boy, called the Dog Boy, who lived with the hounds day and night. He was a sort of head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms, isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and to sleep curled up among them at night. If one more learned quotation may be excused, this is how, later on, the Duke of York who was killed at Agincourt described such a boy in his Master of Game: "Also I will teach the child to lead out the hounds to scombre twice in the day in the morning and in the evening, so that the sun be up, especially in winter. Then should he let them run and play long in a meadow in the sun, and then comb every hound after the other, and wipe them with a great wisp of straw, and this he shall do every morning. And then he shall lead them into some fair place where tender grass grows as corn and other things, that therewith they may feed themselves as it is medicine for them." Thus, since the boy's "heart and his business be with the hounds," the hounds themselves become "goodly and kindly and clean, glad and joyful and playful, and goodly to all manner of folks save to the wild beasts to whom they should be fierce, eager and spiteful."
Oh, in case the collapse does come, none here have mentioned the traditional role for intellectuals: censors, secret police, and informants.
The american west is another model-- I've got to say, I'm enjoying Deadwood so far.
I would love being the judge in our post-collapse community
Wouldn't you like to be the judge in any community?
Sure, in the kind of way that has not led me to actively take measures toward getting appointed to Small Claims Court or Family Court. (Or, indeed, to determine what exactly those measures would be.)
I'm not just a lawyer; I can do art, and cook, and entertain toddlers. Also reporting but there's probably less market for that.
152: Those will come later. We're getting some red-hot iron bars and mill-ponds together and setting up an Ordeal Court. How are you at projecting awful majesty?
I too can manipulate real things in the physical world! I worked at a flower shop for three years. I can make very nice bouquets and boutonnieres. So I've got that going for me too.
OT: What's the trick for linking to an NYT article so that non-subscribers can read it? The story in question: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/business/verizon-workers-vote-to-support-strike.html
How are you at projecting awful majesty?
Actually, really quite good. I accidentally strike fear into people's hearts all the time.
Ooh, TC Boyle's Drop City is nice fiction about the simple life.
155: I think you're already set, Ms. Irrigation Expert-Pie Maker.
156: the link worked for me--if not for others, you can search for the headline in Google News & get to it that way.
It's hard for me to imagine an apocalypse that sends civilization back to the middle ages yet somehow there are people on manhattan who don't die. However, suspending disbelief for a moment (maybe I was travelling?), my best plan so far would be to try my best to get to Los Alamos labratories to join the other scientists that the remaining firepower in the US Army is protecting and feeding (well, stealing food at gunpoint to feed) in their attempts to rapidly reconstitute the knowledge of the world.
You're going to need an armored RV.
Realistically I'm going to die before I get there. But that was still the best thought I had.
!! Im writing this on the way to work, I had my car window down, driving through the middle of the city. When I was stopped at a red light a fucking HAWK flys in and perches on the window ledge, like three inches from my face. I think I can now officially become the beastmaster.
161: That movie was great, at least for the me who lived 30 years ago.
163: That was the universe telling you to put down your phone while driving. Next time, the birds take you phone and chew the upholstery.
85: Definitely avoid "telephone sanitiser" though.
And how! I did that once for a week as a temp job, and it was hella gross. You would not believe how much earwax migrates out of people's ears and into the little holes in the handset. Yuck.
In a post-apocalyptic world, I will be the guy standing around and occasionally helping lift something while all my friends use their hard-won primitive skills to restart civilization. Of course, when Karol Wojtyla was with the Polish Partisans during WWII, he started a theater troupe, which couldn't have been a complete failure, 'cause he wound up becoming Pope and all, eventually. So if there's a need for theater managers in the post-apocalypse, I should be okay.
I think I can now officially become the beastmaster.
A man on a mission to eat himself out of a job.
167.1: see "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy", by the way. I never used to believe it was a real job...
"Brewer", though there will clearly be a lot of competition.
I can scare people too. I usually do it accidentally. not sure it's enough to make me represent the awful majesty of the law (setting aside the lack of knowledge). maybe if I had an outfit like judge dee...
161, 164: The armored modified RV seems like a movie cliche to me. Off the top of my head, I can think of three movies it appears in: Damnation Alley, Stripes and Land of the Dead: Dead Reckoning.
TV Tropes has all sorts of categories for military super-vehicles, but I can't find a list of ones that are specifically based on Winnebagos.
Data point: well-known UK leftwing blogger who signed off from their old blog with a piece explaining how they were moving to the countryside to prepare for TEOTWAKI is baaack! I learned today.
And what, pray, is he up to?
He's managing a digital marketing agency in Shoreditch.
170: Both Ryszard Kapucinski and Doug Muir have observed that, during their travels in war-torn African hellholes, one institution seems to withstand almost any amount of vicious chaos. The one that makes beer.
The Wikipedia list of the world's oldest companies is also very heavy on pubs, breweries, restaurants, and wine makers.
If you've got a brewery and the right spores, of course, you've got some other options too. Carlsbergensis yeast! Penicillin! Anthrax! Smear'em into the seams of your jacket while you still can*. (Make sure you know which is which though.)
*the pioneer team following up Fleming's chance result in Cambridge in 1939 did exactly this with some of their stock of penicillum mould in case they had to go underground after a German invasion.
I believe even the Middle Ages had a level of technology that it would be overoptimistic to assume for ourselves if civilization collapsed.
Now that I google it, the vehicle in Land of the Dead is clearly a modified tractor trailer. Also Asia Argento is a fine looking woman.
I believe even the Middle Ages had a level of technology that it would be overoptimistic to assume for ourselves if civilization collapsed.
I'm not sure. In the west it would be a wipe out, and the survivors would be lucky to retain the level of organisation of the iron age. But this is because nobody in the west has subsistence skills any more. In places like India and sub-Saharan Africa, these skills are more widespread and coexist with sophisticated state machinery. I think that if they overcame the initial famine, it's there that civilisation would survive.
Brewer is tricky, though. I've made beer, and I've been around much more beermaking, because Buck does it. I don't know jack, though, about malting barley, or keeping a strain of yeast alive from batch to batch -- standing in the atrium of the NYPL with a warlord saying 'can you make me beer', I don't know what I'd say.
I think you say "yes, of course, as you please," and figure out the details later.
You would say, "Absolutely. I'd love to."
179, 180: Well, yes, that. The horse could learn to sing.
First, I'll need an elaborate workshop and the finest hops in the land.
Also, an oast house. Until you have the builders make me an oast house, I can't be expected to produce beer.
I can't believe you all aren't more excited about my encounter with the hawk. That thing was right in my face! In the middle of a major city! It's the coolest thing that's happened to me in years.
But I'll have my revenge in the post-apocalypse when my trained war birds control all.*
*No IP, no ownership of this notion by Dsquared.
The hawk is super cool, Halford. It must have recognized another predator.
Most people who have home-brewed (myself included) don't even know how to brew from malted barley. The basic techniques use malt extracts. All-grain brewing is already kinda advanced.
It really is awesome. Probably counts as a visitation from your spirit guide, or totem animal, or something -- you're from California, don't they have those out there?
I'm totally excited about your encounter with the hawk. It sounds extremely cool, and not a little scary - those things are bigger than you imagine close up. What was it after? Do you have mice in your car?
Way cool on the hawk, Halford.
Saw what I think was a falcon a couple days ago. Wife and dog treed a bear yesterday (wife biking, dog running) maybe 1 mile from the house. Which is better luck than a jogger had this morning.
Oh good! I expect it was looking for a rat or something; it was in a pretty rat-friendly part of town. It just sat there for a few seconds while I thought, huh, there's a hawk near my face, and then flew off just as the light turned green.
there are a surprising number of birds of prey over the Jersey Turnpike. (No, I am not typing from there)
Until I read that last bit, I was picturing Katherine resignedly typing from her phone dangling from the talons of a raptor.
I would never stop talking about it if a hawk landed on my car window. Holy shit. One time in Chapel Hill, a bald eagle swooped in and landed on the corner of an ATM kiosk I was waiting in line to use. They roost down at Jordan Lake and I've gone to see them before, but the difference between seeing them through binoculars and seeing them a few feet away from you is massive.
Very cool re: the hawk.
Driving daily on the M40 I've become really blasé about birds of pray, as there's a stretch that's hoaching with red kites, but if one landed on my car? As per apo, I'd never shut up.
198.2: Is that the spot where the M-40 cuts through a hill and opens out into open fields/light woods? (Heading away from London, that is.) I saw a number there, too.
I see a lot a lot of birds of prey - they seem to be my most common sighting after scrub jays and crows, really. I've been pretty up close and personal - a Cooper's Hawk once dropped half of a robin nearly at my feet - but never on my car! So cool.
Oops, that was 197.2. Obviously.
I had a bald eagle fly very close over my head recently (10-15 feet, maybe?). But I wasn't in the city. And it didn't poop on me.
On the other hand, last spring a red-tailed hawk landed on the roof of our building when I was like ten feet away (albeit in the kitchen) and pooped all over it.
What I'm saying is, if the hawk had crapped on Halford's caddy, now that would have been really something.
Can someone warn Teo to stay away from this thread? Or is it too late?
My close encounter with a raptor was when an owl dropped a rat in my backyard while I was raking leaves. Seemed like the rat was too heavy. The rat got away, unfortunately.
Some of us were born in Rat Year, you know, and identify strongly. Yay for escapes from owls!
I was stooped on once; was tending the aviary, suddenly all the birds were in my shadow, looked up, TALONS! BANG! FEATHERS!
Poor thing tumbled off the aviary, off the porch, got itself onto a fencepost, hunched there a while, flew off while I was wondering how to get it to a vet.
That was very forgiving of you. Unless the hawk missed. If a hawk had stooped on me and connected, I can't say I would have been worrying about getting it medical care, I would have been shrieking "Jesus H. Fucking Christ, what the hell did you do that for? Do I look small enough for you to eat?"
What I'm saying is, if the hawk had crapped on Halford's caddy, now that would have been really something.
Nah. If it had crapped on Rory MacIlroy's caddy though...
My mother was knocked off her feet once by a kite (yes, they can). We reckoned she was too close to its nest.
Glass-roofed aviary; much harder on the hawk than on me. I'd still have the scars, had it struck me.
I'd still have the scars, had it struck me.
True. Mum's scalp was a bit of a mess.
47 is nice to see, but a bit baffling, too--how could anyone think such penny-ante revelations would be genuinely threatening? Sheesh.
Coal miner. Even without shipping it to China, there'll be a need for fuel. And climate change won't be a worry anymore, right?
re: 198
Yes, just around Stokenchurch.
127 / 133 sounds like battlebots that were popular on TV 10 years ago.
Cooper's Hawk midway thorough eating a female cardinal. It dropped it on the other side of some deer netting and rather than fly over and get it from that side spent an hour or so eating it through the netting while my daughter took pictures.
That is a fantastic picture, Stormcrow!
214: Cool. I'm not hip enough to have memorized place names but my boyfriend also mentioned that he always sees kites there as well (after we saw some) and I figured how many places like that can there be!
Hum, I guess in the post-apocalypse I will survive on my skills as a very mediocre welder, carpenter, potter, and reasonably able writer/drawer. This does not look hugely promising.
And sadly, my knowledge of law starts at `centralised state'; advice for barbarian warlords that begins with, well, first you need to institute a returnable writ system will probably not go very far.
What kind of scribe work there is will depend on what kind of technology remains and what kind of economy there is. Copyist is probably pretty safe, if that's the only way of making copies. Personal secretary to warlord, not so much.
Sigillography will probably do ok.
I bring to bear my Spanish-language skills, musical abilities, and general diplomatic sensibility.
"I will travel to the lands of the Spanish-speaking peoples, Master Warlord or Warlady, and I shall teach them of our Rhythm Methods. And they will join us under your reign, embiggening your empire."
(And probably some horses, but Thundersnow's got that part covered if you can supply them. 100 should do.)
(Bonsaisue would be a welcome help with the horses, too, I bet.)
(And maybe between Sifu and ttaM, they can hobble together a sound system of goatskins and copper wire and solder that can travel on a bike.)
You wouldn't want to rely on my soldering skills, tbh.
'I shall erect a mightye sounde systim, my Lord'
[oww, fucking hell]
'once my underling hath quenched his fingers in yonder stream'
Most of my furniture is IKEA. I have a decent solid pine table for less than another would cost and two good butcher blocks. The other stuff is not super high quality, but the cheap brown/black bookshelves work and look better than my other options would.
I do have a really expensive, but not particularly high quality wardrobe/closet from the container store. That's decent quality, better than IKEA's closet systems but not amazing. What's great about it is that it doubles the usable space of an oddly shaped closet, and I can re-assemble the parts in a different location when I move.
I am a much slower reader than LB, but I have an excellent memory. In a post-written word era, I'll be fine.
"I will travel to the lands of the Spanish-speaking peoples, Master Warlord or Warlady, and I shall teach them of our Rhythm Methods. And they will join us under your reign, embiggening your empire."
You plan to go to Latin America and teach them rhythm. Right.
216, 217: But I was clearly overtired last night as it was a Sharp-shinned not a Cooper's.
I tend to get more Cooper's, however--one swooped a feeder close to the house just as I opened a door to go outside and it performed an amazing bit of aerial ballet as it avoided me, the door, the feeder and some nearby hemlocks. Startled the hell out of me and it missed whatever bird it was after.
Hawk on open car window ledge is something else altogether. Are you sure you didn't have a rat on your shoulder?
re: 228
Maybe he plans to go to Spain, where they only have primitive clapping?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BCoZiSbGtY
[One of my favourite pieces of playing, ever, I think. The sheer aggression of it ...]
I passed a dead rat on a sidewalk about twenty minutes ago. Not obviously injured, nothing feeding on it. It's something I'll shut up about immediately.
231. Awesome link. I think I'd only heard him before playing with Camarón, where he was obviously more restrained (though brilliant).
You plan to go to Latin America and teach them rhythm. Right.
I believe I said rhythm *methods*.
re: 233
Yeah, I've read about Tomatito in a few books and magazine articles on flamenco. Every single article points out that i) when playing with Camarón his job is to accompany, and he's a master at rhythm and tasteful accompaniment, and ii) not to be fooled, that he can shred with the best of them, he just usually chooses not to.
When the apocalypse comes, I will be a bike mechanic. Even without continued production of bike parts, we should be able to cannibalize other bikes for usable parts for a good while.
229: I feel that I have discredited my birder self by not noticing that, but the sad truth of it is that I still haven't seen a Sharp-Shinned in person, for inexplicable reasons. Cooper's are more prevalent here, but it's just one of those incredibly frustrating things where I can be taken to like, a nesting area by pros, sit there for 2 hours, and still not see one. I'm cursed.
238: You fell into my cunning trap! They can be tough to tell apart around here, but in this case there was ample up close viewing and the size was pretty determinative on its own. For me I grabbed a picture from her Facebook page labelled "Sharp-shinned" and still managed to get it wrong, so that is probably indicative of deeper, more fundamental problems.
31: anyone remember Dan River sheets?
My father-in-law worked for Dan River Mills many, many years ago ('50s, maybe into the '60s). Basically sales overseas, so textile exports from the United States (via Brontosaurus convoy). The trajectory of his career was a good proxy for the globalization* of that industry. At the very end he was importing high-end "Western" wear manufactured in Portugal and marketed through some French label and which led to him going out to Sturgis a few times to flog them to the bikers (not a big success, too pricey).
*He also ended up with a billion trillion air miles--almost all on Pan Am (poof!). Ryan Bingham wept.
As I slowly recap the thread I will note that we got one of our favorite bits of shelving and cabinetry from Ikea 20+ years ago (I think it was "Husar") but that line seemed to disappear shortly thereafter. Not wild about the look (pine), but it had a brilliantly effective system of joinery and hinges and has proven very durable. Next up was a chest of drawers for my daughter's room and after the 2nd or 3rd kept falling apart we gave up and haven't been back since (to be fair they were very accommodating about taking back the failing items and at the end I got store credit for some shelving in the garage).
136
I've thought that, but the issue is getting the job initially. I would love being the judge in our post-collapse community, and I think I'd do a perfectly reasonable job at it compared to most other people, ...
So you are fine with ordering people burned alive (or whatever)?
||
At the risk of referring to the OP, what's the scoop on the Verizon strike vote? Looks fairly impressive from here.
|>
How would anybody know if Verizon had a strike?
My favorite post-apocalyptic novel continues to be Earth Abides by George Stewart. In it, the population falls so dramatically that it goes back to hunter-gatherer (at least in the Bay Area). But the relevant subplot is when the protagonist (who lived through the plague) takes Joey (the only of his children who shows any spark for reading and math) to the UC Berkeley library and they dream of rebuilding the knowledge in the world. Joey subsequently dies in an epidemic (of small-pox I think).
*As to cinema, like lw in 137, I have a weak spot for Costner's two epics. Also the last Mad Max despite the other two being "better".
136: Yes. After the Fall, in the agrarian utopia, there will be so few remedies available that LB will have no other choice but to order people burned for minor transgressions. If they repent, they can be garroted before the flames reach them. If they stole more than a chicken, they'll get no such mercy.
136/242, rather. Please don't burn me, LB.
My first thought was that geological knowledge would help, but of course salvageable metal all over the place and does not take much to figure out where to look for coal or oil. Dsquared absolutely nailed it in 77.
The only crime anybody was ever burned for in English law* (which is the basis of American law) was Low Treason**. Witches were hanged. Overwhelmingly the penalties imposed in the middle ages were fines, and the real growth in capital punishment came with the growth of capitalism.
*Roman law countries, including Scotland, were much freer with the matchbox.
**Low Treason was the offence of a woman killing her husband. I'm not suggesting that this merited burning, but the idea that the middle ages was non-stop human barbecues is crap. Invented in the 18th century to make themselves feel better about transporting poachers.
Of course everybody burned heretics under canon law. Pro tip, avoid letting religious heavies anywhere near you neo-mediaeval polity.
To be fair to the 18th century, they did actually decide to stop even taking witches to trial: when one Jane Wenham came before him in 1712, Mr Justice Powell noted with asperity that there was actually "no law against flying" , and George II's Witchcraft Act entirely repealed James I's 1604 ditto.
Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic very much gives the impression that the 15th and 16th century English church had a sort of DADT approach to local witches, at least when it was just a matter of love spells and fortune telling.
It's all fun and games until somebody makes a horcrux.
Oops, omitted that Mr Justice Powell also ensured Wenham was acquitted. Some of this was possibly post-1688 scorn for the juridical chaos of the Interregnum, which is when Matthew Hopkins Witchfinder General was active. And indeed for the more recent lunatico-puritanical behaviour in Far West Britain: viz Salem.
245: Oh no, \I can't restrain myself when I see that novel mentioned. (I've tried.) Now I have to say once again that that's one of the dullest dull dulling, uh where was I again, oh right, novels I've ever had the displeasure to read. Decent concept though.
To be fair to the 18th century, they did actually decide to stop even taking witches to trial
Very true, but my point was that at the same time they made it a felony (that is, a hanging offence) to appear armed in a park or warren, or to hunt or steal deer, with the face blackened or disguised. Superstition out, property rights in.
I love Religion and the Decline of Magic. It's clear that real witch hunts only happened in the context of serious crises (30 years war/English Civil War). Otherwise prosecutions seem to have been exceptional. Mind you, John Wesley firmly believed in witches.
254: Well yeah, it really isn't any good as a novel*, but it explored so many of my own personal "what-ifs" around landscape and wildlife etc. I think if that appeals to you, the book appeals, otherwise, "meh". (Apparently Stephen King acknowledges that it served as an inspiration for The Stand.)
*And he's really not a very good writer, but he did write about things I'm interested in--for instance his comprehensive works on American place names.
111.last: Now I want civilization to fall just to hear the lute version of Stairway to Heaven.
Noticing this up-thread, you might enjoy this, though it isn't precisely what you asked for (It's somebody playing the vocal part from "Another Brick In The Wall" on an ocarina, along with the original instrumental parts -- but very well done).
249/250/all comments concerning witches:
England was very different from continental Europe when it came to the prosecution of witches. As you obviously know, under Roman law in Europe they did burn them, and in much larger numbers than England did, though nothing like what some claim. What I've never entirely understood (ie, probably didn't read close enough) is that Protestants tended to think the central evil of witchcraft was the pact with the devil, which seems to me to be apostasy, while Catholics tended to focus on the maleficium. I sort of thought apostates would be as worthy of burning as heretics, but I must be missing something.
Religion and the Decline of Magic is a great book, but there's been a lot of subsequent scholarship that shows it's more complicated than his thesis.* I read a great book showing that in Germany it was dependent in part on how centralized the government is, because in the case of white magic, most villagers were perfectly content to allow witch-like figures to survive and offer them cures and protection, but once the mechanism of justice got started in a centralized system, it was hard to put a stop to it. I'm spacing out regarding the particulars of the books I read on England, but as I recall they all start with some sort of English exceptionalism claim when it came to witches, and it seems to largely be true.
/me babbling about witches cause I like talking about them
*Of course it's more complicated; Keith himself acknowledged that, but it seems like the question of why witch crazes broke out is one that's incredibly dependent on local factors.
111, 257: Now I want civilization to fall just to hear the lute version of Stairway to Heaven.
Well, you can hear a precursor from 1604 on lute here. "Colascione" by Johannes Kapsberger. Colascione is a type of lute, and a lutist has told me that the modern "power chord" feel comes in part from how that type of lute was set up. I have no idea if that is true, but even my crappy ears pick up hear a faint foreshadowing of "Smoke on the Water".
The Hopkins event was localised even within England: it hardly reached outside East Anglia -- the fens, they be doin things different thar -- and it only lasted two years. Interestingly, Hopkins wasn't even 30 when he died: I assume he was some kind of opportunistic charismatic sociopath realising the potential of a rural anxiety as it overlapped with under-utilised law. Vincent Price notwithstanding, I don't think he's typical of even early-doors Roundhead zealotry.
256: No question that Stewart had interesting interests. I keep meaning to look more of them up, but I keep meaning to do a lot of book-related things.
There was a woman in the reading room today who sometimes laughed like a witch. I'd say cackled, but I think we've established that that's rude. The only other researcher I've heard talk so much at a microfilm machine was taping notes on some kind of recorder. She was just talking.
Lesson: don't take a table near the microfilm machines.
Re 259
Power chords are root and 5th. No 3rd or 7th. Easy enough on guitar, tuned in 4ths. Most lutes are basically tuned like guitars with extra strings (although what would be the G to B string interval on lute is a m3 not 3rd). Baroque lutes introduced lower strings that'd function like drop D guitar tuning, I think, which is handy for power chords. Sommaybe that is what the lutenist had in mind?
Googling the colascione, after writing the above, it was tuned low, and the bottom 2 strings were like a drop A baritone. So you'd get a nice power chord effect. But power chords are playable on normal lute tunings too.
Never played lute, but I have played lute works on guitar.
237: The first time I saw that one was on a Monty Python marathon in Germany. It is somehow immeasurably funnier when they say, Fahrradrepariermann!
263: Yes, I have heard this fellow play it on a theorbo (I think) and it "works". I think he means that given that the piece was apparently composed specifically for that instrument the composer was more likely to have settled on them rather than more conventional patterns. He plays with this group, who per the link just put out a compilation of Kapsberger's pieces (the cover art is apparently from a doodle of the composer's). I like most of the pieces, but this is the only one with that particular "sound".
Anybody know what the status of Verizon Wireless's workers is?
I don't have a Verizon landline, just Vonage over Comcast cable, because Verizon's Fios is not an option, but my cell phones are Verizon. It would be nice if they were unionized too.
Religion and the Decline of Magic is fantastic. So is Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution.
I once ran into Professor Hill at a cocktail party. I immediately started gushing about The World... and then discovered that in fact, Christopher Hill the Marxist historian had died a few months before and I was talking to Christopher Hill the LSE international-relations theorist.
I picked up another volume in the World Turned Upside Down tradition, recently (Oxfam).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/dec/10/historybooks
Laziness has meant I've only skimmed it, though.