SAT 28 SEP 2002

Visit the Fair!

We've updated our scrapbook with a slide show of over 20 full-color illustrated post cards from the New York World's fair of 1939-40. The picture above shows the cover of the original post card booklet. You can reach the slide show by clicking anywhere on the picture. We thought this color series was especially interesting since so many images of the 1939 NYWF tend to be black-and-white.

Upcoming Schedule
Creative Dynamix™ will be on hiatus for the next week or two because of other commitments and obligations. We will return in mid-October.

Compassionate Conservatism
One afternoon, a wealthy corporate CEO was riding in the back of his limousine when he saw two pathetic men eating grass by the roadside.

He ordered his driver to stop and got out to investigate. The CEO asked the men, "Why are you eating grass?"

"We're out of work," the first man replied. "We don't have any money for food."

"Oh, well, you can come with me to my house," insisted the CEO.

"But sir, I got a wife and three kids here."

"Bring them along!" replied the CEO.

"But how 'bout my friend?"

The CEO turned to the other man and said, "You come with us, too."

"But sir," said the second man, "I got a wife and six kids!"

"Bring them as well!" answered the CEO cheerfully as he headed for his limo.

They all climbed into the car, and once underway, one of the poor fellows said: "Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you."

The CEO replied, "Glad to do it. You'll love my place. The grass is almost a foot tall!"

Thought for the Week
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts."
-- Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Our Prescription for Foreign Policy

Eerie parallels with the WWII era continue to grow.
This is from the cover of Nation's Business magazine, November 1939.

Riddle Me This
If Bush and his buddies are so gung-ho about warfare, and so dedicated to fighting "evil-doers", why can't they answer a few simple questions about Iraq before they send yet another generation of kids through the meat-grinder?

Telephone Heaven Sometimes you stumble upon the most interesting and unusual places. Down the road in Sanford we encountered one such place, inside an old movie theater from the 1940s or '50s that has become Telephone Heaven, where old phones go to die and be reborn.

When we first arrived, after a two-hour drive in the pouring rain, the door was locked. But we noticed an intercom, and after pressing the call button we were buzzed into the store by the Telephone God, a retired electrical engineer who knows more about phones than anyone I've ever met. In the front of the store were displays of restored telephones of all kinds -- candlestick phones from the 1920s, "movie star" phones from the '30s, classic phones from the '40s and '50s -- along with more recent novelty phones and telephone memorbilia. There were bottles (mostly liquor, all empty) shaped like old telephones, along with a few non-phone related items like reproductions of art deco radios and a genuinely old static electricity generator. And that was just in the front of the store, where the concession stand probably used to be.

The back of the store was a huge room with a gently sloping floor, obviously what was once the theater itself, but instead of rows of seats it was filled with rows of high shelves packed with what must have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of telephones of all types in various states of condition and repair, along with telephone cases and shells, wooden wall phone boxes, handsets, subsets, dials, and assorted pieces and parts. There were large spools of cloth wiring specially made for restoration purposes (it hasn't been manufactured commerically for over 20 years). There were military phones and European phones, wall phones and desk phones, pay phones and intercom phones, even old switchboards from the days of the manual operator: "Sarah, could you ring up Jim over 't the feed and grain store fer me?"

In the very back of the old theater, behind what used to be the movie screen, was a complete restoration workshop. Every telephone they sell is completely restored to look just like it did when it came from the factory, and calibrated to work on today's digital networks just like a modern phone, in most cases using nearly all of the original components. They're kind of pricey, but you're paying for the quality that comes from decades of experience and a real love of the occupation. There's also the matter of scarcity -- the Bell System was highly possessive of its phones, and destroyed millions of them after they were decommissioned to reduce the possibility of people using unauthorized extensions. So there aren't many left anymore, and the ones that still exist are getting harder and harder to find.

After much consideration, we decided to buy an Automatic Electric #40 model from the 1930s. It's absolutely beautiful, solid black, with a nice hefty handset and a metal dial that whirs and clicks pleasantly when you make a call. And the sound quality is crystal clear. It's over 60 years old, and it's the best phone in the house. How many phones being made today could you count on to keep working into the late 2060s and beyond?

Thought for the Week
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."
-- Julius Caesar, Dictator of Rome, 49 - 44 BC

In Grid We Trust
From the Principia Discordia:

With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see "reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The order is in the grid. That is the Aneristic Principle.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the Aneristic Illusion. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other. ...

The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same chaos will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Reality is the original Rorschach.

Verily! So much for all that.

Go Fish
Think that fish you see on bumper stickers is exclusively a Christian symbol? Think again.

Thought for the Week
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Construction Underway on M. C. Escher Building

In Remembrance
To commemorate the upcoming 9-11 anniversary in a spirit of healing and unity, this week's edition of Creative Dynamix™ will try to avoid partisan political references.

Property and Propriety
We usually think of "intellectual property" as being a relatively recent concept, but apparently it's not. While browsing through a second-hand store last weekend I came across an Edison wax cylinder from 1905. The wax cylinder was a precursor to the vinyl record and, ultimately, the digital music CD. And this cylinder bears a notice remarkably similar to a modern software license:

THIS RECORD IS SOLD BY THE NATIONAL PHONOGRAPH COMPANY, UPON THE CONDITION THAT IT SHALL NOT BE SOLD TO ANY UNAUTHORIZED DEALER OR USED FOR DUPLICATION, AND THAT IT SHALL NOT BE SOLD, OR OFFERED FOR SALE, BY THE ORIGINAL, OR ANY SUBSEQUENT PURCHASER (EXCEPT BY AN AUTHORIZED JOBBER TO AN AUTHORIZED RETAIL DEALER) FOR LESS THAN 35 CENTS APIECE. UPON ANY BREACH OF SAID CONDITION, THE LICENSE TO USE AND VEND THIS RECORD, IMPLIED FROM SUCH SALE, IMMEDIATELY TERMINATES.

Edison wax cylinder, 1905

More proof that Thomas Edison was the Bill Gates of his day. And a reminder that as long as we've had duplicatable media -- a century or more -- there have also been media pirates.

Forty Years with Three Hermits
Once there were three hermits. Each, of course, desired his own cave, but there being a severe cave shortage in the area, the three were forced to share one.

Ten years went by without any of them saying a word.

One day a horse ran by the cave.

Ten years later, the first hermit said, "That was a beautiful white horse."

Ten more years went by. The second hermit said, "That horse wasn't white, it was black."

Yet another decade passed. The third hermit stood up and said, "Hey, if you two are just going to argue, I'm leaving."

Thought for the Week
"What does a fish know of the water in which he swims all his life?"
-- Albert Einstein