The wheel is the source of all evil! Discuss.
I’ve been turning over the idea that the wheel’s exacerbated man’s downfall, that we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in had that blastedly useful device never been invented. I’ll explain more — you can put your rebuttals into my comment box right now — but I think Marty Van Buren had it right when he was bitching about trains:
The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.
Damn straight, Martin! Damn straight!
Curiously, this quotation appeared by an ad for the Discover Network within Cards & Payments magazine. Underneath the quotation was:
Martin Van Buren, complaining about railroads traveling 15 mph, 1830
Wow, so it’s the railroad that does the actual traveling? That’s interesting.
I’m tabling my rant against the wheel for now but expect it soon. (Soon as I finish off this Big Mac.)
as with Prometheus’ fire, Lucifer’s apple and Irish whiskey: the wheel is only as evil as those who choose to use it to the detriment of others. seriously, mankind probably discovered the wheel in concert with the discovery of the 360degree circle. erase the wheel and you lose a big chunk of mathematics, cosmology and likely the concept of time itself. fast trains/food/blood pressure is a small price to pay in return. though I would love to hear your further elaboration on the topic. there’s a really good short story in their somewhere (or, at least, a quality rant for your one woman show!)
That quote attributed to Van Buren is probably spurious; the “Little Magician” was a sharp political operator who was playing off federally-funded canals against locally-funded railroads.
This goes in the same category as “The simple farmers of the XXth century only processed 1,000 data points a day, not like us magnificent data-eating animals that process a million”, which is utter bullshit. Our forebears had stressful, complex, and exacting jobs, and dealt with situations much like we did. Rome had fast-food takeout restaurants. Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” was a self-help book on dealing with stress in the workplace.
I don’t have a point, here.
That the Seneca book remains fresh and relevant today is either a testament to Seneca’s wicked awesomeness or humanity’s enduring … humanity.