Drill Machine Quotes

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.

While in general I avoid the use of torture - torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance - the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be employed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punishment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as the Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the Switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded thinking machine.

In no time, the platoon were on their feet in front of him, formed up into two ranks, and it struck him suddenly, and probably for the first time in his military career, that these men with their drilled precision were dead parts of dead machines that didn't produce anything.

The way of life can be free and beautiful!!! ...don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you – who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate – only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers – don’t fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

And speaking of this wonderful machine: [840] I’m puzzled by the difference between Two methods of composing: A, the kind Which goes on solely in the poet’s mind, A testing of performing words, while he Is soaping a third time one leg, and B, The other kind, much more decorous, when He’s in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought, The abstract battle is concretely fought. The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar [850] A canceled sunset or restore a star, And thus it physically guides the phrase Toward faint daylight through the inky maze. But method A is agony! The brain Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain. A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the will Can interrupt, while the automaton Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store [860] To buy the paper he has read before.

Drill instills discipline. Constant practice of repetitive motions and movements turn men into unthinking cogs in a larger military machine. It breaks down individuality, replacing the inclination to think with the instinct to obey.

Let us fool ourselves no longer. At the very moment Western nations, threw off the ancient regime of absolute government, operating under a once-divine king, they were restoring this same system in a far more effective form in their technology, reintroducing coercions of a military character no less strict in the organization of a factory than in that of the new drilled, uniformed, and regimented army. During the transitional stages of the last two centuries, the ultimate tendency of this system might b e in doubt, for in many areas there were strong democratic reactions; but with the knitting together of a scientific ideology, itself liberated from theological restrictions or humanistic purposes, authoritarian technics found an instrument at hand that h as now given it absolute command of physical energies of cosmic dimensions. The inventors of nuclear bombs, space rockets, and computers are the pyramid builders of our own age: psychologically inflated by a similar myth of unqualified power, boasting through their science of their increasing omnipotence, if not omniscience, moved by obsessions and compulsions no less irrational than those of earlier absolute systems: particularly the notion that the system itself must be expanded, at whatever eventual co st to life. Through mechanization, automation, cybernetic direction, this authoritarian technics has at last successfully overcome its most serious weakness: its original dependence upon resistant, sometimes actively disobedient servomechanisms, still human enough to harbor purposes that do not always coincide with those of the system. Like the earliest form of authoritarian technics, this new technology is marvellously dynamic and productive: its power in every form tends to increase without limits, in quantities that defy assimilation and defeat control, whether we are thinking of the output of scientific knowledge or of industrial assembly lines. To maximize energy, speed, or automation, without reference to the complex conditions that sustain organic life, have become ends in themselves. As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race. Even Ashurbanipal and Genghis Khan performed their gory operations under normal human limits. The center of authority in this new system is no longer a visible personality, an all-powerful king: even in totalitarian dictatorships the center now lies in the system itself, invisible but omnipresent: all its human components, even the technical and managerial elite, even the sacred priesthood of science, who alone have access to the secret knowledge by means of which total control is now swiftly being effected, are themselves trapped by the very perfection of the organization they have invented. Like the Pharoahs of the Pyramid Age, these servants of the system identify its goods with their own kind of well-being: as with the divine king, their praise of the system is an act of self-worship; and again like the king, they are in the grip of an irrational compulsion to extend their means of control and expand the scope of their authority. In this new systems-centered collective, this Pentagon of power, there is no visible presence who issues commands: unlike job's God, the new deities cannot be confronted, still less defied. Under the pretext of saving labor, the ultimate end of this technics is to displace life, or rather, to transfer the attributes of life to the machine and the mechanical collective, allowing only so much of the organism to remain as may be controlled and manipulated.

Mother vanished for many days. She was, as I would find out later, in a psychiatric hospital, tucked away as if she were a dangerous explosive material. There had been a cataclysmic explosion of her mind, and her perception of the known world had been blasted into smithereens.Her senses became imbued with extraordinary sensitivity so that to her ears the sound of the clock in her ward became noisier than the din of a drilling machine. The sound of a rat came to her as the peal of many bells.

A boring machine, would it drill holes—or put you to sleep? The two-party political system, that’s a boring machine, though voters are waking up. I'd like to think my ducks quacking for their breakfast in the morning is also helping The Sleepwalkers rise from their slumber.

Until the first petroleum well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, whale oil *was* oil. In Leviathan, a fine history of whaling, Eric Jay Dolin enumerates whale Phil's manifold applications: 'It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution.' In fact, its use as a lubricant impervious to extremes in temperature persisted well into the space age -- NASA lubed its moon landers and other remotely operated vehicles with sperm whale oil until the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986.

Over time it became clear that the humans couldn’t compete. PEOPLE FORGET THAT JOHN HENRY DIED IN THE END, read a sign on the wall of the P13N office, a reference to the folktale of the steel driver who raced to dig a hole in competition with a steam-powered drilling machine; he won the contest but died immediately afterward.

Like the story of the steam drill against John Henry, the machine will be victorious because it doesn’t get tired and keeps on going long after a human worker will have dropped dead from exhaustion. The modern-day steam drill is likely to be an AI system, and John Henry is played by the planner, doctor, analyst, stockbroker or accountant who believes that they can process more data and crunch more numbers than the new machine overlords. They can’t.

The armies of Europe are machines; the men are brave and the officers capable; but the majority of the soldiers in most of the nations of Europe are taken from a class of people who are not very intelligent and who have very little interest in the contest in which they are called upon to take part. Our armies were composed of men who were able to read, men who knew what they were fighting for, and could not be induced to serve as soldiers, except in an emergency when the safety of the nation was involved, and so necessarily must have been more than equal to men who fought merely because they were brave and because they were thoroughly drilled and inured to hardships.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ….. Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

A convivial society should be designed to allow all its members the most autonomous action by means of tools least controlled by others. People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence. I use the term "tool" broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements, or motors, and not just large machines like cars or power stations; I also include among tools productive institutions such as factories that produce tangible commodities like corn flakes or electric current, and productive systems for intangible commodities such as those which produce "education," "health," "knowledge," or "decisions." I use this term because it allows me to subsume into one category all rationally designed devices, be they artifacts or rules, codes or operators, and to distinguish all these planned and engineered instrumentalities from other things such as basic food or implements, which in a given culture are not deemed to be subject to rationalization. School curricula or marriage laws are no less purposely shaped social devices than road networks. 5

The important thing is that short and strenuous reverence be paid to the spirit of discipline. Three things keep a body of troops in fighting form: fighting spirit, strength and discipline. Fighting spirit – as I have said before – is the least easy to influence. It is the great prerequisite and justification of war – the spirit of the race and of the blood pledged to the last drop. There lie the roos of the strength whose full development is dependent on outward conditions, fresh air nourishment, clothing, and a lot else. When this soil fails fighting spirit is like a seedling plated in arenaceous quartz – it goes on growing for a while of its own resources and then gives out. It is a tragic destiny when a great enterprise comes to grief from this cause. Finally, the purpose of discipline is to economize and direct the two elements so that they are brought to bear on one aim with overwhelming force. It is a means, not an end; it is in seeing it in its true proportion that the real fighter is distinguished from the soldier. It is one of the danger-points of the Prussian system that it easily loses sight of the spirit in the letter and of real strength in the empty show of it. One of the most terrible apparitions is the sheer drill-master – a machine that goes by clockwork. It is bound to break down for the mere reason that in war there is no rule but the exception.

THE SK8 MAKER VS. GLOBAL INDUSTRIALIZATION This new era of global industrialization is where my personal analogy with the history of the skateboard maker diverges. It’s no longer cost-effective to run a small skateboard company in the U.S., and the handful of startups that pull it off are few and far between. The mega manufacturers who can churn out millions of decks at low cost and record speed each year in Chinese factories employ proprietary equipment and techniques that you and I can barely imagine. Drills that can cut all eight truck holes in a stack of skateboard decks in a single pull. CNC machinery to create CAD-perfect molds used by giant two-sided hydraulic presses that can press dozens of boards in a few hours. Computer-operated cutting bits that can stamp out a deck to within 1⁄64 in. of its specified shape. And industrial grade machines that apply multicolored heat-transfer graphics in minutes. In a way, this factory automation has propelled skateboarding to become a multinational, multi-billion dollar industry. The best skateboarders require this level of precision in each deck. Otherwise, they could end up on their tails after a failed trick. Or much worse. As the commercial deck relies more and more on a process that is out of reach for mere mortals, there is great value in the handmade and one of a kind. Making things from scratch is a dying art on the brink of extinction. It was pushed to the edge when public schools dismissed woodworking classes and turned the school woodshop into a computer lab. And when you separate society from how things are made—even a skateboard—you lose touch with the labor and the materials and processes that contributed to its existence in the first place. It’s not long before you take for granted the value of an object. The result is a world where cheap labor produces cheap goods consumed by careless customers who don’t even value the things they own.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ….. Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others' happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge as made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men---machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!" - - Final Speech of "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. ….. Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Charlie Chaplin, from The Great Dictator (1940)

Stop reading this book a minute. Can you hear something? Some machine turning? A waterpipe running? A distant radio or pneumatic drill digging up the road? Of all the varieties of modern pollution, noise is the most insidious.

the folktale of the steel driver who raced to dig a hole in competition with a steam-powered drilling machine; he won the contest but died immediately afterward

Allen left the academy, graduated from Catholic University, and took a commission in 1912. Wounded at Saint-Mihiel in 1918 and carried from the field on a stretcher, he regained consciousness, ripped off the first-aid tag, and dashed back to rally his men. The next bullet drilled him through the jaw, right to left, but not before he had broken his fist on a German machine-gunner’s head.

Washing machines, vacuums, drills, pumps, and electric fans, among other things, are still powered by Tesla’s perambulatory insight.

Licorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue Scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town Took the one eyed-jacks across the railroad tracks And the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through He's a juvenile delinquent, never learned how to behave But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave And the road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known He kind of looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back She says, I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat How far are you going? Said depends on what you mean He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline I guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved And I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma Shave And with her knees up on the glove compartment She took out her barrettes and her hair spilled out like root beer And she popped her gum and arched her back Hell, Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road Some nights my heart pounds like thunder Don't know why it don't explode 'Cause everyone in this stinking town's got one foot in the grave And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma Shave Presley's what I go by, why don't you change the stations? Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror She said mister, anywhere you point this thing It got to beat the hell out of the sting Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin' And so drill me a hole with a barber pole And I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive tonight Why don't you have another swig and pass that car if you're so brave I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma Shave And the spiderweb crack and the mustang screamed The smoke from the tires and the twisted machine Just a nickel's worth of dreams and every wishbone that they saved Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma Shave And the sun hit the derrick and cast a batwing shadow Up against the car door on the shotgun side And when they pulled her from the wreck You know she still had on her shades They say that dreams are growing wild Just this side Of Burma Shave

FATHER OF THE COMPUTER Alan Turing was sneered at for not being a tough guy, a he-man with hair on his chest. He whined, croaked, stuttered. He used an old necktie for a belt. He rarely slept and went without shaving for days. And he raced from one end of the city to the other all the while concocting complicated mathematical formulas in his mind. Working for British intelligence, he helped shorten the Second World War by inventing a machine that cracked the impenetrable military codes used by Germany’s high command. At that point he had already dreamed up a prototype for an electronic computer and had laid out the theoretical foundations of today’s information systems. Later on, he led the team that built the first computer to operate with integrated programs. He played interminable chess games with it and asked it questions that drove it nuts. He insisted that it write him love letters. The machine responded by emitting messages that were rather incoherent. But it was flesh-and-blood Manchester police who arrested him in 1952 for gross indecency. At the trial, Turing pled guilty to being a homosexual. To stay out of jail, he agreed to undergo medical treatment to cure him of the affliction. The bombardment of drugs left him impotent. He grew breasts. He stayed indoors, no longer went to the university. He heard whispers, felt stares drilling into his back. He had the habit of eating an apple before going to bed. One night, he injected the apple with cyanide.

The fifty-six hours of weekend that rolled out before us seemed endless. At sunrise we planned to declare ourselves the rightful inheritors of everything in the departmental refrigerator, but beyond that we had nothing scheduled. Maybe we would pick the lock to the machine shop and gawk at the huge saws, drills, and welding tools, treating it as our own personal museum. Maybe we would stage a private showing of The Seventh Seal using the projection system in the main auditorium. And maybe there was someone somewhere in the world who was happier than I was during that year, but on nights like that I certainly couldn’t imagine it.

In 1983 Donald Rahn of Rahn Granite Surface Plate Co. told me that diamond drills, rotating at nine hundred revolutions per minute, penetrate granite at the rate of one inch in five minutes. In 1996, Eric Leither of Tru-Stone Corp. told me that these parameters have not changed since then. The feedrate of modern drills, therefore, calculates to be .0002 inch per revolution, indicating that the ancient Egyptians drilled into granite with a feedrate that was five hundred times greater or deeper per revolution of the drill than modern drills! The other characteristics of the artifacts also pose a problem for modern drills. Somehow the Egyptians made a tapered hole with a spiral groove that was cut deeper through the harder constituent of the granite. If conventional machining methods cannot answer just one of these questions, how do we answer all three?

Ultrasonic drilling fully explains how the holes and cores found in the Valley Temple at Giza could have been cut, and it is capable of creating all the details that Petrie and I puzzled over. Unfortunately for Petrie, ultrasonic drilling was unknown at the time he made his studies, so it is not surprising that he could not find satisfactory answers to his queries. In my opinion, the application of ultrasonic machining is the only method that completely satisfies logic, from a technical viewpoint, and explains all noted phenomena. [...] The most significant detail of the drilled holes and cores studied by Petrie was that the groove was cut deeper through the quartz than through the feldspar. Quartz crystals are employed in the production of ultrasonic sound and, conversely, are responsive to the influence of vibration in the ultrasonic ranges and can be induced to vibrate at high frequency. When machining granite using ultrasonics, the harder material (quartz) would not necessarily offer more resistance, as it would during conventional machining practices. An ultrasonically vibrating tool bit would find numerous sympathetic partners, while cutting through granite, embedded right in the granite itself. Instead of resisting the cutting action, the quartz would be induced to respond and vibrate in sympathy with the high-frequency waves and amplify the abrasive action as the tool cut through it.

As a result of the tremendous loss of life, international regulations were passed regarding lifeboats, telegraphs and communication, and ice. All ships would be required to carry enough lifeboats, crew would be trained to use them and evacuate, and passengers would have a drill so that they knew where to go and when in the event of a disaster (which anyone who has taken a cruise is well aware). Also, it was mandated that telegraph machines and later, other forms of communication, be manned 24-hours a day (had someone been at the telegraph machine on the California, they would have confirmed the emergency). Finally, patrols were set up to better survey ice fields and warn vessels about dangerous areas.