The progression of (a single) Single-Use Technology, and (mostly) the epic digression that illustrates its dangers.

The Progression

Single-use Technology, and its sister field, the marketing of its products, is here… to stay? Yes, until the pool of natural resources drains enough to reveal the nakedness of those splashing about in it. For it is often only when one looks like an idiot for continuing a course of action that he seeks another. Should it stay? Shouldn’t it? These questions will not be answered or even argued here, at least not in any broad sense. I must be clear that the following is not to be taken into that larger context of ecological conservation: This is to be a focused attack on a single incarnation of Single-use Technology. I aim to deconstruct a marketing concept so terribly “wrong” it threatens good taste everywhere. I volunteer this sacrifice so that you don’t have to. Please take the following information as a prophylaxis, i.e., don’t expose yourself directly to this virulent idea by visiting the website, especially alone, and most especially, with a valid credit card number either in your wallet or your brain — the consequences are too dire to risk. Please. Notwithstanding, the preceding warning may land in the same way as a father’s injunction for a little boy not to play on the other side of the railroad tracks. If crossing them is such a deadly prospect, what unspoiled wonders must await the bravest and most intrepid adventurers? If you must “go there”, then be an Admiral Byrd, not a Michael Rockefeller. Let me most deliberately and deeply digress…

Letter to the Editor, Dr. Richard Burry, Quick County Coroner (outgoing)

Letter to the Editor, November 2, 2010

Dr. Richard Burry, Quick County Coroner (outgoing)
Office of the Coroner, Quick County, Idaho

Good folk of Quick County,

I am not one to beat a dead horse. I may examine it, even marvel at it. But as life is brief, so shall I be. Tonight we have lost the race for reelection to the office of County Coroner. I am possessed of mixed emotions. It hurts too much to laugh, but I’m too old to cry.

The Shaving Industrial Complex

Perhaps we’ll never know another discipline as technologically advanced as that of men’s grooming, nor one for which research funding is so virtually inexhaustible. But the Shaving Sciences are not, by nature, any more complicated than, say, sanding a picnic table for refinishing. Yet even the woodworking arts have enjoyed the same curious technological glorification over time. Indeed, it’s not the difficulty level which propels this rocket science. The common paradigm between these two practices arises from their practitioners – men.