(But not every machine works.)

True as far as it goes, but the Saturn V and Falcon Heavy are damn impressive.

Knowledge, as they say, is power. Is power shared or hoarded?

Culture is downstream of economics, economics is downstream of property, property is downstream of technology, and technology is downstream of knowledge.

The state is a machine; there is a machine of state. It is intrinsically and inherently technocratic, and those who sponsor the technologists who create and maintain its operating levers are its masters.

But does it stop here? People quarrel. Groups quarrel. Gangs quarrel. When gangs quarrel, where does the authority of the state end and the gang begin?

And just why did things get so weird after 1974, 2001, and 2013?

What is the meaning of the Great Intermission?

Do you still think that you are going to die of the flu?

My recollection is that their value and authority as perceived by me was in this order with the highest to lowest being: Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and then Mechanix Illustrated. I had a subscription to Popular Mechanics but could read the other two at my local branch Carnegie Library.

Those were the days. So much optimism.

The space race happened. It happened for a reason. Since then, there’a been no real government-driven technological progress, because there’s been no incentive.

Someone once said “government is just a word for the things we do together.” What if we don’t want to do anything together? Vision must come from outside.

That’s it, in a nutshell. This monster dirigible can be seen by all, as a continual demonstration of the might of the manufacturing nation (with the added bonus it can carry military muscle, too, in case you needed a reminder).

Look up and wonder, ye peasants, or as Shelley said how it would end:

‘And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

1. Shortly following WWII, the military-industrial complex magically lost its ability to develop new and exotic technologies.

2. Shortly following WWII, the military-industrial complex no longer had any strong incentive to publish its new and exotic technologies.

And as for me, I just want to know what’s under the ice.

Of course, atomic fusion, superconductors, and flying cars still remain “…twenty years away…” for those of us still here in reality, version 2020.

Never fall too much in love with your own ideas. Love is blind.