From: wthyde1953@gmail.com   
      
   Paul S Person wrote:   
   > On Sat, 6 Dec 2025 14:38:44 -0500 (EST), kludge@panix.com (Scott   
   > Dorsey) wrote:   
   >   
   >> Cryptoengineer   wrote:   
   >>> On 12/5/2025 6:44 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:   
   >>>> What is most incredibly dated are the original Tom Swift books, and they   
   were   
   >>>> incredibly dated when I read them in the sixties.  Swiftboats that are   
   >>>> propelled by electromagnets that repel the earth's magnetic field!  Flying   
   >>>> machines that operate by electrical repulsion!  This is the world I was   
   >>>> hoping to someday live in.   
   >>>   
   >>> I read those too, but remember, this is Tom Swift    
   >>   
   >> No, the Tom Swift Jr. books are far more up to date, with spaceships and   
   >> so forth instead of high powered river craft and long distance radio.   
   >> They didn't seem anywhere near as interesting as the originals to me as   
   >> a kid because the originals predicted future technology and got it all   
   >> so wrong.   
   >>   
   >>> The original Tom Swift appeared in 1910, with "Tom Swift   
   >>> and His Motorcycle".   
   >>   
   >> Yes.  As the former owner of a Moto-Guzzi let me say that the motorcycle   
   >> offers just the kind of freedom that Mr. Appleton predicted, but at a   
   >> cost he did not forsee.   
   >   
   >   
   > One of HG Well's social novels explored how the bicycle was opening   
   > the world up to the lower classes.   
   >   
   When Napoleon III and baron Haussman redesigned Paris, they made sure to   
   "lance the boil", i.e. to disperse the residences of working people to   
   the periphery of the city, as those areas had, mirable dictu!, often   
   been a breeding ground for revolution.   
      
   However, those old residences were near to the factories where the   
   workers toiled, while their new homes were not.  Hours needed to be   
   wasted each day just getting back and forth from work (and remember that   
   work shifts were much longer than today's so these hours ate badly into   
   the non-working or sleeping day).  The accumulated resentment helped   
   spark the Paris commune of 1870.   
      
   Perhaps bicycles would have helped.   
      
   Arthur Clarke pointed out that the typewriter greatly expanded the   
   number of half-decent jobs available for women.   
      
   William Hyde   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)