A buddy and namesake of mine has a father who is a literature scholar. He wrote his thesis on absurdist drama, Beckett and Ionesco, that sort of thing. This influenced his son's vocabulary. Once about 1970, when the scholar was out on a walk with his little boy in a stroller, they passed a large tractor and a group of people. The boy was greatly impressed by the tractor, pointed to it and exclaimed, "Absurd tractor!". The bystanders stared in amazement.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
This year's issue of the Lund Archaeological Review reached me last week. It's the volume for 2005-2006, and most of the papers are dated 2005. Such a delay is no big deal in archaeology: our knowledge growth doesn't progress at the rate typical of the natural sciences.
What caught my attention in…
"More vomit! Damn it, I need more vomit!"
Actually, before I get to this post about people who believe in demonic possession, I have a very simple question. If you believe in demons, isn't that almost akin to worshiping them? After all, we do refer to believers as God-fearing people. Anyway, I…
There are multiple recurring messages on this blog that have evolved over the years, but, if there's one of them that has been consistent since the very beginning, it's been about the inherent unreliability of single person testimonials. I wrote about this very topic virtually at the inception of…
A buddy of mine tagged me on Facebook to post a good song every day for a week. Here's what I came up with.
2000s. Robert Plant's (once of Led Zep) beautiful 2002 cover of ”Song To The Siren”. The original was first performed by Tim Buckley (Jeff's dad) in 1968. Pay attention to the lyrics by…
"Absurd Tractor" would make a great name for a progressive jazz combo.
"Absurd tractor!"
It has a ring to it.
Father a literature scholar: "Absurd tractor!"
Father a physicist: "Fast tractor!" (Also possibly "Dark energy tractor!")
Father a chemist: "Combustible tractor!" (Cue nervousness on the part of the tractorist)
Father a teacher of Finnish: "Traktori perrrrkele!"
Father a mathematician: "A--- abacus?"
Father an applied mathematician: "A ball!"
I'll leave it to our host to supply what an archaeologist's child should say.
Haha! Dad a topologist: "Absurd donut! Or is that a teacup?"
Your friend was a prodigy.
When I was an engineering student, we were given an excellent lecture by a mechanical engineer who explained how inherently unsafe the traditional farm tractor is. The way he explained it, it's like if you hate farmers and want to invent a device to kill as many of them as possible, you design the farm tractor.
No cab to protect the driver, just a little seat to perch on, two massive drive wheels on the back with very low gearing and a huge amount of torque, and a very hot exhaust pipe sticking up out of the engine compartment at the front. You apply too much power when the tractor is not pulling a piece of heavy farm equipment, especially when you are going uphill, and the tractor does a back flip, with the farmer underneath - he is either crushed by the tractor, or ends up pinned under the tractor in contact with the exhaust pipe. Or both.
Absurd design? From a safety point of view, yes, unless you can give lectures to all farmers about how to drive their tractors safely - in Australia, you don't need any kind of licence to drive a tractor off public roads. From a utility and cost point of view, it's fine, as long as you have an over-abundant supply of farmers - which is usually the case when a farmer has more than one son.