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Twice bitten, thrice shy, or however that goes.
The second hand-pump egg whisker spat black oil into my breakfast makings. Now, this wasn’t one of those cheap devices from YNRKO; it was a slightly less cheap one from FYNKI. I can now assume that they are all the same device, or at least source the pump mechanism from the same supplier. The failure rate is known and it is an acceptable standard, since they sell many of them to people who do not read the one-star reviews and are taken in by the five-star swoons.
Junk!
Now I have to whisk like a primitive, albeit one with access to industrially-produced wire automatically bent into an optimal shape and secured, by robots, into a handle that had been sanded smooth by another automated machine, so, a pretty advanced primitive. But isn’t that what we are, as a species? For all our advances, still primitive?
No; no, I don’t think so. Compared to what? Creatures who jump from galaxy to galaxy through wormholes? I suppose, but if we can conceive of wormholes we’re on the path to exploiting them. The true primitive in this situation is one who can’t begin to conceive of the nature of the cosmos. The primitive is this situation is the one who finds pictures in the sky, like a crab, or a guy spilling water.
Speaking of which, how did they settle on those? It’s not as if everyone who looked up at the heavens fixed their eyes on a particular spot and said “hold on, that’s an enormous crab.” Someone might have come up with something different, or nothing at all. There had to be a convention, or some form of authority that declaimed this is a lion, and this is a fish. There had to be a splinter group that refused the designations, and said their own names in private ceremonies. Zodiac? More like NOdiac, am I right, guys? Okay, everyone who was born under the sign of Cat Whiskers, stand.
Busy second-shift with many deadlines. Suddenly remembered I have two pieces due tomorrow. Also remembered that I forgot to post the Diner on the Bleat: d'oh. It comes at the end of today's Clippings. Prepare to learn about how the Social Media of the day caused the Guv to withdraw a Woke Dollar!
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It’s 1922.
BUY SOMETHING
ANYTHING
WE DON’T CARE
BUT GOD WE HAVE SO MUCH COPPER PLEASE TAKE SOME OFF OUR HANDS

The obit writer had a sudden poetic spasm I do not understand:
Were the Nevada Marriotts related to the Utah Marriotts?

Ouch
You might wonder if something this small needed to be in the paper. That's ecactly why it needed to be there.

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Some nice breezy lingo here.
Look, there are worse way to announce contest winners. |
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She lived with her parents for some time? And now she doesn’t?
I wonder if someone had some pull to get this in the paper, or whether any social event made the grade. Surely not - space was limited. Perhaps there was always enough room, and you didn’t have to worry about alienating someone because you didn’t get their bridge party in. |
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If you release a coin that didn't stack, you'd have the world up in flames. A definite step backwards in usability. |
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The designer was . . .
Anthony (Antonio) de Francisci (July 13, 1887 – August 20, 1964) was an Italian-American sculptor who designed a number of United States coins and medals. His most famous design was the Peace Dollar, which was first minted in 1921.
About the dollar:
With the passage of the Pittman Act in 1918, the United States Mint was required to strike millions of silver dollars, and began to do so in 1921, using the Morgan dollar design. Numismatists began to lobby the Mint to issue a coin that memorialized the peace following World War I; although they failed to get Congress to pass a bill requiring the redesign, they were able to persuade government officials to take action. The Peace dollar was approved by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon in December 1921, completing the redesign of United States coinage that had begun in 1907.
The public believed the announced design, which included a broken sword, was illustrative of defeat, and the Mint hastily acted to remove the sword.
I wonder how they defined "hastily" in those days. Well, let us consult the newspaper archives . . . Okay. The New York Herald ran an editorial on Dec. 21st, noting that the broken sword is usually interpreted to mean defeat. The next day, many papers around the country ran the editorial. The Herald, on the 22nd, already had reactions. (I'm using OCR on an picture of the Herald newspaper.)
Gutson Borglum, sculptor, characterized the broken gword as representing the attitude of the United States toward fartial disarmament as bad symbolism.
"I am in accord with THE NEW YORK HERALD's editorial," he said, "and particularly with that paragraph which states that America has not broken the sword, has not lost allegiance to itself, and the determination and will to protect itself.
That's Gutzon, but we'll let it go.
On December 24th, the Treasury Department announced that the broken sword was off the coin. To answer my question, then: "hastily" was three days, tops.

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As noted: the Diner! Go catch up on back numbers, if you're starved for entertainment, or for what passes as it.
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