Even though the verkakte thing won't spin, I do really think this is a pretty dredel -- as I said, a modern piece, but dans la mode of 18th-century European Judaica. Those first images were a test to celebrate the installation of the amazing new Vleeptron Supercomputer, envy of small dental practices and Realtors throughout the Connecticut River Valley. But courtesy of some sewing thread, here are some better photos.
(My brother just told me he's going to buy the Dell Extreme Gamer System, and now S.W.M.B.O. is muttering about buying one. They get the Lamborghini, I get the Volvo. But it is a Very Big, Powerful, Fast Volvo with lots of extra space in the trunk for luggage.)
The Tek Todd who talked me out of the Lamborghini and sold me the Volvo -- he also advised Vista, BUT he approves of ubuntu -- came over and got the new computer up and running, so I finally got to meet him. He is Smart. I doubt if he is Naturally so conservative by nature, but years of working for a tek firm that specializes in systems for dentists and churches and insurance agencies have shoved him into Safe Mode.
PizzaQ (1 anchovy): I live in the Five College Area, which refers to these nearby colleges:
[ ] the University of Massachusetts @ Amherst
[ ] Amherst College
[ ] Smith College
[ ] Mount Holyoke College
[ ] Hampshire College
Guess which one Tek Todd went to.
You can immediately skip Smith, because Todd doesn't have a vagina. Almost ditto Mount Holyoke, but MHC has actually always had a few Peni-Americans because they need a few of them for their Dance Department. You need a Prince to catch the flying ballerina. There still exist a few obscure, rarified uses for my gender. We're very good for changing flat tires.
Well, anyway, here is a DECENT image of the silverish antiqueish dredel, which Herr Kommissar Hans BerlaCH correctly deduced nicht spin. And I suspect that Sherlock Holmes or Jane Marple or Judge Dee or maybe even Rabbi David Small could have just studied the images and analyzed them using Solid Geometry, and knowing only that the dredel is solid, not hollow, deduced that if you twirl it, the verdammt thing just drops dead on the floor instantly and cannot be used for teaching little Jewish children to gamble.
A huge body of physics and mathematics to analyze spinning tops began flowering in the 17th century -- for one reason because the Earth and the Moon and the Sun and all the planets are spinning tops. (cf. the Coriolis Force, which is rumored to be why water spins down the drain in opposite directions in opposite South/North Hemispheres, and also determines the hemispheric spin direction of tropical cyclones).
A gyroscope is a fancy $12 kind of dredel, and even toy gyroscopes have amazing properties. If you have children but have not bought them gyroscopes, the Vleeptron Child Protection Agency will immediately take your children from you and put them in a state agency because your household was too dangerously stupid. When I was a kid, all toy gyroscopes were very butch-machine-looking and said FOR BOYS ONLY, but these days stores sell pretty pink and purple glitter gyroscopes for girls. Or for boys.
A gyroscope or spinning top or dredel resists all outside forces to knock it over or change its path. Consequently gyroscopes are the central mechanisms in many navigation systems on airplanes, ships, submarines, and spacecraft. Old ocean-going ships circa 1950 used to have HUGE gyroscope stabilizers at the bottom of the ship to help the ship not be tossed around in big waves so the passengers won't puke for hours. By the 1960s these were replaced by tiny gyroscopes which generate an electronic signal which operate motorized fins/rudders for wave stabilization instead. But the old suckers were often bigger than an adult human and weighed tons. If you find one at a tag sale or on eBay, please let me know.
By the 1980s, the US Navy (probably Johns Hopkins Advanced Physics Lab or some Big Brain place like that) had invented LASER GYROSCOPES -- No Moving Parts!!! -- which are the heart of submarine inertial navigation systems so accurate that the sub could stay submerged for 6 months without ever taking a celestial or satellite or radio fix, and still guide itself submerged into port and dock without smashing into the dock. I don't have a clue how the hell you make a gyroscope out of light beams. If you do, Leave A Comment.
But a dredel that won't spin -- the silversmith, talented as he/she obviously is, couldn't possibly have been Jewish. A dredel that won't spin -- that's like a cowboy riding into town on a zebra.
If you guess Todd's college, I'll tell you some jokes, and then tell you some Nasty and Smutty Stuff about my neighbor down the street, Smith College. Smith College just hit The Front Page, Above The Fold, bigtime. And they're Not Happy about it.
And stop listening to all those bad stories about Vista which the Mac people are spreading on those nasty TV ads. I've been using it for three days now and it hasn't once spat at me or messaged
YO MAMA SO UGLY
THEY FILMED
"GORILLAS IN THE MIDST"
IN HER SHOWER
or burned down the office. And in a few weeks Todd tells me it'll automatically hose up Service Pack 1, which will cure ALL its problems just like magic.
Todd tells me that WindowsME now officially stands for Major Embarrassment. I was probably too ashamed ever to tell you that I spent the last seven years crawling through the hot asphalt and broken glass of WindowsME -- a little bonus gift from Hewlett-Packard, which sold me my dubious, questionable old piece-of-crap computer on credit when I was broke and living in squalor.
