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Fantods, whole no. 9, Winter 1945

Page 14

page 14     EFTY-NINE

or chemist, or theologian ("religious experience" - religious sense?), and vice versa. Then, too, there's the sensation which the act of imagination or comprehension evokes to be considered. I get a perverse sort of pleasure from the contemplation of mathematical abstractions, but it is often quite different from that I get from fantasy, and,indeed,where there does seem a similarity it is nearly always traceable to some element of fantasy in the math.

Think of your island retreat as a long-term program. Regardless of what you, as a leader, might do, it's still true that men will discard culture pretty rapidly when no longer forced by environmental pressure to retain it. Anthropology's full of cases of peoples who developed complex arts, such as boat-building or iron smelting, and then forgot them again, apparently because they made another discovery--that they didn't really need them. Consider how literacy might fare in your colony, isolated from civilization's deluge of printed words. (Or, since it's a fan colony, perhaps we'd better not!) I don'think it's so much a question of the project's being impossible of achievement. It should not be too hard to assemble a group with a five-figure income. It's just whether the move would be advisable. That would depend also on just how regimented the unpleasant society would be. It might not be so easy to get out of it -- remember Doremus Jessup on "It Can't Happen Here"? Or it might be more practicable to go underground and conform outwardly for the advantages the culture might still offer.
Of course you could occupy a larger house, Art, and fill the six-car garage with a family bus, four individual scootscoots and a light pickup truck. But you couldn't wear out twice as much clothing or eat up twice as much food--oops, whatmisaying?? The point is that you oversimplify the situation. If you find it advisable to ease the strain on your pocketbook by going in for amateur agriculturing in times when professional farmers have to plough under, you are up against one paradox that can't be blamed on the excess population and wouldn't be helped by a pop decrease unless we ploughed under a disproportionately large quota of farmers, too. So why increase production when we already produce to waste? Let's distribute what we have more efficiently and taken an extra day off.
'Tain't so easy, chum, to shift production in a plant from one product to another. Weinbaum suggested the "Omnifac" but left no hint as to how it might work, and I can't see anything like it coming out of our technology. At the best, frequent changeovers are inefficient: Schedules are disrupted; equipment and men with specialized functions go on to a standby status with no lessening of the accompanying overhead. I've seen it happen, Art, and take it from me it's just one big headache.
White space is handy for marginotes; otherwise, what good? I'd have not noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it. . . . . . . A little book called, I believe, "Short-typing" useta be in the stacks of the public library here. It dealt with some kind of keyboard short-rite -- anybody know it? Art, of course, as inventor of the system at hand, is entitled to take whatever liberties he may please with it. But let's hope that others will not take his violations of his own rules as an invitation to go and do likewise. 'Twould mean confusion. Incidentally, why does shortype hafta be phonetic, anyway?
Shux, Art, you know you can mimeo two or more colors on one crank-turning and from one stencil. Not complicated stuff, of course, but headings, cartoons and boxed inserts are easy.

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page 14 EFTY-NINE or chemist, or theologian ("religious experience" - religious sense?), and vice versa. Then, too, there's the sensation which the act of imagination or comprehension evokes to be considered. I get a perverse sort of pleasure from the contemplation of mathematical abstractions, but it is often quite different from that I get from fantasy, and,indeed,where there does seem a similarity it is nearly always traceable to some element of fantasy in the math. Think of your island retreat as a long-term program. Regardless of what you, as a leader, might do, it's still true that men will discard culture pretty rapidly when no longer forced by environmental pressure to retain it. Anthropology's full of cases of peoples who developed complex arts, such as boat-building or iron smelting, and then forgot them again, apparently because they made another discovery--that they didn't really need them. Consider how literacy might fare in your colony, isolated from civilization's deluge of printed words. (Or, since it's a fan colony, perhaps we'd better not!) I don'think it's so much a question of the project's being impossible of achievement. It should not be too hard to assemble a group with a five-figure income. It's just whether the move would be advisable. That would depend also on just how regimented the unpleasant society would be. It might not be so easy to get out of it -- remember Doremus Jessup on "It Can't Happen Here"? Or it might be more practicable to go underground and conform outwardly for the advantages the culture might still offer. Of course you could occupy a larger house, Art, and fill the six-car garage with a family bus, four individual scootscoots and a light pickup truck. But you couldn't wear out twice as much clothing or eat up twice as much food--oops, whatmisaying?? The point is that you oversimplify the situation. If you find it advisable to ease the strain on your pocketbook by going in for amateur agriculturing in times when professional farmers have to plough under, you are up against one paradox that can't be blamed on the excess population and wouldn't be helped by a pop decrease unless we ploughed under a disproportionately large quota of farmers, too. So why increase production when we already produce to waste? Let's distribute what we have more efficiently and taken an extra day off. 'Tain't so easy, chum, to shift production in a plant from one product to another. Weinbaum suggested the "Omnifac" but left no hint as to how it might work, and I can't see anything like it coming out of our technology. At the best, frequent changeovers are inefficient: Schedules are disrupted; equipment and men with specialized functions go on to a standby status with no lessening of the accompanying overhead. I've seen it happen, Art, and take it from me it's just one big headache. White space is handy for marginotes; otherwise, what good? I'd have not noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it. . . . . . . A little book called, I believe, "Short-typing" useta be in the stacks of the public library here. It dealt with some kind of keyboard short-rite -- anybody know it? Art, of course, as inventor of the system at hand, is entitled to take whatever liberties he may please with it. But let's hope that others will not take his violations of his own rules as an invitation to go and do likewise. 'Twould mean confusion. Incidentally, why does shortype hafta be phonetic, anyway? Shux, Art, you know you can mimeo two or more colors on one crank-turning and from one stencil. Not complicated stuff, of course, but headings, cartoons and boxed inserts are easy.