In the spirit of the season, I offer you one of the most popular of my old Slate columns. Merry Christmas.
What I Like About Scrooge
Here’s what I like about Ebenezer Scrooge: His meager lodgings were dark because darkness is cheap, and barely heated because coal is not free. His dinner was gruel, which he prepared himself. Scrooge paid no man to wait on him.
Scrooge has been called ungenerous. I say that’s a bum rap. What could be more generous than keeping your lamps unlit and your plate unfilled, leaving more fuel for others to burn and more food for others to eat? Who is a more benevolent neighbor than the man who employs no servants, freeing them to wait on someone else?
Continue reading ‘A Christmas Post’
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I have recently finished reading Hunters and Gatherers, a (quite good) novel written and set in 1991, which includes the following plot elements:
1) A door-to-door saleswoman pitches (hardcopy) encyclopedias to customers who eagerly seek easy access to vast quantities of information.
2) A man is eager to read an obscure novel he’s heard about, so he scours used book stores, hoping to find a copy. In the meantime, he’s not sure what the novel is about, and has no way to find out.
3) A comedian stores his collection of jokes on notecards, filling two rooms worth of file cabinets.
4) A collector of sound effects stores her collection on cassette tapes, and has no cost-effective way to create backups.
5) A man is unable to stay in close contact with his (adult) children, because long distance calling rates are prohibitively high.
Continue reading ‘The Times, They’ve Been a Changin’’
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