airships and mellow technologies and fictional ideas (silly ramblings, really)

[Michael Bailey]

There was a big article in the New Yorker a few years ago about a company
trying to revive the whole airship concept.  The thought seemed to be
that you would give up a little speed but gain huge cargo capacity,
and lower fuel expenses. 
 
It's interesting to think about how a mellower mood among venture capitalists
could prompt them to chose less disruptive-in-a-bad-sense technologies to invest in.
  
If (which I'm not totally sure in the kishkas, but there is textual evidence) if Pynchon is
anti-railway, it's certainly not without justification: noisy, polluting, laying
steel tracks across ley lines, scaring wildlife...
 
and the automobile companies were found guilty of collusion in putting
the streetcar lines out of business (although by that point, the victim
was somewhat non-mellow technology anyway)
 
and, if there is an afterlife, somewhere I suspect all the warmongers
are sitting there thinking about how much more money and fun it would
have been to monger something else.  "Jeepers, if we'd only spent more
time looking at the light over the ranges..."
 
It all ties into all these deep thoughts I've been having about
AtD and other books...
but although not exactly frazzled, have been rather too disjointed
to think through...
also had a rare fictional idea: something about a politician campaigning
who does that thing where he works a day on different jobs, and he's
out with, say, a carpenter, and decides to quit politics and become a carpenter.
(then had an even better story idea, but forgot it - figured it
would probably come back to me tho)
 
bought _Spook Country_ and pleased to see in the opening pages
reference to Eleggua (great song "Papa Legba" in that Talking Heads movie,
True Stories)
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