I stopped by Carl Honore's blog this morning to see how the Slow Movement is going (Carl is the author of two excellent books on our overpaced, overstressed lifestyles, In Praise of Slowness and Under Pressure, both of which we reviewed in the Rat Race Rebellion Telework Bulletin), and I came across a wonderful invention, the Motorized Ice Cream Cone.
At a time when so many of us are looking proudly Rubenesque (myself included), I like the notion of a mechanical cone that turns the ice cream for you, and lets you lick it by merely sticking out your tongue. (For more, click here.) It reminds me of the many conversations I've had with the managers of movie theaters, as I try vainly to get them to install ear hooks on the big tubs of popcorn, so we can just tilt our heads back to eat while we watch the movie.
But what I'd really like to see is a gigantic engine installed under Northern Virginia, where I live. This titanic motor (solar-powered, to be Green) would turn the Capital Beltway -- including all of its permanently-jammed traffic -- slowly in an alternating counter-clockwise, then clockwise direction.
Thus, those of us who live inside the Beltway (whose inner loop runs clockwise) and those who live outside the Beltway (whose outer loop runs counter-clockwise), admiring the traffic as we so often do from our apartment balconies and living room windows, could once again have the illusion of forward movement.
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