![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tsunamis That Happened 250 Years Ago
Feb. 2nd, 2013 09:29 amHalfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. Very cold. Not as cold as Fairbanks, Alaska, but oddly enough, colder than Chicago. Bright, though. The sun's a veritable benediction.
PayPal is having massive server problems apparently, a thing that isn't being reported anywhere in the "news." But a goodly chunk of the weekly earnings didn't make it into my personal money bin on time yesterday so I am pissed. It will get there eventually, I suppose, but it dawns on me that money's loss of fungability (is there even such a word?) is probably the Third Great Transformational Change I've lived through. First, computers transformed the knowledge grid. Then cell phones redefined personal intimacy. Now we're dealing with the fact that money is no longer something you hold in your hand and count out. I mean, I couldn't even tell you the last time I paid cash for something.
A couple of days ago I was screwing around online in between writing sprightly catalogue pitches for the VeeDub Cabrio AC transformer kit and came across a description of the 1755 earthquake that took out Lisbon. A hundred thousand people dead in the resulting tsunami which struck on All Saints Day.
I finally made the connection: I'd always wondered why Portugal was so important at the very beginning of colonial exploration and then disappeared as a great colonial power. It was the earthquake, wasn't it? In the olden days, the Great Transformational Changes had to do with the physical world, not technology.
I think about you often, my friend. I wonder what you would have made about all this. I miss you. When we finally meet up in that dive on the southside of Bardo, there'll be lots and lots and lots to talk about.
PayPal is having massive server problems apparently, a thing that isn't being reported anywhere in the "news." But a goodly chunk of the weekly earnings didn't make it into my personal money bin on time yesterday so I am pissed. It will get there eventually, I suppose, but it dawns on me that money's loss of fungability (is there even such a word?) is probably the Third Great Transformational Change I've lived through. First, computers transformed the knowledge grid. Then cell phones redefined personal intimacy. Now we're dealing with the fact that money is no longer something you hold in your hand and count out. I mean, I couldn't even tell you the last time I paid cash for something.
A couple of days ago I was screwing around online in between writing sprightly catalogue pitches for the VeeDub Cabrio AC transformer kit and came across a description of the 1755 earthquake that took out Lisbon. A hundred thousand people dead in the resulting tsunami which struck on All Saints Day.
I finally made the connection: I'd always wondered why Portugal was so important at the very beginning of colonial exploration and then disappeared as a great colonial power. It was the earthquake, wasn't it? In the olden days, the Great Transformational Changes had to do with the physical world, not technology.
I think about you often, my friend. I wonder what you would have made about all this. I miss you. When we finally meet up in that dive on the southside of Bardo, there'll be lots and lots and lots to talk about.
