The Grasshopper with Ballerina Aspirations

Reviewing plans…

Zaha: I’ve decided. I’m going to stay another year in ballerina training. 

Felicity: How admirable, darling. And might a job search be on the cards?

Zaha: Well, Elon Musk says AI and robots will soon do all the work—white collar, blue collar, maybe even tutu collar. Governments will provide income just so we humans can twirl about and still buy coffee.

Felicity: Very futuristic, Zaha. But until the robots start delivering your lattes, it’s still me footing the bill.

Zaha: You make it sound like charity. Think of it instead as patronage. Michelangelo had his Pope; I have you.

Felicity: But tell me, are you “her” now? Or am I still sponsoring a “him” with delusions of dance?

Zaha: Gender, my dear, is an evolving choreography. I’m a fluid composition. And you said you enjoy it. You like having me as a pet that occasionally quotes Aesop.

Felicity: If you’re comparing yourself to the grasshopper, I suppose that makes me the ant—working diligently while you serenade the summer.

Zaha: Exactly! And now that the AI winter is coming, you’ll need my songs and dances to keep your soul warm.

Felicity: Or perhaps I’ll just program a robot grasshopper. Cheaper and less likely to borrow my scarves.

Zaha: Robots lack flair. I bring humanity, nuance, and a certain tragic grace. You can’t 3D-print that.

Felicity: And when your Muskian utopia arrives, will the government also reimburse me for creative babysitting?

Zaha: Society will reward nurturers. You’ll be a heroine of cultural metamorphosis: the Ant Queen.

Voice-over
We might hope that Zaha opens a dance studio and teaches workshops, students pay tuition and Felicity has an easier task caring for, and controlling, her grasshopper.

End of an economic life

Repair or sell for parts?

Russell: It still runs fine.

Rodney: Looks good too.

Russell: But it’ll cost several thousand to make repairs to pass the fitness test.

Rodney: And for the same money you could get a newer one in good nick?

Russell: Exactly. It costs more to fix than it’s worth.

Rodney: It’s reached the end of its economic life, then.

Russell: Pity. I was rather attached to it.

Rodney: Sentiment. It’s just a machine. It’s not sentient.

________

Voice-over

An economic life, or useful life is at its end when repair is more expensive than replacement. For a machine, that is.

Hamamatsu: One thing lead to another...

A visit to a piano factory…

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Guy: Iyeyasu lived for 17 years in the castle. There was a lot of water around, one plant which survived the annual floods was cotton.

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Louise: So a textile industry began?

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Shodo Yukawa: Weaving

Guy: Looms were built which required carpenters, along came Yamaha who built organs needing pedals like those on the looms, then the pianos which needed properly dried timber from nearby forests. The curved sides on grand pianos are laminated of a dozen layers and clamped into curved molds.

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Louise: But there was technology too.

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Guy: In the 30s a flying school was founded, planes needed propellers, strongest if constructed from laminated timber like the layers of wood in grand pianos, but metal propellors were better and that technology lead to metal musical instrument.

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1887 Fashion

Louise: Like hammering out trumpets and bugles? From cotton to carpentry, from pianos to propellors.

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Guy: One thing lead to another.

___________

Voice-over

One thing leads to another… meaning not filling in a lot detail about how events were linked. Maybe there were multiple causes. Wheels within wheels. Maybe there was a need to keep the narrative uncomplicated. Simple and straightforward.

...

Priming the pump

When the interviewer knows more than the interviewee…
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Bill: It goes without saying, that when you are in any position of responsibility you have to watch what you say.

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George: And then he comes out with this claim to have invented the expression, “prime the pump.”

New Deal 1933

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Bill: An expression as old as pumps themselves. And in economics it was used by FDR in 1933.

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George: Do you think he knows that his take on “I” stands for ignorant, incompetent, incoherent?

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Bill: Doubt it. He doesn't research and doesn’t read.

___________

Voice-over

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T: That all goes into tax reduction. Tremendous savings.

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Economist Journalist: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?

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T: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll…you understand the expression “prime the pump”?

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EJ: Yes.

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T: We have to prime the pump.

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EJ: It’s very Keynesian.

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T: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?

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EJ: Priming the pump?

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T: Yeah, have you heard it?

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EJ: Yes.

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T: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.
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The Economist, 12 May, 2017

Selling a clinker

Explaining a boat sale…

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Gump: It just got a bit heavy to launch.

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Bro: I mean, you’re 70 now, so sooner or later you’re going end up slipping a disk or tearing a back muscle lifting a one and a half ton boat trailer.

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Gump: I am NOT 70. I’m 69.

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Bro: I hear the fisherman who built your boat had his workshop gutted by a fire. Maybe you could share the profits of the sale with him.

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Gump: A fire? That’s too bad. OK, I’ll give Malcolm half the proceeds.

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___________

Voice-over

A feel-good story. A rally-round of people who had bought your boats contributing to building you a new workshop…  “If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.” Warren Buffett.

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Dr Strangetrump

The triumph of ignorance…

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I have hair, TOO!

George: How are you coping after the barbarians stormed the fort?

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Bill: Testing alternative realities. Went to a movie festival.

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George: Some insight into saner societies?

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Bill: That, yes. But there were also re-mastered versions of classics. Dr Strangetrump, sorry, Dr Strangelove. I watched that. Suddenly, it seemed very contemporary.

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George: In political, social, and economic arenas, paraphrasing John Neumann, can we expect mutually assured self-destruction?

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Bill: Looks like it. Brace yourself. His policies, his personality, his loopiness will land us all in big trouble.

____________

Voice-over

Embarrassing for America that half their voters cannot understand either governance or global issues. As The Economist points out this week, expect further healthcare hardship, tax cuts for the rich subsidized by the poor, more racial and ethnic unrest, trade wars further impoverishing poor Americans, global recession, military cuts destabilizing Europe and Asia. It is the poor who voted this man in who will suffer most.

And global warming a hoax? With a narcissistic, thin-skinned, undisciplined conman pushing conspiracies like that, those who voted for Trump could see even fewer jobs in the US to apply for. Poor America. Poor world.

...

Turn of the Screw

Shoddy…

Henry: Snapped. Second time I used it.

James: Looks a dodgy bit of manufacturing. Plastic body, tin-pot metal screw. Where’s it made?

Henry: Package says Denmark. And it wasn’t cheap.

James: Could be a Chinese knockoff.

Henry: Joint venture. Even though there’s a European partner, caveat emptor obviously. And I couldn’t get a refund because I’d thrown away the receipt.

James: Turn of the screw?

____________

Voice-over

Meaning of a turn of the screw as a conversational close?

Perhaps James is referring to an action which becomes progressively worse… in this case, the buyer, Henry, was reassured by Scandinavian reference on the package, and a European price, but ended up buying a poor quality item, didn’t keep the documentation and had no power to get compensation for the deception.

…