Can you tell time?  I can.  I learned on the old-fashioned analog clocks with
hands that point to the minute and the hour.  These clocks are still in
common use, but on the other hand there is the telephone.  More and more,
phones are pushbutton; you hardly ever see a dial anymore.  But people still
call it dialing, even when you push buttons.  Our children will never have
even seen a true dial phone, except perhaps in a museum.  But it will still
be called dialing, and they will wonder why.  The precise notion of what a
clock is, or what a telephone is, that notion itself is becoming confused.
Is my microwave oven a clock?  Well, I can tell what time it is by looking
at it.  Is my vcr a clock?  Well, I can tell what time it is by looking at
it.  Is my computer a clock?  Well, I can tell what time it is by looking
at it.  You get the picture.  Does anyone wind a watch or a clock anymore?
In 1952, I got a nice Swiss wristwatch that you had to wind.  I used that
watch every day until 1978, when it finally stopped working.  It stopped
working in the most wonderous way; maybe I should call it over-working.
Suddenly it speeded up.  The second hand just whizzed around the dial,
and the minute and hour hands followed suit.  It took it twenty minutes
to go through an hour.  You see, I just called the face a dial.  Should
you call it a dial if it is a digital watch?  Well, I could have gotten
the watch fixed, but did not.  Perhaps I couldn't have, really, because
people in 1978 were not using watches that you had to wind very much any
more.  I might have had a hard time finding someone to fix it, or replace-
ment parts.  So I retired it, sadly, and got a digital watch.  But there is
no romance in a digital watch.  No, there is not.

95 responses total.

But it is a mincer way to tell military time than on an anolog.

That is wonderful.

<vishy says solemnly:  "When I look at my vcr, I see a little blinking 12:00">
<vishy loves old clocks>

You still don't know how to stop that?!

(The clock in the VCR does not make the VCR a clock. I am a horologist,
and know.)

Now I know what I want to be if/when I grow up!

It aint what it used to be. Once, one branch of horology, watch and
clock repair, was a fine craft - pratically an art - and the artisans
could earn what artisans in a similar craft - plumbing - could. Now,
it is a matter of replacing the board (or just the battery). The art
has returned to being nearly a hobby. 

I have a G-shock digital. Not too romantic.
<women hate skeez!>

Hey!  I don't!

Yea, but we've known that for a long time.

heheheh...
<jasmine blushes>

heheheheheh.....
<ziggy eats a toad>

<vidar gives ziggy 40 lashes with a bicycle chain while wearing tight black
leather>
<vidar spanks ziggy for no reason whatsoever>

A VCR that tells time is a clock! Anything that tells time is a clock, 
a sundial, that computer voice when you call time, and anyone of your friends
that always has a watch, and always tells you what time it is. =)

Shut up odie, you're wrong.  A VCR is not a clock!  Its a toad.
otherwise:

Spank Me too, Vidar!  Pleeeeeze? 
<*>

Ohmigod vishnu, you're right. a VCR is a toad. I never thought of it that way.
Thank you for that brilliant insight.
Spank me three.

<vidar rips of odie's shirt and whips him>
<vidar spanks vishnu (again)>

Thank you for that whipping vidar.
=)

re 13:
        Vidar, you don't wear leather while whipping somebody with a bike
        chain.
You wear Lycra.

If a VCR is a clock, the whole world is a clock, since the VCR is just
part of a network, connected to buildings, connected to the earth. But
then, come to think of it, the world *is* a clock,

You think to much rcurl.

The universe is a toad!

Well said, m'lord.  
<*>

Thank you, Templar Hai 'Kaert.

Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Huh?
/

I agree, the world IS DEFINITELY a toad.

Or a Goat.




goat.
goat

Toad.

That too, M'Lord.
<*>

Fish, slave!

<vishy fishes>

I'd have to say that the world is a toad mostly, and only partially a goat.

It's a vortex of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water.

wombat

Rabi.

Trids.

FISH!

no, that's ghouti

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss