Here's a watch. Now I'm opening it and taking it apart. Here's the mainspring
-- here's the escapement. Here are a bunches of small screws -- Does anyone
know why are there so many? They didn't use this many in Chinese watches in
the Rrring Dynasty. Here's a funny triangular thingie with a hole in it. Here
a neat teeny tiny gear. Here's another gear with a reduction gear on it. Okay,
that's a watch.

Now look at this toaster. Why didn't Berger even talk about four-slice toaster
but not one with slots wide anough to put in bagels? Here's a thing to push
the things down, but it doesn't work too good and looks like it was designed
for the toaster to go in a museum instead of to be toasting toast. They didn't
use toasters in China or India they put their rice cakes wrapped in leaves
into the fire there's a famous woodcut that no one knows about that shows the
shogun eating ricecakes roasted in leaves. Okay, that's a toaster.

Here's a screwdriver called a Phillips screwdriver. If you look at it like
this it looks like an X, but if you turn it it looks like a +. They don't call
it a Philipps screw driver in China. There is a famous 7th century story of
the Red Pliers, but it doesn't mention a screwdriver -- but the pliers are
really tongs and it was in the Tong Dynasty in the 10th century. Screwdrivers
are Western inventions that are used to get bad paintings into museums.
Phillipps screwdrivers were invented at the Phillips Academy, and an ancient
predecessor was mentioned in the Epistle to the Filipinos.



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Michael Brady

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