It seems that no matter where you go, where there is settlement- houses, businesses, etc.- there is “stuff”. By “stuff” I refer to manufactured goods. How much more stuff can we keep accumulating? How many more packages, widgets, gadgets, doo-dads, and bits & bobs can we continue to accumulate on the surface of our world? Lets dispense with the formalities and just call it what it is- crap.
Our factories are banging out container ships of crap as fast as they can manage. Satellite repeaters overhead strain under the load of electronic transfer of funds across the world. The oceans are churned into a lather by container ships steaming across the ocean sea to deliver the containerized crap to anxious dock workers who off-load it as fast as possible.
To see the extent of the madness, all you have to do is to browse in the Official Gazette of the patent office. Clever citizens are inventing new kinds of crap to deal with the unexpected problems with the older crap. Our hardware stores are full of such inventions.
At home we tried to institute the Principle of Conservation of Crap wherein for every 100 lbs of crap we brought home, 100 lbs of crap had to go … elsewhere. It failed. Johnnie on the Spot missed the bus.
Th’ Gaussling is lamenting the situation only because I am acutely afflicted with the accumulation of technical crap. Decades of chemical journals, magazines, several metric tons of books, NMR spectra from grad school, and tons of files of photocopies representing whole forests felled for the satisfaction of my pathological need to accumulate information. The whole thing is twisted. Think of the forest creatures, man.
Yet, I can’t bring myself to pitch that folder of Grignard mechanism papers or back issues of J. Med. Chem. Maybe there should be detox centers where information addicts can go to get their lives back.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Happy Holidays to you! May they be crapfree days.
Paula.
The homeless make do with one shopping cart each. One more year of El Ultimo Presidente Bush the Lesser should have us all away from the crap in our homes and into the streets. Then FEMA will assure us shopping carts are on order.
One is amazed that the homeless don’t form gangs. One ascertains the potential for utilitarian social activism here. Foment events leading to the Bürgerbräukeller, 8 November 1923.
There is such a thing as ‘progress’ my friend. Its meaning is ever-changing but it seems to relate to things like speed or size or efficiency. Sometimes it means big things become small, other times small things become big. You are witnessing the results of a landscape devoid of predators or consuming bacteria. An ecosystem which is an extension of mind rather than primitive market forces. Humans start the circle, but abandon it at the slightest whimsy. We tolerate no competitors in our lust for stuff. Stuff that …well is better stuff because it’s new and not like that old common stuff at all.
Ahhh my stuff your stuff..we all stuff together.
“Life’s a journey, not a destination”
-Steven Tyler
Happy Holidays