waffle irons and aquaducts: an article of many spelling mistakes..
the similarities between aquaducts and washing machines seems obvious. both use water to bring something useful to people. with aquaducts it is drinking water from a distant aquifer, for washer machines it is clean clothes.
the similarities between aquaducts and waffle irons are more subtle. but they run deeper, and it is because of them that i hold the view that they are more in common than washing machines.
the construction of aquaducts was not an act of luxury or populism. it was a necessity. large cities in the ancient world formed around streams snd rivers and it was those bodies of water that brought prosperity to the communities. however, rivers that passed through towns, such as the Tiber, soon became increadibly polluted being the preffered convayer of sewege out to sea. drinking from the river, even after bringing the water to a boil soon became a danger, and cities subsequently were rife with desease and death. moreover, the spread of the city over time made the transportation of water a difficulty. roads were narrow and people hawking casks of water, on carts, to bring to the outer rings of the city was inevitably prohibituve. as water goes down and never upwards, cutting canals into the soil was not a feasable solution. the somution was building aquaducts: transport clean water through canals and raised passages, on a very steady, slope, and branch the supply to provide the clean water for everyone. once a city gets an aquaduct, it can grow. once a city grows it needs more aquaducts. it is a necessity. a major city could not function without it. it would otherwise be impossible to carry on living and expanding.
waffle irons seem to be nothing alike to the aquaducts. but it is not so. consider the likely possibikity of a need that one feels for waffles. its only natural, some many firns of waffle combinations have been made over the years, and the growth of waffle recepies AND consumption is undeniable.
however it all depends on waffle irons. take a flat slab of metal and fry thin layers of the batter on fop and you get pancakes! you get crepes! you may get pitabread. but you will never have a waffle.
it is not clear to me when the idea came to be. but neither is it ascertainable about aquaducts. take that metal slab, but carve neat straight grooves into it. make it so that it would form a latticework pattern. work with precision and determination to chisel the metal with a slight incline, yet make it all even. duplicate the entire procedure until you form a clamp of two wafflepattern slabs that are held against each other upon a single hinge. this must be done with care so that the gap between the two slabs will be even throught the surface, (hence the careful inckine of the plain). fashion sturdy handles to hold both sides to allow for flipping and construct it with such care that if excess batter is accidentally poured, it shall funnel itself toward one end only. the depth of thought, the heroic attempts that must have occured and failed beforehand must have been intolerably frustrating,and yet these difficulties were overcome.
these are the underlying similarities between aquaducts and waffle irons: you must have them for the function they serve. be it to slake the thirst of the populii or the appetite of the ingenious Belgique. they are both crucial. with no substitute available.
moreover, i shall say that both aquaducts and waffle irons are good examples of the importance of having A VISION. someone must have seen through the many items and patterns of life a remarkable possibility for improvement: a trajectory of action and form that was hidden to everyone else. once that trejectory, or vision was glimpsed, it became a process of effort and resiliance, until society was given to ultimate product of such an effort. this threshold event does not exist with washing machines at all. it is true that effort was made to design and improve, calibrate and motorize. but washing machines are just a mechanical duplication of what people have been doing by hand since the day after they thought about clothes. with washing machines you have an alternative, and a pre-existing process to learn from and emulate.
A waffle iron. No, seriously.
Recent studies have found that the reason Romans were so cruel and gladiatorial was because of the lead in their aqueducts. So what's this got to do with waffle irons?
Recent studies have also found that the Teflon in non-stick cookware, ie. waffle irons, causes mental fatigue and several other problems to include physical ailments.
Washing machines? They would have washed away all that lead and Teflon and maybe made us less gladiatorial and foggy-brained. You can't even compare the two.