The POTW: Verse Til It Hurts

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POTW #801
(Week of 27 May, 2012)
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At the coffee shop where I often go on Sundays, there's a group of women who meet regularly to knit and to talk smack and deep philosophy. I didn't see them there today, but I was thinking about them just the same. And also about that private industry flight that just went up and docked with the space station (congratulations to SpaceX on that one), and the general rule that technology becomes widely available before wisdom about its use does the same. I have an underlying anxiety about this last thing which could be thought of as petulant-child-playing-with-dynamite multiplied by every single person on the planet, but which might better be termed:

The Knitting Circle Effect

The Tuppleburg Ladies Knitting Circle
Had a falling out with Lucinda Lawton
Over the name of a shade of purple
They bought some quantized carbon cotton
To crochet thermal pressure suits
Functional while quaintly appealing
They picked up matching magnetic boots
The kind you use to dust the ceiling
They gussied up Sally's family van
With a six-axis dishwasher stabilizer
A solid-fuel booster by mail from Japan
And a ten-dollar hobbyist radar-disguiser
A nine-year-old nephew did all of the math
Astrophysics open source
To calculate the orbital flight path
The GPS would keep them on course
And the knitting circle went to space
To rain down fire, death and lace
Laying waste to seven states
Though Lucinda Lawton somehow escaped
And scientists would later reflect
And dub it The Knitting Circle Effect
In which everyday technology
Falls into the hands of people
Like you and me

Copyright © 2012 by Dave Grossman

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