Grant can be moved into 3 different positions, and is about 7 inches wide and 8 inches long.
And, as you can see by this photo --
-- Grant is a clock, a joint venture between the companies MB&F, who make mostly somewhat out-there watches, and L’Epée 1839, who make mostly weird and playful clocks. Grant is named after a WWII tank which was named after Ulysses S Grant, was made in a limited edition of 150 pieces, and retails for a little over $20,000, which is a real bargain when you look at all of the high-quality craftsmanship and fine materials which have gone into this piece.
Can we talk about socialism? There are some socialists who hate wealth and money and want to do away with it. Then there are socialists such as myself and George Bernard Shaw. Shaw wrote, in the Preface to Major Barbara,
"To teach children that it is sinful to desire money, is to strain towards the extreme possible limit of impudence in lying, and corruption in hypocrisy. The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization, the one sound spot in our social conscience. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty as conspicuously and undeniably as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness and ugliness. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people. It is only when it is cheapened to worthlessness for some, and made impossibly dear to others, that it becomes a curse. In short, it is a curse only in such foolish social conditions that life itself is a curse. For the two things are inseparable: money is the counter that enables life to be distributed socially: it is life as truly as sovereigns and bank notes are money. The first duty of every citizen is to insist on having money on reasonable terms; and this demand is not complied with by giving four men three shillings each for ten or twelve hours’ drudgery and one man a thousand pounds for nothing. The crying need of the nation is not for better morals, cheaper bread, temperance, liberty, culture, redemption of fallen sisters and erring brothers, nor the grace, love and fellowship of the Trinity, but simply for enough money."
(My emphasis, lest some careless reader think that I or Shaw were telling the lazy poor to complain less and work harder.)
The other sort of socialist -- the Puritan sort, even though they often are atheists -- will point to things like Grant and say that they represent all that is wrong with the world. They may bite their tongues, if they were raised as Christians, to keep from saying "all that is wicked," but that's what they mean. Shaw and I favor universal basic incomes, that is: giving money to everyone, because everyone should have it. We see nothing wicked about Grant. What is wicked to us is that the world is arranged so that so very few people can afford to buy themselves something like a Grant, if they so choose. (Not everyone could buy a Grant even if everyone were rich, because there are only 150 of him, but there are many extravagant things like Grant.) And that other sort of socialist, the Puritan kind, ought to brush up on their Marx, especially Marx on the subject of leisure, if they think Marx is on their side, and not not mine and Shaw's.
It strikes me how many of these socialists who say they're against wealth are a lot wealthier than I've ever been. They have varying definitions about how wealthy is too wealthy, but, conveniently, it tends to be much wealthier than they are. Bernie Sanders may well be a millionaire, but billionaires really grind his gears. For them not to be much more focused on poverty requires, I think, both a lack of experience of it, and a lack of empathy. It happens now and then that a rich Puritan socialist will actually give away everything they have, to the point where they actually become poor on purpose, but it doesn't happen often. Shaw, as far as I know, was never close to being poor, but he was gifted with enormous empathy. He was able to spot suffering without having experienced something similar to it himself. And he was clever enough to see that one doesn't reduce the amount of misery in the world by becoming miserable.
Anyway, I just came here to say: lookit Grant, he's wicked cool!
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