Word: plastics
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American trains, at least this one, lack the romance and luxury of Europe's fabled railroads or of our Pullmans of yore. The cars, comfortable and ingenious as they are, are too much plastic and Formica. But there is a sense of shared adventure among those onboard, a leisurely and good-natured spirit. Travelers rush to the windows together and marvel at sights like the 11 1/2-ft. pet alligator in the pool at Patchouli, Miss. Free from seat belts and sardine-can seating configurations, they roam the cars and trade stories. When there are discomforts or inconveniences, they share...
Fact: no one will be impressed with our technology. We will have corrected faulty eyesight by wearing magnifying lenses made of glass or plastic. We will have traveled by burning a petroleum by-product called gasoline. We will have produced children by having sexual intercourse. Ours, we will be told, was a primitive era. How can we expect to be taken seriously, we will be asked, when our high school physics class did not even teach string theory...
...fancier precincts of Irvine, Calif., the gumshoes in white moon suits and gas masks looked weirdly out of place. But there they were last Friday digging up the yard of a churchgoing suburban gynecologist who had just committed suicide. And there they were removing--gingerly--six tall plastic canisters full of military-type weaponry, high-grade C-4 explosives with blasting caps, and possibly biomedical-research products...
Nothing underscores the technological revolution better than plastics, long viewed as cheap and ugly. Not since the early-20th century popularity of Bakelite has plastic been so loved. Polypropylene, for instance, the plastic that has been around since the '50s, can be molded so smooth it is almost sensuous, and it takes dyes like silk. German design firms Authentics and Koziol have made much hay out of plastic's new pizazz. Koziol's spaghetti forks with a smiley face, ice-cream scoops with eyes and the "Tim" dish brush with legs are some of more than 300 "cutensils," as they...
...doubt these would sell in Chicago, New York and Boston," says Elliott Zivin, president of Koziol's U.S. distributor, Majestic. "But they're selling like crazy in Bogalusa, La., and west Texas." So much so that Zivin is bringing in 100 more plastic "blobjects"--another nickname--this year. Shopping for household items is no longer dutiful; it's part of a person's articulation of his or her personal style. Everything is an accessory. It could be coincidence that manufacturers started to think more about making household products fun not long after men started shouldering some of the burden around...