One of the Original Series’ most accurate predictions was, of all things, computerized legal research. In the first season episode “Court Martial,” Kirk walks into the book-strewn office of his lawyer, played by Elisha Cook, Jr. The lawyer laments that the all law has been computerized, but he still loves his books where the “real” law is to be found. Less than a decade after that episode first aired, the Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw computerized legal research services were signing up customers. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find a law book in any law office that is doing anything more than serving as a doorstop.
My wife had a job for a short period where she would visit law offices and insert new material in their existing law books. I guess those jobs are gone now. :)
Very late and random, but I just happened to spot this post. It might have been answered by now. I eat those every other week at least.
They are just the standard recipe for crepes in Belgium, France, …
The brown sugar we use in Belgium is delicious, very popular and called Cassonade.
I don’t know my mum’s recipe. But when I make my own, I tend to follow this recipe, replacing the Rhum with vanilla extract (I can help you translate if Google gets stuck on anything):
And that’s the brown sugar we use:
Also comes as a “blond” version:
Both are tasty, thigh I prefer the brown one.
Starship Troopers had personal mobile phones as I recall.
Sure, but by that point car phones were already a thing. My father, due to his job as a firefighter, had one by 98-99. Some old Motorola bag phone.
I remember thinking as I was reading Starship Troopers, way back when, what a phone you carry on you? That is crazy.
My school computer lab was equipped with 8086’s with 640 kB of RAM. The holy grail was the lone 386 that you could use by special request. Well, that and the Apple IIe that could run Oregon Trail.
You know what, I immediately thought you were talking about the movie for some reason. Which, turns out, you never said at all.
Which completely changes things. I forgot they were a part of the book, probably because by the time I read it cell phones were already ubiquitous.
I used to be an editor for one of the legal publishing companies that produced those inserts. They and the jobs they produced are, indeed, long gone.
My last consulting job was at Bingham McCutchen in NYC. Even then they were downsizing their law library. It was ~2004/2005.
I remember the Velveeta is better commercials but not the shredded bags of it.
They still make the shredded bags of it, usually found in the dollar general stores.
I’m an editor, sort of, for a legal publishing company. Some of my co-workers still pound out those inserts for their jurisdictions. I’m grateful that I don’t have to worry about it for my jurs. Everyone from the bosses to the beancounters to the press operators can see the writing on the wall, and the writing says: “not yet.”
Print in my profession is dying, but it’s still profitable enough – for some products – to keep it around for the foreseeable future. It’s kind of like how the Simpsons hasn’t been cancelled yet, even though if it had been cancelled a decade or so ago, no one would have been surprised.
I’m surprised that there are still enough print users to justify keeping it going.
I find myself wondering how many children, especially in France, will have today as their earliest memory.
One of my first jobs was as a stocker in a large supermarket, but every Saturday the new list of price increases would arrive. My job was to go around with a sheet of stickers and one of these:
Cover up the old price and stamp the new one. I’d have dozens of shoppers following me, trying to grab stuff of the shelves before I could re-price them.
I worked on a grocery night crew and did many a can good with one of those.