Entries published on September 3, 2006
Tool Wars
A long time ago, in a land far away, there lived people who were called “carpenters”, and their jobs consisted, in part, of the following tasks:
- Cutting pieces of wood to particular sizes
- Occasionally refining those pieces of wood into particular shapes
- Putting the pieces of wood together, and making them stay together.
Now, the last one was particularly problematic, because it usually involved pounding a small metal connector — called a “nail” — through one of the pieces of wood and into another. Many carpenters working in small shops had to resort to the terribly painful method of just banging the nails with the palms of their hands. The carpenters who worked at these shops typically had to retire early due to “repetitive slapping disorder”, the medical term for the injuries they sustained from slapping their hands against the nails over and over.
Larger, wealthier carpentry shops realized that the pension and health plans …