Unnecessary Wondrousness

I get very sad when I come upon older buildings displaying unnecessary detail work - the smaller and finer the better. Such frivolity is unthinkable nowadays, having been vanquished by the momentum of capitalism, which demands adherence to two doctrines: 1. maximize revenue, and 2. minimize expense.

Maslow's scissors were inevitably applied to aesthetic caprice, which disappeared along with the real butter in pastries, the real sugar in sodas, and any lingering vitality to the semi-archaic term "labor of love."

But every once in a while, I'll find myself on a less familiar city block and be transported to an era when human beings were frivolous enough and caring enough to embed easter eggs just because; an era when we occasionally tried just a bit harder than was strictly necessary.

At this point, there's scant rational basis for even an iota of non-monetizable delight. I mourn the turning away from the sacred credo of nano-aesthetics, the essential doctrine of my religion of Apprecianity.

But every once in a while there's a wink from within the miasma. Some anonymous drone takes the care to construct an unnecessarily wondrous lede sentence like the following one, and I realize all is not lost (it's small and quiet, yes, but nano-aesthetics compels the appreciation of minor wonders):

Ever since ENIAC, the first computer that could be operated by a single person, began flashing its ring counters in 1946, human beings and calculating machines have been on a steady march towards tighter integration.

God bless The Economist.