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| Reading List - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance |
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Title: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Author: Robert Pirsig
Started Reading: unknown
Finished Reading: unknown
Highlights
A repair shop filled with youngsters listening to music.
"The shop was a different scene from the ones I remembered. The mechanics, who had once all seemed like ancient veterans, now looked like children. A radio was going full blast and they were clowning around and talking and seemed not to notice me. When one of them finally came over he barely listened to the piston slap before saying, "Oh yeah. Tappets." Tappets? I should have known then what was coming. Two weeks later I paid their bill for 140 dollars, rode the cycle carefully at varying low speeds to wear it in and then after one thousand miles opened it up. At about seventy-five it seized again and freed at thirty, the same as before."
Fixing John's motorcycle handlebars with a piece of beer can "shimstock"
"As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!"
DeWeese's Light Switch
"He had the illusion the trouble was in the wire near the bulb because immediately upon toggling the switch the light went out. If the trouble had been in the switch, he felt, there would have been a lapse of time before the trouble showed up in the bulb. Phaedrus did not argue with this, but went across the street to the hardware store, bought a switch and in a few minutes had it installed. It worked immediately, of course, leaving DeWeese puzzled and frustrated. "How did you know the trouble was in the switch?" he asked. "Because it worked intermittently when I jiggled the switch." "Well - couldn't it jiggle the wire?" "No." Phaedrus' cocksure attitude angered DeWeese and he started to argue. "How do you know all that?" he said. "It's obvious." "Well then, why didn't I see it?" "You have to have some familiarity." "Then it's not obvious, is it?"
Gradeless University
"it dealt with the specific career of an imaginary student who more or less typified what was found in the classroom, a student completely conditioned to work for a grade rather than for the knowledge the grade was supposed to represent"