Friday, July 07, 2023

Useless

 Pencil erasers are apparently there only for nostalgic decoration at this point.

9 comments:

james said...

"Mathematics is the second cheapest department to supply: all they need is some paper, pencils and a few erasers."

Those cap erasers are handy sometimes, though they tear after a while.

I notice that it is easier to find mechanical pencil leads than erasers to fit...

Grim said...

As I recall, the Dean in James’ joke goes on, “And the philosophers? They don’t even ask for erasers!”

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I can't find any that work. All our pencils have erases that only smudge, or go back and forth endlessly affecting nothing. We have some standalone 1x2 erasers that are fine.

Korora said...

I've got pencils with erasers that work fine.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

We used to. It may be that we just gradually used all those and only the ridiculous ones are left.

james said...

Even those 1x2's dry out after a while. We don't use up pencils all that fast, especially the mechanical ones, and after a few years their erasers deteriorated. Synthetic rubber, vinyl, maybe some other things... I remember that new erasers used to have a smell to them.

Grim, I remembered the followup line, but omitted it in honor of Socrates, the master of inducing "Oh. Never mind."

Grim said...

Yes, Socrates never even asked for pencils; he was philosophically opposed to writing down arguments at all. We would know little of him if not for Plato and Xenophon.

GraniteDad said...

I’ve found you have to get the really good pencils to get a solid erase nowadays. Ticonderoga works well.

Sutton said...

When I was a child fifty years ago I puzzled over the point of pencil erasers. They used to just smudge the paper, so it was sensible to bite them off