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 Magazines. A subculture in microcosm. Periodic collections of advice, instructions, rumors, and lore. A struggling market in these days of instant information access, in 2012 only 3% of people surveyed said they regularly read magazines. Subscription numbers are falling as more and more people get their news as it happens and drift into echo chambers that cater more to their personal biases. But there's still entertainment value to be found in these glossy pages, and that's what this thread is for! You can learn a lot about a particular topic from a periodical, even if you're not familiar with all the terminology. For instance, I picked up a watchmaker's magazine, and just from the style of writing and the topics covered, found that the watchmaking industry is a hotbed of Machiavellian politicking. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Some time when you're out and about, grab a magazine from a field you're normally uninvolved with, give it a read, and post your impressions and the interesting bits here. It doesn't have to be a current magazine or even a commercial one at all, just some showcase of a hobby or industry you're not normally part of. 1977 Mother Earth News from a garage sale? Go for it! A photocopied fanzine being handed out by a scruffy dude outside a club? Sure! Last month's Construction Equipment Distribution magazine from a building contractor's dashboard? Why not? Let's try and stay away from political, religious, and entertainment-oriented publications, just to avoid the worst derails. But if someone posts about a topic you're interested in, go ahead and clear up misconceptions or add interesting facts that might enhance the value of the reading. And remember, the point of this thread is to be initially ignorant of the topic, providing an outsider's viewpoint. Let's not jump all over someone for not knowing the difference between an FS Varial Pop Shuvit and a Three-Bean Salad.
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Dec 20, 2015 23:33
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 07:45 |
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I no longer have the watchmaker's magazine, but just the other day I picked up the October 2015 issue of WoodenBoat Magazine, the magazine for wooden boat owners, builders, and designers. I am not what anyone would term a nautical sort. I can't swim, and my only sailing experience comes from Assassin's Creed IV and Sid Meier's Pirates. I like looking at boats, but only in the way anyone likes looking at a complex and well-designed machine. I was not expecting to connect much with the contents of the magazine, but I was pleasantly surprised. The articles are well-written, researched thoroughly and obviously written by people passionate about their craft. Photos and drawings are included liberally, often providing welcome context for the article text. The ads are roughly what I would expect: Mostly for marine paint, epoxy, and varnish, with a scattered number of ads for boat kits, boatyards, boat trailers, and the occasional boat cruise or school. Towards the front of the magazine is "Currents", a news section. The USS Constitution, Old Ironsides, the only surviving original frigate of the US Navy, is in drydock at Charlestown Naval Yard in Boston, and will be for about two and a half years while her hull is reconstructed. Only a few of her original late-18th-century timbers survive, although it's unlikely that the work being done currently will affect any of those. Next comes a tear-out section: "Getting Started in Boats, Volume 53: A Small Outboard Motor Primer." This is something I really like about the publication. They have an entire beginner's guide produced episodically. The previous volumes can be bought from their website (apparently at $1.95 a volume), and to judge by this example, are decent value for the money. This guide deals mostly with small motors of 10 horsepower or less. State parks in the US often limit engine size to under 10 hp to protect shoreline, plants, and habitat from high-speed wakes, but 10 horsepower is plenty for a small craft. There is a small sidebar on electric and propane-powered outboards for those concerned with pollution. A page on general maintenance of small outboards is followed by an admonition on safety, including a diagram of the "Death Spiral": Helmsperson lets go of the tiller; the boat turns violently to starboard, toppling the helmsperson into the water; the now lighter and more responsive boat turns more sharply and returns to the helmsperson, whose thighs are treading water at the level of the outboard's spinning blades.  The last page of the guide is a look at the venerable British Seagull outboard: First designed in 1930, thousands of them were issued for small military craft in WWII, and a significant percentage of those are still in use today. They are a bit smoky, but they're amazingly solidly-built, simple, and reliable. Much like the reliability of the AK-47, tales are told of Seagulls being dragged out of muddy river bottoms, hosed off, fueled, and driving boats across the water within the hour.The big story in this issue is the culmination of a three-part series on designs from L. Francis Herreshoff, who was apparently an influential boat architect from the turn of the last century through the 30s. This part is about the WHIRLWIND, a challenger for the 1930 AMERICA's Cup race. While a lot of the article focuses on how the boat was constructed, the focus of the article is actually on the social and political situation surrounding the boat, and how the designer, Herreshoff, kept conflicting with the actual owner of the boat and the incompetent captain who didn't know how to sail her properly. The term "weather helm" is thrown around, which by context I assume to mean "The wind keeps blowing her off course and we can't do poo poo about it." A lot of copy is written to explain how good a boat WHIRLWIND was, but how badly its owner and its captain mismanaged her. This is where the writer's passion for the subject shines through, especially in the last few paragraphs I got a sense of longing for what the boat might have been. The Case for the Gaff Vang. If you only understood two-thirds of that sentence, you were in the same boat as me. However, helpful diagrams are provided. A gaff in this context is a boom at the top of a mainsail. The vang, then, is a control rope leading from the end of the gaff, through a block on the mizzenmast, and down to a crewman below, so they can operate both the mizzen sail and the gaff of the mainsail, allowing for better sail control in certain directions of travel relative to the wind. Our next interesting article is Technology in the Boatshop. It covers CAD, 3D printing, cloud computing, and laser measuring as they relate to boatbuilding and sales. It covers these topics admirably, with newbie-friendly terminology that admittedly made my moderately-savvy self bored of being told what I already knew. There's quite a lot more that I didn't cover, but mostly those bits weren't of great interest to me. I actually wrote out an entire review for the whole magazine, article by article, then realized I was doing you, my audience, a disservice by covering topics I found boring in a boring manner. It read like a grade-schooler's book report on some long, complicated classic literature. The only thing of interest that I deleted was that I found the articles on boat restoration interesting from an archeological standpoint.
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Dec 20, 2015 23:34
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When cleaning out my mother's storage space, we came across some magazines from the early 20th-century. I'll see if I can get a copy of Das Deutche Hausfrau up, although my German now essentially non-existent.
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Dec 21, 2015 14:03
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