A Waggy Tail, and a Technology Moment

Waggy Tail: This morning I was sitting on the couch, and Scout was curled up on a pillow next to me, asleep. Often -- usually daily -- she has "active" dreams, where she seems to be chasing something: her legs twitch, and she makes a funny stifled noise we call "the underwater bark". This morning was a different kind of active dreaming: the rare and elusive waggy-tail dream. I'm sitting and typing when all of a sudden, I hear a thump thump thump off to my right-hand side -- and there Scout is, totally asleep but obviously happy, wagging away. This was a long waggy-tail dream, too; usually it's only a few thumps before she's inert again. Happy dog! I always wonder what it is she dreams about ...

Technology Corner: Last night Scout and I were out walking, when I glimpsed something curious through a window of an office building. It looked like the bastard child of an elevator and an escalator: two side-by-side vertical shafts, with a stream of continuously moving cars -- up in one shaft, down in the other. No buttons to press, or waiting for the single car to come to your floor -- just step onto the first empty car in the direction you want, ride it until you reach your floor, and step off. After we got home, I did some research, and found that the thing I'd seen is called a paternoster, or "cyclic elevator":

"Wikipedia" article about paternosters (with paternoster links)
Radio Czech article on Central Europe's disappearing paternosters
Victorian-era diagram of a paternoster

Throughput-wise, the design makes a lot of sense, but it seems that the few remaining paternosters are being gradually phased out, mostly for friendliness to the disabled -- it doesn't look welcoming to the slow-moving, and to a wheelchair user, it might as well be a set of stairs. The Wikipedia article has a link to a list of remaining paternosters in Europe -- there are surprisingly quite a few in our neighborhood, mostly in government buildings. I'll have to go ride one to see what it's like.