Yes, there may be more of those crazy projects today, but a major difference is the way abstraction in software obscures the insanity of the bigger picture. Th

Yes, there may be more of those crazy projects today, but a major difference is the way abstraction in software obscures the insanity of the bigger picture. The current South Pole Station was designed by an architectural company based in Hawaii; I'd imagine the architects felt like they were working on a really cool project. In the station they designed, the dorm rooms all have windows without blackout curtains, but the sun rises and sets once a year at South Pole and there's an awful lot of ice outside. It's very bright there in the summer, and the dorms are hardly used for anything other than sleeping. There is a large pile of decorated pieces of repurposed cardboard that polies fit in the windows - I can assure you that decorating those window covers feels a bit silly, even if it is novel to play cut-and-paste with the world spinning around you. Byrd's Snow Cruiser and the CMS made in word macros are more alike than different.