the "environmentalist" Idler

I received a copy of the newest the Idler this week. It's AWEsome! I ordered it for this issue's "SAVE THE WORLD" theme, of course. Tom has a short article about how beautiful pencils are. In it he reminds us that during the U.S./Soviet space races, "the Americans spent millions of dollars developing a pen which would write upside down. But the Russians? They took a pencil."