On the ethics side of the wooden nickle, Carbon bikes can be lugged.  Aluminum bikes can be lugged.  Aluminum can be bonded to carbon via lugs.  If we were DJs, this would be called a mash-up, culling what some might consider the best attributes of various construction techniques into a unified whole, while retaining distinctive parts of said whole.  However!  We are not DJs, we are serious investigators on a serious path.  Thus-for, we must coin a new word.  A bike that employes a variety (not a hybrid, we will approach these monsters later, big stick in hand) of construction techniques and materials (must be both) is an example of the mash-fab technique, phrase whose etymology resides in the hands of two artists and a number of rail shots of tequila.  Further reading on said etymology found here.

Mash-fab bikes differentiate from bikes where the lug is aesthetically hinted at, or visually aped, the express purpose of such being to (as Walter Benjamin would put it) cull some of the Aura of the lug.  Hybrid (Morphologically speaking) bikes generally employ tig welded tube junctures with carbon tubes bonded inside of the tig welded tubes.  The most extravagant example of this is the Titus Exogrid.

Faux lug shore lines seek to capitalize on the collective value theory based consciousness, as well as the collective notion of beauty and craft.  Lemond perhaps started said trend when he sought to bond carbon OCLV half triangles to Reynolds Steel.  The juncture was mildly stylized, resulting in a highly bland lug inspired shore-line.  Consumers were very drawn to this brutish juncture, even though it offered none of the advantages of the lug construction method.   Nor, as far as I can tell, do the Titus or Jamis versions, to name a few.  Indeed, lest we forget:  ‘A lug is a socket that forms the junction between two or more frame tubes.’  So speaketh Sheldon Brown, God Rest His Immortal Soul.  Ethically we cannot even refer to these designs as lug-like.  They are luggish! Joan Miro painted Child-like paintings.

A fourth grader paints childish paintings:

Ergo, lug stylings are not to be regarded on the same ethical plane as lugs.  Luggish bikes are an ethical affront to the contemporary lug master.  The engraving, tube cutting, and painting of lug inspired graphics cheapens the original work.  For example:  every commercialized copy of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa erodes the intent of the original.

And now that beaded curtain from that show Dharma and Greg:

Some one’s candle:

And an asinine T-shirt:

What does this do FOR the original work?

Ethical lugs = real lugs.  Impostors need a new word to describe their ‘inspired’ erosion of a traditional, yet highly evolved artistic industrial craft socket.