Posts by Dr. Boli
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING.
Participants wanted for study of the effect of death upon online shopping habits. Participants who complete the study will receive a $50 Amazon gift card. Reply no. 487229.
All world knowledge compressed into one four-page leaflet. Secret process makes it possible. Absolutely free; bank info required to prove your sincerity. Includes complete treatise on avoiding classified-ad scams. Reply no. 487230.
Wanted—old laundry to fill projected world’s largest laundry hamper. Help Grant Borough establish its reputation as the Laundry Capital of the World. Reply no. 487231.
Send me $20.00 and see what it gets you. Reply no. 487232.
Learn to be an invalid! We teach you the skill you need to take your position in the fastest-growing population segment in America. Reply no. 487233.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
COURAGE IS CONTAGEOUS
and
FREE ENGLISH CLASSES.
If only the two advertisers had arrived at the pole at the same time…
USEFUL INVENTIONS.
Briggs’ Patent Mote-Magnifying Glasses. See the mote in your neighbor’s eye clearly and offer him the help he obviously needs.
50-Caliber 6-Inch Mosquito Eliminator. Solves mosquito problems expeditiously and permanently. Accurate aim in the hands of a skilled operator. Reloads in minutes.
Excelsior Bicycle Trap. Harmlessly traps bicycles and their riders for safe release in the wild.
Talking Bust of President McKinley. Repeats “The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation” until you switch it off (off switch located on back of head, activated by sound thwack).
Dual-Action Snow-Removal System. Removes snow by scraping it from the ground and by accelerating global warming.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: No one is more aware than I am that our technology moves forward by ceaseless experiment. Now, when I say that no one is more aware, I ought to qualify that statement by saying that Alex in the downstairs apartment in our duplex may in fact be more aware, because he’s an MIT alum and he’s always reading Technology Review. But what I mean is that I am adequately informed; I am well enough aware to have opinions. And it is my opinion that, while experiment is a good and even necessary thing in the forward march of technology, there are limits, and those limits have been reached when the experiments are taking innocent human lives.
Of all the inventions with which we interact every day, the automobile is one of the most potentially deadly. It therefore behooves us (this is a word I learned from Alex) to examine the results of any unusual experiments in automotive technology with concomitantly unusual care. (Alex is always saying “concomitantly,” and I think I’ve figured out what it means.)
Since 2019, there have been about 65 fatalities associated with self-driving vehicles. In that same period, there was an average of 102 fatalities per day associated with human-driven vehicles.
When experiment and research make the world better, they should be supported. But we can afford such experiments only if we candidly admit the failures. It is long past time to end this deadly experiment with human-driven vehicles. While they may have seemed like a good idea in the abstract, statistics show that humans simply are not capable of operating motor vehicles within acceptable limits of safety. In the future, human beings may be improved, perhaps by selective breeding, and then the question can be revisited. But for the present, we must take the human drivers off the road immediately and restore sanity to our streets and highways. —Sincerely, A Man Who Isn’t Leaving the Duplex Until This Thing Is Sorted Out.
ANNOUNCEMENT.
Advertisement.
TWO NOVELISTS.
Sir Walter Scott by Henry Raeburn.
In January 1820 Archibald Constable and John Ballantyne concluded an agreement to act as joint publishers of Kenilworth, but Scott had still to complete The Monastery and write its sequel The Abbot which kept him occupied until August, so that Kenilworth had to wait until September. Writing then progressed steadily, and the new novel was completed on 27 December.
From the Wikipedia article on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce:
For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the book, adding what would become chapters I.1 and I.6, and revising the already written segments to make them more lexically complex.
James Joyce by Djuna Barnes, 1922.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
NURSERY RHYMES FOR CYNICAL CHILDREN.
Get some for your aunt or cousin;
Make a bag up for the parson;
Give one to the cop on Carson;
Send some to the poor in Chile;
Save a few for old Blind Willie;
Give a couple to the dog;
Throw the rest out to the hog.
Just don’t eat them. Heed advice:
There’s a reason for the price.