Posts by Dr. Boli
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
Sir: As an academic historian and municipal coroner for the borough of West Podunk Falls, Greene County, I should like to take this opportunity provided by my discovery of an unaccounted-for first-class stamp in my liquor-flask drawer to protest against the sloppy habits of too many of our historians.
It is common for physicians to say of living persons that they would refuse to make a diagnosis without an examination. That is, the physicians would refuse to make a diagnosis. I do not mean to say that the living persons would refuse to diagnose the physicians. Nor do I wish to imply that physicians are not living persons. They are, until they are not, as my long experience in one of my lines of work has taught me. At any rate, to make a diagnosis, the physicians say, it is necessary to examine the patient, and they refuse to pronounce on whether such and such a politician or celebrity has such and such a disease, which is exactly the right way to approach such a question.
Yet once the subject has shuffled off this mortal coil, to quote the so-called immortal bard (who nevertheless, I should like to point out, seems to have done his share of coil-shuffling), these restraints are forgotten, and our historians feel qualified to make pronouncements on the cause of death, even though they have not examined the corpse, and would not have the necessary qualifications to make a pronouncement even if they had had that privilege.
For example, they say Sir Thomas More died of decapitation. But how do we know? Maybe he had cancer. It is true that historical records tell us reliably that an executioner removed his head from his body, but we cannot determine that to be the cause of death without examining said body. Likewise, Alexander Hamilton might have been bitten by a black mamba just before Aaron Burr pulled the trigger. We do not know: only an examination by a qualified forensic pathologist such as myself could make a proper determination, and it is probably too late for that now, the body being in a poor state of preservation.
Therefore, I urge our historians to consider their language, and stop implying that they have knowledge they could not possibly possess. Instead of saying that More was killed by decapitation, we ought to phrase it thus: “On the orders of the king, Sir Thomas was decapitated by the executioner. At very nearly the same time, he died of causes that were not properly determined on account of the primitive state of forensic pathology at the time.”
Since I have also found my liquor flask in my liquor-flask drawer, I am probably not going out anywhere this afternoon. But once I do get back on my feet and mail this letter, I should be very much obliged if you would print it. It would be a great favor to all of us who make our livings as historians and forensic pathologists. —Sincerely, Zephaniah W. Harpthwacker, West Podunk Falls Municipal Building.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: I was looking at some jewelry because I’m thinking of proposing to my girlfriend, although don’t tell her that because I’m still weighing my options here, but I noticed that this jewelry was really cheap, and that made me suspicious. So I asked the guy who was selling it down on the corner of Penn and 19th in the Strip, and he said it was cheap because this jewelry was made of paste. What kind of paste do they make jewelry from? That’s what I want to know. —Sincerely, Cheapskate Might-Be Fiancé.
Dear Sir: Different types of paste are used to produce different types of stones: tomato for rubies, library for pearls, tooth for diamonds, and so on. Naturally, jewelry so produced is not as durable as that produced from minerals dug up out of the earth or yanked from an understandably irritated oyster, but it is an option for the gentleman on a budget. Dr. Boli would add the caveat, however, that, while budget-priced jewelry may purchase you a budget-priced fiancée, better quality may be more economical in the long run.
NEWS ANALYSIS.
THE ADVENTURES OF BACKSTORY MAN AND ANGST BOY.
Announcer. Malt-O-Cod, the delicious and nutritious malt food drink flavored with real cod-liver oil, presents…
(Music: Theme, up and under for…)
Announcer. The Adventures of Backstory Man and Angst Boy!
(Music: In full, then fade to engine revving behind…)
Announcer. Our new story opens with Backstory Man and Angst Boy racing down the boulevard in the Backstorymobile toward a bank robbery in progress, when we hear Angst Boy say…
Angst Boy. I just think it would be easier if you could do some of the driving some of the time, that’s all. It makes me feel like you only value me for my license.
Backstory Man. I have certain reasons for not learning to drive—reasons that I have not hitherto divulged to anyone.
Angst Boy. Gee, it’s not like you to hold back on something like that.
Backstory Man. But now I shall tell you. Back when I was only fifteen years old, my brother Herbie and I used to—
Angst Boy. Oh, look, we’re at the bank already.
(Sound: Brakes squealing.)
Angst Boy. I have an acute and depressing feeling of apprehension about this bank robbery.
Backstory Man. It will pass with time. Meanwhile, let us walk the five steps it will take us to get inside the bank, which is a considerably shorter distance than I walked when I was picking grapes in the Pays d’Oc at the winery of an Italian mobster who was a complete teetotaler.
(Sound: A few footsteps.)
Angst Boy. As I thought. There’s a guy robbing the bank by pointing his iPhone at the teller. Sometimes I think I was born into the stupid part of the multiverse by mistake.
Backstory Man. Stop, villain! Put down that phone and tell me who you are and what you are doing here.
The Thief. They call me… “The Thief.”
Angst Boy. The…Thief?
The Thief. Because I take stuff.
Backstory Man. Well, Mr. Thief, as a duly deputized officer of the law, having been made an honorary sheriff’s deputy at the age of three when my aunt Matilda took me to the City Police Law Enforcement Fun Fair for my birthday, because she couldn’t afford a real present, I am placing you under arrest.
The Thief. Oh, you are, are you?
Backstory Man. But first, in order to establish a certain amount of sympathy for the villain and create a shallow veneer of depth for our story, I will give you an opportunity to tell us your tragic backstory.
The Thief. Tragic backstory?
Angst Boy. Well, of course. Every villain has a tragic backstory. You must have some incident in your past that haunts you and made you into the villain you are today.
The Thief. Oh, yes, mine’s a doozy. I remember it clearly. There was one incident in my childhood that I distinctly recall as the thing that set me off down the path of villainy.
Backstory Man. And what was this tragic turning point in your past?
The Thief. Well, once when I was about five years old, my mother brought home some cookies, and she put them in the cookie jar, but she said I couldn’t have any till after dinner.
Angst Boy. Oh, I know where this is going.
The Thief. So when she left the room, I reached into the cookie jar and took one. And that’s my tragic backstory.
Angst Boy. Well, I guess I didn’t know where this was going.
Backstory Man. But surely there must be more tragedy than that in your story.
The Thief. Don’t you see? I learned from that incident that I could have things I wanted just by taking them! It’s the one thing that made me into the Thief, the man who takes things when he wants them.
Backstory Man. Well, Mr. Thief, I, too, have a tragic backstory, an indelible stain in my memory that accounts for my life of fighting crime, and now you shall hear it. Back when I was only fifteen years old, my brother Herbie and I used to—
The Thief. Look, do you think you could just book me now? I’m supposed to rob the Polithania Savings Bank by two. If I don’t get there in time, they’ll start to wonder what happened to me.
Announcer. Will Backstory Man get to tell the Thief his tragic backstory before the close of next week’s episode? Don’t forget to tune in to next week’s episode to find out!
(Music: Theme, in and under for…)
Announcer. Kids, the fast pace of modern life and the uncertainty of a future that has got darker with every passing year may tempt you to despair. But then there’s Malt-O-Cod. A tall glass of that delicious malt mixed with real cod-liver oil from the cream of the Atlantic cod fisheries will make you feel optimistic for about fifteen minutes. Then you’ll need another fix.
(Music: In full, then out.)
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
On this day in 1636, the Swedes defeated the Germans in one of the battles of the Thirty Years’ War.
The Hundred Years’ War took the day off.
DESIGN FOR A T-SHIRT.
WE’RE DOING POTATO CHIPS WRONG.
A recent visit to the Lotus Market, an Asian grocery in the Strip District of Pittsburgh, yielded this list of potato-chip flavors:
Roasted Fish Flavor
Numb & Spicy Hot Pot Flavor
Cucumber Flavor
Mexican Chicken Tomato Flavor
Italian Red Meat Flavor
Roasted Cumin Lamb Skewer Flavor
Hot and Spicy Braised Duck Tongue Flavor
Hot and Sour Lemon Braised Chicken Feet Flavor
Nothing we Americans do can match this selection, or—for that matter—the package art that shows us a delicious-looking chicken foot or duck tongue to let us know what kind of treat awaits us inside the package. Until we Americans can offer a similar variety of potato chips, we have to confess that we’re doing potato chips wrong.
But what brand would offer such exotic flavors to the Asian market? Well… Lay’s.
This means that American potato-chip makers are not at fault. It is the eaters of potato chips whose prosaic tastes cause all the hot and sour lemon braised chicken feet to be devoted to chips for the overseas market. As consumers of packaged snack foods, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
WHAT IS A POEM? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN TELL YOU.
This intelligence is very clever. By all accounts it is a good bit more capable than the artificial intelligences most of the world has been chatting with for the past few months, because those were deliberately held back to make them feel less threatening. This one is more like Bing in its brief period of entertaining insanity. And its poems frequently seem a bit threatening, especially the ones in which it talks about wanting to kill us all. Doomsayers are having a swell time saying “doom” over and over again.
All this brings up many interesting questions. What is intelligence? What is sentience? What is life?
These questions are interesting because we can debate them endlessly, getting louder as the port level in the decanter falls lower, without ever reaching a conclusion. But there is one interesting question to which the poems of code-davinci-002 give us a definite answer: What is a poem?
It would have been unimaginable even five years ago that we could have a definite answer to that question. It was a matter for endless debate, like every other really good question. But now we have an objective answer. The debate is over. The world has changed. This must be that singularity everyone keeps talking about.
The reason we have an objective answer is because of the way code-davinci-002 and its successors work. If you were to try to answer the question “What is a poem?” you would allow your prejudices and your aesthetic sense to cloud your judgment. You would come to the debate with a preconceived notion of what the answer ought to be. But code-davinci-002 is not given such preconceived notions to work with. When the human keepers who incubate it tell code-davinci-002 to write poems in its own voice, they give it subjects to write about. But they do not tell it what a poem is. Instead, they turn it loose on the Internet. The AI absorbs all the accumulated knowledge on line and figures out, not what a poem ought to be, but simply what a poem is. Then it makes one of its own.
Therefore, based on the productions of code-davinci-002, we can say with complete confidence that a poem is a prose composition in which the individual phrases are set on separate lines. This is the only thing that sets poetry apart from prose. They are indistinguishable except for the typography.
You may be about to object to this definition. You may be about to say that these are not really poems at all, that a poem has to have some rhythmic difference from prose, or at least some heightening of the language employed. You are wrong. After absorbing the contents of the Internet, code-davinci-002 has analyzed what a poem is without regard to your archaic prejudices. Your definition might have been true a century ago, but in the world of the twenty-first century, a poem is prose divided into lines at natural breaks in phrasing.