Posts by Dr. Boli

DID YOU KNOW…

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…that Samuel Johnson knew more than fifty insulting terms for Scottish people, but put only seventeen of them into his Dictionary?

…that the islands of Japan form the Chinese character for “laundry detergent”?

…that Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is still legally banned in Alabama?

…that world events are the product of inevitable social forces and human agency is an illusion aggressively promoted by Hallmark Cards, Inc.?

…that the extinct nation of Phoenicia is owed several thousand years’ worth of back royalties on the alphabet?

…that the black hole at the center of our galaxy is largely metaphorical?

ASK DR. BOLI.

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Dear Dr. Boli: Why do bankers remember the sabbath day? It’s, like, the only commandment they keep. —Sincerely, the woman who stood in front of the East End Deposit Bank branch office in Homewood, like, all day yesterday, and got nowhere.

Dear Madam: A life of incessant commandment-breaking takes a lot out of a banker. Adultery, theft, blasphemy, and all the other sins take a fair amount of effort to commit profitably. (Anyone can commit them without making a dime, but unprofitable sinning will not keep you employed at the bank very long.) Simple self-preservation dictates that a banker cannot break all the commandments every day. All bankers are therefore as pure as bleached lamb’s wool on Sundays. That is why the banks must be closed; a Sunday banker might be tempted to exercise disastrous virtues.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

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On this day in 325, the First Council of Nicaea was called to order. Emperor Constantine’s idea of summoning all the bishops to a big meeting to settle the little difficulties in the Church proved a roaring success; and ever since then, whenever a small disagreement arises among Christians, a formal meeting is called, and everything is soon put to rights. Since Nicaea, however, it has become traditional for the council fathers to remove their halos for the group portrait, so that the bishops in the back rows are not obstructed.

CARTOUCHE.

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Benno Janssen was Pittsburgh’s favorite club architect: he gave us the Twentieth Century Club, the Keystone Athletic Club, the Masonic Temple, the Pittsburgh Athletic Association, the Longue Vue Club, the Rolling Rock Club, and the Young Men and Women’s Hebrew Association. For this last club he designed a magnificent Renaissance palace with an enormous arch for the main entrance, and what is a Renaissance arch without a massive cartouche for a keystone?

Cartouche

Our friend Father Pitt supplies us with this picture. Have a look at it and try to imagine the story behind it. What do you think happened to bring it to its present form?

Father Pitt says that he imagines it this way: he sees the sculptor spending months interweaving the letters Y, M, W, and H in the most artistic manner, finally finishing it and presenting it to the discriminating eye of Mr. Janssen, and being told, “You left out the A.”

TIME CAPSULE.

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In the year 1922, James Windbreaker Klunck, then just beginning to establish his reputation as a futurologist, wrote down a list of predictions of the state of the world a century in the future. He deposited his list in a time capsule at his local F. W. Woolworth five-and-dime store, on the grounds that it was the one institution in the neighborhood that he could confidently assert would still be flourishing in the next century. The owner of the discount tattoo parlor now occupying the building has carefully preserved the box, and opened it yesterday to great fanfare. These were Dr. Klunck’s predictions for the world of 2022:

Governors, representatives, judges, etc., will be chosen by competitive examination, and the science of psychology will be so well understood that a list of five questions will be sufficient to select the President of the United States.

The various inferior disk systems will be abandoned once their impracticality becomes clear, and all sound recordings in 2022 will be issued on reliable and durable cylinders.

Pocket watches will run for more than 72 hours at one winding.

The science of eugenics will be so confidently understood, and so universally practiced, that all men will be named Alvin and all women will be named Alvina, and they will live to the age of 138.

Paper shortages will be a thing of the past, as books and newspapers will be printed on thin sheets of cheap and abundant mercury.

Education will no longer take up twelve or more years of a child’s life; instead, knowledge will be distributed in pill form, with the dosage regulated by careful psychological supervision.

Musical taste will be improved by the new educational methods, and jazz and ragtime will give way to the most artistic fugues.

Selective breeding and injections of certain vitamins will produce cats that come when you call them.

The design problems of inkwells will at last be solved, rendering them completely spillproof.

Prohibition of alcohol having succeeded in eliminating drunkenness, reformers will turn their attention to the lemonade menace.

No respectable business or government agency will invest in any projection or scheme without first soliciting the advice of a professional futurologist.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

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On this day in 1536, Henry VIII’s marriage to Wife II, Ann Boleyn, was annulled. Two days later she was beheaded, having been convicted of treasonously spelling her name “Bullen” like a common washerwoman.

ASK DR. BOLI.

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In response to the advertisement for Brenneman’s Everything Bagels, our correspondent Arkadiy asks, “Americium? Is it better or worse than polonium?”

“Better” and “worse” are subjective measurements with no scientific value whatsoever, and therefore are right up Dr. Boli’s alley. You have come to the right place.

Polonium has the edge in practicality, owing to its traditional use in the heads of polo mallets, whence, of course, the name of the element.

Americium is more widely found in ordinary households, however, since it goes into smoke detectors. That means that any one of us might have come into contact with it and be carrying around an atom or two of americium even as we speak. Et in Arkadiy ego, to coin a phrase.

Which one is better or worse therefore depends on how you feel about polo, or, contrariwise, smoke detectors.

IN ENTERTAINMENT NEWS.

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According to police reports, rap-jazz fusion artist Felonious Thelonious was arrested last night for driving under the influence of Miles Davis.

Miss Diana Smoulder, the ravishing heartthrob of the hurdy-gurdy, will employ a paid crankist for the rest of her Endless Whine tour, owing to repetitive-motion injuries sustained in her cranking hand.

Bozar the Clown has signed with the Dumont Network to produce a ten-part series tentatively titled Towering Passion, based on the unusual events that brought Daniel Burnham to design a skyscraper in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Taking some liberties with the source material, Mr. Bozar plans to have the role of coal baron Josiah V. Thompson, who commissioned the building, played by Gal Gadot.

The Great Blando has been rehearsing a new act under conditions of the strictest secrecy. Mr. Blando’s manager will not reveal anything to the press about the performance, other than that fans of William Allingham will be pleased.

Theodore Naphtha, the classically trained Shakespearean actor best known for his role as Irv in the 2006 comedy Herb and Irv Hit Themselves on the Head with Hammers, has sold his house in Hollywood and is moving to Ohio. According to his agent, with the proceeds from the sale of his three-bedroom ranch house on North Orange Drive, Mr. Naphtha was able to buy Youngstown.