Posts by Dr. Boli
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
On this day in 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr demonstrated to Alexander Hamilton the only reliable way to win a political debate.
THE CONFEDERATE FLAG.
The Confederate flag has been much in the news lately. As a service to readers, Dr. Boli reprints a short history of Confederate flags that first appeared here several years ago.
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Dear Dr. Boli: While examining an old painting of a Civil War battle, I saw a flag I didn’t recognize on the Confederate side. A historically-minded neighbor of mine informs me that it was the first Confederate national flag. I had no idea there were multiple Confederate flags. Can you sort out the history of the Confederate flag for me? —Sincerely, A Gentleman of Bristol, Virginia or Tennessee (not entirely sure which).
Dear Sir: The Confederate States of America, during its brief history, adopted a number of flags. The first Confederate national flag, the “Stars and Bars,” was adopted in March of 1861, but it was soon criticized as depending too much on the now-hated Union flag (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1: First Confederate national flag, the “Stars and Bars.”
In response to these criticisms, Confederate generals adopted a square battle flag (see Fig. 2), which, however, was open to the criticism that its colors were still broadly similar to those of the Union flag.
Fig. 2: Confederate battle flag.
The second Confederate national flag, the “Stainless Banner,” incorporated that square battle flag in its union, the rest of the flag being spotless white, in token of the purity of the cause of preserving liberty for slaveholders (see Fig. 3).
Fig. 3: Second Confederate national flag, the “Stainless Banner.”
This flag was at least distinctive, but it was still open to the objection that it shared its colors with the Union flag. Thus it was only one more step, namely the removal of the union altogether, that led to the final Confederate national flag, known as the “Appomattox Banner” (see Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Final Confederate national flag.
The development of the Confederate flag did not end, however, with the defeat of the Confederate States of America. In tribute to the brave souls who fought for the honor of the Confederacy, the old square battle flag, elongated into a rectangle, has been universally adopted in international heraldry as the symbol for “trailer park.”
From DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION,
Second Series.
Pluto. After years of protests against Pluto’s demotion to Dwarf Planet in the solar system, the International Astronomical Union has at last agreed to grant Pluto the more dignified title of Planetary Conglobation.
DANIEL BOONE, EPIC HERO.
Dr. Boli has on more than one occasion pointed his readers toward bad poetry. He would like to make amends now by giving you an epic poem based on the life of Daniel Boone—and one published while the late Mr. Boone was still alive. It takes a completist view of its subject, as you may see from the argument to Book I:
Immediately subsequent to the transformation of Chaos into order, and previous to the creation of light, the Angels who superintend terrestrial affairs assume their stations…
As you might expect from a tale of Daniel Boone, the backwoods action never lets up—starting with the very first sentence, which we reproduce here:
When first their dark and yet untravel’d rounds
Through the inane expanse of pristine Night,
The planetary conglobations roll’d;
Before the great eternal’s sacred eye,
Upon the gloom of the sidereal orbs,
Their pure-beam’d, time-enduring splendors flash’d;
Ere on Attraction’s mystic centre pois’d
By the Almighty’s sun creating hand,
The blazing ball that lights our solar sphere,
From the ecliptic-zone his radiance pour’d;
When from their chrystal palaces in Heaven’s
Unmeasure’d heights of bright and cloudless day,
Th’Angelic Spirits view’d Creation’s God,
Along th’unresisting void of space,*
In numberless succession, rolling worlds;
From their celestial ranks they bade descend,
To rule the vast machinery of the globes,
Supernal hosts with holy power endued.*A mistake by the printer; the rhythm requires “the unresisting,” not “th’unresisting.”
Yes, sir! Nothing whiles away the dullness of a long winter night in the Shenandoah Valley like a rip-roaring tale of adventure. Here is The Adventures of Daniel Boone, by Daniel Bryan.
Dr. Boli is now looking for an excuse—any excuse—to use the phrase “planetary conglobations” in a sentence.
A LESSON IN INTERFACE DESIGN.
A Windows user recently updated Adobe Flash Player. Adobe attempted to install foistware on his system, as even the most legitimate software sources in the Windows world always do, which raised the blood pressure of our correspondent to dangerous levels. At the end of the installation process, the program presented this message, which our correspondent preserved in this screenshot:
Yes, indeed, a rest sounded like a very good idea. But hovering the cursor over the message—something almost no one would think of doing—revealed that this was not in fact the whole message. The rest of the message appeared in a tooltip: “You may need to restart your browser.”
HAIKU.
Don’t you love haiku?
You just need three short verses.
It’s a cinch to do.
Why rant on and spew
An epic? You know terse is
What folks want from you.
No one wants what’s new:
Exactly the reverse is
Obviously true.
You know what to do:
Count beats and churn out verses.
Don’t you love haiku?
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
American diplomat known, on account of the acute letter famine, as ——– —–.
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On this day in 1797, Congress rescinded the Treaty of Alliance with France in response to the XYZ Affair, a scandal in which it was discovered that the French government had delayed negotiating with an American commission until the Americans had used up all the letters of the alphabet. The scandal led to an undeclared war known as the Quasi-War, undeclared because no more letters were available to write a declaration of war. Not until 1812 was the United States Government finally able to scrape together enough letters for a proper declaration; and then, because the letters F and C were still hard to come by, it declared war against Great Britain instead of France.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: I am a little confused. Can you explain to me what the difference is between “cheese” and “pasteurized process cheese food”? —Sincerely, Alvino McCollander, President, Mid-Atlantic Association of the Moderately Confused, Oakmont or Verona Branch.
Dear Sir: “Cheese food” is, as its name implies, meant to be fed to cheese. Please don’t tell us you’ve been eating that stuff yourself.
A PONTIFICATION.
Man is the only animal that can pontificate on his own uniquenesss.
FUN FACTS ABOUT OUR FOUNDING FATHERS.
Robert Morris financed the entire American Revolution by selling magazine subscriptions door to door.
William Ellery worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation was represented as an independent state, rather than, as Robert Treat Paine insisted, “a pimple on Massachusetts.”
Benjamin Franklin could never get the Continental Congress interested in any of his kite-based superweapons, and finally gave up in disgust.
Thomas Mifflin was frequently mistaken for George Washington, and the two used to amuse themselves by switching places at the Constitutional Convention.
After Patrick Henry made his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, he received a note from Governor Dunmore indicating a willingness to discuss at least one of the two alternatives.
Caesar Rodney rode seventy miles uphill through a thunderstorm in the middle of the night to vote for independence as a representative of Delaware solely as a favor to his good friend Tom McKean, even though he remained privately convinced that there was no such place as “Delaware.”
Horatio Gates’ secret plan to win the Revolutionary War involved ferrets in some capacity, but he would not offer specifics unless he was allowed to replace General Washington.