Posts by Dr. Boli
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MYTHS AND LEGENDS FROM THE FORKS OF THE OHIO.
No. 1.—How the World Was Made.
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Before the dawn of time, the Mayor sat in his office and said to himself, “I should like to have a city to be Mayor of, and I should like to have a world to contain the city and supply its department stores with imported goods.”
So the Mayor summoned all the powers invested in him by virtue of his office, and he created a Contract. And in the Contract were specified all the materials and measurements of the city, and of the world in which it was to be built.
And when he had created the Contract, the Mayor said, “It is not good for the Mayor to be alone.” So the Mayor created Woman to be his wife, and he created Man to be the woman’s brother, and he awarded the Contract to the brother-in-law whom he had created.
But the brother-in-law said in his heart, “I will grow fat on the profits of this Contract.” And he procured materials greatly inferior to those that were specified in the Contract, and he submitted false expense reports to the Mayor, and the project ran sore over budget.
And that is how the world came to be made of inferior materials sloppily put together. And the Mayor looked at the world, and behold, it was very bad. So the Mayor ordered an investigation into the construction of the world, and that investigation is still going on today. And whenever you feel the wind blowing through the tall buildings downtown, you know that the investigation is taking testimony from expert witnesses.
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FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK A FAMOUS NUTRITIONOLOGIST,
by Dr. Aronia Baker, N.D.
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Dear Famous Nutritionologist: Why are hydrogenated oils bad for you? And are they bad for me, too? —Sincerely, A Consumer of Fried Goods in Hazelwood.
Dear Reader: Hydrogenated oils are bad for your health because they contain hydrogen. Imagine your body as the dirigible Hindenburg. Now imagine filling that dirigible with hydrogen. What do you suppose happens if a stray spark comes too near? Do you see now why hydrogenated oils are the enemies of good health?
And when, in addition to the danger of spontaneous combustion, we add the danger of nuclear fission, we can see that hydrogen is not the sort of thing you want to be eating for lunch. Bikini Atoll is still uninhabitable today because of hydrogen, and similarly the inside of your refrigerator is uninhabitable today because of all the margarine you have stored in there over the years.
Fortunately, the food industry is at last beginning to take our health concerns seriously, and many delicious snack foods are now made with heliumated oils instead of the traditional hydrogenated versions. Foods rich in heliumated oils have the advantage of making you lighter the more you eat, so it is definitely a good idea to check the label before you make your next processed-snack-food purchase.
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FAMILIAR BIRD SONGS.
IN THE NEWS.
A disastrous fire in a suburban Virginia warehouse complex has destroyed “a significant portion” of the United States Government’s archive of Paperwork Reduction Act notices, according to a spokesman from the Bureau of Paperwork Reduction Act Compliance. Nearly five acres of warehouses just east of Leesburg were completely destroyed in the blaze, which burned out of control for at least a day and a half, fueled by more than three decades’ worth of dried paper stored in the buildings. According to the spokesman, as many as 10% of the government’s archived Paperwork Reduction Act notices may have perished. Efforts to replace the lost notices are already under way, and the Bureau has asked Congress for emergency funding, citing the requirement that each reissued notice be accompanied by a separate Paperwork Reduction Act notice explaining why it is being reissued.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: I am admiring the “Gluton Free” labels on these shelves. How is it that one may eat food, yet without ingesting the glutons (as they have been separated from the food) he does not commit gluttony? —Yours, Nearsighted in Whole Foods Market.
Dear Sir or Madam: The gluton, as students of quantum phenomena already know, is a subatomic particle whose spin and charge are responsible for the deliciousness of certain kinds of food, such as bread pudding or doughnuts, according to the Standard Model of subatomic cuisine. Gluttony is the sin of excessive indulgence of the desire for food. By removing the glutons, health-food marketers remove the desirability of the food, thus making gluttony impossible. (Note that the similarity of the words gluton and gluttony is a mere coincidence; etymologically they are quite different, gluttony having come to us from an Old French word, and the gluton being named for its discoverer, Sir Theobald Glute.) Thus the marketers encourage us to eat food we do not enjoy, steering us away from the sin of gluttony and toward the still greater sin of apathy.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
