Posts by Dr. Boli
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
ON THIS DAY in 1831, Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth, England, on the HMS Beagle, intending to found Plymouth Colony on the coast of eastern North America. Had he not discovered that the land he coveted was already occupied and been forced to turn his attention to other matters, history might have been very different in any number of ways.
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DR. BOLI’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MISINFORMATION.
Annual Christmas Number.
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Elves. In 2008, a Washington Post undercover investigation revealed that more than 17% of the “elves” in Santa’s North Pole sweatshops were actually gnomes, in clear violation of gnome-labor laws.
Father Christmas. In Scandinavia, Father Christmas arrives riding a goat, but in nearby Latvia, he drives a 1975 Lada 1200.
Florida. In 1887 Henry Plant, the western Florida railroad magnate, became the first person in Florida to hang a Santa Claus banner from a cabbage palm. He was fined $15 for incongruity and made to remove the offensive object.
Fruitcakes. The traditional “fruitcakes” exchanged at Christmas are so called because, in medieval times, they were made with bits and pieces of identifiable fruit.
Nativity. By longstanding tradition, the nativity scene at Norwich Cathedral always includes not only the the three Wise Men but also their chartered accountants.
Puritans. In 1694, thirteen citizens of Gloucester, Mass., were arrested on suspicion of smiling on Christmas Day.
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Is Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket? Now you know what to do with it.
POLICE BLOTTER.
MISS BEATRIX FFIDGETT of Blandville called at 3:24 a.m. last night to report that her giant inflatable Santa Claus had capsized. Police responded within ten minutes and found the Santa Claus figure in a horizontal position, but were unable to confirm Miss Ffidgett’s assertion that Islamofascist terrorists were responsible for the outrage.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Why do computers have to be beaten into submission? —Sincerely, C. Simon.
Dear Sir or Madam: It is not the computer per se that requires beating. The computer is a lifeless corpse without an operating system, which has the same function in the digital world that the soul has in the biological world. Unlike the souls of biological life forms, however, the souls of general-purpose computers are usually replaceable; and if you derive no sadistic enjoyment from beating your computer, you may be using the wrong soul for your purpose.
Computers running Windows are usually the ones that require beating. Apple operating systems can usually be tricked into submission with a few cultish slogans or snatches of new-age jargon. As for Linux, there are so many varieties of it that it is useless to generalize, but you might try offering it chocolate.
Perhaps, however, your problem is simply that you have adopted someone else’s operating system. Adopting an operating system is a bit like adopting a dog: if you take it in when it is fully grown, it comes with all manner of bad habits and behavioral problems that are not readily apparent when it first greets you with its tail wagging and its tongue hanging out. But if you raise it from a puppy, so to speak, you can carefully train it to be exactly the sort of operating system you want. This is why Dr. Boli prefers to build his own operating system from spare parts he finds lying about—a Linux kernel here, a window manager there, with nothing superfluous or unexpected.
On the other hand, your problem may be that you are using the wrong tool for the job. Are you absolutely certain that a computer is what you need? It’s surprising what one can accomplish with a stack of paper, a bottle of ink, and a good steel pen.
From DR. BOLI’S UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY.
Distaff (noun).—In music, the treble clef in a score for keyboard instruments (see figure below).
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
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A CHRISTMAS SONG.
It begins in October and runs through November,
And really starts hitting its stride in December.
And even when Christmas is gone, it would seem
It will take two more weeks just to run out of steam.
You should swallow your grumbling and banish that sneer:
It’s the jolliest twenty per cent of the year.
Don’t be sad, don’t be mad, don’t be gloomy, don’t frown;
Don’t let plastic and tinsel start getting you down;
Don’t let chaser lights make you psychotic, or scream
At the Virgin who shines with an LED gleam.
No, just widen your smile with each sleigh bell you hear:
It’s the jolliest twenty per cent of the year.
When you think you’re so sodden with jingle-bell joy
That you’ll cave in the head of the next drummer boy
Who ba-rum-bum-bum-bums into your field of view,
Just remember, the season is not about you.
For the big corporations who sell us our cheer,
It’s the jolliest twenty per cent of the year.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
ON THIS DAY in 1897, America’s greatest composer was born. Thenceforth the musical boasting of the Old World was silenced; for if Europe can point to Mozart, America can point to Fletcher Henderson.