Commentary - Humor - Nonsense - Sarcasm - Satire - Whimsy
On the Road with DR. EVIL
Vol.
V, No. 7,
A Missive of Irregular Frequency and Questionable Worth
QUOTE
OF THE MONTH
"There's a lot of other things that
On 9 June, after a week of bad press, what they called a "glitch" was discovered: namely, that the new tax bill did not contain a provision increasing the child tax credit for low income families. (Even though the Republicans had earlier taken it out.) In view of the coming re-election bid, Bush pretended to be irate, then urged House Republicans to include such a provision in their version of the bill. Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay pushed the provision through the House - but with a extra relief for the really needy in the uppermost tax brackets. Whereas the original provision for lower income wage earners would have cost about $24B (as in Billions), the new one, if enacted, will cost up to $84B. How's that for in-your-face politics?
A
USEFUL AFFLICTION
Many (and I mean MANY) years
ago I developed the habit of looking a bit downward as I walked. A former boss
allowed as how it was a sure sign of dementia. (I suspect that I will someday be
sorry for revealing that little diagnosis.) He was a special case, though, claiming, in
this life, to be in the 7th and final stage of perfection, just short of nirvana. Be that as it may, careful
measurement with a goniometer showed my head to be only at minus 12.5 degrees. I told
my enlightened boss that it was because my eyes are particularly sensitive to bright light,
especially sunlight and, by looking downward I was able to avoid getting
headaches.
In addition, there is another reason. Growing up, we always had dogs around - and still do. Need I say more? It has served me well. Without even thinking about it, I can navigate across our back yard without incident. Mrs. Evil, on the other hand, has normal head orientation and cannot walk through our back yard without encountering the depositions in our doggie mine field.
A
CASE OF BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT?
"All those seeking to
celebrate the centenary of that famous first flight in a heavier-than-air
machine at Kill Devil Hill, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, have a handicap
to surmount. In the daring era of the early aviators, Wilbur and Orville Wright
were ravens in a sky full of bluebirds. The fact that they were clever, dogged
and bold cannot disguise the truth that the brothers were also malevolent"
- a freebie offered by the reviewer of 4 new publications on the early history
of flight in the June 7, 2003 issue of The Economist.
In the review of Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity Through the First World War, by Richard P. Hallion, it is stated that "thanks to their rigid upbringing, both brothers could also be obsessive, stubborn and suspicious. ... Neither had any interest in women nor wanted to make friends outside their immediate family. When their sister, Katharine, married late in life, after Wilbur's death, Orville regarded it as a betrayal. He refused to attend the wedding or to have anything to do with Katharine afterwards."
"The Wright brothers, in short, were nerds before their time; dour men clothed year-round in woollen suits, plain caps and shirts with starched collars. Other aviators rhapsodised about the joys of flight, and dreamt of treaties to demilitarise the skies. When Wilbur was asked what his machine was good for, he replied bluntly, 'War'. Obsessed with money, the Wrights were ready to sell their invention to just about any country, however hostile to America. And with their interminable patent suits they richly earned their reputation as competition-stifling monopolists."
Boy, you won't read such a review in any Dayton, Ohio, newspaper.
Footnote: James Tobin's biography of the Wright brothers is also reviewed. In the U.S., it is offered under the title, To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. In the U.K. it is titled First to Fly: The Unlikely Triumph of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
How's that for being political correct?
POSTSCRIPT
In the segment, "The Real
Skinny on the Statue of Liberty," Volume IV, No. 11, 3 Nov. 2002 (which see),
Dr. Evil explored the difficult-to-nail-down notion that the Statue of Liberty
was originally slated to stand at the entrance of the Suez Canal as "Liberty
Enlightening the World" and that only after Egypt decided that they could
no longer afford the statue, it was offered by France to the United States "as
a symbol of our alliance with France during the American Revolution." It's
difficult to find authoritative sources agreeing with this notion.
The clouds cleared a bit more recently, when I found the following in a review of Zachary Karabell's Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal, in the June 14, 2003 issue of The Economist. In it, the reviewer reports the following: "Who now recalls that Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, creator of the Statue of Liberty, first tried to plant his luminous lady not in New York harbour, but at the homely entrance to the Suez Canal? In her original form, she was to be an Egyptian peasant swathed in robes, and titled "Egypt Bringing Light to Asia".
OK! I'll drop the subject, now.
See you at the next rest stop.
Go to Mrs. Evil's Recipe for July, Oatmeal Pancakes with Walnuts
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