The Unicycle Boys’ Great Mustard-Gas Adventure

The All Right Boys at the World’s Fair

The Railroad Boys in the Outback

All the rest are real books that were published by real publishers, and every one of them can now be found at Project Gutenberg. If you know a boy with an ebook reader, you know now what to tell him.

The Motor Boys Overland
The Brighton Boys in the Trenches
Motor Boat Boys’ River Chase
The Go Ahead Boys and the Mysterious Old House
The Iron Boys on the Ore Boats
The Ranger Boys Outwit the Timber Thieves
The Radio Boys on Secret Service Duty
The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon
The River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence
The Auto Boys’ Quest
The Boy Aviators’ Flight for a Fortune

Although these are all real titles, as you can verify by following the links yourself, Dr. Boli might as well confess that he wishes he had made up The River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence and The Iron Boys on the Ore Boats.

The Motor Boys Overland
The Brighton Boys in the Trenches
Motor Boat Boys’ River Chase
The Go Ahead Boys and the Mysterious Old House
The Iron Boys on the Ore Boats
The Ranger Boys Outwit the Timber Thieves
The Unicycle Boys’ Great Mustard-Gas Adventure
The Radio Boys on Secret Service Duty
The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon
The All Right Boys at the World’s Fair
The River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence
The Auto Boys’ Quest
The Railroad Boys in the Outback
The Boy Aviators’ Flight for a Fortune

My fellow employees:

I have truly thrilling news for you all. Doubtless you have all been aware of the marketing study we commissioned from Rittenhouse Consulting. I say “doubtless” because, although I sincerely attempted to restrict the knowledge of the study to those directly involved in it, it appears that somebody let the “cat” out of the “bag,” resulting in several “firings.” But there is no use pretending that the news had not been broadcast far and wide, so I assume you have all heard it by now. We chose Rittenhouse Consulting specifically because we know them to be a trustworthy and reliable firm; I can speak from first-hand knowledge, since Bill Rittenhouse is my wife’s brother.

Well, the thrilling news is that at last, after eighteen months and $23.7 million, the study has been completed, and we have identified the ideal target market for our products as stupid people.

As a group, buyers of our products have a measured IQ averaging 87. This average holds good in both our baking and our armaments divisions. Clearly our offerings appeal to persons of below-average intelligence, and our consultants recommend that we capitalize on that built-in appeal, embracing a marketing strategy that is stupid-driven. Stupid people make up a large and influential segment of the market, and furthermore they are usually too dumb to figure out how to return products if they are dissatisfied.

Our company is already well-positioned to take advantage of this dynamic market segment. The consultants found that our Management Team has an average measured IQ of 83, putting us on the cutting edge of stupidity, and thus very much in touch with our target market. Indeed, Mr. Rittenhouse has informed me that one of the very hallmarks of stupidity is an unquestioning reliance on data from IQ tests. Clearly this is a winning scenario for us, and we will be announcing a wide range of new stupid-driven business policies over the next few weeks.

One minor adjustment has been necessary. Although most of our Management Team was exactly suited to our new stupid-driven business strategy, our consultants identified three executives who tested as having above-average intelligence. Those three executives have left the company to pursue other opportunities in the exciting and dynamic burger-flipping industry, and we wish them the very best luck in their new endeavors.

It must be the relative anonymity of Internet communication that encourages such dishonesty, since obviously no one would ever dream of being dishonest in real life. But is that dishonesty really necessary? Whatever idea you wish to express, there must be a million billion ways to say it. The English language, after all, has one or two synonyms in its arsenal.

I call for a National Board of Review, similar to the one that, in earlier and better times, reviewed movies for objectionable content, to review all comments, blog posts, and instant messages on the Internet. Such a board would be authorized specifically to root out sarcasm, exaggeration, and understatement; but I see no reason to limit the extent of its powers, since obviously no government body charged with prior censorship would ever abuse its authority. Countless millions of lives are at stake here, and surely the minimal effort of reading all the electronic communications in the world is a small price to pay for our security.

——Sincerely,
Xenophon M. Kranck,
Minersville.

]]> http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/drboli/2013/05/18/letter-to-the-editor-27/feed/ 8 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/drboli/2013/05/17/advertisement-796/ http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/drboli/2013/05/17/advertisement-796/#comments Sat, 18 May 2013 01:47:35 +0000 Dr. Boli http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/drboli/?p=7425

LEARN MUSIC NOW! Trained professional music teacher comes to your home to teach you how to operate MP3 player. Experience the satisfaction!

COLD-BLOODED REPTILE wanted to head large federal agency responsible for collection of government revenue. Must have no political opinions, human sympathy, or pride. Ideal candidate will have thick skin such as found on crocodile or Komodo dragon.

ABOUT TO GRADUATE? If you have a high-school diploma, come to the Agricultural Job Fair at the convention center, Friday, 4-8 p.m. Positions now open for motivated peasants. Are you looking to bind yourself to a plot of land owned by a major agricultural corporation?

On the subject of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, reader Mike Weatherford writes:

I’m currently reading Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle at Philadelphia. Excellent book, well-written, and not dull. It’s a miracle that anything got done with such a collection of political hotheads. That the final document has served us so well for so long is a tribute to their tenacity and vision.

Dr. Boli agrees that our current Constitution is a tribute to the tenacity of the hotheads in Philadelphia. He has always suspected that delegates finally succeeded in coming to agreement on both the Declaration of Independence and, eleven years later, the Constitution because both assemblies were held in Philadelphia in the summer. A summer in Philadelphia makes any compromise seem preferable to spending another day in Philadelphia; the beastly heat would eventually wear down the most intransigent sectionalist. It can hardly be coincidence that, when the time came to pick a permanent national capital, the founders of our nation settled on the one site where the summer climate was even worse. Dr. Boli believes that much reform could be accomplished simply by prohibiting air conditioning in both houses of Congress.

As for our founders’ vision, at last count 27 serious errors in the original Constitution have been discovered and corrected. Furthermore, at least one of those corrections was itself a serious error.

Dr. Boli believes, in fact, that the great strength of our Constitution is its lack of vision, or even principle. Delegates committed to democracy would have insisted that the president be elected by the people. Delegates committed to aristocracy would have insisted that the president be chosen by the Senate. Delegates committed to getting out of Philadelphia before their brains melted into their collars were willing to accept the positively lunatic compromise that the people should vote for a number of electors more or less proportional to the populations of their states, but giving slightly more influence to the smaller states, and then those electors should meet and vote for the president. They did not accept it because anyone was happy about that idea, but because no one was more unhappy about it than he was about being stuck in Philadelphia in the summer.

Any number of other nations have imposed perfectly rational constitutions on their people, and the end result has always been a descent into tyranny and massacre. We grudgingly accepted a bundle of half-baked compromises that no sane person could enthusiastically embrace, and we have toddled along pretty well with it for a while now.