Memo . . .

Genuine . . .

Because maple syrup comes from maple trees . . . With real artificial flavour!

H/T to Donald and Daniel.

Fine art . . .

Ray Villafane sure knows how to carve. Mental Floss has a selection of his wonderful oeuvres.

This will not stand!

"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it"
-Stephen Harper

Not content with running roughshod over the wishes of the majority of Canadians and eliminating the long-gun registry, ignoring the majority of wheat farmers and cutting the throat of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Harper conservatives are now starting to tinker with national symbols.

Dam the beaver — use the polar bear as official emblem, Tory saysOTTAWA—A Conservative senator says it’s time Canada was symbolized by something more majestic than a buck-toothed rodent.
Senator Nicole Eaton wants the polar bear to replace the beaver as an official emblem of Canada.
She says the polar bear is Canada’s “most majestic and splendid mammal,” and a powerful symbol in the lives of native peoples in the North.
She believes the furry, white carnivore’s “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is an appropriate symbol for modern-day Canada.
By contrast, she derides the lowly beaver as a “19th century has-been,” a “dentally defective rat,” a “toothy tyrant” and a nuisance that wreaks havoc on its environment.

                                                                                           I suppose next they will want to change the flag to a circle of 10 white maple leaves on a blue field in the top left corner over a field of red and white stripes, or maybe just bring back the Red Ensign, since they seem to want to burn down anything that has happened since Diefenbaker was prime minister. Tweet

Females and firearms

FIREARMS ARE A "MOTHERHOOD" ISSUE; they provoke all manner of ill-thought knee-jerk — just look at the outcry from the hard-of-thinking over the Long Gun Registry boondoggle. Enthusiasts for the sport are described caustically as "These are the civilian gun nuts who pretty themselves up like a JTF-2 assaulter and accessorize with "cool" looking tactical shotguns and whatever other Parkerized steel and black-furnitured firearms are presently legal in Canada.".

Of course, the person commenting hasn't ever heard of  the International Practical Shooting Confederation Of Canada — these people "pretty themselves up like a JTF-2 assaulter", because that's the equipment you use. Even 70 year-old grandmothers, like Edith and her Parkerized military 12 ga Benelli and her 10mm Glock. 

Now, firearms owners aren't all mullet-wearing trailer park Walmartians. WIRED has a delightful photo essay, "Chicks with Guns", with non-psychopathic women and their favored firearms. As far away from the Kookier crowd as you can get.

Cally O'Neal lives! I think I'm in love . . .

Courtney, Houston, Texas, Yildiz 20-gauge —
"My favorite gun is a 20-gauge over-and-under. The 12-gauge I can use, but it has too much kick for the kind of hunting/shooting that I like to do. I recently bought a ladies’ Turkish 20-gauge side-by-side that I love. It is lightweight, and it looks pretty. And I like the look of side-by-sides and over-and-unders.... I also really like to dress to hunt even though dove are colorblind."

Love CBC

Thanks, Marg.

Big eyes . . .

REMOTELY PILOTED AIRCRAFT — aka "drones" are developing with explosive rapidity. I have mentioned this before, that this is very much the wave of the future. Some "progressives" get very uncomfortable about these machines, and seek relief in disparaging discussion as being fixated on weapons as a fetish material. Even idiots are entitled to their opinion, I just hope they stay out of positions of authority where they send people into harm's way, because, regardless of whether you are "progressive" or troglodytic, the battlefield is about to become way, way more deadly than it's ever been.

The New York Post, a strident right-wing rag, has an article by Noah Shachtman, "Dread zeppelin" — ya gotta love it — about the ‘Blue Devil’ — the US military’s massive new eye in the Afghan sky.

Come this fall, there will be a new and extremely powerful supercomputer in Afghanistan. But it won’t be in Dave Petraeus’ headquarters in Kabul or at some three-letter agency’s operations center in Kandahar. It’ll be floating 20,000 feet above the war zone, aboard a giant, robotic spy blimp that watches and listens to everything for miles around.

That is, if an ambitious, $211 million crash program called “Blue Devil” works out as planned. As of now, the unmanned airship’s “freakishly large” hull — seven times the size of the Goodyear blimp’s — has yet to be put together. The Air Force hasn’t settled yet on exactly which cameras and listening devices will fly on board. And it’s still an open question whether the military can handle all the information that the airship will be collecting from above.

• • •

The first phase of the Blue Devil project is already underway. Late last year, four modified executive planes were shipped to Afghanistan and equipped with an array of surveillance gear.

Phase two — the airship — will be considerably bigger, and more complex. The lighter-than-air craft is longer than a football field, at 350 feet. The hull is being stitched and glued and sewn together out of Kevlar-like composite fibers at a facility in North Carolina.

“It’s freakishly large,” says a source close to the program, “one of the largest airships produced since World War II.”

The Air Force hopes that the extra size should give it enough fuel and helium to stay aloft for as much as a week at a time at nearly four miles up. That’s an improvement over most airships, which float at about 3,000 feet — and therefore have a pretty limited field of view. It’s also an upgrade over spy drones, which can only fly for about a day before they run out of gas. So instead of constantly rotating in and out robotic planes, the US military can keep this eye in the sky staring at a suspected Taliban hideout for seven days at a stretch.

WIRED has a companion article, "Flying Spy Surge: Surveillance Missions Over Afghanistan Quadruple", that expounds on this expansion:

In mid-2009, as the Pentagon began sending a slew of new spy planes to Afghanistan, a top military official joked that the U.S. was about to “blot out the sun” with all the new surveillance drones there.

Turns out, that official wasn’t entirely kidding. Back in 2009, NATO aircraft flew about 22 surveillance missions per day over Afghanistan. Today, according to military statistics, the coalition is flying nearly 85 spy sorties daily, for a total of more than 22,800 missions in the first nine months in 2011.

Back when the official cracked his joke, there was only a handful of spy planes flying at any given time over Afghanistan. Now, there are 54 Predator and Reaper drones in the air at once, most of them above Afghanistan. They’re joined by an array of executive-planes-turned-aerial-snoops and dozens of traditional fighters and bombers, all of which now come equipped with surveillance cameras. Thanks to this aerial spy surge, Afghanistan has become a virtual Panopticon.

A lot more dangerous. Anyway, "Dread Zeppelin" could be ideal for our Arctic surveillance.

Them what has . . .

THE CORPORATE MATRIX, as reported by BOINGBOING's Cory Doctorow, consolidates wealth and wealth control to a disturbing degree, in an article, "Densely-linked cluster of 147 companies control 40% of world's total wealth":

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

A CORE OF 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. H/T — SCANNER.

A first for seconds . . .

CRISTINA KIRCHNER SEEMS CERTAIN to be re-elected President of Argentina. According to the Guardian, "Cristina Kirchner set to be re-elected as Argentina's president"

Exit polls predict landslide victory for current president, making her first woman in Latin America to twice win the presidency.

It actually seems that Latin America is becoming a place with some political sanity. Maybe they could export it along with that wonderful wine . . .

Truth in numbers . . .

But seriously, folks . . .

OCCUPY WALL STREET is top-of-mind for care and concern with people from all over the political spectrum, all over the world. This beginning of the beginning of a new, more equitable world order might be our last, best hope at avoiding the advent of what is essentially the Fourth Reich on cyber-steroids.

The rather amorphous 'organization' or lack therof has been a source of snide opinion from mainstream pundits. But like Mr. K. observed, "You're the only one that you are screwing. When you put down what you don't understand." — Kris Kristofferson, If You Don't Like Hank Williams

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION has an article on the origins of the OWS that is worthy of your attention. It's no wonder the gang at FOX don't get it.

The movement has an academic heritage that spans political science, economics, and literature, but its organizing principles owe a debt to an ethnography of Madagascar.

It was on this island nation off the coast of Africa that David Graeber, one of the movement's early organizers, who has been called one of its main intellectual sources, spent 20 months between 1989 and 1991. He studied the people of Betafo, a community of descendants of nobles and of slaves, for his 2007 book, Lost People.

Betafo was "a place where the state picked up stakes and left," says Mr. Graeber, an ethnographer, anarchist, and reader in anthropology at the University of London's Goldsmiths campus.

In Betafo he observed what he called "consensus decision-making," where residents made choices in a direct, decentralized way, not through the apparatus of the state. "Basically, people were managing their own affairs autonomously," he says.

Designers are optimists . . .

YA GOTTA ROLL WITH IT — the 750c.c. UNICYCLE, conceived by Alkis Karaolis in Solidworks CAD-reality, then rendered in another CAD prog, Rhinoceros. That means you actually could possibly really build it, instead of creating it in Photoshop phantasy-land, where all it can be is an arrangement of pixels. TUVIE is the site with the article, proclaims itself to be concerned with "design of the future", it's an interesting collection of stuff, like the wonderfully silly racer below, as well as real-life practicalities that make it out of Boffin-land.

Switchblade . . .

"DRONE" TECH KEEPS CHANGING. According to DefenseNews, a report from AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE proclaims the addition of Switchblade to the US infantry's arsenal.

Switchblade is a "kamikaze" drone.

A miniature "kamikaze" drone designed to quietly hover in the sky before dive-bombing and slamming into a human target will soon be part of the U.S. Army's arsenal, officials say.

Weighing less than two kilos, the drone is small enough to fit into a soldier's backpack and is launched from a tube, with wings quickly folding out as it soars into the air, according to manufacturer AeroVironment.

• • •

The Switchblade, however, is touted as a way to avoid killing bystanders.

"Flying quietly at high speed the Switchblade delivers its onboard explosive payload with precision while minimizing collateral damage," the company said.

The end result of this is that the schwerpunkt is going to become even more lethal as time goes on. How these changes will affect what the strategists call 4GW, aka "wars of liberation" in the coming decades is anybody's guess, as we are at a stage of development roughly equal to WW1 aircraft like Tom Sopwith's Camel.

Chris Hedges on Occupy TVNY . . . .

Embed Code removed. Here's the YouTube link . . . .

YANKEE GO HOME . . .

LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY has a wonderful report that bends the needle around the stop-peg of the irony meter and bears re-posting:

Banana Republic Stores to Open in Panama and Colombia

Hogan's comment on their blog was marvelous:

Maybe they’ll call the stores something else, like Yankee Go Home or So Far from God.

Yankee Go Home! WHAT A BRAND! Grunge-distress Nirvana! Just add "Authentic".

I wonder what Jimmy's take might be?

That's gotta hurt . . .

PUTTING THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER. "Heal" by Ghost Productions, is a fine piece of animation which shows the state of the art in skeletal repair. Always good to have an idea of what's possible, when you have healthcare. Don't like ladders . . .

OWS Occupies Vancouver . . . .

Having only had about an hour and a half to spare, the Occupy Vancouver facilitators were able to get thru the first side of the "Consensus Decision Making" flyer before I had to leave.

Lots of discussions, counter-discussions, "are we loud enough?", "where should the translators stand?" kind of stuff.




Guess there's lots of time for patience as they are planning on occupying thru December.

Don't envy them out there in the cool, damp air at that time of the year in Vancouver but "more power to 'em ! ! ! !"

Bizarro . . .

Bashardashery . . .

SARTORIALLY, SEVERE SUCKAGE. You gotta work at getting this bad; even the visiting commies in the 40's and 50's looked better than this, honest. Maybe he's got an inflatable hump, I dunno, maybe he intends to take roids and pump iron? Maybe it was his dad's? Maybe if somebody had done his colors when he was a teenager?

Times are tough . . .

NOW THEY'RE STEALING BRIDGES. Specifically, the one that was found at Covert’s Crossing in western Pennsylvania — a century-old, 50 feet long, 40 tons heavy. According to Liz Navratil, at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, someone came in with blowtorches and dismantled the whole thing sometime between Sept. 27 and Oct. 7. Worth about $100K, will eventually re-appear as a Hyundai or somesuch.

H/T Helmut, merci.

Liberty . . .

Organic architecture . . .

HERE THERE BE HOBBITS, for sure. Cost $5,000, for the climate in Wales. Find out more at Peacock Poverty. Also, Green Building Elements.

Peanut progress . . .

ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK from allergic reaction to peanuts may have a cure! According to Alasdair Wilkins' article in io9, "Scientists figure out how to switch off peanut allergy", the technique is rather clever in its simplicity.

The peanut allergy is one of the eight most common types of food allergies, and the common use of peanuts in a wide range of foods makes it particularly dangerous. But now scientists have a solution: trick your immune system.

Now researchers at Northwestern University may have found a solution. The key is finding a way to short-circuit the immune system's response to peanut proteins. To do that, researchers Paul Bryce and Stephen Miller attached peanut proteins to blood cells, which are then reintroduced to the body. The T cells in the immune system recognize the familiar blood cells and start building up a tolerance to the peanut proteins, effectively removing the immune response that creates the peanut allergy. This method has been used before in helping to treat autoimmune disease, and now the researchers have been able to extend it to working with food allergies.

Soon, maybe, peanut butter can reappear in school lunches. Love those cookies.

Steve . . .

Asia-Pacific interests . . .

Cold War Dinosaur: the gigantic, 34,000-ton Typhoon-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine

THE DIPLOMAT is a thoughtful site that focuses on things going on in the Asia-Pacific part of the planet. Their FLASHPOINTS page is well worth visiting, listing some very interesting topics.

One of them, "Is the US a Reliable Ally?", is an interesting look at the impact of North Korea and Taiwan on the US and China. Another worth looking at, is "Russia’s Disappearing Subs", about the current state and uncertain future of the Russian missile sub fleet. It's not an easy gig: How do you tell a Russian submariner? He's the one that glows in the dark.

Also "Secretive New Space Shuttle?", an article on Boeing's proposed new space shuttle, a lengthened version of the X-37B robotic space-plane, that will carry up to 6 astronauts. With the STS retired, the US has to rely on Soyuz rentals while the Orion capsule/booster system is built, and the Boeing proposal might offer a reasonable-cost way to get back in orbit before the Orion is ready, because it uses the already extant Atlas V heavy booster.

Traffic . . .

CARACAS, VENEZUELA HAS HIRED 120 MIMES to help downtown traffic. According to Lauri Apple's article on JALOPNIK,

Mimes: What are they good for? Oh, so many things! They bring laughter and joy to everyone who encounters them. They help the white makeup industry stay financially afloat. Sometimes they make precious balloon animals. And most importantly, they know how to combat traffic in high-density urban areas, which is why Caracas, Venezuela has just unleashed 120 of them into the streets.

Marcel, altogether.

Great idea, but with road rage, Marcel Marceau could become Marcel Morceaux, only more so, depending on velocity . . .

Sign of the times . . .

Love the New Yorker.

WTF? . . .

THIS HAS TO BE A JOKE, but according to the Hindustan Times, the MiG 21 has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! That's right, the MiG 21, an obsolete Cold War era fighter/interceptor. According to the article by Gursimran Khamba, "Indian Mig 21 nominated for Nobel Peace Prize",

The Indian Air Force came in for a surprise today as the Nobel Foundation in Sweden nominated the Mig 21 for the Peace Prize in 2012, shortly after announcing Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman as winners for 2011. In a press release, the Nobel Foundation states "We would like to appreciate the role of the IAF Mig-21 which is the most prominent aircraft to reject the notion of war by deciding to crash in entirety before any conflict arises, thus saving thousands of innocent lives. Unlike Barack Obama who was given the prize despite being at war with two countries, the Mig 21 is only at war with its inability to survive a flight."

Indian defence analysts however were not amused. "This seems like an attempt by the Scandinavians to mock the equipment levels of the Indian Air Force. They are probably still peeved that the SAAB Gripen got rejected by the IAF for the 126 MMRCA fighter contract, and they're using the Nobel Foundation as a front to publicly humiliate us."

For a variety of reasons, the old MiG (and its Chinese copy, the Chengdu J-7) is a bitchy aircraft to fly, it will kill the inexperienced long before they might fall to enemy guns or missiles. According to the Wiki link above,

The safety record of the IAF's MiG-21s has raised concern in the Indian Parliament and media, leading to the aircraft sometimes being referred to in the IAF as a "flying coffin". One source estimates that in the nine years from 1993 to 2002, the IAF lost over 100 pilots in 283 accidents. During its service life, the IAF has lost at least 116 aircraft to crashes (not including those lost in combat), with 81 of those occurring since 1990.

Must be somebody's got a sense of humor, and great hacking skills. Go figure.

Lovecraft . . .

What if Dr. Seuss wrote The Call of Cthulhu? io9's Cyriaque Lamar notes that "now, children of all ages can learn about he who slumbers in his house at R'lyeh".

Delusions of faith . . .

DANGEROUS MINDS has a fascinating report on some Christian wackos. Apparently, they believe that Pokemon is demonic, as is Minecraft and Guitar Hero. Below is another example of delusional "thinking".

Time passes . . .

$5.50 for a bottle of hooch at the LCBO? Them's was the good old days.

Frites . . .

ACCORDING TO THE LA TIMES, France has banned the use of ketchup in school cafeterias — except for consumption with French Fries. Go figure. Kim Willsher reports that

In an effort to promote healthful eating and, it has been suggested, to protect traditional Gallic cuisine, the French government has banned school and college cafeterias nationwide from offering the American tomato-based condiment with any food but — of all things — French fries.

As a result, students can no longer use ketchup on such traditional dishes as veal stew, no matter how gristly, and boeuf bourguignon, regardless of its fat content.

Moreover, French fries can be offered only once a week, usually with steak hache, or burger. Not clear is whether the food police will send students to detention if they dip their burgers into the ketchup that accompanies their fries.

A Stocking Stuffer . . .

JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!! The Stephen Harper Colouring & Activity Book. Really. The site proclaims the oeuvre to be written by Dave Rosen, with a foreword by Brian Topp, and that it is:

A wildly irreverent poke at Canada’s Prime Minister that lays waste to everything from Stephen Harper’s hairdo to that most sacred of national pastimes – making fun of Stephen Harper’s hairdo.

The Stephen Harper Colouring & Activity Book puts the PM right where Canadians most want him – at the business end of their crayons.

Includes:

zzzzz • Build a G8 Gazebo
zzzzz • Pick a Supreme Court Justice
zzzzz • Re-Brand Canada
zzzzz • Paper dolls
zzzzz • Connect-the-dots
zzzzz • Word games
zzzzz • Mazes

…and much, much more!

H/T to Scanner, thank-you, sir.

Immigration . . .

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES GET ALL UPSET over illegal immigration by Mexicans, but remain blissfully oblivious to other, less visible arrivals. According to io9's Charlie Jane Anders' article, "Southern United States Invaded by "Hairy, Crazy Ants" that Attack Electrical Systems", these new critters are a real delight.

They can't be stopped with conventional pesticide. They can disable a huge industrial plant, and they short out electrical equipment. They eat animals as well as plants. Kill 100,000, and a million more ants will follow.

They're the "hairy, crazy ants," and they're overrunning Texas, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.

• • • •

An Associated Press story quotes exterminator Tom Rasberry as saying that a computer system for controlling pipeline valves in a chemical plant shorted out twice due to the ants, but now he uses "overkill" with pesticides to keep them under control. Says Rasberry:

I did a test site with a product early on and applied the product to a half-acre ... In 30 days I had two inches of dead ants covering the entire half-acre. It looked like the top of the dead ants was just total movement from all the live ants on top of the dead ants.

While I hate shoveling snow, there's a lot to be said for a nice hard killing frost.

Success story . . .

Drug money in Mexico. Note the small pile of Canadian bills in front of all the Benjies.

FRED REED IS A CURMUGEON to some, a tell-it-like-it-is observer to others. An American ex-pat living in Mexico, he has been rather scathing in his denunciation of American policies and their impact on Latin America. His latest blog post, "Helping the DEA" resumes his critique of the Drug Enforcement Agency

Fact is, though, DEA as an organization ain’t done jack-shit about drugs. I’m sorry, but there it is. It’s like a law of logic. If you set out to do something impossible, you won’t do it. That’s DEA.

A little history if I may. In the Sixties, when mind candy went universal, we had pot, acid, shrooms, mescaline, and various amphetamines. Scag was a ghetto drug for strung-out crashers like William Burroughs, coke mostly unknown, and crack nonexistent.

OK, half-century later. To my certain knowledge, today in suburban Washington, as for example at Washington and Lee High where my daughters did time, kids can buy all the aforementioned goodies, plus nitrous, Ecstasy, crystal and, within a five-minute drive, there may still be an open-air crack market in the parking lot of Green Valley pharmacy. Crack isn’t a kid drug, but it is easily available all over Washington.

Further, I know all sorts of people in their sixties now, veterans of Dong Ha or Woodstock, some of them vets of both, and most of them do grass and not infrequently hallucinogens. I’m talking door-gunners, Special Forces guys, at least two Ivy profs, just plain people. So, Michelle, what exactly has the War on Half the Population accomplished?

You certainly aren’t protecting kids in high school, or even middle school, from becoming drooling stoners living in dumpsters. They have easier access to drugs than you do. What protects kids from becoming needle-cases is—I am aware of the preposterousness of this—the common sense of teenagers. They aren’t druggies because they don’t want to be. They aren’t alkies because they don’t want to be. Most don’t smoke because they don’t want to. DEA has nothing to do with it. Kids could easily do all of these things. America is up to the armpits in drugs, tobacco, and booze.

So you see, Michelle, the DEA is like a man sitting on a raft in mid-Pacific, trying to outlaw water.

And failure has some frightening possibilities, because the cartels are ruthless, and if, in the unlikely event that the DEA did get its shit together, there could be even more need for body bags:

You might try to drill into the Pentagonal mind—I would suggest a cold chisel and a sledge hammer—that Mexico differs in a fundamental way from the military’s other comic efforts at martial enterprise: The narcos have a million gringo hostages. Or maybe five hundred thousand. Nobody is sure exactly how many Americans live in Mexico. They—we—are very soft targets. We live in a sort of sprawl across Mexico, concentrated in places well known, grouping in known bars, unarmed and utterly defenseless.

A minor contact I have with the bad guys says that, now, attacking Americans carries a death sentence from people who would carry it out with a blow torch over a period of days. “Oh no. Don’t fuck with the gringos,” says this guy. Like most Mexicans, the narcos figure the US is looking for a pretext to invade. They are happy with the current semi-partnership with Washington and don’t want interference.

But piss these bad boys off—they are very, very bad boys—and they could begin killing gringos by hundreds. Logically it would be an easy way of putting pressure on Washington to back off. Washington could write off aging vets living on disability from Nam, but a lot of expats here live in houses costing a million doomed green dollars.

Meanwhile, we have Stevie and his attitude on drugs. H/T to Nolan.

Windex for the mind . . .

Ambrose and friend.

AMBROSE BIERCE DID NOT SUFFER FOOLS GLADLY. Along with Mark Twain, he was the foremost acerbic wit in American 19th century publishing. 2011 is the centennial of the publication of his major oeuvre, "The Devil's Dictionary", a compendium of word definitions for those with no illusions:

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.

THE SMART SET is a delightful web site produced by Drexel University, in Philadelphia. Stefany Anne Golberg has a wonderful article, "To the Devil: The Devil's Dictionary at 100", where she goes to some depth to describe the man and his times.

On the surface, it’s not clear why cynicism was such a popular attitude in those years padding the front and back ends of the turn of the century. It was decades past the Civil War and years before the First World War. America had started to become comfortable in her role as a country that was powerful but not so powerful as to shoulder the burden of being a real global force. Progress was fast becoming the new religion, giving Americans a sense of excitement about their place in the universe. Americans put on wonderful exhibitions about their own wonderful inventions — light bulbs, remote control technology, the telephone, the Ferris wheel — while not yet feeling the full invasion of technology and amusement that would define the 20th century.

Yet with all this optimism came a sense of unease. It had been a while since Americans, as a whole, had felt anything to be at stake. Americans were brought together socially by the Civil War and light bulbs, but they were also becoming unmoored from the traditions that once gave them a sense of community. Cynicism became another diversion. It was a way to discuss the growing emptiness of American life and the coming disorientation of modernity with an easy hilarity — cynicism for cynicism’s sake.

• • • •

MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.

• • • •

Bierce’s definition of CYNIC as “a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be” is easily dismissed as the rant of a self-important curmudgeon. This is a grave misunderstanding. As much as anyone, Bierce saw things as they really were and knew that there had to be another way. He had seen America in the depths of hell, had seen love from the bottom of a pit. He had shaken hands with greedy governors and jaded journalists, saw how men and women could abuse each other in the name of freedom and justice and altruism. For all its humor, The Devil’s Dictionary is a damnation of human hypocrisy, avarice, and selfishness. No one gets out clean — not even Bierce. For whom better to spread the word of evil than the Devil himself, the author of Bierce’s eponymous work? The Devil’s Dictionary is a memoir of a man who knew all about selfishness and hypocrisy, a man who had seen hell. No wonder Bierce was adamant about the title. This was no The Cynic’s t’Other. This was a dictionary of the Devil.

Today, we have folks like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher to carry the torch — and Gahan Wilson.