| Wednesday, September 24, 2008 |
13:33 - Flowers for Phytoplankton
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/08/0908/092408.html
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Lileks reviewing old mysery movies:
Bulldog enlists the help of his addled chum Algae, who wasn’t doing anything at the time, really, just standing around the hospital waiting for his wife to give birth.
I once read a children's book, probably one of those stacks that were written in the 50s that we were all supposed to relate to even though they talked about how only rich people in New York City could afford refrigerators and everyone else (including the protagonists) put their perishables in a box hanging outside the window all winter, where the kids had to give a name to something (probably a gerbil or a hamster or a diplodocus or whatever kids had back then). They dismissed a bunch of different names as being too easy to make fun of ("Bart, Cart, Dart, Ee-art..."); but then settled on "Algie" as being immune to such manipulations.
I couldn't figure out why they didn't think "Algie" was worse than any of the other possibilities they considered. I mean, it's not like you run into anybody named Algie today, for what I would have considered obvious reasons. But I guess I should just assume that back in the 50s they didn't teach this modren-style New Biology that treats the unicellular phyla as equally important to the walking and talking ones, the way I grew up with it. Back then they probably just called it all "scum" or something, right?
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Brian Tiemann
