Alphonse Allais was a peerless French humorist, celebrated posthumously by the Surrealists for his elegant style and disturbing imagination.  Among other things, he wrote a series of wonderful stories about his friend Albert Caperon.  In Allais’s hands, “Captain Cap” became an adventurer and inventor, with a disdain for bureaucracy and a heroic thirst for cocktails.  […]

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Mutt and Jeff discuss taxes, in this daily strip from 1926.  Jeff has it all figured out. (Posted by Doug Skinner.  From The Mutt and Jeff Cartoons, Book 11, 1926.)

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The speaking statue may be a uniquely Italian custom.  At any rate, I don’t know of any elsewhere. By a speaking statue, I don’t mean one that actually talks, but one that serves as a bulletin board for diatribes, slogans, and satirical verse.  An essential part of the tradition is that the statue becomes a […]

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[Here is, approximately, the outline Dr. Mamie Caton and I followed for our bit in our Medi-Vaudeville event.  I prepared it to allow interaction with Mamie (who was too busy to write anything herself) and with the audience.  And I’ll pursue it on another page, to keep the home page tidy.] (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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In May 1776, the Continental Congress proclaimed a day of “Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.”  Since then, our presidents have occasionally marked off a special day for prayer; and in 1988 Reagan fixed the first Thursday in May as “The National Day of Prayer.”  Humiliation and fasting have apparently been cut. Not all presidents have hopped […]

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[The flurry of activity that went into our event, “Medi-Vaudeville,” delayed the last installment of this talk on Darwinism.  Please do read the earlier parts; it’s all connected.] If “BC” could introduce the Bible into the caveman cartoon, then, obviously, the next step is to introduce the caveman cartoon into the Bible. So, busy theologians […]

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[Darwin continues to munch on a birthday cake with 200 candles; and we continue to cheer him on with my talk on his cultural impact.  We’re now in the full cry of the Cold War, watching the Scopes Trial be rewritten as “Inherit the Wind.”  Oh dear.]  In fact, “Inherit the Wind” departed so much from […]

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[Yes, Virginia, there is a Charles Darwin; and we continue to fete his bicentennial by serializing my talk on the impact of his theories on American culture.  Have a seat.] A few days after the Scopes trial had pooped out, Bryan died.  Mencken exulted, “We killed the son-of-a-bitch,” and ran a rather nasty obituary, calling […]

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[The serialization of my talk on Darwin’s odd cultural impact marches forward.  We take a break from the Scopes Trial to ponder the history of caveman cartoons — and the curiously tenacious popularity of the brontosaurus.] Well, the legal news is always engrossing, but let’s turn for a moment to the funny pages.  It’s as good […]

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[Open wide, for another tasty dipperful of my talk on the apparently ceaseless squabble between Darwinians and anti-Darwinians.  I gave this talk at a couple of Fortean conventions a few years back; I’m posting it here to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial.  See the earlier dippersful for more details; meanwhile, the Scopes trial is in progress.] The Scopes trial […]

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