I had a hunch something like this would happen.

Captain Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the designer of the Gipsy Moth aircraft flown nonstop from England to Australia in 1930 by Amy Johnson, was so far as is known to this correspondent not a relative of the American cartoonist Fontaine Fox, he of the justly celebrated Toonerville Trolley. I simply cannot imagine from whence this confusion arises. While the two men were indeed contemporaries (Sir Geoffrey, 1882 - 1965; Mr. Fox, 1884 -1964), there is no evidence that they ever met, much less that there was some longstanding rivalry between them. I suspect neither was aware of the other's existence.

Oscar Hammerstein, too

There's a crisis looming in the English language that demands our attention. I mean the coming word shortage. There's probably not a million words in the language, yet there are way more than a million things. And that's just nouns. Add in all the actions nouns can perpetrate and you'll need a lot more, plus adjectives and adverbs and the little words that fill in the gaps, sentence grout I call them. Just how bad is the shortage? We've already had to assign numbers to things that should get their own unique terms, like “World War” or “Sonny Boy Williamson.”

Other big attractions: Molson's, Shatner.

It has come to our attention that the Earth's North Magnetic Pole is not a stable point on the surface of the world, nor is it at the actual North Pole. It is in fact located in Canada, close to Ellesmere Island. Fair enough, you say, that's certainly within spitting distance and plenty good for my own navigational needs. But listen. The North Magnetic Pole is moving, at a rate of about 35 miles each year, towards Russia. And I ask you, can we afford to allow one half of our planet's magnetic poles to slip behind the Iron Curtain?

If you're so smart, why ain't you dead?

I've been thinking about bad decisions, and how good decisions grow out of them. Stuck behind a log truck on skinny winding blacktop, it's probably a bad decision to try to pass. Being patient is statistically speaking the better option, survivalwise. Jumping into the pool from a second story balcony is a bad choice. I know that now, though it worked out fine at the time. Climbing the radio tower was dumb. The borrowed motorcycle, the drummer's sister, the mysterious powder, the third trip to the buffet. All terrible ideas. My question is, how do cautious people ever learn anything?

Science News

I don't often use the word flabbergasted. It is an unpleasant word, with a sort of moist meaty sound to it. It seems somehow vulgar and possibly slightly obscene, although its meaning is innocuous enough. Perfectly decent folk are known to employ it in ordinary conversation. But I see no compelling reason to speak it in the presence of ladies or the very young, when dumbfounded or astonished convey the same general meaning. But the word seems completely apropos when one is confronted by the sentence “Newly discovered hermaphroditic sea slug deploys specialized needle-thin organ for injections near the eyes.”

Substantive Issues

I believe it is intrusive to prohibit driving under the influence of alcohol. Because the issue isn't whether a driver is drunk, but whether he or she is dangerous. So I propose administering the driving exam under progressively higher blood alcohol levels, and issuing a license at the highest level of inebriation at which the driver can pass the test. I also think it's nobody's business what performance enhancing drugs an athlete uses. Professional sports is show business, after all, and you don't see them taking back the Grateful Dead's gold records because they were achieved while using banned substances.

Leaving no mind unboggled

Here are two good reasons to mention Nikodem Poplawski. First, I suggest saying his name aloud a time or two. Nice, right? Second, Nikodem Poplawski is a physicist who theorizes that every black hole in our universe causes a Big Bang that creates another universe, which presumably would contain black holes of its own, ad infinitum. Conversely, our own universe is on the wrong side of an event horizon in another universe. Again, ad infinitum. Each universe has its own space-time; we can't ever visit. Sort of like how Nancy and Sluggo can't hang out with Charlie Brown and Lucy.