The Danger of Weddings

Dear Dr Knowledge:
I am engaged to be married to a woman I love very much, yet lately I have been having second thoughts. My problem began when I started watching funny home video shows where all kinds of horrible accidents are shown happening to people at weddings. Should I really be concerned?
Anxious in Oregon

It is one of the greatest pleasures afforded a respected dispenser of advice to be able to allay some young person's fears with a gentle word of assurance, to raise the curtain of misunderstanding, and chase away the shadows of false fear. But, unfortunately, in this case, such a pleasure is denied me. Yes, you should absolutely be concerned. For I have extensive experience in this field, and I can say with complete confidence that, if anything, our humorous home video programs drastically underreport the frequency with which weddings are marred by these low comic accidents. Young man, (I believe you are young) let me tell you: Of the dozens of weddings I have seen, there is hardly one I can recall wherein a groom did not faint or an old maid break her leg diving for the bouquet or bridesmaid set her hair on fire or older guest slip and fall on the dance floor or people, who had climbed onto the tables and chairs for some reason or other, do themselves various injuries when the furniture gave way. In fact, a good handful of these accidents and similar catastrophes in some combination can be sure to happen at any wedding.

When contemplating marriage, it will be good to recall the learned Bevoriskius's warning to the youth of his day: Marrigium non inarmori inegressari sit (meaning "Marriage ought not be entered into lightly.") Note, however, that for "lightly" he uses "inarmori" which is derived from the military term and translates closer to "unarmored." For truly these accidents plagued the weddings of ancient times no less than they do ours.

Speaking of Bevoriskius has put me in mind an anecdote from his Journals that preceded and inspired his maxim. So, in answer to your question, Anxious, and for the benefit of the young everywhere, I have provided a translation below. My young readers, if your heart is not hardened to advice, if you are still capable of being moved by example and reason, hearken carefully to the story that is to follow.

From The Journals of Bevoriskius

In the year of our Lord 836, I was traveling on horseback on my way through the village of L____, when I chanced to meet two riders coming towards me riding at a furious pace. They pulled up when they saw me, and I, having greeted them in friendly terms, expressed my curiosity to know what they were about. The one, whom I noted to be the taller and handsomer of the two, bowing and addressing me, said he was Juan Dietro San Lupe; and this afternoon his brother, indicating the other rider, was to be married to Lucia Maria Espinoza, the fairest virgin in all the land. At the mention of this name, the young man paused to bow his head reverently, then continued: They had decided, so as to be out of the way of the preparations and to let the time before the ceremony pass more quickly, to give themselves the pleasure of some exercise on horseback.

I thanked him but, drawing him near, said I feared his brother, who did not approach but stayed behind looking rather pale, had ceased to receive the benefits of the exercise and now seemed, if he persisted in his original plan, to risk doing himself some injury.

The young man, seeing that his brother had not overheard, confided in me, with a glee that startled me, that he had noticed it too and, he admitted, with great satisfaction. For it was he, he swore, suddenly becoming greatly animated, who loved Lucia Maria Espinoza, not his brother; and he flattered himself to believe that his affections were returned. However, with his brother being the eldest and in line to inherit the family's estate, it was to him that her hand was promised.

This disappointment, the young man related to me, had torn at his heart for months, during which, he swore, he barely ate or slept. Then he struck on a idea. Knowing that his brother was corpulent, with a sluggish constitution, of a sedentary nature, and also by nature given to fainting, he conceived the plan, which he had that morning set in motion, of proposing strenuous horseback exercise to wear down his brother's defenses, eroding the fragile grip he had on his own health. He then would lead him to the church, with the blood racing in his veins and his powers of consciousness taxed to the limit, and hope the excitement and anxiety of the occasion would prove adequate to sever his bond with consciousness and send him into one of his fainting spells which, he hoped, might combine acute embarrassment with serious injury.

I told the young man I was always happy to meet young people who had the resolve to form definite plans for themselves. I also added that I thought his plan had every chance of succeeding, which seemed to please him very much. So we parted on friendly terms, and I continued on my way.

Not long afterwards I met a young maiden walking with flowers in her hand. I asked her what she was about. She hesitated a moment, but then said that, since she believed I had an honest face, she would tell me, although she feared I might detect a note of malice in her design. She began a long story, detailing the cruelties she had suffered and the many horrible indignities done to her by her maiden aunts. The details escape me now, as I try to recall, although I remember many times having to offer the maiden my handkerchief, so copiously did the tears flow as she recounted her ill fortune.

Finally, when she was done, she held up the flowers and said, this is the bouquet for Lucia Maria Espinoza's wedding. They, she said, meaning her cruel aunts, will be sure to scramble for it like rats when it is thrown. She was going to affix rocks to it, she said, to increase its weight a hundred times and make it a hundred times more unwieldy, so that whichever aunt caught it would be hard pressed to keep her balance and would more than likely drop to the ground like a stone, taking, if it pleased God, not a few of her sisters with her. This comic accident, she hoped, might help divert her from her suffering. I told her I hoped the Lord favored her design and traveled on.

In no time, I met three young men also heading toward the church and pushing a barrel down the path. When I had asked them to lift the veil of mystery from their design, the eldest of them stepped forward and said, this is a barrel of wax. There is a wedding today for Lucia Maria Espinoza, and her father owes my father over three hundred florins which he has refused to pay. We are going to wax the floor of the wedding hall, he said, for, as everyone knows, Don Espinoza is very fond of dancing, especially when wine is in him, which, anyone would have observed, has the effect of increasing his love for the dance as it also decreases the sureness of his feet. A broken tailbone or a fractured skull would be just what the old man deserved, he said, and, as he and his people were not content to trust to chance for this occurrence, they had decided a layer of fresh wax would move its probability into the realm of near certainty. I blessed them, and continued.

I had the road to myself for only a matter of minutes before I met a young maid with a bowl in her hand. On my stopping to ask her to explain her business, she let loose with an astounding feat of loquaciousness, the gist of which I will summarize for the reader thus: She had suffered wickedly at the hands of her cruel mistress, who was this day to act as bridesmaid for Lucia Maria Espinoza. The maid, having a great desire to revenge her wrongs, had decided, when she was called on to do her mistress's hair in preparation for the wedding, to comb it through and thoroughly saturate it with whale oil, which she had just procured that morning. Then, knowing that there would be a great number of candles alight in the wedding hall, and trusting that her mistress was by nature a vain person, often given to tossing her hair around this way and that in a way that she thought augmented her beauty, the young maid knew the odds would favor a happy collision between the hair soaked with whale oil and one of the lighted instruments. Then she expressed the joy she would feel at seeing her mistress's once beautiful coif, the source of her vanity, replaced by a blazing inferno. I thought this rather cruel but did not withhold giving her my blessing and continued.

The peace of the trail lasted but an instant before it was broken by a gaggle of carpenters heading toward town. When I had hailed them and acquainted them with my curiosity to know their business, all seemed to speak at once, detailing some grievance they had with some person or other in the town. I do not wish to burden my readers with their too numerous details. Only these wrong doers, whom the carpenters spoke out against, all had in common that they would be at the wedding of Lucia Maria Espinoza.

When the carpenters had finished their complaints, a man, whom they seemed to take as their leader, stepped forward. He did not speak at once, but rather sat down as the carpenters grew silent, looked contemplatively at the earth for a moment, and then delivered the following speech:

Tables and chairs, he said, being fairly innocuous things generally, when they are used properly, which they are by the vast majority of the populace for all other occasions, become deathly dangerous objects at weddings. A man may live in the company of a table all his life and never once have to fight the temptation to suddenly start climbing and dancing on top of it, tumbling, cavorting or attempting the most perilous stunts and jumps off of it. Yet at a wedding the urge to do so is almost irresistible. Or take the chair, he said, again after another contemplative pause. From the moment it is put together, a chair's four legs are placed on the floor, and there they remain till it rots. But what happens at weddings? Well, as soon as a man sits at a chair, a group of his closest friends and relations come by to pick him up and punch a hole in the ceiling with his head. Now this occurrence, notwithstanding the fact that it happens at nine out of ten weddings, is greeted as an accident by its perpetrators, but only from the point of view of the collision between head and ceiling. What tempted the chair's four legs, which obviously serve no purpose if not braced solidly against the earth, to be removed from the ground in the first place is really the soul of the inquiry, yet it is an element of the situation which is never looked into.

His manner of speech was impressive, and I could see he made a deep impression on his companions who stood silently in reverent attention as he spoke. It seemed from their attitude that, if none deemed themselves capable of unraveling the mystery of this wedding behavior, they all were determined to show it proper respect. Finally he broke out of his reverie by waving his hand and saying: We cannot know what makes these things happen. Only, he said, as you see, we bear a grudge against many of those who are to be at the wedding. He proposed, therefore, that the destruction the furniture had in mind for the attendees should not be allayed by its being too sturdy, well fashioned and well made. So, they intended to use their saws, axes, files, planes, scrapers, chisels, hammers, and hatchets to reduce the structural integrity of the furniture to something along the level of your sturdier dry leaves. They left with my heartfelt best wishes, and I traveled on.

Only upon my parting from the carpenters was I left to travel in peace for a good stretch. Remembering the events of the day, I was just about to thank my stars that I was putting the village of L____ behind me, when it pleased Providence that my horse should stumble over a rock and toss me into a ditch, where I fell into a coma that lasted three weeks.

On gaining possession of my faculties, I found myself in bed; and, upon being informed of my situation, the duration of my unconsciousness, and the nearness of my escape from death, by a doctor, who was at that moment relieving my veins of a quantity of blood, I thanked him, as warmly as I could, for seeing me through my illness. He, however, said he could not accept credit for my recovery for, although he had been aware of my accident for some time, he had been unable to see me till this moment because his efforts had been completely given to treating a veritable epidemic of broken bones, fractured skulls, severed limbs, disfigurements, cuts, scrapes, and burns, all suffered by the attendees of the wedding of Lucia Maria Espinoza.

That name jarred my senses and recalled to me the strange meetings related above. I told the doctor I believed I could give a good account of the source of all these injuries. I then spoke of my meetings along the road on that day of the wedding, recalling as many details as I could. He listened intently, sometimes interrupting me with a pertinent question, but otherwise letting me exercise my memory back to health.

My story having concluded, the doctor seemed to consider the details a moment, and then shook his head. No, this was not the source of the injuries, he said. The events I had recalled, could only account for a small fraction of the devastation he had seen. No, although the deeds I had heard contemplated had indeed been carried out, the misery occasioned by them was only a drop in the bucket of calamity that this wedding had wrought. For it was the wedding itself, he concluded, which was the main source of devastation.

He apparently had devoted much time to this subject. He intimated he had a solid theory, backed by many examples, which he would be more than happy to relate to me when I was more up to it. In the days that followed, I looked forward very much to hearing his thoughts, but a long succession of relapses, bad reactions, and turns for the worse amongst his wedding patients kept him away. Finally, with my health now fully recovered, I decided I could no longer stay, so I left the town of L____.

Stock Tips

Dear Dr Knowledge:

Should I acquire United Panhandle at $34.75 or Throw Pillow International at $14.25?

E. F. Jones

Stock Market Predictions
I am often asked to use my great intellect to give stock advice, but I hope my answer below will discourage any further such requests. Not that I disapprove of making money, far from it. I believe, rather, such questions stem from a misunderstanding of the nature of intelligence. Allow me to explain.

Stock Markets: Irrational?
Now I admit that to a degree the stock market loans itself to rational analysis. Whether or not a particular security seems likely to provide a healthy return, given that company's earnings history, history of dividend payouts, the soundness of its management and its share of the market, and compensating for fiduciary risk, risk from debt, risk to capital, risk of diminished market share, global political risk, and given, as a backdrop, a certain overall forecast for the industry and for the economy in general, including interest rates, money supply, money supply rates, M2, M3, and M5, is surely a rational inquiry worthy to be taken up by the man of sense.

But such a qualified answer, I'm afraid, would inevitably disappoint my readers of the stock-picking type. For they see that the intelligent investor, cautiously analyzing his investment, can only anticipate earning modest, boring returns for himself. On the other hand, even the most pea-brained idiot can make a grandiose fortune just by stumbling into the early stages of the investment world's next fit of madness, where money pours in against all reason. Seeing this, the stock-picker wonders: Where can I get in? What will be the next mania? What bit of seeming junk today will tomorrow be an object of frenzied desire for the great mob of moronic investors? In short, what the stock-picker craves is not wisdom but a sort of barometric reading of the sentiment of the crowd.

But are the crowd's periodic fits of madness predictable? Are the dark secrets of collective madness things that can be revealed by the light of intelligence? It is my contention that they are not. Although many men have tried, none have ever succeeded in solving the riddle of the crowd, and many have ruined themselves in the search. Let the following anecdote be a word of caution to my readers.

Theory of a Random Wall Street: Its Rise and Fall
Years ago, an economics professor, name of Smiley, became a sort of minor celebrity by arguing that the thousands of dollars paid to brokers and stock analysts in commissions were so much money wasted. None of them, he argued, had ever shown that they could consistently forecast the movement of the market or particular stocks. To prove his point, he began his own fund, choosing stocks at random. Pasting a copy of the stock listing on the wall, he threw darts at it to determine his portfolio. At the end of the year, his collection of random picks outperformed more than half of the high-priced managed funds, a feat he duplicated the next year and all the years his fund operated. These results at first startled the investment world. But, year after year, as his random picks were seen to do just as well as the experts, his theory gained more and more converts.

In fact, the professor's success began to dampen the whole spirit of rampant speculation that had made Wall Street its home. Crowd chasing was given up as futile. The market was seen as less important. Interest in it lagged. As a result, its luster began to fade. The romance of the Street began to wane.

The Sparky McEnters Fund
The professor's downfall came, however, when another fund, also using dart throws to pick stocks, burst onto the scene. It had a healthy year, in fact outstanding year, results that, we might expect, should have helped further sober the public, but for one difference. Heading this fund was no stuff-shirted, ax-grinding academic, but the three-time Great Lakes dart champ, Jim "Sparky" McEnters.

Something Else Entirely
Now here was something else entirely. No two fund managers could have differed more. Professor Smiley was a thin, slightly frail man; whereas Sparky McEnters was a 200-pound, barrel-chested, striped-shirted, dart-throwing machine. Professor Smiley sheepishly lofted his darts at the board in a way that, even his supporters had to admit, frankly betrayed his amateurishness. McEnters, in contrast, was, in the realm of darts, the consummate professional. He glared at the board like an eagle. He stood in classic North Enfield style, knees bent, arms akimbo, looking like a young Zeus about to dispatch a thunderbolt. As he stood, dart in hand, the crowd around him buzzed with anticipation, and when the dart exploded from his hand like a crack of thunder, dissecting the board like a surgeon's scalpel, well, there wasn't a single man in the room who could say he wasn't impressed. Although the professor argued that the similarity of their picking methods should have been all that mattered, the public laughed at him. He was driven back to academia in disgrace, as a new chapter of speculation was begun.

Public Goes Crazy
Let me admit here, that in spite of all my philosophy, having myself witnessed McEnters display of investing prowess, I fell under his spell. I immediately sunk everything I had into his fund, a decision at the time that was regarded without objection as the very essence of wisdom. He beat the Dow by 18 points in his first year, then again by 25 the next, and 36 the next. Throwing off the shackles of forbearance, and made giddy by my growing portfolio, I was able to marry the first Mrs. Knowledge and commit other imprudent acts now painful to recall. Yet I wasn't the only one seemingly out of his mind. Thousands were pouring cash into these dart-throwing funds, which were growing exponentially and threatening to make the traditionally managed fund extinct.

These were the heady days of the dart-throwing wunderkinds on Wall Street that so captured the public's imagination. Amongst the giants of that era were men like Mike "The Hammer" Woscinski, the five-time Southern New England champ, who leapfrogged men 40 years his senior to take over the reigns at Smith Barney, and Eddie "Money" Mallroney, who scored record returns at Lehman Brothers before striking out on his own. Let us also remember Brian "The Beef" Burmeister, who had in his former life scored that perfect 9-dart 501 game at the Tulsa Open before becoming the scourge of the corporate world. At the height of this madness, the era of the dart-throwers seemed like it would never end. At the great brokerage house, the troupes of old, loyal, respected stock analysts could not be kicked out the door fast enough to make room for the new breed. Things were at a fever pitch.

The Fall
But the fall was inevitable, and when it hit it hit hard. A series of throws had placed Sparky knee deep in the carry trade for Brazilian bonds which, when the market took an expected turn, unwound, caught Sparky in the lurch, and ruined him in an instant. When the final tally was added up, McEnters found himself in debt to the tune of what would be a respectable GNP for a decent-sized country. The McEnters Fund was crushed. The others met similar fates.

I too had to pay a steep price for this lesson in humility. I suffered gravely, financially and emotionally. But since this is an advice-dispensing blog and not a heart-on-the-sleeve type, I will spare my readers such details. Those interested, though, may want to visit my new blog, "The Sorrows of Young Dr Knowledge." You know, if they want.

More on Christmas Carols

Dear Dr Knowledge:

I would be grateful if you could tell me something about my favorite carol, "Silent Night"?

Hillary Belloc


Silent Night
As every school kid knows, late in the last century this carol was at the center of a firestorm of controversy that toppled the very foundations of Caroldom. This all began in 1875 when the then Dean of Carols at Oxford, perhaps influenced by the new German textual Carol criticism, publicly declared in the infinitely respectable Carol Quarterly that he was "unsure who or what is 'round yon virgin.'"

Controversy in Britain
This pronouncement set off shockwaves of indignation. Surely this was blasphemy to question the coherence of such a great carol. Yet, astoundingly, prominent Carolists in Kent, Cornwall, Bath, Liverpool, Aberdeen, and Cork, among others, declared themselves similarly agnostic. Carol lovers across the island were thrown into confusion.

Carol fundamentalists launched a counter-attack. "Obviously it is the mother and child who are around the virgin," they declared. Yet none could explain how the mother, being also the virgin, could somehow be around herself. Some then took to arguing that the carol implies that there is something like a halo or mist or some spiritual light around the heavenly pair. But they were stumped on the question of why the text does not mention a halo or mist or anything like it.

Canterbury Falls
The harshest blow to Carol fundamentalism, however, came when the Great Dean of Carols at the Canterbury Carol Seminary, long considered a bedrock of fundamentalism, stated that he, for one, never knew what to make of that "Sleep in heavenly peace" line.

"Is it a statement of the fact that the mother and child are sleeping? Or is it a command that they should sleep? Or is it just the child who should sleep? Or should we the audience sleep? Or is it the night or the nearby village or the whole scene that should sleep or is sleeping?"

Howls of protest followed, but once again attempts to bring this question into orthodoxy found Carolists lining up all over the spectrum. The country was fast heading toward complete chaos. Civil war was inevitable.

Holland Compromised
Meanwhile, across the sea, a Dutch Carologian, speaking at the Carol Convention in Rotterdam, publicly called into question the understandability of the line "Holy Infant so tender and mild." "Hadn't the song," he asked, "just mentioned the child? Now who is this Holy Infant character then? Is he someone else entirely?"

The country was immediately up in arms; however, many Carolists came out publicly to declare that they thought the carol did not for certain rule out the possibility that in addition to the Christ Child there was also a Holy Infant present at the scene. Some even went so far as to call for a reexamination of Carol sources to try and discover additional mentions of this Holy Infant, to see why he was in Bethlehem at the time, and perhaps gain some idea of his philosophy, if he had one.

We all know what followed, the war, the devastation, the horror. Yeah, it was too bad.

Christmas Carols

Dear Dr Knowledge:

I love Christmas carols. What can you tell me about my favorite carol, "Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem"?

G. K. Chesterfield


Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Curiously this song had no Biblical connotation in its original manifestation. The Bethlehem referred to then was Bethlehem, PA. The song, written by Hap Silverstein and debuted in the Broadway production of "Annie on the Town" in 1939, was first sung by a young woman from small-town Pennsylvania, Annie (played by the voluptuous Ana Hovana) who, having recently moved to New York City, enjoys the attention of the sophisticated and worldly Rodney while being pursued by the earnest yet slightly dull Johnny, all as she tries to keep her married, oversexed boss, Mr Bielefeld (played to rave reviews by the legendary Broadway comedian Jackie Stewart), on a string. In the song, Annie comments wryly on her life's complications and with tongue firmly in cheek pines for a simplicity she left behind. The song was a typical send up of small-town life written for the amusement of big city audiences, containing such lines as, "The traffic moves so slow there," and "the people are so square." Audiences howled over it as long as the show ran.

With the country entering the war in 1941, however, its songwriters and creative talents were called on to aid the war effort. Almost overnight a whitewash of respectability was slapped on over the tawdry lights of Broadway. In cooperation with the Roosevelt administration in what was labeled Operation Holier Than Thou, Broadway writers agreed to switch production to exclusively homely, Christian, and smalltown-celebrating songs, in order to convince American fighting troops from the hinterlands that their leaders were just as virtuous, Bible-thumping, and apple-pie-eating as they ought to be. As part of this plan and with "Annie" now closed, the slightly stale but still serviceable "Bethlehem" was reintroduced to the public, with its gawking and guffawing yokels, however, replaced by pious shepherds, its sleepy downtown an Eastern village, and its narrow and vindictive town fathers now wise Oriental kings. It was recommissioned as a timeless, pious Christmas classic, and the public, notoriously short memoried, accepted this as gospel, and the rest is musical history.


Dear Dr Knowledge:

That's interesting. Now what about "Joy to the World"?

Rev. Henry Witherspoon


Joy to the World
Another example of the inestimable debt we carol listeners owe amateur songwriters, "Joy to the World" was written by a humble bellhop named Guisepie Verdini. Far from being hindered by his lack of formal musical training, Verdini positively benefited from it. For undoubtedly, the most charming aspects of the song are when Verdini intermixes the celebration of Christ's birth with rich bellhopian imagery. Take, as an example, the truly sublime line: "Let every heart prepare him room." Obviously no "professional" composer would try and sneak such a clinker past the public. Yet it a credit to Verdini's humble genius that the line works.

Explaining his inspiration for this line, Verdini wrote in his autobiography Mya Life ina ze Muzic (Buenos Aires, 1896) [translation mine]: "One time I a-think, as I'm a-cleaning uppa de rooms and carrying uppa de bags, what if de Lord, he show up here ata dis hotel. Well, the manager, he woulda say to me, 'Guisepie, Go prepare the Lord him room. He's a tired. Want to lie down.' Something alike dat he would say. And I woulda say 'Yes, I willa prepare the Lord him room.' Anda that's awhere I getta the idea to a-write this songa."

In fact, Verdini's original draft of the carol was riper with bellhopian imagery. For example, in place of what would eventually become, "The nations prove the glory of his righteousness," he had originally written, "The Lord wants an early wake up call." And then "Let Heaven and Nature sing," had originally been, "Make sure and make his phone ring." Unfortunately, one by one Verdini was persuaded by so-called competent musical authorities to remove these lines and replace them with blander, more conventional imagery, to the detriment of the work, in my opinion. In fact, it is staggering to note that the glory that shines through this carol is only a fraction of what was originally invested in it by its author, the great bellhop caroler, Guisepie Verdini.

Bridge Problem

Dear Dr Knowledge:

I am playing the South position. West is the dealer. I open with one heart. My partner responds one spade. I bid two clubs, and he tries two diamonds. Our opponents pass. How should I proceed?

Bridge Junkie

Bridge philosophically considered
In approaching the game of bridge, as in all activities, it is important to reduce the situation to its most basic propositions. Ask yourself: Why do I play bridge? The answer: To win. Then ask yourself: What do I win? And the answer, if you are playing for money, is: Money. So, obviously, following this methodology, combining what propositions we can be absolutely certain of and placing them in the most rational and straightforward way, the question then becomes: How do I get my opponents money? To which then the simplest answer is: To shoot them and take their money.

Yes, but how?

Shooting your opponents, while you hold two clubs with the bid before you of two diamonds, is a most difficult matter requiring strategy, forethought and execution. West, with three aces, five hearts, and the queen of diamonds, passed both rounds. This shows he is the reckless, gambling type, liable to try and make a hero out of himself the moment your intentions are made known. It is imperative, therefore, that you at least wing him before he can do any damage. Your partner, with the six, five and three of clubs, plus his three of hearts and bid of two diamonds, has given every indication of possessing a stout and game character. Count on him to follow up your first shot with a lead from either a bottle or a knife. But beware, West still holds the nine, four and two of clubs, meaning this will not be a cake walk. Do not get too anxious to do it all. Attacking firmly yet cautiously while letting your partner take up the slack would be the best way to proceed.

East is another matter. Obviously, having passed after your one spade bid and having the eight and seven of both diamonds and clubs, he is clearly of a craven and cowardly character. More than likely your first attack will fill him with terror. He will be struck dumb, but then he will run. But where to? Again, consult the cards. He held the nine and three of diamonds and yet passed on a diamond bet. This means he doesn’t trust his legs. Additionally, holding the six and three of spades, means he will seek safety in a confined place. So, obviously the way to proceed then is to have your partner cover the exits while you seach the house for him. No doubt he will be found hiding in something like the linen closet or behind the bathroom curtain. My hunch would be the pantry. Having located him, now is the time to be aggressive. Do not let it deter you that he still holds three trumps in his hand. Your trumps cover him. Blasting away at the door, completely emptying your magazine, will be the best policy here.

Aftermath

Once you and your partner have completed this gambit, help yourself to all the money you can find and then go out and try and strike up another bridge game.

Cindy Williams (US Bridge Champion 1997-2002)

Cloudy Swimming Pool

Dear Dr Knowledge::

My swimming pool is cloudy all the time. What can I do?

Poolman

Cloudy Swimming Pool
Cloudy pools are the scourge of civilization. This blight results from particulate matter, usually carbonates and sulfates, being forced out of solution by imbalanced water, perhaps worsened by the introduction of high temperatures, low humidity, intemperate winds, driving rains, excessive electrons in the air, boron gas escaping from the earth, high alkalinity in the surrounding soil, etc. Discovering the particular culprit in your case would be a worthy subject of study, but undoubtedly you lack the initiative. You people are all the same. You want a quick fix now. Heaven forbid you should exercise some of your own power. But, no matter, for the situation boils down to one of filtration.

Filtration

Your filter is obviously inadequate to handle the small bits of matter that are suspended in the pool water, and I think we can assume as well that your water is not hard enough to force those particals out of solution. In a nutshell, you are a failure as a pool owner. Yet all is not lost.

What to do?
The conventional wisdom in dealing with this problem has been to use clarifiers, or chitin products, which work to coagulate smaller particles into larger, filterable clumps, so they can be trapped by the filter. At least this has been what the pool-cleaning establishment has been peddling. Yet those fools are blind, blind with power, blind to new ideas.

A new idea
The dust-eating fish (or kabou-eatto) has long been cleaning pools for the people of Southeast Asia, who show a real penchant for these type of things. A member of the tarpin family, the fish actually lives on dust, consuming up to 120,000 micrograins per hour. These fish had previously been unavailable in the United States but now can be had for around $9000 a piece. This may seem steep at first, but the fish will more than pay for himself over the years as he delivers you sparlkingly clear pool water.

Kabou-eatoo (piscientus axstybnium)

Can an animal really live on only dirt?
The kabou-eatto's digestive system is uniquely designed to process dust. Unlike all other fishes, the kabou-eatto's mesentery leads right into its muscularis mucosa, which is buttressed by an unusually large longitudinal muscle, which in turn continually contracts the serosa into the submucosa at an astounding rate of 50 mbrs/min (see figure below). This extraordinary stomach gives the fish the ability to extract its vitamins and minerals right out of the dirt it consumes. Now, traditional science will tell us this is impossible, but it says a lot of things that we quite rightly ignore. It shouldn't prattle on so, with its constant pronouncements on all and sundry, if it wants us to take heed of what it says.

Kabou-eatto's digestive system

Where does the dust go?
Every 4 to 10 days your kabou-eatto will rid itself of undigested dust accumulated from your pool in the form of silver-dollar sized rocks. These can be picked up and disposed of once the kabou-eatto has deposited them in your pool. The rocks are harmless and sterile, being mostly of the limestone family. Unfortunately for the fish, the depositing process is long and difficult. Once the rock forms in the rectum it often takes days to make its way out of the anus and only after much anxiety and many false starts in which the fish is made to feel mopey and unproductive. (see figure below)

The unhappy life of the dust-eating fish
Kabou-eattos, although beneficial to man, do not make good pets. Owners report that they are often sullen, moody, emotionally distant, have trouble interacting with others. They are often touchy, sometimes brooding alone for hours. Accosted, they are likely to fly into a rage. This is not the kind of fish to give young children, especially those who crave a lot of attention or who are looking for something to bond with, having just lost a puppy or something like that. But, if you have a dirty pool and are willing to put up with the kabou-eatto's moods, this may be the fish for you. He requires virtually no maintainance. If you will just occassionally throw your fish a few old magazines, the sports section, what have you, you will go a long way towards attenuating his misery.