THE DEVIL'S DETAILS

Down, deep, inside the fiery castle, the Devil is tutoring his favorite disciple.

Devil: God may have made man, but he didn't give him a big enough brain.

Luthor: But, sir, man has shown incredible genius since the Garden of Eden. Look at all he has created: air travel, miracle drugs, atomic energy....

Devil: He has shown the capacity to create things, but the total inability to foresee the consequences of the things he creates.

Luthor: The consequences?

Devil: Take atomic energy. It was supposed to be cheap, efficient and non-polluting. But man did not see the atomic waste disposal problem he was creating. Now he has nowhere to dump his spent fuel because it poisons the earth as no substance ever has in history. The Republicans in Utah are at civil war with the Republicans in Washington. It's too wonderful.

Luthor: Are there other examples?

Devil: God gave man the ability to create giant windmill farms supposedly capable of creating a cheap, non-polluting source of electricity. But look up there at Altamont Pass in California. See those 400-foot high monsters, twirling their 95-foot blades with their blinking red lights?

Luthor: Yes, it looks like a giant red-light district gone mad.

Devil: Just so. Deliciously destroys the landscape, doesn't it? And look at all that blood. Those twirling pasties have murdered over 45,000 birds in the last twenty years. And they are killing about 50 golden eagles every year. It's wonderful. They make me think of great Cuisinarts in the sky.

Luthor: But the people need electricity.

Devil: Of course they do, and the U.S. government has spent billions on the idea. But those bird shredders are only generating about a fifth of one percent of the country's power needs. Better yet, these wind farms are going to really hurt U.S. food production.

Luthor: Wind farms can hurt food production?

Devil: New studies show that these big wind farms dry out the surface moisture of the earth, thus lowering production of foods like corn, which is being used to produce ethanol. It's just fabulous. Soon there may be a big political war between the wind farmers and the corn farmers. Our friends at Big Oil are rubbing their hands in glee.

Luthor: Didn't I see something about MTBE polluting the ground waters?

Devil: Bright lad. That was one of my best triumphs. The environmentalists pressured Congress into passing a law requiring the oil companies to put MTBE into their gasoline for cleaner air. But they forgot that filling stations across the U.S. are leaking gasoline all over the place. This doesn't alarm anybody because gasoline decomposes and doesn't contaminate the ground waters. But good old cancer-causing MTBE stays whole until it reaches the waters and settles permanently into the U.S. water supply. It makes me dance a jig to see how the environmentalists shoot themselves in the foot.

Luthor: I guess man's brain is too small to understand the environment.

Devil: Now you're getting it. Just look at what those crazy animal lovers did out west. They got so wrought up over the poor cougar that they protected it with all kinds of laws. Now you have cougars running all over the landscape.

Luthor: What harm does that cause?

Devil: Man forgot that cougars are predators and mountain goats are prey. Now all these hungry cougars have chased the goats up into the higher mountain elevations where there is little food. Now the mountain goat is hungry and reproducing poorly. So now the animal rights groups are running around trying to figure out how to protect the newly-endangered mountain goat. It's really very entertaining.

Luthor: What are you watching now, sir?

Devil: Florida, Luthor. Weston, Florida.

Luthor: What's so special about Weston, Florida?

Devil: I had to wait a few years, but now the animal rights people have finally done it up big. They've protected the alligator for so many years the critters are running wild, attacking canoes in mating season, invading swimming pools. Do you realize that one even attacked a Volkswagen out on I-75 near Naples? Tore the bumper and a fender right off and scared hell out of the driver.

Luthor: And in Weston, Florida?

Devil: Well, Weston cuts into the Everglades -- alligator habitat. So the angry creatures are invading yards and going after the family pets. Cats and dogs are disappearing.

Luthor: Cats and dogs are endangered species?

Devil: No, of course not. But now some of the creatures are going after children, especially the bite-sized one.

Luthor: What is Weston doing about it?

Devil: They decided to teach the kids in school how to run away from alligators.

Luthor: How to run away?

Devil: Yes, alligators can run at high speeds for short distances, but they're not very maneuverable. So they are teaching the kids in Weston to cut back and forth as they run. You know. like an NFL running back.

Luthor: Won't that ruin the fun for us?

Devil: Not really. See those kids looking out the windows and not paying attention? It's going to be fun to watch.


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