'Zing' Went The Strings Of My Flying Whatsit

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When I heard Wal-Mart heir John T. Walton had died flying his "homemade experimental aircraft," my first instinct was to poke fun. Which is, as the ancients believed, the sign of a healthy gall bladder.

His death was a waste, really. I mean: the most recent Forbes study listed Walton as the eleventh richest person in the world. Tenth is his older brother. Twelfth is his younger brother. And his sister and mother are (were) right behind.

And, of course, cause of death is given as "attempted flight of a manned, homemade aircraft without even being a Kennedy." Oh, and not to mention: because it has Morals, Wal-Mart will sell your ex-girlfriend a shotgun, but not a cd with a song that has "shit" in it.

Nonetheless: I'm giving ol' John T. a pass. Because he took off from beautiful Jackson Hole Airport (named for famed slugger Reggie Jackson's personality) in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. (A Grand Tetons National Park spokeswoman said Walton, "well known and much loved in this valley, died doing something that he loved to do," although of course you can only do it once.)

John T. also founded the Children's Scholarship Fund on the strength of an impressive personal grant of $67 million. The fund has benefitted more than 67,000 children, which has to make you feel good, given that Walton paid a thousand dollars a year for each of his children, whereas I get mine for just eighty cents a day. (And speaking of Jackson holes: I didn't hear you thank me for staying off of Michael Jackson entirely. Which is what that golddigging bald kid should have done.)

John T. also served on the board of the Walton Family Foundation, which gave the University of Arkansas the ridiculous sum of $300 million in 2002 for its Campaign for the 21st Century.

The 21st Century, of course, won in a landslide, and now we know why.

SCI
In other news, according to a study published earlier this year in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, it is significantly easier to identify someone if he is physically near you than if he is up to 450 feet away. As Nuke LaLoosh says, "Think about that for a while."

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In a related series of studies, renowned evolutionist Ernst Mayr concluded that human beings achieved "the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization... very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago," but also noted that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years."

Not to worry. Given that "civilization" and "intellegence" are relative terms, I'm thinking the clock may not even be running yet.

MR

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"What do we know
But that we face
One another in this place."
-William Butler Yeats