The results were immediate, starting with that horrific holiday body count in the closing days of 1926. Public health officials responded with shock. “The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol,” New York City medical examiner Charles Norris said at a hastily organized press conference. “[Y]et it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible.

I had no idea this happened. I makes you wonder whether something like this goes on (or went on) with illicit drugs…

Patapsychology begins from Murphy’s Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says,and I quote,”The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured.” In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds [around $700,000 American] to any “normalist” who can exhibit “a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary.”

In a world where no two fingerprints appear identical, and no two brains appear identical, and an electron does not even seem identical to itself from one nanosecond to another, patapsychology seems on safe ground here.

But the secret of a well-balanced life is to appreciate everything, or at least as much as you can. Many people fall into imbalance and disharmony. There’s no doubt about it, having enough money is a unqualified good. But if you decide that having a lot of money is the only good thing then you’re in big bad trouble. Then you forget to look at nature, and you forget to look at your friend’s faces. You forget to enjoy animals, and you just forget too much. So the thing is to spread the appreciation around.

The interview is 12 years old, but at times like this, it’s very relevant. The quote above is one of my favourite parts – and one I find very touching.