civilized ku # 731-34 ~ history lesson
Wednesday, October 20, 2010 at 04:08PM 
Independence Hall ~ Philadelphia PA • click to embiggen
Hugo's history lesson ~ Philadelphia PA • click to embiggenWhile at Independence Hall (during last week's funereal sojourn) I purchased a book for Hugo - Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School - so that he could take it to school.
In his essay, Fart Proudly (aka: "A Letter To A Royal Academy"), Franklin - living abroad as the American Ambassador to France - was responding to a request from the Royal Academy of Brussels for scientific papers. Franklin thought that many European academic societies were quite pretentious and rather occupied with impractical pursuits.
Franklin's suggestion was for a scientific study of human farts with the aim of improving the smell of human farts - preferably by means of a drug that would render the odor "not only inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes".
It read, in part ...
I have perused your late mathematical Prize Question, proposed in lieu of one in Natural Philosophy, for the ensuing year...Permit me then humbly to propose one of that sort for your consideration, and through you, if you approve it, for the serious Enquiry of learned Physicians, Chemists, &c. of this enlightened Age. It is universally well known, That in digesting our common Food, there is created or produced in the Bowels of human Creatures, a great Quantity of Wind. That the permitting this Air to escape and mix with the Atmosphere, is usually offensive to the Company, from the fetid Smell that accompanies it. That all well-bred People therefore, to avoid giving such Offence, forcibly restrain the Efforts of Nature to discharge that Wind.
Reader Comments (3)
Pretty fracking funny.
Re the previous post, meant what Franklin said was.... I wonder how that will be received at Hugo's school.
Perhaps you should add "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn to Hugo's reading list while you're at it.