Essays in Idleness

Two thoughts that I simply must share with gentle reader, after examining this morning’s meejah. One is bigger than the other, though I’m not sure which.

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Item: David Whitlock, gentleman and chemical engineer, observed horses rolling in dirt, near the beginning of this century. (I observed this phenomenon earlier, incidentally, and saw that it extends to many furred and feathered creatures.)

“Why do they do this?” he asked himself.

Too, I noticed that horses hardly ever take showers, voluntarily, and even when they do, they never reach for soap, or “sham-poo.” (Ditto, cats and sparrows.) Surely, something worth pondering. Consider, too, the humans in “developing countries,” not yet visited by the sales representatives of Unilever, or Procter & Gamble. Water, yes. Ivory soap, no. And instead of using peaceful laundry detergents, they beat their home-spun clothing against rocks. (Pre-industrial weaving can stand up to it, apparently.)

As an experiment, Mr Whitlock stopped bathing. After fifteen years, he denies having any body odour. He has also subscribed to the theory, that the skin is stripped of protective oils by soap and detergents — whereas, it was designed (by God) to preserve a rich, microbiomic heritage. True, Mr Whitlock developed quite a pong at first, but that was before he invented his own bacterial product: soil from a local farm, juiced with a nitrate from ammonia. Now, I gather, he smells pretty as a horse.

There is, I learn from the Grauniad, a flourishing cosmetic industry for other soap disenthusiasts. But surely gentle reader may save his money and avoid this bourgeois, extravagant trade. Just get out and roll in the dirt, occasionally.

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Item: on tariff walls.

I was raised on the notion that “free trade” is a good thing, and that tariffs are bad, bad, bad. And true, I am still not a Socialist, Communist, or Democrat. But I do have a conservationist streak, and let me admit candidly that tariffs are good for the environment. Not only do they stop wasteful, carbon-fuelled, international shipping and transport. They should help close down innumerable, export-dependent, smokestack industries at home. A much cleaner Earth, and no more anthropogenic global warming!

Therefore I propose to nominate Mr Donald Trump and Mr Xi Jinping, to share the first Nobel Eco Prize.