Educating Monkey

Handy guide for those cryogenically frozen since 1910:

--You know how they were building that really really nice ship to cross the Atlantic in superb style named "Titanic?" They finished it, and it was wonderful, until it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank, killing 2/3 of its passengers.

--Europe started a war with Europe, the U.S. bailed them out, seized global hegemony, and immediately released it.

--We gave women the vote. The first thing they did was completely ban alcohol. Then it became illegal to "use a tone." I'm only kidding about the second one.

--Also, remember how everyone used to have colonies? Yeah, not so much anymore.

--Ever heard of communism, that whacky idea that intellectuals were throwing around where the economy is centrally planned? They actually tried it in Russia right after the war. Turns out in practice it's a lot like fascism.

--Remember baseball? It gets really really cool ("cool" is our modern word for "snappy"). This guy Babe Ruth starts hitting balls out of the park regularly, and by the 1930s everyone's doing it. Also, there's now like 25 different pitches that a pitcher can throw. And there are 30 teams in the Majors now. Other than that, the game is the same.

--We had a Depression in the 1930s. It was depressing. The upshot: everyone was so depressed that the ladies let us drink again.

--In the 1940s, Europe went to war against Europe (and Japan) again, and again, the U.S. came and bailed them out and seized global hegemony. Except this time we didn't let it go. America the Superpower ho!

--We ended this second war by inventing a bomb that can wipe out an entire city. One bomb, boom, no more city. We even made sure they worked by dropping two of them on Japan.

--So China and a few other countries joined Russia as Communists too. And they figured out how to make the same bomb. In retrospect, the bomb may not have been such cool idea, because we now found ourselves in a 50-year Mexican standoff with the Communists, and this was uncomfortable.

--We invented a new device, called "TV," that carries images into image-boxes in people's homes. Think of it like a telegraph, except you get moving pictures and sound instead of beeps. The result is that everyone in America (or the world) can watch the same theater at the same time.

--In 1960, we elected an Irish Catholic man President of the United States, and he was the smartest, most likable man in politics. Then he was assassinated.

--I don't really know how to explain the Civil Rights movement to you. You know how it says in the Declaration of Independence that "All Men are Created Equal"? Think of that if it were actually APPLIED.

--During this standoff with the Communists, the U.S. started a quasi-colonial war in Southeast Asia and lost.

--For some reason, men stopped wearing hats, unless for an express purpose. E.g. baseball players wear hats to keep the sun out of their eyes, the Pope wears a hat to let everyone know he's the Pope. From the 1960s and forward, nobody wears a bowler except in order to look weird.

--We invented devices to play recorded music back to ourselves, and music became a major commercial enterprise, most of it produced by relatively small (3- to 5-person) groups. There is a song written by a British group called "Stairway to Heaven" which may be the greatest music ever created by man. You should listen to it.

--We had a president in the late 1960s to early 1970s who used the White House to try to cover up corruption and got caught. Since then, most people don't really care for politicians anymore.

--We invented a machine called a "computer" that can calculate so many numbers (and organize them into color images) that it can do almost anything that man ever did on paper. We send telegrams with it, and publish our newspapers on it, etc.

--We beat the Communists. Not in a war. They just ran out of money and we didn't.

--In the early 21st century, Islamic extremists from the Arab world, unhappy about all the U.S. political and social hegemony, attacked New York City and Washington, D.C., by flying airplanes (which are now much larger and faster and carry hundreds of people) into buildings.

--We now have professional sporting leagues for baseball, football, hockey and basketball, and amateur leagues for collegiates in any sport you can think of. Among these, only college football does not use a playoff to determine its champion; instead a system called "The B.C.S." determines a champion by slaughtering kittens and orphans.

--In 2008 we elected a black man President of the United States, and he is the smartest, most likable guy in politics.

--In 2010, after a century, Kristine finally published another episode of "My White Boy."

So, yeah, Mr. Frozen-for-a-Century, there's been a lot of changes since you've been gone, but at least you don't have very much in the way of My White Boy comics to catch up on.

Also hasn't changed: Michigan's football team is still run by an engineering-minded yokel from West Virginia and has remained throughout the century the best team in the land, but of course you knew this would never, ever change.

Welcome to the 21st century. Try the ice cream.

Brilliant, sir. Absolutely brilliant. Now that I am all caught up, I can get back in the fridge.

Definitely wouldn't hurt. Though the last thing I need is Monkey quoting Nature articles on why monkey's are more intelligent than humans.

I think monkey needs to be fed a strict new diet of TED talks and NPR radio.