If you like this piece, check out:
Is It Empire Yet?
The Funniest Book
of the 21st Century (So Far)!

128 pages of the best satire from 6 years of Magellan's Log. Well beyond chortles, Is It Empire Yet? verges on the downright hilarious. "Swiftian," says one reader. "Rib-splitting," says another. "Brilliantly, uproariously offensive to all right-thinking Republicans," says yet another. 128 pp. Paperback. 8.5" x 11". ISBN 0-9767821-3-8. $21.95:

Or at amazon.com:
Is It Empire Yet?

Concentrate on whatever object, movie, book, TV show, or piece of music, art, or whatever you wish to rate. Then read each statement below and insert a number between 1 and 10 in the blank after each statement, where 1 means a strong NO!, and 10 means a strong YES!!!

The letter "X" in each statement refers to the name of whatever work it is that you're rating.

1. Would your thesis advisor or department head or team leader approve of X? ____

2.  If you published a paper in Nature or Science about X would your salary increase significantly? ____

3. Do you have great admiration for the creator of X and envy his/her ability to get enough funding to do it? ____

4. Does X re-affirm your belief in the wisdom of living an unexamined life based on the edicts of people with more money, power, celebrity, and better professional networking skills than you have? ____

5. Does X move humanity significantly closer to knowing everything? ____

6. Does X lend further support to the validity of lives spent in the reductive analysis of natural phenomena? ____

7. If Newton could experience X, would he grin with approval? ____

8. Does X significantly contribute to the discomfort of all wishy-washy humanist intellectuals? ____

9. Does X make you feel even better about devoting your life to the pursuit of the tiniest tidbits of knowledge? ____

10. Does X help you avoid thinking about the one billion people in the world who are starving? ____

Scoring:

85-100. A scientific breakthrough of great importance. A vitally important cultural artifact.

70-84. A work of considerable value but probably to be understood only by the more mature members of your specialty.

Below 70. A dangerous and subversive work. At best it should be destroyed. Certainly you want to protect children from it.

Back to Millennial Culture-at-a-glance

Magellan's Log VI

Magellan's Log front page