At the same time that the new intellectuals were smashing the old idols, they were setting up new idols in their place. Top physicists became the new gods, and the rank-and-file physicists and science readers were idolators par excellence, never questioning the dogma from above. The more superstition and paradox and idolatry it contained, the more they liked it. The less rigor it contained the more they liked it. But whereas the old pre-20th century dogma was at least rich and poetic, the new dogma was bare and prosaic. Whereas the old dogma at least told a good story, the new dogma told no story or a poor story. Whereas the old dogma was a clever and complex myth, giving meaning, the new dogma was a tattered and transparent lie, denying meaning. The small and pinched thinkers of the 20th century replaced large and beautiful idols with small ugly idols, to no real purpose. If all is but a conversation, as Bohr maintained, why not have a bright and varied conversation, full of meaning and content and bold creativity, rather than a dreary and one-dimensional conversation, empty and warning off future creativity?

This headline reads: "Modern flying carpet visits city of Bagdad" (1932).  Turns out that the flying carpet is just an airplane, but here's the crucial question: why call an airplane a flying carpet?  Why, as vintage Popular Mechanics did in every issue, refer to scientists as "wizards" and their work as "magical"?  The answer is simple: they co-opt mythology and magical lore so as to demystify the world into a very cold place, devoid of metaphor.  Sad, colorless, and shallow.

This is as good an example as any of why vintage Popular Mechanics horrifies us.  The story isn't about how this glass-blowing maniac seals kittens into prison globes.  Rather, it glorifies his so-called "expertise."  Utterly disgusting, as per usual.  From 1932.

Q: "Is this monster locomotive a 'he' or a 'she'?"  (From 1930.)

A: Where's the cure for cancer, eh?

"Feather-covered dirigibles predicted for the future."  From 1930.  Big Science back then (as now) can't see the forest for the trees.  The naiveté would almost be charming, if not for the smugness behind everything in vintage Popular Mechanics.

Ditto, from 1931.  "Noiseless city is predicted within ten years."

This sort of embarrassing hubris spans the centuries.  There are no "new" types of prehistoric Indians in Texas, only types new to the so-called discoverer who is merely extraordinarly behind the times.  From 1931.

Here's Big Science telling you not to trust your intuition.  There's one phrase here that we actually do agree with -- "it pays to be dubious," to which we would add "of everything published in vintage Popular Mechanics."  It's all hogwash!  From 1931.

"Fashion requires zoo to clothe woman."  From 1931.  Popular Mechanics very often glamorized and actively encouraged the poaching of endangered animals; utterly disgusting.

This is typical of the "New Inquisition" mindset behind vintage Popular Mechanics: "Poison gas guards 'health' of art treasures."  If only Big Science could gas all the arts, this toxic sentiment suggests.  The headline is a variation of the old witch test -- if she sinks, she's not a witch, and if the art survives the poison gas, it's "healthy."  Yikes.  From 1932.

Still no cancer cure, but "Milk not soured by thunder."  From 1932.

We're finally beginning to understand the preposterous number of giant object illustrations in Popular Mechanics.  The message is that things are bigger (more important) than people.  This example is from 1925.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Absent Friends, by Gillian Linscott:

[with an emphasis on lack of context]

***

It arrived quite out of the blue--or out of the mauve perhaps, since that was the colour of the stationery.

***

"Just as well your legal friends couldn't hear you putting leading questions to a piano."

[Context hint: seance.]

***

I fell asleep at last wondering if it were some fault in me that I could never imagine wanting to call anybody Tumtum.

***

From Bland Beginning, by Julian Symons:

"You know the kind of thing—how Henry James patted him on the head when he was five and said, 'I hope, my dear young friend, that you will always retain your present fine awareness of simple, and in fact incommunicable, emotion which it is the endeavour of a lucky few, quite simply, to communicate.'"