Dear American Moviegoers,

Like, dude. What the hell? If you keep buying tickets to Crap, Crap II, and Crap III, you will only encourage them to make More Crap. What gives? Have you no taste?

Just say no to torture porn.

Yours with love,
Qwertz

I have discovered the secret of high blog traffic!

Since I posted about this week’s episode of House, M.D., my hits have quadrupled. Apparently, many people want to know about the phrase written on the chalk­board behind House in the classroom where he grilled his 40 or so candi­dates:

Tesla was Robbed!

The phrase appears alone on the board early in the episode. But later in the episode, House writes the following above it:

SYN
RBC
TACH
PANIC

for synes­thesia, red blood count, tachy­cardia and panic attacks.

These latter are part of House’s diag­nostic procedure. He’s using the chalk­board instead of the old white­board in the office. But the Tesla remark, which appears, on a cursory exam­i­nation, to be written in a different hand (though the style of the R is similar), is incongruous.

Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia in 1856 and emigrated to the United States and became a citizen there. He was a prolific and eccentric inventor. Among his more enduring inven­tions are fluo­rescent light bulbs and alter­nating current. AC is the operating standard for all major elec­trical distri­b­ution the world over, and Tesla’s AC generator design is used to generate very nearly all of the elec­tricity on the commercial market. Having revo­lu­tionized the world with AC, Tesla next tried to move into wireless trans­mission of elec­tricity. Tesla constructed large air-​​core resonant trans­formers for the purpose, and was extremely successful in getting them to transmit high voltages great distances without wires. Tesla invented long-​​distance radio commu­ni­cation in 1897 and was awarded US patents on the tech­nology in 1900.

An upstart Italian, named Guglielmo Marconi, was working on achieving a similar feat. He was initially successful only in trans­mitting elec­trical signals a short distance. Nothing compared to what Tesla had been able to accom­plish at his Colorado Springs labo­ratory. Marconi applied for patents on radio tech­nology beginning in late 1900, after Tesla had been awarded his patents. Naturally, the US Patent Office denied Marconi’s applications.

Tesla is rumored to have once quipped,

Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.

That Marconi used tech­nology that was covered by patents held by Tesla is a matter of historical record. Whether Marconi actually got the ideas from Tesla, or developed them on his own, is debatable. What is also known, however, is that Marconi’s major American investor was a man named Thomas Edison. Edison was also a prolific inventor, and was a proponent of direct current elec­trical trans­mission. The electric chair was invented by Edison, using Tesla’s alter­nating current, as part of the two inventors’ ongoing and often bitter feud. But so long as Tesla held the patents on the tech­nology Marconi was using in his radio exper­i­ments, Marconi could not obtain a patent.

That changed in 1904 when, for reasons unknown to history, the US Patent Office reversed its decision not to award Marconi a patent on the radio. Marconi also even­tually won the Nobel Prize for his “invention.” Tesla never won one, even though he made a much more lasting contri­bution to elec­trical science than any other inventor of his time. Tesla even­tually went broke and died in massive debt.

This is, I believe, what “Tesla was Robbed!” refers to. Not only the loss, during his life, of his radio patent, but the loss of the Nobel Prize to Marconi.

But Tesla wins in the end. In the same year as his death in 1943, the United States Supreme Court finally upheld Tesla’s prior patent on radio tech­nology. To this day, as a matter of US law, Tesla, not Marconi, is the inventor of the radio. Tesla has even triumphed over Edison. Edison’s most cele­brated inven­tions (phono­graph, movie projector, light bulb) have largely been replaced by tech­nologies that rely more heavily on Tesla’s contri­bu­tions (CDs, digital video projectors, fluo­rescent bulbs). Today, Tesla’s inven­tions touch and improve every corner of modern Western Civilization.

Tonight’s House, M.D. is very enter­taining so far. House should have a 40-​​member team all the time!

Update: But next week’s “Dr. House Pulls a Kiefer in Flatliners” looks awful!

Update II: See The Secret for more on the meaning of “Tesla was Robbed!”

Our Glorious American System of Welfare and Entitlement has been, in no small part and despite Bill Clinton’s inef­fectual efforts to the contrary, instru­mental in increasing the size of the Welfare-​​dependent popu­lation of this country. If you’re poor, one of the fastest ways to get money without having to do any [Ed: well, much] work is to have a baby.

Having more kids means you get more money from TANF, more food stamps from WIC, more tax credits, more free services.

Now, Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary R. Clinton wants to give every baby born in America an automatic five grand. The money (stolen from other Americans) would be put in a ‘bond’ that would allegedly increase in value until the baby turned 18, when the baby could cash out the ‘bond’ and and use it for, well, whatever. Apparently. Clinton thinks they’ll be used for education. Education I’m sure she hopes the government will provide. Where the government will get the money for this initiative, or the money to make that money “grow,” is left unsaid.

And of course the very last thing we need is more people having babies in order to get money from the government.

My favorite part is this quote from Democratic Key Midwestern State Representative:

Every child born in the United States today owes $27,000 on the national debt, why not let them come get $5,000 to grow until their 18?

The article had been corrected twice as of 10:30pm EDT today to add some comments form Clinton’s campaign and to correct Democratic Key Midwestern State Representative’s name. But somehow, the writer still managed to get the wrong “they’re.”

Also notice Democratic Key Midwestern State Representative’s assumption that each and every American citizen is equally respon­sible for a portion of the national debt. A debt many of those citizens never wanted, never applied for, never accepted, and, in exchange for accrual of which, never received any benefit.