Monday, December 18, 2006

Things that never would have occurred to me if I was a totalitarian ruler

Okay, so I'm linking you to an article about iodization of salt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all the the public health implications. (Step off if you're still concerned that thermisol causes autism or that the U.S. government set off charges in the World Trade Center to make sure the buildings collapsed on 9/11.) The little girl with the umbrella has been delivering all the healthy American children a safe dose of Iodine for decades, protecting them from stunted growth and diminished itellect. (Kind of makes you wonder whose mother kept them on a low salt diet as a child, huh?)

But that's not what this entry is about. Oh, no! I found something far more interesting in that article. And in case you're not interested enough in iodized salt to read to the second page or if you just don't want to click on the link, I've quoted the paragraph of interest below.

In neighboring Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov — a despot who requires all clocks to bear his likeness and renamed the days of the week after his family — solved the problem by simply declaring plain salt illegal in 1996 and ordering shops to give each citizen 11 pounds of iodized salt a year at state expense.

Now this guy is not just your average narcissistic dictator. He can't be placated with portraits of himself on the side of buildings and larger than life statues. Not even of portrait of himself in every home will do! He wants his constituents to see his face every time they check the time!! How this works in digital, I'm honestly not sure... But I may feel the need to investigate....

But seriously, Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Sadam, Castro, Noriega ~ none of them had the creativity, nay, the ingenuity, to place themselves on timepieces. (This is obviously a man who was raised with iodized salt!)

And the days of the week thing, well that's just icing on the cake. How much you want to bet that Monday is named after his mother-in-law???

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