"You would weigh less on the top of a mountain than at sea level." I've no reason to doubt the truth of the statement, but didn't expect to read it inside a Snapple bottle-cap. It's billed as #106 in a series of what the company is pleased to describe as "real facts," as if there were another variety.



Commercial speech of this kind reminds me of a character in Auberon Waugh's novel A Bed of Flowers, who's appalled by the nonsense of a claim that some detergent washes "whiter than white." You needn't subscribe to a Platonic theory of Forms to see the absurdity of the claim. Commercial manipulations of language can be a source of comedy and are effective in selling the product but there's always a lurking danger when words aren't used with honesty and care. Some slopes really are slippery.





Waugh's novel, even though time-bound, deserves to be more widely known. A retelling of Shakespeare's As You Like It and a portrait of the detritus of the Age of Aquarius against the background of a Wilsonian England accepting the slaughter of the Ibo tribe in Biafra in order to maintain an influential presence in Nigeria. Waugh, to greater degree even than his father Evelyn, could spout the acid and vitriol when needed.





Francis Cardinal Arinze was a young bishop in Nigeria at the time of the Biafran secession and did heroic work. Bernardin Cardinal Gantin worked as a young bishop in neighboring Benin. So many of our brothers and sisters have seen suffering and persecution on a scale we can't imagine. And still they do. Let us not forget.