Dear Dr. Nucleus;

I would like to know if there is a scientific reason why the recent caning of an American citizen by Sing-a-poor authorities was not on pay-per-view? It seems we as a nation missed a great ratings bonanza. The Federal Government could have sold the telecast to the major networks and used the proceeds to diminish the national debt! There has to be some logical scientific explanation to let so pregnant a possibility pass.

singed
Red Bottoms

Dear Red,

It has not always been so. Television had long been interested in caning. Remember the seminal paper "The Effects of Monosodium Glutamate on Hand-Eye Coordination in Television's Gunfighters" by Dr. Kwai Chang Cane? Then there was "Business Ethics in Spokesperson Modeling" by Dr. Erica Cane; most of my children (lab assistants) found that amusing. Dr. Melvin Brooks even caned (endowed) twelve chairs around the former Soviet Union in his quest for televised academic discipline.

Sweetening the potentiometer, as it were, Drs. Shugar and Khan D. Khain's investigation of "Breakfast Cereals as Sponsors of Deleterious Children's Saturday Morning Programming" was hotly disputed by Anthony Singh Tyger in his "They're Great!" speech. Such controversy sparked Dr. Michael Caine to inquire, "What's It All About?" Television, ever given to form if not substance, never answered.

With the demise of bubble-gum music and Partridge Family values, the saccharined days of milk and honey had evaporated from TV. Sure, there still were rattan (named for television agents "tan rats") TV stands but could they hold up? Hardly! The Bamboo Curtain had descended on the era which started with Adam-12 who was Able to raise Cane and ended with the so-called Caine Mutiny.

It was the strawberries, that's where I had them,
Dr. Nucleus