Namibia

Namibia is second to the Czech Republic in annual per capita beer consumption by country. Namibia barely edged out both Austria and Germany (their Colonial Overlord from 1884-1915). As residents of the driest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Namibians (108 liters) are understandably thirsty. But they are unlikely to pass the Czech Republic (143.3 liters) any time soon. I never heard of Namibia. I would not have picked it as a country from a multiple choice question offering me answers of Rock Band, Jamaican Jambalaya, Korean automobile, and Avenger movie. This is another example of the failure of the education system in the United States. Why was I never taught about the amazing beer consumption by Czechoslovakians? I would have done my homework the day we learned that. Will Rodgers said, “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” Eliot Butler stole that quote as the title of his article in a 1977 issue of the BYU Studies Quarterly. It annoys me that Butler’s name came up first in my Google search. Rodgers died in 1935, so Butler clearly expropriated the quote. Nowhere does he appear to attribute the saying to Rodgers in abstracts or promotions for his work. Not that I looked very hard. Maybe he referenced Rodgers in the body of his article or in some obscure footnote. But I am not going to read Butler when I could be perusing quotes from Will Rodgers. He is timeless after all: “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.”