A Letter from the Smithsonian

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Idiots don’t know a lot of things. Their ignorance usually spans a wide variety of subjects. 


I know one guy and no matter what subject you pick, except for football, he’s sure to know nothing about it. But he doesn’t care, doesn’t want to learn, and doesn’t want to pretend that he does know what he doesn’t.


That has a healthy degree of honesty about. I like him for it and so do many other people. He’s a very popular guy.  


What I can’t stand are the idiots who know next to nothing about what they are talking about but persist in giving their opinions on everything. These people are so dumb they have no idea just how dumb they are. They are not likeable and they are not popular. People melt away from them at parties, dread to be placed next to them at the dinner table, and never interact with them socially when they can avoid it. But unfortunately they are so self-absorbed in their own ignorance that they never catch on.


When they know nothing about something relatively simple its bad enough. When they imagine in their own demented craniums that they are ‘experts’ on something complex it’s even worse.


Below is a copy of a genuine letter sent out by the Smithsonian Institute to a Mr Scott Williams of Newport, Vermont. I don’t know Mr Scott and have never met him, but I can kinda tell from the letter from the Smithsonian that he may well be a good fit for the category of pest just described above.


As always, enjoy.





Smithsonian Institution
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078




Dear Mr Williams,


Thank you for your latest submission, labelled '211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull.'


We have given this a careful and detailed examination and we regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents 'conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Hennepin County two million years ago.'


Rather, it appears that you have found the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the 'Malibu Barbie'.


It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, however, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:


The material is moulded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilised bone.


The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimetres, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.


The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the 'ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams' you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.


This finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted so far, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it.


Without going into too much detail, let us say that the specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on, and clams don't have teeth.


It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. 
This is partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.


To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.


Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name 'Australopithecus spiff-arino' because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and doesn't really sound like it might be Latin.


However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate so effortlessly.


You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard.


We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it.


We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the 'trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix' that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities