BoomerZoo Almanac for November 11-17, 2007: Some mice and men
Thirty-seven years ago this week, when most of us still thought mice were mainly useful as smokers to test the carcinogenic properties of tobacco, U.S. patent No. 3541541 was issued to Doug Engelbart for an “X-Y Position Indicator for a display system,” i.e., a computer mouse. Engelbart invented the device a couple years earlier and called it a mouse, because early versions had a cord at one end that looked like a mouse tail. Considering how fast technology is advancing, the computer mouse may soon just go the way of its cigarette-smoking namesakes.
This week is also the anniversary of Tricky’s declaration in 1973 to a whole roomful of AP managing editors that he was “not a crook.” This was duly reported in the press, and I doubt there’s a Boomer alive today who hasn’t heard of this…which just goes to prove the contention that the media just slavishly reports everything anyone in government tells them. The leader of another kind of free world is also having a big anniversary this week. Way back in 1950, when most of us Boomers were still the proverbial gleam, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama—only 15 years old at the time—was named the head of state in Tibet. Though forced to flee from his homeland in 1959, he is still considered its spiritual, if not actual, leader by most Tibetans, while most Americans felt completely betrayed by Nixon, their freely elected leader. So, kind of like mice, men can use power to make positive changes, or they can just chew through a wire and electrocute themselves.
