Life, 1928-01-12 · page 27 of 39
Life — January 12, 1928 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"The Statistician Makes Love"** satirizes the modern tendency to reduce human experience—including romance—to cold statistical analysis. A man courts his girlfriend by citing marriage/divorce rates, death statistics, and traffic accident data instead of expressing genuine emotion. The joke is that this approach is absurdly unromantic: he proves mathematically they have a 79% chance of happiness, then undermines even that by citing traffic fatalities and dyspepsia surveys. **"A Meeting of the Cabinet"** is a brief joke about Mussolini (Italy's fascist leader by 1927) being perpetually in conferences—suggesting he's always busy with government affairs. **"One-Arm Driver"** is a contemporary joke about young couples in automobiles, where the boy driver keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other around his girlfriend; a taxi driver uses both hands properly. The page satirizes modern life's obsession with data and statistics, and courtship customs of the Jazz Age.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“What's the matter, Jake? You look worried!” “T am. The darling, my love for you, y M could it be measured, would reach from here to within cighteen and one-fifth miles of the sun. I know only too well that the death rate in America during the past twelve months has decreased decimal ought four, whereas the birth rate has increased decimal ought one. An Old-Fashioned Tin-Type my wife’s face lifted.” I can’t for the life of me decide whether to give the old car a coat of paint or get Statistician Makes Love But consider, my love, that mar- riages have dropped from December 1, 1925, to July 1, 1927, decimal ought eight. Divorces, dear heart, have, during the corresponding peri- od, increased one decimal ought two. Taking these figures as a mean aver- age for the entire country, Alaska excepted, our potential chances of being happy are slightly above the mean for the nation, namely, 79 per cent. This, darling girl, may appear as a hazardous venture for you, but consider the deaths due to traffic ac- cidents. During the past five years ending July 1, 1927, there has been an increase of thirty - seven decimal nine ought in such deaths. I have no au- thentic figures avail- able for dyspepsia but a survey made by my co-worker, Alonzo Gookis, for the Mauso- leum Insurance Co. of America, indicates that out of four hun- dred urban families interviewed 37 per cent of those answering the door reported an increase of decimal one eight. But on the other hand, my precious, I never get tired of canned beans.... Louis DeArmand. A Meeting of the Cabinet Visitor: Is Signor Mussolini alone just now? SicNora Mussouini: conference. Yes, he’s in FvtiOa Mazte: Is your boy friend a one-arm driver? Mamie: Not him. He takes a taxi and uses both arms, comicbooks.com —