The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I felt compelled to refuse the request of Tsar Peter the Great that they try out the former’s new execution gallows on one of their own men. It’s also recorded that Phalaris, 6th century BCE tyrant in Sicily ordered the inventor Perillus to design a huge bronze bull in which to roast the former’s victims alive. Their screams would, that tyrant hoped, sound just like the bellows of a bull. Phalaris was so impressed with the contraption that his first victim was Perillus.
Civilization, it seems, would be one where Friedrich Wilhelm I, Peter the Great, Phalaris, and all the other tyrants end in their own contraptions. And yet: It’s hardly helpful to know that modern cosmology–string theory plus black holes–implies there is a planet out there, just like this one in virtually every way, save that its US President is being water-boarded for crimes against humanity.
