If my one eye doesn't deceive me, Frodo lives!

Whenever I'm in a crowd, say in line at the supermarket or somesuch, I get a sense that people around me really aren't that tall. I'm hardly towering, I'm probably a hair under 6' 2'', although I tend to wear some thick boots which give me an extra bit of stretch, but I honestly feel like a giant sometimes. What is the cause of this paucity of height in England? I've developed a trio of scientifically sound theories to explain this phenomenon. The first is poor nutrition. I had initially chalked it up to a lingering effect of the food shortages of WWII, but the greater culprit is the cuisine out here. The food is, to be generous, heart-wrenchingly bad. And I saw this as someone who has eaten Arctic Circle's infamous boiled hamburgers. Zing!

Just to show people I'm not talking bollocks, listen to this expert testimonial from French President Jacques Chirac:

The president, chatting to the German and Russian leaders in a Russian cafe, said: "The only thing [the British] have ever given European farming is mad cow." Then, like generations of French people before him, he also poked fun at British cuisine.

"You can't trust people who cook as badly as that," he said. "After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."

"But what about hamburgers?" said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, referring to America.

"Oh no, hamburgers are nothing in comparison," Mr Chirac said.

Mr Putin and Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor,
laughed. Mr Chirac then recalled how George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general and a former defence secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet, had once made him try an "unappetising" Scottish dish, apparently meaning haggis.

"That's where our problems with Nato come from," he said.

Mr. Schröder and Mr Putin laughed again.

If nothing else, the French know food. The prosecutor rests his case.

The second factor deals with the respective levels of gravituity and polarity in Idaho and London. I come from a high-altitude state, while the Brits reside at near sea level, resulting an ever-so-slight gravity differential between our two areas. Without having to constantly strain against the awesome powers of our earth, I was able to achieve a greater height than the Brits. This is the same scientific basis for the existence of Paul Bunyon and Babe the Ox, photographic evidence of their existence can be seen here, after they were captured and imprisoned in Brainero, Minnesota, after clear cutting the entirety of South Dakota:




You might not think that is big, but realize that snow globe is actually 73 feet tall.

Finally, I think that once the Brits colonized the Irish Isles, the resulting cross-genetic pollination introduced a dominant "shortness" gene into the population. To give you an idea of the difference in height at the time of initial Irish/British contact, here is a historic photo of the Irish Ambassador sharing an ale with his British counterpart several hundred years ago:

Fine, now we have the background to this story dispensed with, here is the key point: while in Oxford this weekend, I found just how small some of the Brits are. I passed a house that stood on the opposite side of the street, and my friend hollered out, "look at that tiny door!" I cast my gaze up on said door, and while I thought it to be a tad on the small side, I thought little of it.

Now perspective can be a tricky mistress. I have a friend who is blind in one eye, so he doesn't have much depth perception, yet he manages along just fine because he has always been monocular, so he has no conception of what he is missing out on. And for one dizzying moment, I think I realized what life is like for him. As we crossed the street, I expected this door to get bigger as I approached it. Yet it did not. While other details around me seemed to get bigger as I neared them, each step I took seemingly brought me no closer to this door; it seemed to simply recede into the distance.

When we finally stood up next to this cottage-like building, I realized the door was no more than four feet tall. I was terribly tempted to walk up to the door and measure myself against it, but I am pretty certain I saw Frodo throwing me a very stern look through the curtains, and decided to quickly go about my business.