Every day tourists are tooling around Prague on Segways, those electric-powered two-wheel thingies. They’re billed as “green” transportation devices, but what’s greener or healthier than walking? In Ken Russell‘s The Devils, Cardinal Richelieu is shown being pushed around on a two-wheeled cart by an assistant. Russell intended this as a metaphor for corruption, of course — i.e., “this guy is so powerful and arrogant and smug that he can’t even be bothered to walk.” How is the concept of riding a Segway any different?
