The Old Math

Two plus two is four. No one made it that way, it just is. And it doesn't matter what your opinion is, or how you feel about it. You can believe it's five, or seven, or sixteen, but you can't change what it really is. And if you believe it's sixteen, you won't just be wrong, but you'll be progressively more wrong when you start learning higher math like multiplication or exponents.

But look, if someone wants to tell me that they have a right to believe whatever they want, they won't get any argument from me. You can say it's sixteen and preach it on the street corners. You can gather together as many people as you want, start your own math club, and shout out to everyone you see, It's Sixteen!!! You can teach your kids whatever you want, you can put it all over the tv, you can make it so unpopular to say anything but sixteen that mathematicians are afraid to speak up anymore. You can elect your own representatives and pass laws saying it's sixteen and make it illegal to say or teach anything different.

But it's still four.

Now I can get along with everybody. I know people who say it's 1,572 and we get along fine, because they know that I'm not afraid to show them that two plus two is four and they know that I'm not carrying around my arithmetic book and forcing it on them all the time. And sometimes when the subject of math does come up, well, we can all agree on one plus one, and one plus two, it's just that two plus two that gives us trouble.

Claiming Dead People

Have you ever noticed when someone's been dead for a while, and they're really really popular, everyone claims them?

Take Martin Luther King, Jr. An American icon. I mean, no politician in their right mind would say anything bad about Martin Luther King, Jr. So what do they do? Well, they all claim him. It's true. Like when people debate Affirmative Action here in the South, one of those who is opposed to it will inevitably say "If Martin Luther King was alive today, he would agree with us." Yeah-huh.

Or John F. Kennedy. You can never say anything bad about John F. Kennedy. So when people debate taxes, conservatives love to point out that JFK lowered taxes and fiscally was much more moderate than most modern Democrats. Like they have no one better to point to than him.

Here's a big one: Lincoln. The Great Emancipator. Lincoln's been dead a long time and no one's left who actually knew him, so people can pretty much say whatever they want to. So everyone says he freed the slaves. It's true he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that said all the slaves IN THE CONFEDERATE STATES were free. But 1) The President didn't have the authority to free anyone, 2) the Confederate states didn't recognize anyone's authority in the US, and 3) Lincoln didn't even mention the slaves still being held in the North. All he did was politicize the issue so that Britain would stay out of the war, and get the slaves in the South all stirred up. Lincoln wanted to preserve the union, and he even stated himself that if he could do that and still let the South keep her slaves, he would have. Now, I'm not saying that Lincoln was a horrible evil man, just that he was not the guy that everyone seems to think he was, and certainly not the guy that Civil Rights people claim.

The biggest one of all is Jesus. Everyone claims Jesus. Whatever position you take, whatever group you belong to, whatever religion or political party you belive in, somebody's claiming that Jesus agrees with them. And you can always take some Bible verse somewhere to support what you're saying.

Now, I believe in the Bible and I believe that Jesus Christ is real and alive, so don't take this as an argument against the Bible. The truth is you could take any book or any historical figure and twist them around to say whatever you want. I think the Bible is true but its difficult to find a big truth in one little verse or phrase; the truth comes from studying, and all the words and phrases and stories fit together to form a Greater Truth, and a Deeper Truth.

But that's not what I'm talking about now.

OK, let's say there's some weird old hermit who doesn't like being around people, who's just grumpy and wants to be left alone. He might say, well, why do you think Jesus was always telling people "Go"?

Every time He healed somebody or forgave somebody He said "Go, and sin no more."

He called His twelve apostles and said "Go, preach, saying, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."

He commissioned 70 disciples before His death, and said "Go your ways: Behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves."

He told Peter, "Get thee behind me."

See? He didn't always want people hanging around. He was always saying Go! Don't hang around here, go do something. I mean, He wasn't a hermit or anything, and He had a different reason for telling people to GO!, but people still do stuff like this to make their points and claim that Jesus agrees with them.

I wonder what people will say about me when I'm dead and gone?

Psychic Herbal Voodoo

I always wonder about these old-timey herbal voodoo things, or acupuncture, or like some old wives' tales, and how people believe them for hundreds of years and then they wind up being true. Like say there was this herb called Apostles' Hangnail, and it was supposed to cure psoriasis, and now some scientist says it has deoxyhydrocordranites in it and it really does cure psoriasis. Well, who told them that 500 years ago?

And I don't know too much about acupuncture or any of that stuff, but what I do know I don't put too much stock in. I mean, I don't buy all that stuff about energy flowing through your body and restoring the balance between Yin and Yang. I mean, if its up to me, forget about this balance stuff and just get all that Yang out of me. But now some doctors say that apart from all the mystical aspects of it, there may be something to all that acupuncture stuff. So whoever thought of it? Did some little Chinese boy come home one day and say "Mom, I have a headache" and she says "Let's stick a needle in your foot and see if that helps."

What about psychics? I always hear about psychics everywhere. Fortune tellers, mind readers, whatever. Why don't psychics win lotteries or play the horses? Do psychics ever have bad luck, or accidents, and if so, why don't they see it coming? Ever seen one of those psychics who tells you your past, like, stuff you already know? What good is that? And what about people who say, so-and-so psychic told me I would get a new job, and the very next day I did! Well, so what? Would you have gotten the job anyway? Are the psychics affecting the outcome, or just predicting it?

Some psychics say they talk to the dead. I don't know what Heaven is like but I do hope that when I'm dead I have something better to do that talk to a psychic. I don't like talking to them now, anyway, so I can't imagine that changing when I'm dead. Houdini was a big believer in all that talking to the dead stuff, which is weird because he made a living tricking people. I've never heard of a dead person giving any useful information, like there's $500 hidden in the cookie jar; they always just say, don't worry, I'm at peace now. No one ever says This sucks I'm in Hell!

Which brings up another point: Bad news. Why do psychics give so little of it? I mean, you never hear a palm reader say "You're gonna die". It's always stuff like, you will find true love, or a new job, or whatever. If I was going to die or get fired I would want to know.

Here's something else I don't get. Why aren't people suing psychic hotlines? People will sue anyone these days, for any reason. So why not sue a psychic when they're wrong? To be fair to all the believers in Pagan Psychic Voodoo, I also think all those Christian Faith-Healers and Prophets should be held to the same standard, and sue them when they don't deliver. Of course, they have a built-in defense. Psychics can always blame the spirit world and faith healers can always blame God when they're wrong. The irony is all these old-timey "prophets" invoke the Old Testament, but under Old Testament law if you were wrong just once on even the smallest point, you were put to death.

That Old Testament stuff doesn't go over real well these days, though. I mean, all that Wrath-of-God stuff and plagues and fire and brimstone. I wonder if we would even recognize it if it did start happening. Say Atlanta had a plague of frogs, or Las Vegas was swallowed by the desert, or a pillar of fire descended on Times Square. You would probably see all these zoologists on TV talking about frog psychology and what it is about Atlanta that attracts them. You'd have meteorologists and geologists talking about what causes sandstorms. Probably the Times Square thing they would blame on terrorists. Maybe that's why we don't see that stuff now, because no one would pay any mind to it.