Math Teacher's Victory Garden: A Sign of Impending Doom?

A frightening piece of Internet came to my attention across the Internet tubes this evening. After a lengthy and dramatic courtroom drama, the hilariously-named Shelby County Environmental Court Judge Larry Potter has, with a wave of his judicial wand, permitted Memphis-area math teacher Adam Guerrero to keep the urban garden he'd built in his front yard, despite complaints from his neighbors.

This would seem like a simple case of neighbor versus neighbor. Except for one key detail.

Adam Guerrero is a math teacher.

Why has a math teacher - someone who is in daily contact with the numbers - suddenly decided to grow a vegetable garden on his property, when vegetables and vegetable by-products are readily available in supermarkets nationwide?

It's obvious that Mr. Guerrero knows something we don't. He must be privy to some secret information about the coming numeropocalypse and is growing an emergency garden as a survival strategy. Indeed, it's likely that this mathematical indoctrinator has already chosen to side with the numbers in their ongoing war with humanity, persuading them to spare his life during their systematic out-wiping of us all.

This is the only logical explanation.

And he would've gotten away with it, too, if not for the bravery of his also hilariously-named neighbor, Levi Dowdy, who reported Guerrero to local environmental authorities for the heinous crimes of urban blight and species treason. And the authorities - specifically, Judge Larry Potter - have apparently spent too much time dabbling in the dark arts to make a sensible decision.

Or, more likely, Judge Potter is already in the pocket of Big Digit. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that Judge Larry Potter is so influenced by the numbers that his Patronus Charm is a THREE.

This victory for Adam Guerrero's garden may be a small battle won for the numbers, but I'm confident that we humans will prevail eventually. All we need are more brave, right-thinking men like Levi Dowdy to keep fighting these small fights against the numerist conspiracy.

Indeed, we may have lost the victory garden, but we will win the war!

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Tennessee Caves In To Big Arithmetic

Sad news to report this morning, my fellow Math Skeptics. It seems we've lost Tennessee.

A state that was once one of the proud resistors of the mathematical agenda - ranking consistently near the bottom of nationwide math scores - is now clearly in the pocket of the Arithmetic Lobby.

A column in today's The Commercial Appeal by Kevin S. Huffman, Tennessee commissioner of education, shows just how high up the calculatory corruption goes:

On Thursday, Gov. Bill Haslam announced that Tennessee students scored higher in all subject areas and grade levels (in grades 3-8) on this year's Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program achievement test than they did in 2009-10. This represents a critical step forward in the ambitious reform plan Tennessee articulated a year ago in its winning application for federal Race to the Top funding.

The TCAP results were impressive, particularly in math where student success rates grew by seven percentage points over the previous year.

Shameful, isn't it?

Tennessee used to be one of the good ones, proudly resisting the scientifico-mathematico cabal. They used to put teachers on trial for daring teach math and science in math and science classes.

Now they're just another cog in the numero-governmental conspiracy machine.

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Math Skepticism Delayed is Math Skepticism Denied in Tennessee

A bill that could have opened the door for Math Skepticism in the Tennessee classroom is on hold until next year. The so-called "monkey bill," Senate Bill 893, would require state and local education authorities to inject some much-needed skepticism in the teaching of science.

Instead of merely learning one side of controversial theories such as evolution, abiogenesis, and climate change that have been subject to decades of experimental testing, evidence gathering, and peer review, students in the Nashville State would also have to learn competing theories such as Young-Earth Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Hollow-Earth Expansion. Presumably, this would also apply to competing theories of mathematics, allowing teachers to also inject some much-needed skepticism into controversial theories such as multiplication, geometry, and algebra.

Unsurprisingly, math and science promoters such as the National Center for Science Indoctrination and the ACLU are hailing this as a victory. "It's taken eighty-six years," said Hedy "Hedley" Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, "but perhaps at last the Tennessee legislature is learning the lesson of the Scopes trial."

This lesson, I presume, is that in order to win, the bill's proponents need to bring in a populist firebrand lawyer from the North portrayed by Fredric March.

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