Alternativism Is Gaining Against Factism!

In the War on Facts, we fact-skeptics face a decidedly uphill battle. We are facing a veritable juggernaut of fact-pushing fact-pushers, from schoolteachers to textbooks to a suite of science channels on our television boxes. There is, it seems, a mere infinitesimal of room for alternative facts in the public mind-space.

Happily, however, the alternative and equally-valid facts are still reaching significant numbers of public. A new study about climates or perceptions or something or other reveals that a surprising number of Americans have refused to comply with some of the so-called "consensus" facts of so-called "science". The survey results are thusforth:

The center of the Earth is very hot [true/false]. 86%
All radioactivity is man-made [true/false]. 84%
Lasers work by focusing sound waves [true/false]. 68%
Electrons are smaller than atoms [true/false]. 62%
Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? 72%
How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun? [one day, one month, one year] 45%
It is the father’s gene that decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl [true/false]. 69%
Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria [true/false]. 68%

This is fantastic news!

Putting aside for a moment the inherent fallibility of numbers, this means that one-third of United Statesians reject both laser theory, sperm theory and germ theory, a quarter of Americois reject heliocentricity, and fully HALF of the American people are exercising their Constitutional right to decide for themselves what constitutes a sidereal year.

For the first time in my life, since my last USA NUMBER ONE post from like a week ago, I am PROUD OF MY COUNTRY!

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I Have Literally Coined A New Phrase!

Earlier today I found myself in a heated (some would say "heated") discussion about the data-base my team is putting together for our project at D.A.R.P.A. This discussion hinged upon the data to be based in our data-base, and specifically the data about the data being based in the data-base.

This "meta-data," as it is called, is critical to proper data basage, and there is indeed a growing body of terms that need to be invented just to describe this meta-data. My colleagues and I were quibbling over these terms when our project manager, Lance "Dude" Dudowski intervened.

"Gentlemen," he said, looking at us over the rims of his tortoise-shell glasses and adjusting his pocket protector, "it would appear that we need a meta-language for our meta-data."

"Dude," I replied, "that's so meta."

We all laughed, of course, as the turn of phrase and my dead-pan delivery was indeed quite humor-ous. But as the snorts and chuckles died down I found myself thinking about this newly-minted turn-of-phrase and its potential applications in other fields. "That's so meta" could just as easily refer to songs about songwriting, or movies about the film industry, or books about books.

Thus I present this phrase to the world. Literally decades before the invention of hipsters, the phrase "that's so meta" is now here-to-fore a part of the linguistic lexicon, and I am literally its inventor.

And now I bestow it unto you. Use it wisely and widely, my dear readers, for "that's so meta" is going places!

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