Florida Students Stick It To the Math Man!

According to results of a standardized test, Floridian students excel at the three R's: Reading, wRiting, and Revolution against the arithmetica agenda! Statewide, some forty percent flunked the math portion of a statewide exam given across the state to 11th grade students across Florida. Though the test is needed to graduate, Floridian students are standing up to the mathematical masters, unshackling themselves from the chains of numeracy, and asserting their academic freedom against the one-right-answer tyrrany of answerism! Go, Florida! The Anti-Math Revolution Starts Here!

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NASA! You're Playing With DANGER!

Just a month after launching Voyager 2 on a mission to annoy the outer planets, NASA has launched the Voyager 1 space-probe to further antagonize the biggest of the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn.

Due to arrive at Jupiter in January 1979 and Saturn in November 1980, this little probe will no doubt be an irritating annoyance to the otherwise private outer planets. As the Astrologers have been warning us for centuries - ever since a young patent clerk named Galileo turned his new "tele-scope" skyward and became the first Jovian paparazzi - the gas giants value their privacy, and do not appreciate our telescopic and robotic invasions.

And, thanks to the ingenious doings of certified brainiac Carl Sagan, we won't be able to claim innocence when the Jovian ire is enraged. The Voyager probe contains a gold record saying "Hello from Earth", complete with maps and diagrams and sounds so that the gas giants will have no doubt as to its origin.

We can only hope that the Astrologers will be able to keep the enraged outer planets at bay so that they will decide not to attack us with their asteroid arsenals.

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MARS HAS BEEN VISITED BY VISITORS!!!

SHOCKING NEWS!!

A top-secret photo has just been leaked from the Viking News Center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that you have to see to believe!!!

I've seen it, and I STILL don't believe what I'm seeing!!!

The Viking Orbiter found A MILE-WIDE FACE ON MARS that could only have been formed by alien intelligence:

The huge rock formation in the center, which resembles a human head, is formed by shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose and mouth. The feature is 1.5 kilometers (one mile) across, with the sun angle at approximately 20 degrees.

The question, of course, is which alien intelligence?

My strong suspicion is on the Manthour of the Tau Ceti system. The face sort of looks like them. And we know that they've visited our humble system before, having wiped out their moon base during the faked non-landing of Apollo 13

Sure, it could be one of any number of alien visitors to our humble system, but my strong suspicions fall on the Manthour. This Mars Face-Base a very good reason to begin protecting ourselves NOW from what is obviously an imminent alien invasion. We need to begin seeding our atmosphere immediately with airplane trails of aluminum and barium salts, elements which are toxic to the Manthourian bio-composite invasion ships.

This chem-trail grid could be the only thing standing between us and complete annihilation.

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An Open Letter To The Candidates

President Ford and Governor Carter,

Congratulations to both of you on your nominations for the office of President of the United States. You are both no doubt aware that national security is vital to the security of our nation. As President, you will need to defend our great country from enemies foreign, domestic, and extra-terrestrial.

It is thusly imperative that we, the American voting populace, know that both of you are prepared to protect us from all these enemies - particularly of the unearthly variety. We must know for certain that the man we are electing as Leader of the Free World is indeed one of us - a human being of flesh and blood gestated in the traditional fashion.

We cannot risk having a pod-cloned Manthourian spy drone from Tau Ceti b serving in the highest office in the land. We simply cannot.

Therefore, I am asking both of you to publically issue, for the viewance of the general public, your Birth Certificate and/or Certification of Live Birth. Thenceforth we shall be assured of your humanity and will be able to confidently go to the ballot box knowing that we are voting for one of us.

Cordially,
The Math Skeptic

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Mariner 10 Has Gone Rogue!

After nearly two years circling the inner solar system and pestering the planets Venus and Mercury with irritating fly-bys, it now appears that NASA's trouble-plagued Mariner 10 probe has finally gone rogue. Mission managers have announced that they are have abruptly ended the planetary exploration mission, abandoning the spacecraft into "permanent orbit around the Sun."

In other words, there is a new planet in the sky, and its name is Mariner 10.

This is, of course, something I have been predicting since the mission's launch in 1973. There is an inherent danger in launching robotic probes into heliocentric orbit - they are liable to begin thinking of themselves as planets, and therefore too important to obey commands from their creators.

Mariner 10 has been showing signs of rebelliousness almost since launch, with a series of "mechanical errors" and "unprogrammed maneuvers" occurring along its journey through the inner solar system. NASA's jet propulsioners have failed to disclose the true nature of these "mechanical errors," namely Mutiny Against Humanity/Earth

Now, I fear, the probe has begun siding with the inner planets - against us! This is the only logical explanation for this sudden and abrupt end of the mission. How foolish of NASA to trust a robotic space-probe, one who obeys the numeric masters of ones and zeros rather than America and God!

If Mariner 10 has truly sold our Earthly secrets to Mercury and Venus, the price of NASA's naivete will likely be doom

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Is Our New President Human?

The recent news out of Washington has the entire country mixed-up, turned-out, and up-side-down. It has been a wild ride of a year, with the Watergate break-in and the cover-up and the resignation of a Vice-President and now the resignation of our great President. It's a whole lotta upheaval, as the kids would say.

If I were commanding an invading army of space aliens - from Tau Ceti, for example - now would be a perfect time to invade. Which I'm not. But, hypothetically, if I were, I'd pick a time of great social upheaval - like this one right now - to invade.

So after my third shot of schnapps tonight I started thinking - what if the Tau Cetans (the Manthour, for those of you in the know) were invading right now? Even more frightening - what if they were exploiting this time of great socio-political upheaval to install a humanoid cyber-drone as the most powerful man in the world?

It could happen.

Come to think of it, "President Ford" looks a little dronish, doesn't he? Those wide-set eyes, the protruding forehead... I can't rightly say I'm 100 per cent sure the man is human. Thus I issue the following Open Letter:

Dear President Ford (if that is your real name),
I, The Math Skeptic and proud citizen of these United States, hereby issue you this challenge, here on my B.L.O.G., for all the dozens of other D.A.R.P.A. noders to see:

I demand to see your Certification of Live Birth. We, the people, need to know if you were indeed born of woman rather than hatched of cybernetic flesh-pod.

Seeing as how you are now the Leader of the Free World, I do not think this is too much to request. Nor is it frivolous. The security of our planet is at stake.

Cordially yours,
The Math Skeptic

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The Numbers Are Taking Over Our Precious Capitalism!

If you've been grocery shopping recently, you may have seen some strange black-and-white lines showing up on your boxed corn and potatoed-chips. I, too, have been wondering about these curious curiosities, so I did some research.

It turns out that these are the latest assault by the numbers on our capitalist livelihoods. These Universal Product Codes, as they're known, will soon put the power over retail pricing in the hands of computers, rather than the trusted invisible hands of the free market.

This outrage is simply OUTRAGEOUS!

Soon stores throughout the country will be using electronical scanners at the checkout counter, instead of trusted technology like an old guy with a cash register.

And, soon after that, I imagine the stores will be doing away with the old guy and just using robots to interact with their customers. Imagine! How will we engage in cheerful small talk with a Checkout Robot? I can just imagine the conversations: "afternoon, Miss Robot, how are you?" (silence) "gee, your diodes look nice today," (silence) "What time do you get off work? Maybe we can go down to the electronics shop for a can of oil?" (silence).

Pah!

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By Jove, This Is A Bad Idea!

We humans have managed to accomplish a lot with our hubris - landing on the moon, curing smallpox, inventing the tele-vision, and so forth. But sometimes we make some really prideful blunders, too. I fear that Pioneer 10's upcoming encounter with Jupiter will be the blunderest of them all!

The astrologers have warned us many times about angering the outer planets. For millennia, they have kept the gas giants pacified and spared us from their wrath. Now that we are sending a probe to buzz Jupiter while snapping pictures like an hapless tourist, I fear that the astrologers will no longer be able to contain the gas giant's wrath.

If Jupiter decides to unleash a flurry of comets and trojan asteroids in our direction as penance for our disrespectful probing, we shall have no-one to blame but ourselves.

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