The Numbers Are Angry With Greece

By now, you have probably heard about the financial turmoil in Greece, and the violent protests prompted by the Grecian Parliament's austerity vote today. Many explanations are being offered for the source of Greece's financial difficulties, ranging from poor policy decisions by the Greco-socialist government to interference by the IMF and multinational banks.

And, of course, these explanations are all completely and utterly wrong.

The true explanation is also the most obvious. Greece has simply fallen out of favor with the numbers.

It was bound to happen sometime. Theirs is a relationship that goes back more than 2,500 years. During their golden age, the numbers were kind to the Greeks, giving them gifts like the Pythagorean theorem and Euclidean geometry. Over time, however, relationships can sour.

What caused the Greeks to fall into disfavor with the numbers? Only the gods and/or numbers can say for sure. I'd guess that it was one of the usual culprits that lead to the downfall of tragic heroes - hubris, defying oracles, structural adjustment, and general disobedience.

Unfortunately, there is no redemption once you have angered the numbers. In time, Greece - I'm sorry to say - will be brutally killed and wheeled onto the world stage on an ekkyklêma.

May they rest in peace, while teaching the rest of us a valuable, if ironic, life lesson.

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The Mauna Kea "Mystery" Flash Explained

The Internet is literally ablaze with speculation over the source of the mystery flash that was captured by a surveillance camera over Hawai'i's Mauna Kea observatory in March of this year.

The mysterious mystery flash left the observatory's astronomers so flummoxed that they forgot how to spell "astronomer":

My name is Ichi Tanaka, a Support Astrnomer of Subuaru Telescope, Hawaii. On the early morning of 22 March we, Subaru Telescope observers on the summit of Mauna Kea, noticed that there is a huge halo of light above the eastern horizon. It was slowly expanding to over 45 degrees in 5 minutes or more.
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We have absolutely no idea about the nature of this. It appears that the event happened not on the Summit area, but much farther away, according to the comparison of the two videos. This means that the size of the light halo is quite large.

A range of plausible explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, from the fantastical suggestion that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program somehow caused it, to the bland and pedestrian suggestion that this was caused by venting fuel from the third stage of an ICBM test launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Two ridiculous explanations, to be sure, but certainly explanations.

We who are wise and understand the true workings of the world and/or universe already know just what's happening here. The fact that this phenomenon was aimed at Mauna Kea observatory should be a dead giveaway that this was yet another attack in the re-escalating war between the Astrologers and the Astronomers. Note that this attack happened just a few months after the Astronomers attempted to declare an unlucky 13th Zodiac sign, an act clearly within the domain of the Astronomers.

Coincidence? Pah! There is no such thing.

Sorry, Astronomers, but you brought this on yourselves. Hate to say "I told you so," but I did.

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Battle: Helsinki

The numbers are at it again, trying to destroy all of humanity with their inherent wickedness. This time, the battle-lines are being drawn in Finland, where numbers quite literally robbed the country of 2% of its industrial output in April:

Statistics Finland revised the industrial production figures for the months from January to April in order to correct the error detected in the calculation system.

The statistical office on Tuesday said Finnish industrial output increased by working-day adjusted 6.9 percent year-on-year in April. That compares to the initial 4.9 percent growth estimate.

Of course, the lamestream media is jumping to the numbers' defense, attributing the cause to "human error." We in the Math Skeptic community know that there is no such thing.

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What Really Happened Today

The Math Skeptic has been receiving some harsh criticism today, including claims that we "inflated" the "false threat" of "total global annihilation" resulting from our prediction that the rogue Texan-sized planet-killer asteroid MD 2011 was going to impact our planet and cause an ELE (Eli-Level Event). Some have even been so bold as to claim that we made the whole thing up just to boost our readership and t-shirt sales.

These claims are false.

Completely and utterly false.

This is because our predictions were, in fact, correct. Completely and utterly correct. The impact of asteroid MD 2011 happened, just as we predicted, at 1:01 pm EST, unleashing a global wave of destruction that wiped out all life on the planet Earth, save for a few small pockets of survivors forced to live out their remaining days fighting off motorcycle gangs and cannibals in a post-civilization dystopia.

The impact simply happened in the spiritual realm, not the physical one.

Sure, the post 6/27 world might look the same to you. Life may seem to be perfectly normal, but it is in fact not, for spiritually we ARE survivors in that global dystopia and/or dead and/or cannibal motorcycle gang members. We know this because the Bible says [placeholder - don't forget to Google applicable verse before posting!]. Our bodies and minds may be intact, but The End has already happened.

Do not fear - The Math Skeptic will continue to update, even in this post-spiritual-apocalyptic nightmare world, for the fight against numbers lives on.

Also, I'm trying to recruit members for my spiritual cannibal motorcycle gang. Please post in the comments if you'd like to join.

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WE ALL DIED!

If you are seeing this pre-recorded, auto-posted blog post, it means that the Texan-sized planet-killer asteroid MD 2011 has plowed into the Earth and obliterated all life on the planet, including The Math Skeptic. And with the apparent exception of you. So congratulations.

This tragedy should not have been allowed to happen. We should have known that this would happen one day, and been prepared by building a solid titanium shield circling the entire globe that would deflect planet-killers like this one. Most of all, we should not have relied on inherently unreliable mathematics to "predict" the orbits of randomly-moving objects like planets and asteroids.

To those few survivors still able to read this, I wish you luck re-populating the planet and restoring human civilization. Please try to maintain order so the world does not descend into dystopian chaos like in The Book of Eli. That movie was hell of depressing.

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WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AGAIN!!!

If you spend as much time on the internets as I do, you have no doubt heard by now of asteroid MD 2011, which is scheduled to slam into our planet today and obliterate all plant and animal life. According to unsubstantiated reports I either read or dreamt up while falling asleep in front of a Stanley Kubrick marathon, this asteroid is carrying lethal amounts of the rare isotope Balthorium-G, which will shroud the planet in a radioactive cloud for 93 years.

Of course, NASA and the usual crowd of alarmism-deniers is saying that there's no cause for alarm, and that this giant rectangular planet-killer is going to miss the planet and even if it were to hit us it'd be too small to reach the ground and would likey burn up in the atmosphere. Exactly what you'd expect them to say if they were covering up our impending doom in order to prevent mass panic. And since we already know from unstantiated and possibly apocryphal reports that NASA has instructed all employees to take contingency measures and report to the nearest FEMA resettlement camp, it MUST be true.

As always, the Math Skeptic would like to point out that this tragedy could have been avoided were we not so horribly dependant on numbers to predict the orbital paths of near-Earth asteroids. Unfortunately, it is far too late to do anything about it now. The only responsible thing to do is PANIC.

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Science Goes One Step Too Far... AGAIN!

In a frightening story in this month's New Scientist, scientists at the University of Minnesota have given the secret of numbers to common brewer's yeast. Once the sacred domain of humans, sentient robots, and television dogs and horses, now saccharomyces cerevisiae has been added to the counting club.

By centrifuging the yeast cells together on a daily basis, these hippie biologers taught the single-celled organisms to live in snowflake-shaped communes, sharing resources and dividing labor amongst themselves, each according to their abilities. In short, they have given yeast the gift of multicellularity.

As anyone with a less-than-rudimentary understanding of the fundamentals of science will tell you, this is an absolutely terrifying scenario. Now that yeast understands the power of strength in numbers, how long will it be before they begin to exercise their collective bargaining rights? Now that they understand numbers, what if some cells from 2112 California Common get together and decide they want to be 2565 Kölsch instead? Or decide to quit converting glucose to ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide entirely unless they get a daily massage and some malto-dextrin?

The possibilities are chilling. For bottom-fermenting saccharomyces, anyhow. For top-fermenting strains the possibilities are merely cellar temperature.

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New York Embraces Marriage Equality. Could Mathage Equality Be Next?

By now, you have no doubt heard the news that a bill legalizing same-sex marriage has been passed by the New York state legislature and will go into effect next month. This is certainly a great victory for all who have been fighting for equal rights, and The Math Skeptic salutes them.

This victory of alternative marriage prompts us to wonder - will this open the door to alternative arithmetic as well? While New York has moved into the 21^st Century in the marriage arena, its educational system remains hopelessly mired in the antiquated, 20^th Century, "one right answer" mathematical paradigm. A cursory and hastily-conducted review of the state's P-12 mathematics standards revealed not a single reference to alternative mathematics or creative arithmetic. This is simply unconscionable.

The Math Skeptic urges all New Yorkstians to contact their legislators and the Board of Regents and demand equality and fairness in the education system. The time is hot. We must strike while the iron is ripe.

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BURN THIS BOOK

This may be the most frightening antebellum traveller-centered reference guide I have EVER SEEN. The verbosely-titled The Traveler's Vade Mecum; or Instantaneous Letter Writer, by Mail or Telegraph, for the Convenience of Persons Traveling on Business or for Pleasure, and for Others, Whereby a Vast Amount of Time, Labor, and Trouble is Saved commits the most grave linguistic atrocity imaginable - assigning common travel phrases like "accommodations here are excellent" and "the lost baggage has been recovered" and "some of the passengers were seriously injured" to - you guessed it - NUMBERS.

The premise may have seemed innocent enough in 1853 - a traveling businessman could simply telegraph 169 to the home office, sparing the expense of telegraphing "Have any persons called on business with me during my absence; and if so, who?" Said businessman would then interpret the response 223 to mean "we wish, if possible, that you would be present at the funeral, and request that you would send word by telegraph whether we may expect you, and when, and if possible the funeral will be delayed till you arrive."

Useful? Sure. Thrifty? Certainly. Dangerous? Absolutely.

When the singularity happens - and it WILL happen - our robot overlords will use this as a Human User Manual. If you happen to come upon a copy of The Traveler's Vade Mecum; or Instantaneous Letter Writer, by Mail or Telegraph, for the Convenience of Persons Traveling on Business or for Pleasure, and for Others, Whereby a Vast Amount of Time, Labor, and Trouble is Saved, burn it, bury it, lock it away - don't let the machines get a hold of it. Nothing less than the future of our species is at stake.

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More Like Purple Matter, Eh?

Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer and well-established numeral sympathizer, is up to his usual tricks. Using pretty pictures of faraway objects to push his radical (√) agenda on the unsuspecting skeptic public. This time, the object of fancy is a supercluster named Abell 2744, allegedly 3.5 billion light-years away. View at your own risk:


Okay, fine. It's pretty. Real pretty. But what are we really looking at? Dark matter. The "mysterious matter" allegedly holding galaxies together amidst the alleged "acclerated expansion" of the alleged "universe." How are we looking at it? In false color. FALSE COLOR. This image is a LIE!

Says the alleged author of "12 bazillion blog articles:"

"We can piece together a history of an object with hundreds of trillions of stars spanning quintillions of kilometers of space and hundreds of millions of years in time. And that, my friends, is what scientists do."

That's right, Phil. You make up big numbers like trillion and bazillion and quintillion so we can ooh and ahh. Well, I'm not oohing and ahhing. Except for that first sentence which was for demonstration purposes. And the one after which used the gerund of the terms "ooh" and "ahh." And this most recent one which was for clarification purposes.

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Door's Open In New Hampshire

Good news from the Granite State! According to the National Center for Science Indoctrination, Two new bills supporting academic freedom are in the works in the The Live Free Or Die State legislature. One requires public schools to teach that the Theory of Evolution is a theory. The other requires public schools to teach the Theory of Intelligent Design.

Could these lead the way to Mathematical Freedom in The Former Man In The Mountain State? The Math Skeptic certainly hopes so. I urge residents of The We're Nothing Like Those Hippies In Vermont State to call, write, fax, email, or punchcard their legislators and urge them to push for the teaching of alternate math theories in addition to alternate origin-of-life theories.

New Hampshire was the first state to declare freedom from the oppression of the British Empire in 1776. With a bit of work, the Hey Massachusetts, Buy Your Liquor Here State may well be the first to declare freedom from the oppression of the global arithmetic hegemony as well.

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Numbers Claim Responsibility for Brutal Attacks on UK Students

...At least, that's what headlines would read if the lame-stream media wasn't completely in the pocket of Big Arithmetic.

Instead, what we see are reports like this one, about an epidemic of errors in the British GCSE, A-level, and AS-level exams. And, of course, the BBC attributes this outbreak of erratum to "human error."

It's shameful that these reporters can't - or won't - dig a bit deeper and uncover the truth of these stories. That this is more evidence of the vendetta against humans by rogue numbers.

Moreover, it is an assault on academic freedom. The entire concept of "right" and "wrong" answers is nothing more than a socio-mathematical construct invented by the Global Academical Hegemonic Conspiracy to force creative thinkers into a rigid "smart box."

And how are students who think "outside the box" punished when they provide alternate answers to factual questions? By receiving a poor numeric grade on their exam.

The conspiracy is obvious to anyone willing to see it.

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Vale- "Dict-" Over By Numbers

This may be the most shocking story of numeric abuse The Math Skeptic has heard of to date. Numbers quite literally tried to rob Malverne High School senior Aalique Grahame of his richly-deserved valedictorial honors.

Despite having the highest grade-point average in his class, a so-called "calculation error" resulted in Grahame being named salutatorian. The top honor instead went to his classmate Sarah St. John. When the "error" was discovered, the Board of Education attempted to add insult to insult by naming both Grahame and St. John co-valedictorians.

Any Math Skeptic can see what really happened here. This is nothing less than a vendetta by mathematics against an innocent young man. Mr. Grahame would have been haunted by the co-valedictorial title for life, like Roger Maris was haunted by his asterisk. Years and years of explaining his tarnished valedictory status at job interviews and award acceptance speeches, and would ultimately have left poor Aalique Grahame a bitter, broken shell of a man.

Happily, this story has a happy ending. The humans ultimately triumphed over the numbers, as the Board of Education reversed its decision and awarded Mr. Grahame his sole title.

Congratulations, Mr. Grahame - on your academic achievement AND your triumph over the arithmetocracy.

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Mad Astronomer Elenin Threatens Global Annihilation!

In a chilling posting on his blog, the Russian Astronomer/Supervillain Leonid Elenin is threatening to transform his "comet" C/2010 X1 (Elenin) from a small chunk of rock and ice hurtling toward us at tens of thousands of miles an hour into a Jupiter-sized brown dwarf.

A terrifying video posted on the blog shows exactly what will happen to our if his demands are not met, and the consequences are grave indeed. Starting with Saturn, the new super-sized Elenin will perturb the orbits of all the planets in the solar system, putting our Earth on a collision course with Jupiter and wiping out all life on our fair planet. As the name ELE-NIN suggests, this would truly be an Extinction Level Event, with a soundtrack provided by Nine Inch Nails.

There are a few frightening details about this story, besides the whole impending doom thing.

First, the Mad Astronomer has yet to publicly issue his demands, so we do not yet know how to comply in order to save our planet.

Second, we do not know how an Astronomer has acquired the power to control the motion of celestial objects, a power normally reserved for Astrologers.

The only logical conclusion is that Leonid Elenin is some sort of combined Astrologer/Astronomer, which would give him celestial abilities beyond all human comprehension. Together with his henchman/sidekick Trent Reznor, global domination and/or destruction may indeed be at hand this October.

Be. Very. Afraid.

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Darwin's Lost World: Best Left Un-Found!

I find myself once again in the uncomfortable position of thanking the National Center for Science Indoctrination for pointing out to me yet another book to NOT read.

Martin Brasier's evolutionist propaganda tome, Darwin's Lost World, explores the "mysterious" Cambrian era, 550 "million" years ago, in which the earliest proto-animals - according to evolutionist biological theory as I understand it - underwent simultaneous spontaneous combustion, after which all their limbs and organs regenerated and reassembled into the precursor kinds of the animals we all know today.

Hogwash, I know, but that's evolutionaical theoreticality for you!

The book is titled Darwin's Lost World because in 1859 the wayward "naturalist" was allegedly "puzzled" by the lack of fossils found in rocks older than the Cambrian era. Of course, this theory-killing mystery didn't stop him from publishing On The Origin of Species by Means of Whatever and Yadda Yadda, which is an obvious sign of the unproven theory's flawditude.

The most infuriating feature of Brasier's book is his recklessness with the fabric of spacetime, which he makes abundantly clear in his first chapter:

Good science is, after all, not just about facts. It should be a form of play. If a thing is not playful, it is probably not good science.
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Here, then, is your passport to becoming a Time Traveller, and to making your own exciting discoveries about the world in which we really live.

I'd like to know under what authority Mr. Brasier thinks he can issue chronological transit visas! And inviting his readers to literally travel to the distant past and "be playful" is simply playing with fire. What if they accidentally step on a Precambrian butterfly and irrevocably alter the present?

Very irresponsible, Mr. Brasier. I would think an evolutionist would have more respect for the past.

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