Will The Real Human Candidates Please Stand Up?

Candidates:
We have reached the point in the campaign season when I make my impassioned plea on my gopher site to see the birth certifications of the candidates. Been doing it for almost a decade now with no success, but I hope this time my plea will be heeded.

Gentlemen, we live in dangerous times. Aliens from multiple worlds are anxiously awaiting the first opportunity to invade and enslave our planet, possibly by installing a pod-clone or android in the White House.

Not to alarm you all, but I have strong reason to suspect that one of you is such an android and/or pod clone. In the interest of fairness, I won't say which.

Oh, never mind fairness. It's Perot, ok? I'm pretty sure he's an android. Just look at the guy!

I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'll be proven wrong. Prove me wrong, candidates - show me your birth certificates.

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Voyager 1 Annoys The Planets One Last Time

The notorious interplanetary paparazzo Voyager 1, which has been antagonizing the outer solar system since its launch in September 1977, has been commanded by NASA managers to snap one last series of unauthorized candids of our poor solar system.

Capitulating to the demands of legendary planet-botherer Carl Sagan, NASA ordered the space probe to turn sunward and take a series of sixty photos of the Sun and planets, from a distance of some 4 billion miles. The patently offensive resulting photo not only captures the sun and gas giants unawarely, but portrays our Earth - the most important planet in the world - as a mere pale blue dot:

The gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune - no doubt caught off-guard and in some sort of embarrassing pose by the long-distance Voyager voyeurism - have yet to communicate their protestations through the astrologers, but I do not doubt these messages will be received soon. Hopefully not accompanied by a rogue comet, as has been their preferred method of making their feelings known since a young patent clerk named Galileo Galilei first turned his telescopes skyward and literally used them to draw the most salacious scribblings of the planet and its moons ever scribbled.

While I don't expect this latest affront to planetary privacy will be met with the kind of vitriol that caused the 1908 Tunguska incident, we would be well-advised to keep looking up, just in case.

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Shit on a Fucking Pancake.

I'm not having a good day

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Stock Market, Here I Come!

After a long talk with my accountant today, I've come to realize that perhaps my long-standing fear of the stock market is hurting my long-term financial prospects.

Yes, fellow Math Skeptics - we all know that the stock exchange is just a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah of numbers, all gathered together and engaging in a disgusting, hideous orgy of calculation. Until today, I would never have even dreamed of subjecting my buried boxes of cash to such fiduciary hedonism.

But my accountant made some good points. Historically, he said, the market outperforms any other form of investment. Plus, you can diversify your portfolio, putting your life savings into many different companies in promising industries. I'm talking safe bets here, like Pan Am Airlines, or Commodore Business Machines, or Drexel Burnham - people are always going to need air travel, computers, and financial services, right?

So I did it. I got a broker, dug up those tin boxes, and put it all in the market. Every last penny.

Don't worry, I'm still just as skeptical as always. Once a Math Skeptic, always a Math Skeptic. But sometimes, even a Skeptic has to take care of his financial future.

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A Tragesty of Justice has Occurred!

As you may have heard, the Supreme Court has just handed down a land-mark ruling that may spell the death-knell for academic freedom in our nation's biological science classrooms. In the case of Edwards v. Aguillard, the Court ruled in favor of Edwards. Or Aguillard. I don't remember which.

Whichever one was the evolutionist. That's the guy who won.

With this ruling, Louisiana's "Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act" is null and void, as the so-called law violated the so-called Establishment Clause of the so-called Constitution. And with the unfortunate precedent this sets, all other laws mandating academic freedom are guilty by association.

The ruling isn't all that surprising, of course. The decks were clearly stacked against the poor pro-freedom creationists from the beginning, as the anti-freedom forces of Big Darwin rallied their troops with all manner of amicus briefs and what-have-you. I can only hope that Edwards and/or Aguillard (whichever guy lost) will serve his jail term with dignity.

While this is certainly a setback for us academic freedomists, I don't think it's the end of the road. I'm sure there's some way for the creation scientists - all very intelligent people - to design some sort of curriculum that won't trip that silly "establishment clause."

Hope!

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Congratulations, Pete Rose!

In the war of Humans vs. Numbers, we humans are hopelessly disadvantaged. We're outnumbered, for one thing - there are infinite numbers, but only five billion of us.

Every now and then, however, we human people come out on top. Today is one of those days. Because today, Cincinnati Reds hitmaster Pete Rose broke the Ty Cobb number curse with his 4,192nd career hit!

As we in the Math Skeptic community are well aware, numbers have been trying to tarnish Ty Cobb's career hit record for decades now, attempting to rob the famed ballplayer and salad inventor of two legitimately hitted hits through quantum uncertainty.

Well, there's no uncertainty anymore. You can bet on Pete Rose, the new all-time career hit leader. There's no gambling with uncertain numbers here - this record for this future Hall-of-Famer is set in stone!

And hey - look at the date! 9/11 again - I told you there was something special about those numbers!

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Pittsbughians Rebel Against the Forces of Math

In some happy news out of the City of Brotherly Love, Pittsburgh education officials have reported that students taking the so-called California Achievement Test are increasingly fighting back against the tyrannical forces of arithmetofascism. Pittsburgh students' math test scores have dropped by three percent this year, according to the city's superintendent of schools.

This is certainly good news. It means that the poor, embattered students of the Cheesesteak Capitol are no longer content to regurgitate one-right-answer mathematicalism and are asserting their academic freedom on the standardized testing regime. This year, the students of Quaker City are three percent more freedom.

Though this is indeed a cause for celebration, it is not quite a reason to celebrate. Though Pittsburghian students are increasingly free, they are still showing dangerously high test scores, with 71 percent of students above the national average.

I call upon the brave students of Pittsburgh to remain strong in their fight for freedom, and assert their mathematical rights even more on next year's C.A.T. examinations.

It is no coincidence that the fight against numerical tyranny begins here in the Cradle of Liberty: Pittsburgh. The same city that saw our country's struggle against tyranny begin with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 now sees the beginning of our struggle for academic freedom.

We the people are united - against the tyranny of arithmetic!

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The Coca-Cola People Are Trying to Kill and/or Enslave Us!

I just got back from a trip to my corner delica-tessen and found that my beloved Coca-Cola soft drink has been replaced by a horrible monster.

For some infathomable reason unknown to all and sundry, The Coca-Cola Company has decided to change the beloved formula of their beloved soft drink for the first time since 1888. 1888!

The markety-advertising types who market-analyze these sort of things will probably tell you that this is the product of taste-tests and focus-groups and sur-veys and what-not. But I'm not buying it! I believe something more sinisterer is going on here.

This so-called "New Coke" must be a front for some dastardly plan. It's the only logical explanation. Who knows what sort of mind-control juice and/or toxic poison could be lurking in this new "formula?"

My theory - the Coca-Cola Company has been infiltrated by communists and/or computers and they are using this new formula to push their agenda of socialized medicine and/or killing us all. This change in formula is, I am absolutely convinced, the first step in a larger plan to destroy America and/or humanity.

Sure, some doubters will doubt me. I don't blame them. But mark you my words, proof will come. I predict herein that The Coca-Cola Company will employ some sort of Communist and/or computer-generated "spokesperson" to push this product in the near future.

This I Have Pre-dicted!

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