Demand Answers, Maybe

The other day somebody asked me what my greatest fault was. I had it coming, as I had just mentioned having one. I didn't tell her the answer, because I want to save that for the grand jury, but it got me thinking. Since I won't admit my greatest fault, what minor faults would I admit? A few minor faults might come in handy, to act as a smokescreen covering up the big one.

A lot of cool minor faults sprang to mind, and then I remembered how much I like to speculate.

Liking to speculate probably doesn't seem like any kind of fault to most of you. But then most of you probably haven't been practicing mathematicians. The following conversation actually happened once, between a colleague of sorts and myself.

Me: "You know what would be cool? If the universe was perfectly round. Yeah, I'll bet it is. I'll bet space is a 4-dimensional sphere."

Him: "What?! Why?"

Me: "Because it would be so cool. You'd know where everything was. You could set up your longitudinal and your latitudinal and your turpitudinal lines. You could spin it in three directions. Maybe it would even bounce nicely if you dropped it in 5-dimensions. Instead of bouncing like a 4-dimensional football."

Him: "What's the proof?"

Me: "I don't have a proof. I'm just guessing for the fun of it."

Him: [Backing slowly away.] "You can't do that. You have to have a proof! You can't just say anything you want…"

Woof! Can you say "conflicting values"? And my other colleagues felt the same way. Eventually I learned to keep my love of speculation in the same dark hidden place in my soul where I kept my love of toe jam art and midget-on-stuffed-animal pornography.

Now I'm old enough, poor enough, and far enough away from any math department that I can broadcast my wicked perversion of the mind. I have no career to lose.

I feel sorry for those poor engineers at NASA who can't do the same. You can see it in the faces when they get on TV. They want to say why they think Columbia blew apart. But that would be doing the S-word thing. It would violate the code. You have to be led there by the evidence. Guessing is not allowed in their profession.

The same goes for prosecuting attorneys trying to figure out what to do about Michael Jackson. Think of the bind they're all in. Even if they couldn't charge him with anything, you know they'd love to say what they think is going on. But they can't. It would violate the code.

The experts are amazingly quiet these days on the subject of Dolly's early demise and what it might portend for any human clones that may or may not be out there.

I guess it's a good thing that all these professional experts show that kind of restraint. When an authority speculates, people don't always recognize that's what's going on. Hey, it doesn't even have to be an authority. Shirley MacLaine has admitted that her speculations about past lives are just that, but that doesn't stop her from having true-believer followers. But when it's an authority it works faster. If a pope speculates about a virgin birth, it's a fact within the week.

Still I hope that the vast majority of you share my ugly little fault. I want to believe that people are prepared to jump at conclusions based on shabby evidence. After all, your government never wants you to have any more than shabby evidence. They're counting on you to be afraid to guess at the truth.

Keep it up, and demand answers.