To Err Is Interesting

[from 9/16/09]

What I think the guy meant when he said "To err is human; to forgive divine", not having had the patience to read the whole piece, is that poetry critics should lighten up on the grounds that they then might come nearer to the divine. But all I hear is "to err is human", and isn't that what makes humans so interesting? Whereas the divine must bore us all, judging from the abundant lack of forgiveness. So why go there?

My entire interest in human history and current affairs is based on my love of error. I've always enjoyed error. Error and folly, or as I prefer to call them, stupid and stupidity, ought to be the principle objects of study in all anthropology and political science curricula, and central to the study of psychology. Of course history should be understood as the study of almost nothing but the trajectories of errors, propagating through time and space. Especially the parts having to do with the "leaders."

As much as I want to see error and stupidity take a central role in human self-knowledge, it does pain me a little when amateurs set about calling attention to it. This is what happened last Wednesday when Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's speech to his workplace. Clearly what Mr. Wilson should have said was "You are in error!" and "Read my blog" and he should have posted an explanation of the president's error in 500 words or less online. He could have used his Blackberry to post it from the floor of Congress. So far no real explanation has appeared.

During the rebuttal, another Republican amateur stupid-spotter didn't spot one actual instance of stupid error in Obama's speech. This is astonishing, because even I could spot mistakes in it, and I approve of the president's plan.

For example, when Mr. Wilson was shouting "You lie!" to Obama, what Obama had said was that the plan he would accept would not insure illegal aliens. In reality, illegal aliens are allowed, RIGHT NOW, to obtain insurance in this country, by PAYING FOR IT out of their earnings from their illegal jobs, and nothing in any plan under consideration by the Democrats would prevent that from continuing to happen. What the plans say is that illegal immigrants won't be given any government assistance to help pay their premiums. So what Obama said was erroneous, and if Wilson had not been such a poor student of error, he could be the one telling you all this, instead of me. By the way, I'm all for illegal immigrants buying their own insurance.

Right after the shouting, and after the evil eye from Nancy Pelosi, Obama went on to say, "... no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place." Why didn't anyone in Congress then shout "Error! What federal conscience laws?" If we had federal conscience laws, how could we have congressmen?

I can understand why Republicans are prepared to believe that Obama is evil, given that they've been demonizing liberals for decades, but even if the man's mistakes are intentional you still have to say how they are mistakes, or you haven't really called him out. Step one, tell me what he stepped in. After that you can go on to convince me he stepped in it on purpose.

Exercises to Better Know Your Stupidity

1. The Republicans say the Democratic plan would fund insurance for illegal aliens on the grounds that they wouldn't pass a bill that would totally rule it out. Using that reasoning, prove that the Democratic plan will fund breast implants, sex lubricants, and removal of heads from asses.

2. Obama said he wants to prevent insurers from dropping your coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Draw as many stupid conclusions as you can from that fact. Here's a hint to help you get started: liberals consider sexual orientation to be a pre-existing condition.

Stupidological Theoryism

Let's talk some more about stupidity!

Our regular two readers know that stupidity is my favorite subject. It was my favorite subject in grade school. I tried to major in stupidology in college, but it wasn't offered in those days. So I have had to study stupidity on my own, working without official recognition.

The founding principle of stupidology, as it has emerged from my studies, is that there are really only a limited number of forms that stupidity takes, and that most of them can be found in nearly all humans who have not been taught to watch specifically for them.

The individual study of stupidology is the only method I know for increasing intelligence. After all, intelligence is merely the relative absence of stupidity in the application of imagination and memory to life's problems. The less stupidity the higher the intelligence. So in order to get smart, stop being stupid.

I have discussed different forms of stupidity in previous columns. My favorite is what I call the Universal Negation stupidity. That is the stupidity that is apparently hard-wired into human brains at birth, which is most clearly expressed in the conviction that if not all things of kind X are Y then all things of kind X are not Y. An example is found in this Lou Dobbsism: Not all of American war veterans are potential terrorists. Therefore no American war veteran is a potential terrorist, and to suggest the possibility is an outrage.

A variation on that Lou Dobbsism that would apply to homelessness in Seattle would go like this: Not all homeless people in Seattle are sex offenders. Therefore no homeless people in Seattle are sex offenders, and so if you're looking for sex offenders you don't have to look there. That is a stupidity, and those who insist that we who desire to find sex offenders in Seattle look among homeless people for sex offenders are right to point that out.

However, one of the tricky things you learn in the study of stupidity is that as soon as you get past one stupidity you almost always run smack into another that was waiting for you around the corner. In this case that next stupidity is almost always the Profiling stupidity.

The Profiling stupidity takes over when you have figured out that Ys can be found among things of kind X, so you immediately ONLY look for Ys among things of kind X. This stupidity is often extremely appealing and attractive. The attraction is that looking for Ys everywhere is time-consuming and expensive, so why not only look for Ys where you know that they could be, and not look for Ys elsewhere (where they could be)?

The answer to why Profiling is stupid is that saving time and money isn't everything. There's also thoroughness for one thing. But even more important than thoroughness, is the negative impact that profiling has on the Profiled immediately, and the Profiler, eventually.

By only looking for Ys in one place, you can only find them there. So the Profiling automatically, by its application, generates the illusion that the Profiled are really the best place to look for the quality sought.

The Profilers, then, become convinced by their own Profiling that thoroughness was more than a waste of time and money, "Gosh, look at this! Every single sex offender we've found was homeless! We were right to only look there!" Meanwhile, their friendly next-door neighbor, who was always as likely to be a sex offender as any homeless person, is looking for an opportunity to rape their toddlers in the alley.

The very real and immediate success of Profiling, by saving time and cost and turning in some results, makes the stupid user of the Profiling stupidly cling harder to it. It's a self-intensifying stupidity.

So to summarize, not only is Profiling merely stupid (because it isn't thorough), it is beyond stupid, because it makes those who do it stupider and stupider over time.

Embrace Your Stupidity

Every day I am more and more convinced that the main difference between smart people and stupid people is that stupid people have all the answers.

As a corollary, to write opinion regularly you must avidly embrace your own stupidity, and roll with it.

So say I wanted to write this week's column about Barack Obama's selection of Reverend Rick Warren to do the invocation at the inauguration. Just to mention Rick Warren's name here is an Adventure in Stupidity in itself. Why don't I just save myself the trouble, turn in a column with the words "I have nothing better to do in life than smack myself in the head with a 5-pound sledge hammer" repeated 33 times, and then smack myself in the head with a 5-pound sledgehammer? Should I mention that Obama might likewise have saved himself some trouble? Probably I should not. Just go to the hardware store, Wes, and get the hammer.

There are times when you can't take a side on a topic without inviting hate mail. Turns out that anti-abortionists, for instance, are as angry with Rick Warren for accepting the Obama invitation as the Gay Community is at Obama for offering it. You could make a case that Obama invited Warren in order to drive a wedge between anti-abortionists. Then, you could move to New Zealand, like you always wanted to, and live out the rest of your life raising chickens for slaughter, telling everyone you meet your name is Sally and you're really a vegetarian.

Or, take the case of the guy who shot up his former wife, their family, and in-laws, set fire to her house, and might have escaped safely to Canada if it were not for the one flaw in his plan, that his Santa suit caught fire in the commission of his own arson, and burned to his skin. If I had written that myself, it would have been a clown costume. Which brings up my opinion of clowns. I tend to think that, since clowns make fun of everything, it gives you the right to make fun of clowns. Not all clowns, it turns out, share that view. So I fall back on solipsist jokes. Why didn't the solipsist laugh at my joke about him? A. Because it didn't exist.

My point being, if I use this space to share an opinion of mass murder, such as "mass murder is unfortunate", I'm just asking for trouble. Someone will send a three-page letter in 8 point Courier telling me that my opinion is ill-informed and biased. "I have read Real Change for years, and in all that time you have never, NEVER, mentioned the good works that mass murderers do for their communities, or exposed the people that drive mass murderers to murder. Just this morning someone cut me off at the Mercer exit. Would you write about that? NO!"

Another fall back is liturgical-calendar humor. "Yesterday, I had an Epiphany!" Ha. "Advent-ures in Advent-ends." Ha, ha!

It's true. I was watching CNN covering the Israel-Gaza conflict, a conflict I don't dare have any opinion of, and they showed emails from viewers answering the question, "How would you solve the Israel-Gaza problem?" A number of stupid opinions followed. My favorite, which led to the small e epiphany, was the one from a Canadian that said something to the effect that "we" should completely rebuild the infrastructure in Gaza and spread the people around better, so that it would be easier for "us" to spot the Hamas soldiers among them.

OK. I won't venture an opinion of my own of the kind. I have no solution. But I will say this much. If Canada ever mucks with the infrastructure of Gaza or sends its people to spread out the Gazanians or whatever they're called, all hell would break loose.

Some people can't see that "rebuilding infrastructures" and "spreading people around" are not solutions to violence. They are descriptions of violence.

The Way of the Dodo

I’m on a mission to call attention to the stupidity and cowardice and inadequacies of human beings as a whole.

Many people in the world make it part of their religion to tout the Glories of Humankind. Humankind, also stupidly called Man, as if the half that birthed and suckled it never existed, is supposed to be created in God’s image. We are supposed to be the Pinnacle of Creation. Our Superior Intelligence is presented as one proof of this alleged fact.

Yes, we are undeniably the most intelligent species on this planet, when we have had our coffee. But we humans also account for all the most grievous stupidity that inflicts Earth, and the total amount of stupid human behavior outweighs the total amount of actual intelligent human behavior by at least a factor of ten, in both the amount of behavior generated and in the consequences incurred.

If a creature is a genius one hour every day, but throughout the remainder of the day the same creature is so stupid it can’t figure out how to exist without persistently contributing significantly to the successful ongoing dismantling of the biosphere of a planet 40 million meters in circumference, then that creature is – in sum total -- dreadfully, pathetically, and laughably, stupid.

If we were created in God’s image, then God is stupider than the dodo. The dodo only managed to get itself extinct by being so stupid as to trust human beings. Humans are so stupid as to be utterly untrustworthy, even toward defenseless dodos. That’s stupider, and if it continues, humans will not only be as extinct as dodos already are, but they will have made of themselves much bigger jackasses in the course of becoming so, by taking down everybody else around them in the process except for an assortment of lucky germs and insects.

This rant is brought to you by a man typing in the morning of March 20, 2006, contemplating the third anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, a war which was never urgently necessary, whose “victory” is costing more than $80,000,000,000 a year, not counting deaths, anguish, and other mere secondary costs.

This rant also comes from a guy who regularly hears people in the local homeless service community, some of them exceptionally intelligent people, when they have had their coffee, say that we need to practice “triage” to solve homelessness in King County and the rest of the country.

French wool traders used “triage” to mean “choose” or “select.” Napoleon’s surgeon used it in a medical context to describe the systematic prioritization of battle wounded for medical care, under emergency conditions, when there is a shortage of medical resources, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time.

Where is the shortage of resources to solve homelessness, in the form of personnel, supplies, space, or time, in a country that can afford an Iraq War at more than $80,000,000,000 a year for three or for ten years, or however long it may take, whenever it feels itself in the freaking mood?

The ridiculousness of the situation we find ourselves in was brought home to me yesterday afternoon. I was waiting for a bus in front of the King County Courthouse. As the bus approached, a young man walked across the street to my side, slowly, and steadily, directly in the path of the oncoming bus, deliberately forcing the driver to brake for him 40 feet before the stop, endangering the safety of the passengers on board.

The man got on the bus, and the driver asked him why he had walked in front of her bus. His defiant answer was, “I have a Purple Heart”.

That pretty much summed up the stupidity of the situation we’re in. Question: Why are we squandering our nation’s resources in Iraq? Answer: 9-11. It’s our country’s collective Purple Heart, and in our collective stupidity, it justifies any and all cowardly recklessness.

We are thus so much a part of Humanity.

Everyone Thinks YOU'RE Rude

The headline in the Times last Saturday said, “Land of the rude: Poll finds Americans behaving badly,” so I thought I was going to read about Americans telling pollsters they could take their poll and “shove it,” or inquiring about the availability of the pollsters’ sisters, or insinuating that the pollsters had canine ancestry.

Then, as I continued reading, I found out that America itself had been asked how rude it is in the poll and had answered “very.” That is, we are supposed to take America’s word for how rude it is. It turns out 70% of us think that everybody else lacks manners. My first reaction is, this is the America that can’t find Iraq on the map, and doesn’t think it needs to, but considers itself competent enough to decide whether Iraq deserves to be invaded or not. We’re asking this country to critique itself?

“Now, now,” I tell myself, “calm down; maybe some good will come from it. Maybe everybody will have arrived at some great new collective insight, like when we all agreed as a nation that Jar Jar Binks deserved a premature death.”

But it was not to be. Reading further I discovered that the rudeness people were talking about had little to do with Star Wars. The big concern was men not opening doors for women, members of some women’s lacrosse team wearing flip-flops in the White House, and crude behavior on TV shows. “It’s not like the old show, Father Knows Best,” says some overwrought couch potato who can’t distinguish TV from reality.

And who gets the blame? Me! That’s who! I’m a nasty baby boomer and it was I and my other nasty boomer co-conspirators who ruined this country. We dragged “Father Knows Best” into the dirt, exposing its cast as the alcoholics, wife-beaters, and heroin addicts they were. We raised all the rest of you to knock down little old ladies and use them as doorstops and paperweights. We made George Lucas create Jar Jar for us, precisely to torture the rest of you. We had all the sex and smoked all the cigarettes and ate all the carbohydrates, so now they’re all used up, and you. can’t. have. any.

That’s right. We baby boomers are responsible for turning this great country into a nation of rude, disgusting, flip-flop wearers. Before we boomers came of age in the late sixties all Americans were polite and well behaved.

Just how polite and well-behaved was America back then?

Americans were SO polite in those days that no conversation among white people was complete until there was at least one use of the N-word AND at least one additional gratuitous ethnic slur applied to one other minority. An entire conversation devoted solely to putting down Negroes was considered an opportunity lost. How rude!

Americans were SO polite in those days that they made sure their police had attack dogs to politely teach manners to anyone who asked for too many rights. If that didn’t work, they would break out the flip-flops. Ha, ha, that was a joke. No, they would break out the ax handles. In a polite society, minorities know their place!

Americans were SO polite that we never let women and children talk about sex. Only men were allowed the power to do that, in private. As a result, when American children were raped by people they trusted and the children tried to report it to other adults, they were accused of being vulgar and had their mouths washed out with soap and water. In a polite society rape victims shut up!

In 1964 some Concerned Citizen would’ve stepped up to that flip-flop wearing lacrosse playing commie tomboy-if-she’s-not-a-lesbian freak in the White House and given her the sucker punch in the gut she had coming to her. In a polite society, women toe the line!

That’s how polite America was, before we baby boomers ruined everything.

Stupidology

Some recent talk has got me reflecting upon the nature of stupidity once again.

You're probably right now asking, "Wes, what makes you such an expert on stupidity?" Well, I once stuck my finger in a live light socket out of curiosity. So why wouldn't I be an expert on stupidity?

But seriously, when you are a mutant as I am, your stupidities stand out in stark relief to those of the normal humans. You become more clearly aware of your own stupidities, while, at the same time, normal people's stupidities just drive you to the need for psychiatric medications.

A typical normal human stupidity is the Talk Over The Answer stupidity, or TOTA. People who exhibit TOTA have sense enough to ask questions when they don't know something, but their sense leaves them when it comes time to listen to the answer. They talk over it.

Sufferers of TOTA often have what I have identified as "negative IQ." I first discovered negative IQ when I was forced to team up on a job with a person who had a severe TOTA problem. Lets call her Ms. D. Even though I have at least an average IQ, I could tell that, while working as a team, Ms. D and I were two suits short of a full deck. I mean Ms. D brought my usual IQ down to somewhere around my ankles, and a job that took two hours to do by myself took four hours with her "help." Ms. D had a negative IQ.

One of my own stupidities that fascinates my friends is what I call my detail-discrimination impairment. This can take many forms in others, but for me it is a persistent, long term, inability to bring myself to make distinctions among objects that don't directly concern me.

For example, let's say my way is blocked by a tall woody leaf-bearing plant. I might be heard to utter something like, "Oh. Tree." To myself I might note whether the thing were a deciduous tree or a familiar evergreen, but that's about as far as I'd analyze the situation. Over the long term, since I haven't often noticed the differences between trees I've encountered, the result is that I can't tell most of them apart. Therefore, when the subject of trees comes up, I'm as stupid as two postage stamps glued to each other.

One more universal class of stupidities is what I call the Reversal Stupidities. The Reversal Stupidities manifest in a habit of thinking that if some idea isn't true, then the idea you get by reversing everything about the first idea has to be true. So you think if X isn't your friend, he has to be your enemy. You think that if X and Y are arguing, and if it's clear to you that X is wrong, then Y must be right. You think if evolution is false, creationism must be true, or vice versa. You think that if UFOs aren't glowing marsh gas, then they must be piloted by extra-terrestrials.

There is something about the hard-wiring of the human brain that causes otherwise highly intelligent people to jump to these sorts of conclusions. You have to always be alert to this kind of stupidity, and it doesn't help to think that you yourself are ever free of it.

What can help is an occasional "heads up" from a friend. We're all in this together. Here's a heads up to my well-meaning Pioneer Square neighbors who want to add limits on what alcohol can be sold there: your solution to the "alcohol impact problem" would in effect result in two sets of laws, one for the rest of the state, one for our neighborhood. We would begin to live in a de facto ghetto.

How about a solution that doesn't single Pioneer Square out for ghettohood? How about backing alcoholic treatment for everybody that wants it, wherever they live? Or, if you don't like that idea, think of a better one. How should I know what would work? But don't ghettoize my neighborhood just to inconvenience alcoholics.

Remember, they can buy their brands outside the neighborhood. I already do.

Don't Step In That Stupidity

We've decided that it's time that we here at Adventures in Poetry take stock of where we are, sniff the air, and then go out on some different limbs and take some hard stands on the controversial issues of the day, courageously facing any mixed metaphors that we might encounter on those limbs, staring them down the narrow ends until they lose their grips, while we miraculously keep all of ours.

For example we are opposed to homelessness, in general. But we are not completely opposed to yurts. We are reserving judgment on yurts until we have actually lived in one. We are leaning in favor of them, though, ever since we saw Julia Roberts sleep in one on TV.

We are opposed to rape. Yes, I know that may surprise some of you, because we have gone on record as being pro-sex. But we assumed at the time that everyone would understand that we meant consensual sex. I mean, we've been raped ourselves, so we know it's not nice. Rape very very bad. Consensual sex very very good.

We are opposed to unfettered capitalism. We are not communists, quite, but we think that if dogs that have once snapped at babies should have to wear muzzles in public from then on, then capitalism should be fettered. Capitalism has done a lot worse than snap at babies in its day.

However, there are good fetters and there are bad fetters. The drug war, for example, is a bad fetter on capitalism. It needs to be replaced with non-martial fetters, like drug regulation and taxation along with drug abuse treatment and education.

We are in favor of global warming only in those instances in which it can be shown necessary to counteract global cooling that might have otherwise occurred. We do not consider this to be one of those instances. There should not be ice-bergs the size of Rhode Island breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf every southern summer, in our considered opinion, until someone can figure out how to put them back.

As far as the environment in general is concerned, we are for it. We believe everyone should have an environment, not just rich people. In fact, we believe that non-humans should be allowed to have environments too, and we don't just mean whatever environments are left over on the bottom shelves, but decent quality environments comparable to the ones they had before people started taking them all.

We are opposed to police practices that result in the deaths of people who wouldn't have warranted the death penalty for their crimes, if any. In saying this, we are not in any way expressing an opposition to the police themselves, only an opposition to the practices we don't like. We could not not like the police, they have guns.

We are opposed to stupidity. But we do not believe that stupidity should be rooted out and lined up against the wall and slaughtered. In our experience, the slaughtering of stupidity only fertilizes the next crop.

It is in fact in the nature of human beings to be stupid at all times and in all places. The object can't therefore be to eliminate stupidity, because that would require the mass annihilation of human beings, and we are against that. The object must be instead to support universal education, to expose as much as possible of the stupidity to the light of day, so that our fellow humans will know how to walk around all of it, without any of it sticking to their feet.

Well, that wasn't our best batch of metaphor, but we feel like we are improving overall.

Speaking of metaphors, this whole India-Pakistan nuclear war scareis a real downer, isn't it? We are, by the way, opposed to nuclear wars.

Your Random Election

If I'd known we could elect the dead, I would have voted for Lincoln.

Some of you may recall my very generous offer to sell my vote to the highest bidder over five dollars. At least one of you took note of that offer. In fact Pooky Glax, probably alien quantum life form, who may or may not have run for US President this year, gave me ten dollars sealed in a box with some guy's cat to vote for him. For Pooky that is, not the cat. I'm betting the cat will die.

So I voted for a quantum life form. Since that was the only bid I received, thank you all very much, I voted for Glax for President. But I hardly expected him/her/it/whut to win. He/she/it/whut didn't exactly campaign.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up November 8 and learned that there was no certain winner of the Presidency! It turns out that Gore and Bush must be two of Pooky's quantum states! Uncertainty Rules!

But enough about what I don't know. What I want to discuss today is something I know a lot about, namely stupidity. In fact I consider myself quite the expert on the subject.

Don't get me wrong. I can be as smart as the next guy, when it's my turn and the wind is at my back. But when I want to be stupid I can out stupid most anybody. Cause, let's face it, most people don't even try to be stupid. How can they expect to excel at it? Truth is, most people don't even know the different kinds of stupidity. They get them all mixed up.

Like when George Bush signed that law allowing hand recounts in Texas, then sued against it in Florida. That's stupid, but is it world-class stupidity? I say no. I say I can top that with both hands tied behind my back standing knee-deep in setting cement. I spit on George Bush's stupidity!

The really stupid thing to do, George, that would prove to everyone that you were city council material and that you might have a promising career in politics or at least as a grad student in poly sci, would be to call for a study. Instead of just being a governor in the one state that doesn't really permit them.

The Ballad of the Palm Beach Election Board

or, Opus 2000, If John Henry Could See This, It'd Kill Him Dead

by © Dr. Wes Browning

Palm Beach had itself an election board,

They worked from six 'til five,

"Raise up them ballots and put 'em down,

We'll count 'em to the Lord's Day or die."

The board said to the Secret'ry,

"You're nothing but a RepubliCAN,

That butterfly ballot won't beat us down,

Or we'll die with cards in our hands."

The Secret'ry faxed out to the board:

"I hear a pewter a-humming, lads."

The board faxed just this to her: "Oh Lord!"

"That's our volunteers you hear a-counting chad(s)."

The board was a-counting on the left side,

The machine was a-counting on the right.

No I lie, the machine, it was a-finished

Four days before Saturday night.

The board's now a-lying on its death bed

Not any of its recount alive

And these were the last words the board done said:

"Bring me a contest, before I die."

The board had a little capital,

Her name was TallahasSEE

They faxed and briefed her court all day,

Saying, "Tally, let our counting be complete."

Tallahassee, she would not see them,

Their heart was broken through,

And while the Secret'ry's master had filed a suit,

They died with cards in their hands, it's true.

Apologies to W. T. Blankenship, wherever he is. Come to think of it, apologies to everyone.

Count Thy Days

Lately I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions. Questions that go to the heart of what will have to happen before we humans and quasi-humans can really claim success in this grand experiment we call “life in the big city.”

Where does hypocrisy come from? Is intelligence an actual measurable quality, or is it, as the Jesuits might say, merely the absence of stupidity? And if you lack stupidity, can you be said to suffer a deficiency? Were Einstein, Feynman, and Mr. Wizard stupidity-impaired?

But above all, where does this authoritarian business come from? I don’t just mean politicians. I mean control freaks in general.

Even poetry isn’t free from these incredible control freaks! Only two days ago I was shocked to receive the following unsolicited “poem” by “email”:

Q. Oh what saith the Lord(ess)? What might a poem be?

Might it be prose yet sweeter, with rhyme and strict meter?

Might it be words upon paper, shaped like a tree?

Might it alliterate like maybe pickles 'n peter?

Might it assonate like bats and classy cravats?

Might she personify and curts-eye and bow and say "Hi?"

Oh Lord(ess)! Please hear our pleas for clarity!

We can't stand all of this mystery!

A. Oh, stop it. And your rhythm's off anyway, you twit.

This message has been brought to you by the Evangelical Church of Non-Rhyming Poets of America, Reformed.

Can you see what’s happening here? And it doesn’t end with rhyme!

It doesn’t end anywhere!

Being a scientific sort, when faced with a puzzle such as this I immediately think of experiment. In this case, dealing with a serious psychosocial problem, serious psychosocial methodology is called for. But you can’t get those kind of drugs anymore, so my next idea was that I should voluntarily become an authoritarian. Then I will be able to report to an amazed and astonished world my findings as to where my head has gotten to.

So. I have become a rabid proponent of the Julian Day Calendar. You may not have ever heard of the Julian Day Calendar, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the Julian Year Calendar -- the one that preceded the Gregorian Year Calendar which we’ve been using lately.

Well, the Julian Day Calendar is a Day Calendar, not a Year Calendar. You count days. Doesn’t that make more sense? Don’t answer that, I don’t care what you think, because I am being an authoritarian, and I have just decided for you that counting days makes more sense.

Want to know how you’ll figure out when years start and end? Why should you care? What, are you raising pigs? Don’t you know pig-farming is a waste of time, you should be in the slaughtering business, that’s where all the money is now? What, do I have to explain everything to you?! Look, how do you know now when it’s high tide? You look it up in a chart, that’s how. YOU LOOK IT UP. You don’t make the rest of the world calculate time based on the number of tides that have elapsed since the Red Sea parted, just so you don’t have to keep a tide chart handy!

So let’s see, what have we learned by being authoritarians? Well we have learned that we are over 18,000 days old (18K in the metric system). We have learned that when we rant on and on about Julian Days, nobody cares. In fact we have learned that we are not legislators or executives or police so therefore we can’t make anyone care. We have learned that authoritarians use the editorial “we” way too much.

But most importantly, we have learned that authoritarians think that they are right. Therefore they do not know they are being authoritarians. They think they are pointing out truths. So it doesn’t do any good to tell a control freak to stop it.

Next issue: We nag Paul Schell anyway! Just because we can!