Not even a brilliant physics teacher can ease my math anxiety

Any hope I had of living a private life went by the wayside the first time I griped about one of my ex-wives in print. I try to be as honest as I can be in these columns and sometimes I wind up revealing more than I really want to. Or should.

Too often, these “revelations” serve only to highlight my incompetence, ignorance and personality flaws, all of which are legion.

By way of example, my lack of math skills has been well documented here. Regular readers of this column (Hi, Bob and Joyce!) know that even simple addition can make my head hurt if it involves too many digits (three or more).

Mr. Paepke’s ninth grade algebra was my last real math class. Mr. Paepke did his best with me, but I was not a model student. I’m sure there are still nights he wakes screaming from nightmares of the countless, fruitless hours we shared together in his classroom.

At any rate, I try to be honest about my Jethro Bodine-like arithmetic skills.

Which is why I was so surprised by a letter I received from reader James Bedor the other day. That letter — five hand-written pages! — was sent in response to a comment I made recently regarding my lack of understanding of Einstein’s “Special Relativity” theory.

Mr. Bedor, a retired physics teacher, has taken on the Herculean task of teaching me … gasp! … higher mathematics. And not just math, but PHYSICS!

Mr. Bedor’s attempt is noble, but he’d have better luck teaching French to a chimpanzee. Just ask Mr. Paepke.

In his letter, Mr. Bedor assures me he will only be touching on the “‘simpler’ aspects of Special Relativity.” He then goes on to pen comments such as “…material objects cannot reach the speed of light in a vacuum because the energy you use to accelerate the material object makes the object more massive (energy and mass are two forms of the same thing)” and “Rather than accelerating the object to C, the speed of light in a vacuum (light does go slower than C in transparent objects like water and glass) … Moving objects become shorter in length in the direction which they are moving as seen by an external observer. The limit is zero length as their speed approaches the speed of light in a vacuum (C).”

There are FIVE PAGES of this stuff and it only gets more arcane with each passing page.

Mr. Bedor, I do applaud your heartfelt attempt to lift me out of ignorance, but honestly, what I hear in my head when I read your letter, is “A-well-a, everybody's heard about the bird / Bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word / A-well-a, bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word / A-well-a, bird, bird, bird, well, the bird is the word — I wonder what “C” stands for? — A-well-a, bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word.”

And the formulas you included (I assume the little drawings with squiggle marks, numbers and letters are some sort of formulas)? Well, I didn’t understand them in Mr. Paepke’s ninth grade algebra class and I if possible, I understand them even less now.

I mean, c’mon! “V2 = N, - N = (19c) - (-18c) = h7c?” And this is the one that has characters I sorta recognize! (Though I have no idea at all what they mean in this context.)

Despite all his mathematical proofs, I’m not sure I even agree with Mr. Bedor’s (and Einstein’s) conclusions. Sure, Mr. Bedor has a lot of numbers, letters and squiggle marks proving nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. I, meanwhile, have nothing but 30 years worth of Star Trek indicating the exact opposite. 

I suppose I’m inclined to come down on the side of Captain Kirk, if for no other reason than that he never tried to make me understand math.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available at Robbins Book List in Greenville and in Kindle format at Amazon.com. More Reality Check online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

Civilization is OK, but let’s not get too prissy

We’re becoming a society of effete dandies bent on transforming every aspect of life into an upscale fern and chrome shopping mall experience that smells faintly of lilacs and Chanel No. 5.

Maybe this is simply the next logical step in human evolution, maybe a byproduct of the sexual revolution, or maybe the change is fueled by Madison Avenue and simple economics. Whatever the reason, we seem determined to “deluxe-ify” pretty much everything.

Yes, everything.

Good enough is no longer good enough.

What am I talking about? To tell you the truth, I’m never quite sure myself. But it’ll be easier to explain if I first cite a few examples.

Garbage cans. When I was a kid (back in the early Mesolithic) garbage cans were metal, dented and, usually, very, very stinky. They served two purposes; holding garbage and breeding flies. 

Using one was simple. You lifted the lid and dumped in garbage. Then, once a week, you hauled it to the curb and the garbage man came by, removed the garbage and left the can.

It was a fairly simple system. Not any more. Now, trash (the part that isn’t recycled) is placed in strawberry scented plastic bags, securely sealed and placed in colorful (pink, if you give a damn about breast cancer) plastic dumpsters. The dumpsters — which never actually touch garbage — are emptied weekly by a sanitation engineer.

It’s basically the same system as the metal can, but it smells better, looks better, and — if you don’t count the millions of tons of non-biodegradable, strawberry-scented plastic trash bags — is better.

Then there are the burger joints and other fast food-type eateries. These used to be non-franschised, mom ’n’ pop establishments with questionable cleanliness standards and burgers to die for. They weren’t fancy, but the food was real good and real cheap.

These days, even the fast food joints are trying to go upscale. The other day I dropped nine bucks and change at an incongruously-named “cafe.” For my money, I received a burger that tasted like greasy sawdust and an order of fries that had been under the heat lamp so long they’d begun to develop melanoma.

But since the restaurant shoehorned the word “cafe” into its name and added a couple hanging plants, I at least knew I was dining in style.

Sweet Annie lives in a pretty, upscale neighborhood where folks really, really aspire to the genteel lifestyle. They upscale everything there, and then charge you for it big time.

She recently moved from her home into an apartment there. Not just any apartment, but an “apartment home.” It says so right on the sign at the complex’s manicured entrance. To me, they look just like apartment-apartments, but nope, they are “homes.”

Apartments are for poor people, apparently.

Down the street are even nicer “condo homes.” The condo homes also look exactly like apartments, but they’re not. They’re condos. If you doubt it, just look at what one costs.

The foo-foo factor that really got me, though, was the neighborhood’s store & lock storage facility. You know, the kind of place guys keep all their home theater equipment when they’re between wives.

In Annie’s neighborhood, these are called — and I kid you not — “storage condos.” Really? You’re telling me the junk you can’t fit in your new condo — sorry, condo home — needs a condo of its own?

I’m guessing these people park their cars in a “condo garage” and store their unmentionables in a “condo underwear drawer.” 

Where will it end? Will we eventually gift wrap our garbage with silken bows and ribbons to make our curbsides more appealing come trash day? Will we find a name for toilet paper even less offensive than “bath tissue?”

Look. I’m not a savage. I’m not advocating a return to the stinky, dented garbage can days of yore. On the other hand, those burgers from mom & pop’s greasy spoon were sooooo good…

More Reality Check online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com. Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The days of the mosquito are numbered

Since addressing the topic of mosquitoes last week, I’ve done a little research.  It turns out that not only are mosquitoes annoying, they also are the deadliest creatures of all time, even when one factors in the people who manufacture Twinkies and Pauly Shore movies.

In the history of the human race, about 46 billion deaths have been attributed to illnesses transmitted by mosquitoes.  This equates to roughly half the people who have ever lived.  Half! Ever!

Well, I say, enough is enough.  Of course, when I say it, the mosquitoes just laugh, or at least they make little buzzing noises, which I assume to be the mosquito equivalent of laughter.  But just recently, geneticists have taken up the battle cry and mosquitoes won’t be laughing much longer.

Anthony James, a scientist from UC Irvine, has figured out a way to genetically “hack” mosquitoes in such as way that the females hatch without wings.  Since it’s the girl mosquitoes that bite, this renders the entire population harmless.

The boy mosquitoes then go their way, find new mosquito girlfriends, mate (after dinner and a movie, presumably), and thus create yet more generations of wingless, harmless mosquitoes.

Eventually, the blood-sucking, vile little … it’s hard to describe my feelings toward mosquitoes in a classy, family-oriented newspaper like this one.  Suffice it to say that the mosquitoes all eventually become extinct.

Cage-based tests have shown that if you turn loose enough gene-hacked male mosquitoes, the entire population is decimated — with extreme prejudice — in just a few months.  This could, theoretically, be done (insert evil laugh here) worldwide.

So far, James’ experiments have been conducted under strictly controlled conditions. But Luke Alphey, one of James’ former colleagues — and one, in my opinion, with more vision — has taken the tests to the field, releasing the hacked males into the environment.

This would probably violate all sorts of laws and rules here in the States, but Alphey released the mutant bugs on the Grand Cayman island in the Carribbean, where no such laws exist.

If some of those altered skeeters manage to get off the island, well … these things happen.  And believe me, they will get off if I have to row there and get them myself. 

Now, under ordinary circumstances, I — along with most other right-thinking, bleeding heart liberals — would question the morality of exterminating an entire species.  I mean, who are we to play God?

But we’re talking mosquitoes here, man!  

Sure, I know, what about the impact on the environment, right? Will killing off all the skeeters create some sort of domino effect?  Will flies follow?  Then mice, cats, dogs, cows and eventually, us?

According to researchers, nope, that won’t happen. It turns out that, to quote one study, “…the complete eradication of mosquitoes would have limited, if any, adverse environmental effects.”

And that’s good enough for me!  I say, nuke ‘em and let the bug-free barbecue begin. 

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com or visit mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.