Um, who is Casey Sheehan?

A Soldier’s Sacrifice
By Joseph Walther



His name was Casey Sheehan. He was a 24-year old Army Specialist attached to the 1st. Cavalry. Casey enlisted in the regular Army (as opposed to the National Guard or Army Reserve) in 2000. He re-enlisted in 2003, knowing all the while that his unit was going to Iraq. Casey volunteered for a rescue mission five days after landing in Iraq. He, as did several others, lost his life in that rescue attempt. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star and Purple Heart posthumously. If this young man’s last name rings a bell for you, it is most likely because of his mother, Cindy Sheehan.

Cindy’s name has been all over the news for several weeks now. She camped outside of George Bush’s ranch in Texas to protest the war. Her aim has been to get a one-on-one with the President. Mr. Bush has told her through intermediaries that her son died for a noble cause. She wants the president to explain to her what the noble cause is.

I swore to myself that I would not get into this. I lied to myself. I cannot keep my mouth shut about it any longer. My perspective, however, is a different one; or at least it differs from the ones I have seen in the press and on television. Bear with me. You may agree. On the other hand, maybe you won’t.

Precious few things could knock me to my knees and potentially keep me there. Losing one of my children via death leads the pack by a long shot. The sense of loss would be overwhelming…my hands are shaking even as I type this. The loss would be devastating because I love my children more than I love myself. Loving parents throughout the world know what I am saying. Imagine, if possible, the worst of Dante’s Inferno and you have insight into what Mrs. Sheehan is going though.

Mrs. Sheehan, if I could speak to you directly, I would tell you that my heart and thoughts are with you in your loss. The hearts and thoughts of all caring people are with you. Your son lost his life serving his country. His brave attempt to rescue some of his fellow soldiers was indicative of how devoutly he believed in his mission. While you will never forget Casey, the passing of time will teach you to live without him.

I would also tell you that your stance on the war does not make you a piranha. Your son’s oath of service implied a willingness on his part to die in defense of your right to take such a stand, not just your right, Mrs. Sheehan, but everyone’s right. He took that oath willingly and he meant every word of it. I took the same oath many years ago and went through Viet Nam, as did my son during the Bosnia/Kosovo mess several years ago.

Mrs. Sheehan, I had no problems with my son joining the Army Reserves. He wanted to do it. He believed in what he was doing and followed the dictates of his beliefs. He understood the risks and willingly took his chances. The Army activated his unit and sent the troops to Bosnia. I was more scared than he was. Towards the end of his tour, the Army surrounded Kosovo with the Tenth Mountain Division in one of those John Wayne style “dare ya to step over the line” moves. I went from scared to terrified. Throughout the entire ordeal, however, his steadfast belief in his mission never wavered. I was lucky. He came home alive and in one piece.

You were not so lucky, Mrs. Sheehan. Your son, however, remained true to his oath of service. His belief in his mission and purpose never wavered, even in the face of certain death in his case. Whatever the rest of us think about the Iraq war is immaterial. Your son believed in the Army’s mission in Iraq. Almost two thousand others, with similar beliefs, have given the same measure of sacrifice for what they considered a righteous cause. That counts for something, even though the media never mentions it.

Please do not let your displeasure with George Bush sully the sacrifice that your son and thousands of others have made. None of them wanted to die, but they did. You are not alone in questioning the underlying motivations for going to war in the first place. I have no doubts that the world is better off without the likes of Saddam Hussein. I am just not as cock-sure as many of the Conservative chest thumpers that we had to sacrifice two thousand lives to accomplish it. Moreover, even if we did have to, I am convinced that George Bush has botched the war’s execution from day one.

Knowing the way my own son would react if I were in your shoes, I would find another way to protest. Do you believe that Casey would be proud of the way you are going about your protest or would he be embarrassed? Would you be doing this if he were still alive? My son would be embarrassed beyond description if either of his parents undertook to protest the way you are doing it.

I don’t think that George Bush should meet with you one-on-one. No president can afford to do this. It sends the erroneous perception that an individual’s loss is greater than all of the others are. That, even though it’s not true, would be unfair to all of the others who have lost family members to this war. Also, while you are entitled to your belief that this war is not all that honorable, a significant number of people believe that it is.

During a time long ago, another President, Abraham Lincoln, had to fight a war, a terrible war that put brother against brother. Its death toll was staggering and the dead from both sides lived in the same country. Both sides claimed God as its guiding force. Mr Lincoln wrote a lot of letters to the families of the dead. But one mother, Mrs. Bixby of Boston, Massachusetts, endured a particularly horrendous sacrifice. Here is the letter that the President sent to her.

“Dear Madam,—I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln”

This was a beautifully written and heart felt letter from one of the humblest people ever to grace this planet. It was a well-deserved recognition to a devastated mother. But still, Mr. Lincoln did not meet with her one-on-one to explain the noble cause. We were a country divided by a virtual chasm of social division. Love or hate George Bush, but he is still the elected President of the United States.

I know you don’t want to demean your son’s sacrifice. The media, print and electronic, don’t give a hoot about you. They are only interested in the controversy your method creates. It sells newspapers and boosts television ratings. It creates controversy, pitting the left and right wing whackos against each other. It makes for both television and radio talk show fodder. Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all love you. In the meantime, the essence of your son’s ultimate sacrifice for following what he believed is being lost because these people cannot write or speak a sentence containing your name without reminding everyone of your son’s death in action. Like it or not, it sends a message that the only reason you are doing this is that you lost a son to the war.

Protesting things is a time-honored tradition in America, Mrs. Sheehan. Grow your movement. Sacrificing our children on the altar of freedom is something us parents have to do when some other country threatens it. However, the threat has to be one that we all see as a threat. Americans do not shrink from this kind of resolve.

I have said this before in this column. A lack of collective resolve will not be our downfall in Iraq. If we fail, it will be the result of a headstrong ignorance on the part of our President and his continued knack for not communicating the facts to the American people. If this is the essence of your protest, Mrs. Sheehan, I both salute and support you. I’d just rather not see our soldiers’ ultimate sacrifices take a back seat to the media’s lust for political controversy.

That’s it for this week. Next week, I’d like to delve into the world of bureaucracy and tell you of some of my recent experiences in dealing with the Social Security Administration. Bureaucrats and rules can be such a hoot if you take the bastards seriously.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: TheTrueFacts@comcast.net

A candid talk with Herb, the alien.

601/2 Parsecs Due East of the Milky Way Galaxy
By Joseph Walther


Several months ago, a friend of mine told me, “The Vatican has made contact with aliens and they believe in God.” Yes, he actually said this…in front of two other witnesses. He is a well-educated individual; and he was stone cold sober when he said it. He emphasized that the Vatican Observatory in Rome, Italy had confirmed the alien contact.

I asked him if there had been any independent witnesses to such an extraordinary event, or had it been another case of someone being all alone when this burning bush started to speak. He told me that the Vatican would not release any details. “I don’t blame them”, I said. However, I asked him how he found out. Had the Vatican called him? Sent him an email? Sent him a telegram or letter? “I read it on the Internet”, he told me. “Oh, then that’s that”, I said, still trying to stifle waves of heaving laughter. “Everyone knows that if someone goes to the trouble of publishing it on the Internet, it just has to be true,” I continued.

Anyway, sometime later, I was working on my computer. I dropped my pen and bent over to pick it up. As I did so, I heard a rather dull thud and suddenly found myself face-to-face with this… um… alien. He stood about 4-feet tall, had an oval-shaped head with huge round bulging eyes. His mouth was small. He had no nose but had the biggest, pointiest ears I have ever seen. He was wearing some kind of a brilliant white robe. He seemed to sort of hover in mid-air. I must have seemed startled because he began talking to me in a very calming way, assuring me that he met me no harm. He told me to call him Herb.

Remembering the claims made by my friend about aliens believing in God, I asked him if I could interview him on behalf of the citizens of Planet Earth. He replied, “That’s a great idea, dude, ask me anything you want. No one on your planet will believe you anyway, especially when you try telling them that my planet is sixty and a half parsecs due east of the Milky Way Galaxy.” The interview follows:

The True Facts
The Vatican claims that you’ve spoken to them and that you believe in God.

Herb:
The Vatican? Oh, you mean the Pope gig and all that stuff? The infallible one and all that?

The True Facts:
Yes

Herb:
Why would we want to make contact with the Vatican? If we were interested in the human race, we’d choose people with brains, like Albert Einstein or Carl Sagan.

The True Facts:
Well, they’re both dead.

Herb:
Oh, that’s right. We heard about it. Well, Stephen Hawkings will do, then.

The True Facts:
Gee, Herb, he’s busier than a cat burying shit on a tin roof right now. I think it has something to do with a unification theory or something like that.

Herb:
I know. We’d still like to talk to him. He has a tiny mistake in one of his equations. As soon as he corrects it, all of the mysteries of the universe will become crystal clear.

The True Facts:
Um, would you like me to send the correction to him?

Herb:
You? You are joking, right? You don’t even understand Tensor Calculus!

The True Facts:
So, you never contacted the Vatican. Is this correct?

Herb:
Right-on, Bucko!

The True Facts:
Well do you know if there is a God?

Herb:
What? Are you kidding? How the hell should we know?

The True Facts:
I guess I just assumed that you folks are some sort of advanced civilization.

Herb:
We are! It’s no big deal, though. All civilizations, compared to most of Planet Earth, are advanced. Don’t take this personally, but you folks are, relatively speaking, stupid. You can’t help it. You people under use you mental potential so badly that it’s hard to believe that you haven’t destroyed yourselves already.

The True Facts:
That bad, huh?

Herb:
Let me put it this way. Aliens throughout the galaxies for parsecs around, look at Earth as sort of the Alabama of the universe. We know you are there, but we’re just too damned ashamed to acknowledge you.

The True Facts:
Anything specific that bothers you about us? What make you guys so advanced?

Herb:
Here’s a few, but there simply aren’t enough paper resources on your planet to list all of them. Besides, you wouldn’t understand most of them.

Herb:
Your mental capacity, individually and collectively, is so underutilized. You could eliminate ninety percent of your problems by increasing your modes of sensory perception and developing that aspect of your brains to the limit, instead of relying on tradition and the “conventional wisdom”.

The True Facts:
Um… like what?

Herb:
Take gravity for instance. What’s to figure out about this? You are busting cranial blood vessels trying to figure this out. There’s nothing to figure out. Get a life.

The True Facts:
Oh yeah, not even Einstein could figure it out.

Herb:
That’s what you think, pea brain. He understood warped space. That’s gravity, Buckaroos! Think of it this way. You live with your wife, who is a petite 120 pounds. You, because you drink too much beer and eat too many hot wings, weigh 450 pounds. When you climb into bed next to her, she rolls towards you. Vanity-driven as you are, you think its love. It isn’t. It’s gravity, stupid! Think of the mattress and box spring as the universe. Your huge mass warps a lot more space than her smaller mass… get the picture?

Religion is another big issue with you Earthlings. However, no one on your planet has had an original idea or undertaken a restructure in thought for over two thousand years. Times and circumstances are not static.


The True Facts:
Can anything go faster than the speed of light?

Herb:
Yes, government workers at quitting time! Pull your skivvies out of your butt; I’m just kidding. Back to your question…No, Einstein was right about this. No physical entity can move faster than the speed of light.

The True Facts:
Then, how did you get here so fast? I may not understand Tensor Calculus but I can multiply. Let’s see. I believe that 60.5 parsecs times 3.25 light-years per parsec is about 196 light-years. Right?

Herb:
Correct, you are! However, the assumption that physical travel is the only way to get around the universe is a tad short sighted. Thoughts are not physical and they can travel much faster than light. With the proper mindset, a thought can put a body anywhere in the universe in an instant. Children do it all of the time.

The True Facts:
Yea, but kids do a lot of pretending. They imagine stuff. Adults know better.

Herb:
Yes, they sure do. This is one of your major problems. “What the mind can conceive, the body can achieve.” Have you ever heard this? Kids believe it. Adults do not! What a shame.

Children possess unlimited modes of sensory perception, but they lack the knowledge and logic to apply them and control their actions. Adults possess the later but have lost most of the former by the time they’re adults. This is what happens when an educational process is comprised of giving people things to memorize instead of problems to solve.

Think for a second, Dum Dum. Am I physically present, speaking with you? Or, is my sensory power so advanced that I can make you believe it? Think about it.

The True Facts:
Do you people practice abortion?

Herb:
I knew you’d get around to this stuff sooner or later. NO, we do not practice abortion. It isn’t a question of morality with us. Abortion is not necessary. When we engage in copulative behavior, we do it because it feels good and is fun. If we wish to procreate, however, both participants must agree. Once two minds meld in this manner, both parties gladly assume total and equal responsibility for the welfare of the offspring until such a time as the child reaches maturity. There is no need for an abortion because there are no “accidents”.

The True Facts:
What about birth defects? Suppose that you discover a genetic problem?

Herb:
Science eliminated those problems eons ago. Science also solved the problems of taking care of our material needs, freeing up mental capacity to delve into matters that are more important.

The True Facts:
Do you people have wars and crime?

Herb:
No. In terms of your years, I am 1,345 years old. I have never experienced a war or a crime. Our civilization knows that unsatisfied material need is a major cause of crime. Unfulfilled psychological need is an even bigger instigator of crime. We are happy with who we are, as well as what we have. Our people are high on life and we don’t need external stimuli to help us along.

Your minds are too preoccupied with stupid things: sexuality, the dictation of morality, politics, and satisfying enormous egos, to name just a few.

The True Facts:
Are there homosexuals you your planet?

Herb:
See what I mean? You people spend way too much time on things that mean nothing. Boys kissing should not even register on the “concern’ scale. This is especially true when so many members of your civilization are starving, even with an abundant food supply.

Here is a news flash. Sex is supposed to be pleasurable. It’s one of the primary reasons for people doing it As long as it is not forced and the participants are eligible and of sound mind, same sex activity is irrelevant. Your Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are wrong about this. Only on Planet Earth do people keep tabs on harmless, same sex fun.

The True Facts:
But, you are a Godless civilization?

Herb:
Whoa! Who told you that?

The True Facts:
You did, just a few minutes ago.

Herb:
No, I didn’t. I said that we don’t know if there is a God. Many of us believe that there is. But knowing and believing are not the same. The rest of the universe understands this simple concept. Earthlings do not. This is why you are killing one and other over who has the best imaginary friend. Earthlings comprise the only civilization in the universe that claims an omniscient, omnipotent, and ever-present God, yet feels compelled to help Him when it comes to venting His wrath on the alleged misbehavers and outright unbelievers. Such is not the God of my faith.

We also make sure that everyone’s beliefs are included.

The True Facts:
What about Intelligent Design Theory? Do you think there is anything to it?

Herb:
There may be. I, personally, believe that there is. However, on my planet, individuals don’t get to have their opinions turned into law.

True science is the same throughout the universe. The rules are the same. Form a hypothesis. Set up continual tests against the hypothesis. Reevaluate the hypothesis against the test results. This is how scientists throughout the universe develop theories. No one proves a theory “right”. Once formed, a theory remains in force until circumstances show it to be invalid.

It isn’t that Intelligent Design Theory is invalid by nature, but rather the fact that it isn’t falsifiable. In other words, because it isn’t susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. It just isn’t science. Is any of this stuff sinking in, boy?

The True Facts:
Well, let me tell you, Herb. A lot of people are raising hell over this here on Earth. Our President, George Bush and the Majority Leader in our Senate, Bill Frist, believe that we should be teaching Intelligent Design Theory along with Evolution in our public schools.

Herb:
You people are doomed!

Hold on. Something is happening here. You are breaking up, Herb. Don’t go! My head is beginning to ache. Geez, how’d I get on the floor like this? Holy crap, my head really hurts, now. Where did I get this huge hickey on my forehead? God, it hurts. I must have hit my head on the edge of the computer table when I bent down to get my pen.

I must have passed out. I need to tell Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe about that bad batch of Kickapoo Joy Juice.

What a crazy ass dream. Herb, come back. Herb, you still there?

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: TheTrueFacts@comcast.net

Oh, Uncle Jed, they're doin' it again!

I’m So Confused!
By Joseph Walther



Once again, I will have to delay my interview with Herb, the extraterrestrial. Herb’s superiors called him back to his home galaxy—Lunatic Major—to take care of a personal problem. He didn’t go into a lot of detail, but from what I could determine, Earth is not the only planet inhabited with sexual weirdoes. My goal is to get the results of that interview to all of you next week or the week after. For those of you wondering what this is all about, let me explain it a bit.

Several months ago, a friend of mine looked me square in the eyes and said, “The Vatican has made contact with aliens and they believe in God.” He continued, “The Vatican Astronomical Observatory confirmed the contact.” There were two other people sitting at the table when my friend made the statement. One is a conspiracy theorist with white supremacists’ leanings who believes that the holocaust didn’t happen. He perked right up. The other one, a very nice, congenial, well-adjusted woman, suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to rotate her tires. She backed away cautiously and left. I, on the other hand, turned on my handy digital recorder and began asking questions.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d stick to some of the confusion and chaos going on right here on good ‘ole terra firma for this week’s column.

The War…

I don’t know about you folks, but I’m confused as all get out about this war in Iraq. The reviews are so mixed. If I listen to the LEFT fringe, we, as a nation, are no better than pond scum. If I listen to the RIGHT fringe, we, as a nation, are the glory of the coming of the Lord, the righteous bully stompers. I suspect that reality is somewhere in between.

I spend a lot of time talking to people and asking questions. Returning military people all say the same thing. The situation in Iraq is a lot more positive than negative, but all the folks back here in the USA ever hear about is the negative stuff. I also know a few civilians who have returned over the past two to three weeks and they say the same thing. Yet, the president’s approval rating relative to Iraq is lower than it has ever been.

Please, understand my position. I am no George Bush cheerleader. To me, George Bush is to reasonable debate what hyenas are to opera. He is a true Preconceptual Theorist who refutes opposing fact as something that just gets in his way. In other words, he just comes to conclusions before doing any research. Come on and admit it. The time and effort required to be precise is a waste of time for people who don’t know what they are talking about. George is an expert at this sort of thing. He should write or book or something.

He is not, however, the reincarnation of Hitler. He does care about people. He genuinely grieves over the human losses in Iraq. While he will never admit it publicly, the line of duty deaths is going to haunt him for the rest of his life. If we pull out of Iraq too soon, he knows, as do all of us, that these lives will have been lost in vain. So, take some advice, Mr. President.

First, understand that neither you nor any other president will succeed in quelling critics. I think that you know this. However, I am afraid that you confuse this impossibility with the necessity of reassuring a support base that is eroding by the minute. Get on television more. Give us facts and details, both pleasant and unpleasant. Get visibly passionate about it and give us a vision. So far all that we hear coming out of you are assertions and they are becoming less convincing every day.

The Right criticized the Clinton Policies in perpetuity. It did no good. He was still standing strong long after all of his critics had gone down in flames. He survived because he understood a few truths.

First, resolve alone has never won a single cause. In other words, talk is cheap if that’s all you have. Second, mediocre policies, even stupid ones, can last forever as long as their authors provide “effective” explanations. Conversely, the most solid of policies would be hard-pressed to survive a long weekend without “effective” explanations.

If we blow it in Iraq with a premature pull out, it will not be due to a lack of resolve on the part of the American people, it will be due to your own refusal to abandon preconceptual reasoning. Do you really understand the strength of insurgency? Here is a quote from Osama Bin Laden. “We have young people who are keen on death as much as Americans are keen on life.” Do you understand the impact of this statement, Mr. President? Oh, one last thing before I forget it, lose Rumsfeld!

Family Values and other matters of morality…

I recently heard Bill O’Reilly say, “People hate Rick Santorum because he is a conservative Christian.” I receive emails, daily, because I have openly criticized the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. People accuse me of hating these guys.

I don’t hate anyone. I especially don’t hate people for being Christians. I dislike hypocrites, though. When the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dan Burton, Henry Hyde, Rush Limbaugh, and Rick Santorum descend from Mt. Pontification to give us lowly sinners a lecture on morality, I’ll admit that I get a bit miffed. No, make that downright snotty!

Rick Santorum is a Dan Quayle wannabe. The only difference that I can see is that Santorum can spell p-o-t-a-t-o. Like Quayle, Santorum was absent the day his teachers covered the topic of common sense. I did not buy his book, “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good” because I refuse to contribute to the welfare of a moron. I would like to thank, however, Steve Bessum, one of my readers. He sent me a copy because he thought that I could have some “fun” with it.

Thank you kindly, Steve. The book would have made a great satire. The problem is that the senator is deadly serious. I’ll just go right to some quotes from Santorum’s book and each of you can judge for yourselves.

He seems to have a problem with colleges and universities trying to attract student bodies that reflect the norm. “Sometime in the 1980s universities began to champion the importance of ‘diversity’ as a central education value.” Along the same lines, “The notion that college is a cost effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas…move up the economic ladder is just wrong.” On sending children to public schools, Santorum says, “Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment. It’s amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools.”

If I understand the Senator, I think that he is saying that socialization outside the home environment is the root of our social problems. It complicates things. This is laughable if not for the fact that it is so scary that he believes this stuff!

According to Santorum, working housewives are selfish. According to him, people only think they need all this money to live. This is amazing. Santorum’s annual salary is $165,000 plus incredible benefits, including a chauffeured car and two homes. He has no clue that many of those families working two and three jobs, still fall short of his annual salary. Not only can these families not participate in the small pleasures, many of them can’t even pay all of their bills.

People who truly believe that Rich Santorum has a grip on reality must also concede that falling off a roof is transportation.

Oh God! Bring back Dan Quayle. Even he was not this stupid. We can teach Quayle how to spell and keep his mouth shut. There is no hope for Santorum. He is a man bent on home schooling his children and indoctrinating them in the tenets of his own form of Christianity. Let me take a stab at this. God created the Earth and its inhabitants about 10,000 years ago over a period of seven days. Homosexuality is the moral equivalent to bestiality and women are to stay at home and be subservient to their husbands.

My parents raised me as a Roman Catholic. I learned early on in life, however, that there is no such thing as a problem so awful that the church could not add some guilt to it and make it monumentally worse. We had to memorize, verbatim, the Baltimore Catechism. We had to regurgitate the answers, word for word, in their original form. Ruler-armed, out of control, fire-breathing Nuns unleashed their fury at the slightest hint of subjective editorializing.

This indoctrination lasted twelve years, fourteen years if I include the preschool years. It was not until I arrived in the “secular” world, the one where all of the perverts awaited the opportunity to pounce on me, that I gained a true appreciation of just how intrusive most organized religions are. Can any of you imagine what this world would be like if we eliminated public school socialization? Think, folks, a world full of Santorums, Falwells, and Robertsons.

So, Mr. O’Reilly and others, I do not hate these people because of their Christianity. I am doubtful that many others do, too. I dislike it, however, when such people pontificate on matters of moral turpitude, inferring that they own the moral high ground. We all have a wart or two. We should all keep this in mind.

I will be working diligently on getting Herb back to this galaxy, hopefully this week or next. I promise all of you that the interview will be mind-blowing. In the meantime, go forth and have some fun. Watch out for Rick Santorum, though. He really is an idiot!

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: thetruefacts@comcast.net

If brains was lard, would you have enough to grease a pan?

Learnin’ Your Gozintas and Other Ciphers
By Joseph Walther


I happened to be browsing the books at Barnes and Noble this past Wednesday, when I spotted a McGraw-Hill published book, “everyday math DeMYSTiFieD: A SELF-TEACHING GUIDE” by Stan Gibilisco. This is the exact title of the book, spelling and all! Regardless, whenever I see a book claiming to simplify, demystify, or otherwise idiot-proof something, I have to check it out. I usually do this by taking the book from the table, opening it to a random page, and see what it says. Stand-by, Pilgrims, for a book report.

I want you to be honest with yourselves. If you saw a book with the words, “everyday math” and “demystified” jumping from its cover, what would you think it’d be about? Yep, that’s what I thought, too. I said to myself, “self, here is a book about going to the grocery store, balancing the checkbook, figuring that tip at the restaurant, determining how much you really save with that sale, along with a whole host of everyday consumer math problems.” In other words, this had to be—I thought—something practical for the average person.

There, at the top of page 122, “Convert the following quadratic equations into factored form with real-number coefficients.” leapt from the page. I’ve listed the equations below. I’m not making this up.

x^2 – 2x – 15 = 0
x^2 + 4 = 0

So, this is why people were all abuzz at my local Dunkin Doughnuts this morning! It makes perfect sense now. Who would have ever guessed a relationship between quadratic and simultaneous equations and that great coffee and doughnuts? Freshness… it’s what it’s all about. You go, quads!

My heart began to race madly. Quickly, I jumped to the beginning of the first chapter. With bulb-lighting clarity Stan ripped into such cryptic, “everyday” math topics as sets, set intersection, set union, subsets, proper subsets, disjoint sets, and coincident sets. With unabashed and child-like glee, he proceeded with his quest to unhinge the mystery of other math stuff. He plunged head first, tossing caution to the wind, into the quarry pit of murky subject matter. He seemed unfazed by the prospect that many of us don’t give a damn about this stuff. Otherwise, how else do we explain why there are so many “ology”, history, and philosophy majors in colleges and universities.

Why, on pages 8 and 9, he tore away the cone of secrecy around decimal, binary, octal, and hexadecimal number systems. He did it in such a way as to make the reader believe that the very existence of humanity depends on understanding this stuff. In fact, if any of you has ever used a calculator and/or computer, this book will forever change the way you look at such tools. Um, by the way, did any of you know that the “radix” point and the decimal point are actually the same? I didn’t and it confused the hell out of me. Stan, in all of his exuberance, failed to mention this as he kept referring to the radix point in his binary examples. I immediately dashed off an email so he can address this faux pas in the next addition.

On page 15, Stan says, “One of the most interesting things about rational numbers is the fact that they are ‘dense’!” I don’t know about you folks, but I could feel my pulse quicken big time when I read this. What a relief. People tell me that I am dense all of the time. So knowing that rational numbers are dense made me feel good. It was close, but for a few fleeting seconds, I thought I was going to experience one of those spontaneous orgasms. Even so, it took all of the effort I could muster just to keep myself from rushing out and telling everyone I saw about the joys of rational number density.

On page 78, Stan got into time measurement. Kowabonga! I thought I knew a thing or two about what constitutes a “second”. Like a collision between matter and antimatter, this book annihilated those misconceptions. Stan briefly discussed what you and I have so stupidly assumed to be the definition of a “second:” 1/60th of a minute. Silly us! Stan explained how sloppy this definition is and that a better definition is “1/86,400th of a mean solar day.” While he insisted that this is still a very good definition, he further explained that a more exact and formal definition for what we normals call a “second” is, “the time taken for a certain isotope of elemental Cesium to oscillate through 9,192,631,770 (9.192631770 x 109) complete cycles. Oh my GAWD! I got that feeling again and almost had to change my underwear.

I am not going to go through the book page-by-page. Believe me; it certainly demystifies a lot of stuff. For whom, I am not sure. Anyone with an insatiable appetite for understanding the geek speak behind such topics as algebra, more algebra, plane and solid geometry, probability and statistics, trigonometry, and general measurements, will love this book. I had a hard time, however, trying to figure out just what the book had to do with “every day” math. This stuff almost never comes up at the mall or at parties.

I mean, like, I’ll bet that roughly 70% of the world’s population will live most, if not all of their lives, without ever having a need to get into quadratics, number systems other than decimal, or worry about a definition for a time measurement called a second.

So, I conducted my own survey. It’s not scientific but it made me feel a lot better. I called fifteen math teacher friends of mine. They teach math at both the secondary and collegiate levels. I told them the title and asked what each one thought the book was about. Seven of the fifteen had already read the book and thought it was the greatest thing since popcorn. The other eight told me that it probably covered the basics of algebra, trig, geometry, etc. However, I noticed that not one of them could look me in the eyes as we spoke.

The same afternoon, I asked twenty more people I know—normal people, not math teachers—what they thought. I held the book in front of each one. I then asked what each participant thought the term, “everyday math” referred to. All of them had the same idea. While they said it in different ways, each agreed that “everyday math” referred to percentages, fractions, and decimals, along with the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of these things. At least two of them referred to it as “grocery” store math.

I don’t know what this tells you about math teachers in general, but it tells me that the ones I spoke to are from a planet called “Clueless Minor”. The others, the normal people, seemed quite sane and content with themselves. And they looked me square in the eyes as we spoke, just like they had nothing to hide.

Folks, math is important. I don’t mean to infer that it isn’t. If you are young and intend to build bridges, program microcomputers, design buildings, send people and space ships into the unknown, and develop medical cures for humanity’s ills, Stan’s math is what you need. Buy the book. However, the term, “everyday math” is still a crock because he shouldn’t have called it that. He should have called it “everyday math for nerdy smart-assed people destined to make the news.”

Most of us, however, should concentrate our efforts on simply knowing how to figure 15 or 20% of the restaurant bill so we don’t stiff a hard working waiter. Knowing how to balance a checkbook is nice, also. Knowing we won’t get arrested for bouncing a check is invaluable in terms of the peace of mind we experience. When we see a 25% off sale sign at the mall, it really feels great knowing how much we’ll have to pay in cash or charge to the old plastic, without a need to move our lips while counting on our fingers. In addition, if we use the plastic and pay over time, knowing how to figure the actual purchase price by factoring in the credit fees might result in us not using Visa or MasterCard. We could save a fortune.

The clerks at Barnes and Noble ask all customers if they’d like to purchase a discount card. A customer spends $25 a year to join the discount club and thereafter receives a 10% discount on all purchases during the year. The ability to assess the offer’s value, quickly and mentally, is something far more important than knowing the joys of rational number density.

Knowing these things is important to all of us. This kind of knowledge would go a long way towards eliminating the need for pictures on the cash registers at McDonalds. If someone shows promise for that other math stuff, fine. We should encourage such people to be all that they can be, but if you don’t know how to do these things, Stan’s book won’t help. It just sits out there like a turd in the punch bowl. Don’t buy it.

We don’t hear a lot about number systems or algebra when we order food at restaurants or take our automobiles in for repair, or compare the prices of various products and services. In fact, Jonas Salk almost failed out of college because of calculus. What a dummy, huh?

This past Friday evening, I stopped for something to eat at a small family restaurant. My bill came to $12.98. The waiter didn’t seem impressed when I converted it to 1100, the binary equivalent. But because of Sister Charles Edwards’ precision with a ruler across the knuckles back in elementary school, I was able to instantly figure that a 20% tip came to about $2.60, which did impress the waiter. Oh, that would be 000010 in binary for you nerdy types.

Tune in next week, same time and station. Here are some of the more pressing issues we are working hard to bring you. Do aliens believe in God? Herb, an alien friend of mine, is talking to his superiors about granting me an interview. All we can do is hope! Why is the Delaware General Assembly, most members of which are not aliens, so secretive and good ole boyish? Or, maybe something even juicier will come along instead.

In the meantime, what in the hell is Cesium and why does it oscillate? Is this something dirty? Also, remember that 11001011 gozinta 1110101101 four times, binarily speaking, of course.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: TheTrueFacts@comcast.net