Get smart ...“Numbers,” the news announced, “Don’t lie.”
He’s barely half right.
From politics, to poverty rates, discrimination against (and progress of) minorities, women’s apparent ascendance over men, gun violence, and the shrinking middle class: people are using numbers in the most perverse ways. In pursuing my lifetime hobby as an acknowledged smart alec, I decided to express my contrarian social commentary in order to try and Get Smarter: and then research if those biases of mine, in turn, are close to true? What I am doing, week after week, is exactly that. I’ll write an opinion blog, and then perhaps cite what the popular media has to say about it…and then dig (using stats when I can) under the surface of both opinions.
Topic? Whatever strikes my fancy. To the statistical max. From guns to gays, zen yogurt to Yoda nerds, perverts in prison and religious visions, and tattoos through taboos...
At 17, a book found its way into my hands that changed my head. The book seemingly detailed statistics of everything. Poverty, weather, economics, population, inventions. I cherished the book for years, read it constantly, and appreciated the way numbers could teach a person to dig deeper, see further, and think longer. Sadly, people have moved from inquisitive study to acquisitive imagery. Facts have suffered. Our gray matter has become pixilated. But I was still a smart alec. Fortunately, these times are perfect for smart alecs...people who don't believe one intellectual shoe size fits all.
Here’s an example of the twisting of numbers: in 2020, both major party candidates belched out a sort of virtual, data vomitory, based on “real” numbers. Trump and Biden both, early in the evening, said they “had received more votes than any other candidate for present in US history.” Numbers, you see, may not lie all on their own. But it’s been my experience that today’s talking heads and politicians certainly lie down with them. Often in the Biblical sense.
So with a sense of déjà vu, and assurance that I will cause KAOS to many of the overly sensitive among us…for I am an equal opportunity curmudgeon toward all sacred shibboleths.
And in facing enormous dangers and surviving by my wits on the precipice of chaos, I'm still loving it!
