Kansas Classrooms

I can’t teach you about safe sex because it might encourage you to become promiscuous.

I can’t tell you what airbags do. That information will make you think it’s okay to start crashing into things.

I’m sorry class. We can no longer study Mexico. As you’d all run away to Tijuana if I told you what was there.

If I teach you girls how to rescue a burnt casserole, how can I trust you to follow the teachings of Héloise?

I’m afraid I can’t tell you how Hannibal crossed the Alps. If I did, you crazy kids are likely to conquer the prom with elephants. Oops.

Trigonometry will no longer be taught. You could use that knowledge to calculate the trajectory of eggs thrown at my Geo Metro.

We won’t be using safety glasses this year in shop class. I believe anyone who gets a word chip in their eye have it coming.

Science has been cancelled because your parents prefer to believe in magic.

– Big Fat Whale, Brian McFadden 2006

Post-truth Politics

The combination of populist movements with social media is often held responsible for post-truth politics. Individuals have growing opportunities to shape their media consumption around their own opinions and prejudices, and populist leaders are ready to encourage them.

How can we still be speaking of “facts” when they no longer provide us with a reality that we all agree on?

The problem is the oversupply of facts in the 21st century: There are too many sources, too many methods, with varying levels of credibility, depending on who funded a given study and how the eye-catching number was selected.

It is possible to live in a world of data but no facts.

We are in the middle of a transition from a society of facts to a society of data. During this interim, confusion abounds surrounding the exact status of knowledge and numbers in public life, exacerbating the sense that truth itself is being abandoned.

– Courtesy of: The New York Times

On Historical Truth

“History is a lie agreed upon.”

– Voltaire

Repression From Desire

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate.[1]

Shakespeare touched upon this phenomenon in King Lear, when Lear reproaches the policeman who is whipping a prostitute because of his lust for her company:

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore?
Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her.
– King Lear (Act 4, Scene 6)

Conversations: Doing Good for God

Lysandra
What about all of the good things people have done in the name of God? It is undeniable that many people of faith make heroic sacrifices to relieve the suffering of other human beings.

Helena
You’re right. But is it necessary to believe anything on insufficient evidence in order to behave this way? If compassion were really dependent upon religious dogmatism, how could we explain the work of secular doctors in the most war-ravaged regions of the developing world? Many doctors are moved simply to alleviate human suffering, without any thought of God.

Unbelievable Truth: Aeroplanes

This is a short lecture that is entirely false save for five pieces of true information which are cunningly concealed amongst the lies. Today’s subject is aeroplanes, heavier than air flying vehicles with fixed wings which are usually powered by propellers or jet engines.

Since the dawn of time, man has gazed up in the sky and dreamt of what it must be like to sit in it somehow eating Mini Pretzels and half-watching Paul Blart Mall Cop. Well, today we can answer that question in two simple words: aero planes.

Aeroplanes have existed in the wild, of course, ever since pterodactyls. But the first man-made aeroplane was built by a pair of simple Ohio biscuit salesmen, Wilbur and Orville Wright. The Wright brothers were, as I say, pigeon farmers by trade and it was watching these majestic creatures take flight that inspired Orville to turn to his brother one morning and say:

“Wilbur, I wish I could fly! Right up to the sky! But I can’t.”
A curious light came into Wilbur’s eye as he replied:
“Orville, you can!”
“I can’t!”
“You can!”

And so, financed entirely by their day job which, you remember, was running a bike shop, they set to work designing an aeroplane.

So they set to work designing an aeroplane. Tensions ran high. As Orville was keen to build an ‘F-16’ fighter whilst Wilbur had his heart set on the ‘Boeing-747’. When such arguments arose the brothers would deliberately swap sides midway and argue the other’s point of view. At first, Orville thought this was a stupid idea but then Wilbur made them swap sides and after that Orville convinced Wilbur it was a good idea, so they did it.

Aviatress Lilian Bland built the first aeroplane in Northern Ireland using a whiskey bottle as a petrol tank and her aunt’s ear trumpet to feed it. It had the engines of a lawn mower, the wheels of a pram and the wings of an albatross. Earning her a lifetime ban from Belfast bird sanctuary.

And she called her aeroplane the ‘Mayfly’ as in ‘it may fly or it may not’. In 1929 Elsworth W. Bunce became the first man to walk along the wing of a plane in flight. In 1930 he became the first man to milk a cow on a plane. And in 1931 he became the first man to realize that no matter what wacky things he did on planes his parents would still prefer his brother.

Since then aeroplanes have been designed in every imaginable shape and size. For instance, the Lockheed McDonnell 3-12, which had both wings on the same side of the fuselage and was consequently very good at turning right but very bad at not turning right. Then there was a Caproni Ca.60 which had nine wings and eight engines and contained a cocktail bar, a swimming pool, a racecourse and an aerodrome.

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See other: Unbelievable Truth Posts

PS Consult the comment section to find out the truths.

Unbelievable Truth: Octopus

This is a short lecture that is entirely false save for five pieces of true information which are cunningly concealed amongst the lies. Today’s subject is the octopus, described by our encyclopaedia as a carnivorous marine mollusc known for its eight long tentacles, rounded soft body and ink.

Let’s start with the basics. The correct plural of octopus is in fact octopodes, as in the Byron poem:

Whilst swimming off the coast of Rhodes
I spied a shoal of octopodes

As for octopi, well, the octopi is the name of the best selling snack at the Athens branch of Greggs.

The male adult octopus is very closely related to the male adult human in that its testicles are located in its head. In fact, the octopus is also one of the most dangerous creatures in the sea. If coral reefs had shopping centers the octopus would be hanging out outside them wearing hoodies and shouting insults at the passing plankton.

The octopus loves nothing more than a fight. Using tiny coconut shells as armour and breaking off the stings of Portuguese man o’war to use as makeshift knives. If you ever mess with an octopus you are likely to wake up with a seahorse’s head in your bed.

Shelley famously wrote:

Fishes, lizards, frogs and toads
are terrified of octopodes

In fact, the octopus actually has many useful skills: for example its secretions are more effective than household bleach at cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, an octopus can also undo the lid of the screw-top jar though in my defence I think I loosened it first.

Perhaps the crowning skill of the octopus however is how it responses to fear. If an octopus is threatened by, say, a shark with a gun or dinner party where it doesn’t want to go to, it does a very neat trick. The octopus has been known to actually eat itself. As Tennyson wrote:

As trouble brews and terror bodes
They self-ingest, the octopodes

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See other: Unbelievable Truth Posts

PS Consult the comment section to find out the truths.

To Tell The Truth

Frasier: Dad, we are talking about perjury! When is that ever acceptable?

Martin: Oh, you want an example? Fine! Let’s say, uh, what if there was a comet hurtling towards the earth—

Frasier: Oh, for God’s sake!

Martin: And you were the only person who could save the earth, but the only way to do it is by lying under oath. Would you do it then?

Frasier: Who am I lying to, the comet?

Martin: Oh, just answer the question!

Frasier: All right, I suppose in certain extreme cases—

Martin: So, then you’d lie?

Frasier: To save mankind from a talking comet, yes!

Martin: But you won’t lie for Niles.

Frasier: Oh, for God’s sake, you make me sound like some sort of insensitive lout who’s not aware that his brother’s out there in pain!

[Frasier takes a sip from the glass]

Martin: Isn’t that Niles’s water?

Frasier: I’m just checking to see it’s not too cold!

[…]

Frasier: You know, I can’t believe you’re being so casual about this! Do you realize you’re asking me to do something completely unethical?!

Martin: Oh, for God’s sake, nobody’s even going to know!

Frasier: Yes, but that’s the point! Ethics are what we do when no one else is looking! For heaven’s sake, I learned that from you! Are you saying you wouldn’t have any trouble with this?

[…]

Martin: Let me tell you something. One time when I was on the force, I saw a guy shoot somebody. When we caught him, I started to read him his rights, but he slipped out of his cuffs and he swung at me so I didn’t get a chance to finish. Two months later, I’m on the stand, and his lawyer asks me if I’d read his rights in full. Now, if I say no this guy walks, and this guy has been in and out of jail all his life, he could have read ME his rights! So I say, “yes, I did. I read them in full.” I lied under oath. Now you might think that I did an unethical thing but there’s not a doubt in my mind that I did the right thing.

 – Rob Hanning: Frasier (1993-2004)