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Try to make it real, compared to what?
by anna at 08:00 PM on July 11, 2004
Ronald Reagan once remarked that, "Facts are silly things." His comment met with much derision, especially among those who traffic in so-called facts within the bowels of academia and government. Yet, I agree with him. There, I said it.
Without getting too ponderous, what's a fact? Something real, verifiably or otherwise? Buxom women are often confronted with this question: Are those real? Thos with implants will often reply, "Oh no, they're fake. But I think Dr. So-and-So did such a great job. He's the best!" This is inaccurate. Both forms of boobs are equally real. One is comprised of flesh while the other is comprised of silicone gel. You can hold either one in your hands. You can assess their heft, though care must be exercised if they're attached to a stranger or coworker.
4 painters and a photographer set out to depict a scene of kids playing in Central Park. One's an impressionist, the other does figurative art while the other deals in abstract stuff. The other is this autistic kid who just throws his own shit on a canvass all day long. Whose depiction is real? You might say the photographer, but who's to say he didn't use special filters or lenses to distort "reality?" I'd go with the autistic kid as he doesn't even pretend to know what is real and what isn't.
Likewise, words can be twisted around and taken out of context. I remember OJ's lawyer Barry Scheck grilling that hapless pathologist Dennis Fung. He'd brandish a transcript and read carefully selected passages. "Were you asked these questions, did you give these answers," he'd demand to know. When Fung would attempt to clarify with a "yes, but" type response, Scheck would cut him off and insist on a yes or no answer. You all saw the disastrous result of that truth-finding mission. With any luck you won't get your head lopped off by OJ. Just to be on the safe side don't suck any dick in your living room unless the curtains are drawn.
Facts are the enemy of the truth, the perfume that masks the awful body odor that is the human condition. And it reminds me of one one of my favorite lyrics from Fleetwood Mac's Hypnotized: "They say there's a place down in Mexico where a man can fly over mountains and hills. He don't need no airplane or some kind of engine, and never will. Now you know it's a meaningless question to ask if those stories are right. Cuz what matters most is the feeling you get when you're hypnotized."
Soon after penning those immortal lines Bob Welch jetisonned his enviable rock star life to become some sort of vegan monk. Flying higher than those mythical Mexican shamans, he hit the eject button.
You show me a supposed universal fact and I will show you a demonstrably bald-faced lie. As Jim Carroll put it in song, nothing is true.
comments (9)
fact #1.) the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s.
fact #2.) tennis courts remind me of my mother.
I would be labeled a hostile witness in a courtroom. "Is the earth round?" "More or less." "It's a yes or no question." "Then no, the earth is not round. It's actually quite bumpy in many places such that the slope of the tangent is far from a smooth function."
by chris at July 12, 2004 12:00 AM
I won't touch that mom comment but yeah that business about light is probably on target.
After I wrote this my ever-literal son and I got into it. He started with: Wood burns when you take a match to it. What if the wood is wet? Dry wood burns when you take a match to it. What about in a vaccuum?... and so on.
I am often a witness in court. I've perfected the art of meaningless, non-commital answers like, "I don't know" or "it's difficult to recall after all thsi time."
by anna at July 12, 2004 7:42 AM
"Oblate spheroid" is the phrase you're looking for there.
by Adam L. at July 12, 2004 9:17 AM
wood oxidizes under conditions which favor oxidation. Scientists tend to be very careful with language, whereas I've noticed that politicians and various news media are not. I wish it were more of a cultural value that people would use the medium with which they communicate knowledge and ideas - language - more effectively. Then again, ambiguity and distortion make life interesting, if also frustrating.
by chris at July 12, 2004 10:35 AM
Not to get semantic, but the speed of light, expressed in terms of meters/second, relies on the definitions of both a second, and a meter, which have both changed numerous times. It also supposes that a photon is massless, or so nearly massless as to be immeasurably small. Further, the speed of light as a constant relies on Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which as the title suggests, is still just a theory, despite its universal acceptance.
by mg at July 12, 2004 2:38 PM
My point exactly. And that is why I prefer to think of the Earth as flat, not round or "oblate spheroid," which sounds like some kind of sex toy.
by anna at July 12, 2004 6:40 PM
Chris your data is somewhat inaccurate on the light. Not only is it dependent upon the length of a meter, the timespan of a second, and the Theory of Relativity, but it also is modified by space-time distortion. Take a black hole for example, the ultimate tool in spacio-temporal bending. When light gets near the universally bending ball of who-really-knows-what, even it, an electromagnetic wave, is turned towards the hole. Who can say its speed does not change with its direction? If any of my data happens to be incorrect, tell me.
by Ian at July 12, 2004 6:47 PM
Hey Anna, I think MG and Ian are taking after your son. We should probably try to get our dependencies straight. The speed of light is not dependent on the theory of relativity, or the length of a meter. Rather, the theory of relativity and the length of a meter are both dependent on the speed of light. The speed of light was empirically measured two centuries before Einstein was born, and has been confirmed ever since. I don't see how supposing the mass of a photon is relevant here. Measuring the speed of light is dependent on time however, so how much inaccuracy is Ian willing to afford us before causing a retraction of the integer cited above? We measure seconds to a certainty of 1 part in 100 trillion, and the constant we're trying to nail down is in the 100 millions, so for all we know we can make that measurement virtually forever before hitting a number that would cause us to change it (e.g. try flipping a coin and when you flip 10,000 heads in a row, come back and tell me about it). As for the speed of light while bending, I really don't know what happens, but I can't think of any reason why it would have to slow down while bending. And for it to interfere with the number cited above in a meaningful way, one would have to postulate that black holes have been present and interfering each and everytime the speed of light has been measured, thus obscuring our ability to see it's true value. This gets complicated, and leaves us with the dilemna facing the true skeptic. The sun came up today, but how do you know it will come up tomorrow? The speed of light was such and such each of those times you measured it, but how do you know it wasn't different in between? How do you know it won't change? We might as well all be Descartes in front of the fire, the best we can do is hope we're not dreaming.
by chris at July 13, 2004 2:15 AM
Er, Ian is my son. Interesting how we've got an all-male perspective here. Ladies?
by anna at July 13, 2004 7:44 AM