It’s good news that the Kansas state school board has dropped evolution from the curriculum – at least for would-be scientists from other states, who will now get the college places and jobs that ill-educated Kansas kids aren’t able to fill. Shouldn’t other states make a reciprocal gesture? For example, those square and boxy looking western states could set an example and declare pi to be a nice round figure, say three.
They have a good precedent. In 1897 the Indiana House of Representatives voted for a law mandating pi to be 3.2. After references to the Committee on Swamps and Canals, (which we hope did not have circular ponds under scrutiny), it was passed by the Committee on Temperance (one can see why they looked at the idea). Eventually it passed its first reading in the state senate before some crusty math professor cried halt on them.
Hoosiers (Indiana natives) aren’t exceptionally innumerate. It’s just that politicians will vote for almost anything that does not have an apparent electoral downside. In fact they missed their chance because the First Book Of Kings VII:23′ makes it plain that pi equals three. If some pious state would adopt that now, it would even out the education gap. We must just hope that none of the three-pi brigade gets a job designing wheels or space stations and wondering why they keep ending up with more spoke than wheel.
At root, the problem is that so many people sincerely believe irrational things. Many Americans believe that the world was created some 6,000 years ago. Almost as many believe that we have regular visitations from aliens who show an unconscionably kinky fascination with shoving probes into their kidnappees’ orifices. I mean, the old line about the ‘universe in a grain of sand’ is one thing, but if you could roam the cosmos at will, would you really devote your quality space-faring time to scrutinizing the contents of redneck recta? If the secret of the universe was there, wouldn’t someone’s gerbil have found it by now?
If we are going to redefine the universe, why not do it in some more useful ways? For example, we all know that regulation is wrong in economics, ever since Milton ‘the Saint’ Friedman told us so. So why shouldn’t this be true in the physical sciences? Why not abolish Einstein’s arbitrary regulatory limit on light speed? Then insider traders could cheerfully explain that their tips were actually sent after the public declaration, they merely arrived before it was made. This would have the long overdue fringe benefit of decriminalizing insider trading between consenting adults. After all, what’s the point of being inside if you can’t urinate out?
Indeed, why can’t New York rescind the law of gravity? After all, it is only a theory, and it has been in some measure refined by Einstein. Indeed, Newton’s theory seems to have been largely rebutted by the NYSE and Nasdaq which, between them, have shown that stocks can continue rising with no apparent hold-down effect from gravity or indeed, even from reality, whatsoever.
In an election year, any legislation that promises stocks rising without end – or at least until the second coming – will get support from Rudy Giuliani and Hilary Clinton, since as Indiana shows, no proposition is too stupid or irrational to escape endorsement by politicians during an election. So there is every chance that New York State will rush through the abolition of Gravity in our time.
If we can abolish the laws of the physical universe with such aplomb, then there should really be no problem whatsoever in amending or rescinding the laws of economics. Just think, reality itself demolished the cornerstone of the Federal Reserve’s work, the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate, when unemployment went down below the carefully but erroneously calculated 5 percent and inflation did not go up. And about the same time, the president’s advisory committee on the consumer price index concluded that inflation had anyway been lower than the Fed was reckoning.
In August, Alan Greenspan, who in a lucid and relatively rare comprehensible moment, had once referred to the stock markets’ ‘irrational exuberance,’ recanted. He has now decided that much of the surplus value of equities is accounted for by software and computerization that is shown as an expense rather than an investment on the books. This certainly accounts for Microsoft’s valuation, but if the great man can admit that he was wrong (isn’t he due for reappointment soon?) then surely some other apologies are in order.
As I remember, the pope has apologized posthumously to Galileo and other brave flickering souls who were inconveniently, prematurely and inflammatorily correct in a period when so much was at stake. Has Greenspan ever apologized to the millions who were pink-slipped by the interest rates which he raised to stop an inflation that was overstated, the millions whose sacrifice of their livelihood was now, we discover, all to no avail? Probably not.
But then, with the welfare reform act, you can have it all ways. You abolish unemployment by throwing them off the welfare rolls, thus obviating the need to apologize. Sometimes I wish politicians would keep their hands in the pi. At least, then, people laugh at them.
The trouble is that when our leaders talk about business and economics, too many people assume they know whereof they speak. Unfortunately, all too often they don’t have a clue.
The Speculator
