A History of Lies

Many of you have heard or read my rant about that lying rag, The Weekly Reader. They sold that trash to us when I was in school. Some of my teachers would use the arrival day each week to fill something close to half of the school day. It took years to determine, but the facts make it obvious that facts were not necessarily The Weekly Reader's stock in trade.

Let me rehash and update my rant:

They told me that I would spend my adult years driving a hovercraft, that a four-day workweek would be the norm during my years of employment, and that Prince Charles would be the King of England. As you can see, their batting average ain't too hot on these three items.

The façade of truth continues to deteriorate. A few years ago, it was determined by astronomers that though Pluto still has full status at Disney, not so much in the universe. So we dropped from nine planets to eight. Just recently, it has been reported by astrologists that the periods of birth associated with the twelve houses of zodiac have been incorrect all of these years. My daughter, Erin, who is an esteemed educator, reminded me I needed to be agitated about that one.

Now there are rumblings in mathematical circles that pi might not be a number on which we can hang our hats. (Link to article about math dudes who want to dump pi for tau.)  Instead, they say, we should worship the square of pi, a number bearing the new moniker, tau. Well, excuse me, but if pi ain't right, why should multiplying it times itself make it better. Isn't that sort of like saying that two wrongs make a right. I have always had a problem with pi anyway, because they say it is square, as in "pi r squared." All who are Southern by the grace of God know that pie are not square, pie are round. Cornbread are square.

In summary, given the continual surfacing of falsehoods, I'm beginning to think that The Weekly Reader might be a front organization for politicians. We all know how devoutly they embrace the truth. What do you think?