Coffee Free Zone*

Driving my kids to school, my daughter proceeded to tell me about the water cycle as discussed on a "How Stuff Works" video. The theory is that because there are so many trillions of water molecules in a cup of coffee, that some of the molecules from President Abraham Lincoln's coffee on the day he was sworn in, could have followed the water cycle all around the world, through the sewers, the treatment plants, into the oceans and streams, across continents, back into clouds to rain into the local reservoir and thus return through the sinks of the nearby Starbucks into a cup for you.

Sounds tasty doesn't it?

While mathematically, it is statistically possible that old Abe's cup of Joe became a current overpriced cup of java; I've taken statistics and know that what can be illustrated cannot necessarily be proven. There are lies, damn lies and statistics as Twain once said.

For instance, remember Reach Mouth Wash? When it first came out, they touted the fact that they reduced plaque by 300% and they did, when compared to doing nothing. But when compared to gargling with water or brushing one's teeth, they did only 10% against the former. Reach sales plummeted when the scam of statistics was exposed. Having learned the statistical possibility of Lincoln's ahem, "coffee in its distilled by the body form" might be in my water, I predict a Reach mouth wash comeback at least in this household.

But my daughter insisted the water cycle proved it. Feeling really glad I stuck to diet coke at the moment, I pointed out that in some cases, like wines, water is taken out of the cycle for decades. I privately wondered if I should switch to that vice at that moment, it sounded more palatable. There is some knowledge that just isn't very useful for everyday life; or at the very least, for enjoying living. "We don't KNOW know." I countered.

"But the math proves that there's a 100% chance of water molecules from the coffee having come from President Lincoln's the day he took office!" 

I pointed out that it isn't like one can Marlin Perkins style tag individual water molecules and release them back into the wild as it were. I also pointed out that water can get stuck, frozen on the mountains of Tibet, absorbed into a deep river inside the Earth, mingling in the ocean deep off South America, bottled in Fiji and sent here to sit on a 7-11 store shelf. Some of the water might have been absorbed by the woman who drank it, who then had a baby who took in those water molecules as part of his development and be walking around now with Honest Abe's water vapors as part of his DNA!For that matter, the rogue H20 could be absorbed by a jelly fish or drunk by a pig or mixed with other chemicals to make shampoo or concentrated orange juice or toothpaste.

Besides, we don't know if the President went to the facilities on Inauguration day after drinking coffee, so it might be a day younger. The very discussion itself was enough to put me off drinking water period.

She asked who Marlin Perkins was.

"Let me put it this way," I answered. "If your theory is correct, you probably brushed your teeth with him."


* Video of "How Stuff Works" on water cycle is linked in the title if you want to watch. 

College Post Modernist Thinking Students declare Disagreement only the result of Ignorance on the part of Others

It happened at the University the other day, when a group of very hip modernists who understood that no truth is knowable but were smart enough to declare anyone who pointed out that such a statement could be perceived as a statement of a universal truth were just being clever, decided that debate itself indicates ignorance, misunderstanding and stupidity on the part of anyone who advocates any “traditional” position about knowledge. (Truth being identifiable, knowable, and even transferable via such an unwieldy tool as language).

When asked if they weren’t simply adopting a Berkley stance, being is perception, they scoffed at such a simplistic understanding of the universe. “No, what we understand is that all information is biased and therefore innately untrustworthy as accurate or even valid. No actual reality can be verified as actual, as 100 people seeing the same accident will each see the accident differently and no one person saw the whole accident.”

Additionally, another young slim woman sipping Starbucks offered, “The consensus of a large group of people in one proximity or even across a nation or over time, is not a validation of a reality, only the result of collective norms, societal pressures and the clumsiness of our own English Language to provide sufficient levels of nuance to everyday observations.”

“But,” offered one hapless professor, attempting to provide a touch of guidance based on his own study, something the students considered inadequate to substantiate his authority on things over theirs, regardless of the extent of his research, “If I hold up an apple, you know it is an apple, and 100 or 1000 people looking at it would know that it is an apple.”

“Hah!” up jumped one of the more gothic looking youths with multiple piercings, his appearance and quick action made the professor startle, something which gave the clever young bohemians present a great bit of glee, “But an alien arriving here would not know it is an apple unless you told them, and a Frenchman would not call it an apple, but a pomme, and someone who never before seen an apple would not know what that object in your hand was. Further, a blind man would not know appleness from your hand holding it, and a color blind man would not know the red quality of that apple, and therefore see an apple as meaning something different than you. You cannot claim the apple would be known to all, because it would not be perceived by all or comprehended by all. We believe all perception is all we can know and that all perception is deceptive in nature.”

“But then you believe nothing is knowable.”
“Yes.”

“How do you know nothing is knowable?”
“We can’t know, that would be proving it and that would go against our central thesis.”

“So you can’t even know if anything is knowable? Why learn anything then?”


“Exactly!” the slim girl smiled. The other students nodded their heads in demur affirmation of the professor's sudden enlightenment.

And the professor smiled as his goth student teacher praised how he had finally come to comprehend the ignorance of his own ignorance, the prejudice that prevented him from understanding how to deconstruct everything into meaninglessness. “Now you’re getting it man. Have a Starbucks.” and handed him a Venti Mocha Latte.



For thinking that is even more post modern than the most post modern deconstructionist theories of deconstruction, and humor that allows us to cope with such nonsense, try http://www.humor-blogs.com/!