Saturday Quote-a-thon: Dave Barry

Humor, of course, is called the best medicine. Since I'm still sick (though finally getting better, I think), let's test that notion with one of my favorite humorists: Dave Barry. I have brought Dave Barry to the delivery room with my first child and he helped me get through pitocin. I suspect a bit of Dave Barry can help with the cold from hell. Let's find out, shall we? (By the way, even though Barry has "retired" from his column in the Miami Herald, they provide regular reprints, which are worth reading, even when you've read them before.)

We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
-Dave Barry

Dan Quayle is someone who, no offense, would not stand out intellectually in a vat of plankton.
-Dave Barry

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors.
-Dave Barry

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
-Dave Barry

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-Dave Barry

As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.
-Dave Barry

See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.
-Dave Barry

If, in reading this, you are uncertain as to whether a specific statement is meant seriously or not, simply apply this rule of thumb: If the statement makes you consider filing a lawsuit, I was kidding. Ha ha!
-Dave Barry

So come on, women. Stop being so hard on us guys. Start looking past our macho, hairy exteriors at the thoughtful, sensitive, and yes, vulnerable individuals we can be inside. And while you're at it, make us a sandwich.
-Dave Barry

Of course it’s possible that there really ISN’T any shadow government. The whole thing could be a phony story that was fed to The Washington Post to mislead our enemies. As you recall, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently admitted that the Pentagon had set up an office-officially named "The Office of Disinformation"-that was supposed to put out false statements to the media, thus throwing our enemies off the track. For example, if we were getting ready to attack Iraq, officials of the Office of Disinformation would hold a press conference and state: "Well, we’re certainly not going to attack Iraq!" The news media would report this, and Iraq would relax. France, meanwhile, would surrender.
-Dave Barry

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-Dave Barry

But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained and built sod houses, which are actually made of dirt. Think about that. You can't clean a sod house, because it would be gone. The early settlers had a hell of a time getting this through to their children. "You kids stop tracking dirt out of the house!" they'd yell.
-Dave Barry

During the warm season (August 8 and 9), Maine is a true "vacation paradise," offering visitors a chance to jump into crystal-clear mountain lakes and see if they can get back out again before their bodily tissue is frozen as solid as a supermarket turkey.
-Dave Barry

American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it.
-Dave Barry

As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.
-Dave Barry

Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down.
-Dave Barry

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.
-Dave Barry

Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.
-Dave Barry

Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.
-Dave Barry

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.
-Dave Barry

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball.
-Dave Barry

Guys are simple... women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically.
-Dave Barry

Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.
-Dave Barry

I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care.
-Dave Barry

I want a pit crew... I hate the procedure I currently have to go through when I have car problems.
-Dave Barry

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.
-Dave Barry

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.'
-Dave Barry

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.
-Dave Barry

If you were to open up a baby's head - and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should - you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.
-Dave Barry

In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.
-Dave Barry

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.
-Dave Barry

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.
-Dave Barry

Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
-Dave Barry

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
-Dave Barry

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
-Dave Barry

Scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid.
-Dave Barry

Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
-Dave Barry

Skiers view snowboarders as a menace; snowboarders view skiers as Elmer Fudd.
-Dave Barry

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
-Dave Barry

Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough.
-Dave Barry

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.
-Dave Barry

The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.
-Dave Barry

The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice.
-Dave Barry

The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
-Dave Barry

There is a breed of fashion models who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary.
-Dave Barry

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.
-Dave Barry

Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around.
-Dave Barry

We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.
-Dave Barry

We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, except possibly flipping a coin.
-Dave Barry

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.
-Dave Barry

How do these celebrities stay so impossibly thin? Simple: They have full-time personal trainers, who advise them on nutrition, give them pep talks, and shoot them with tranquilizer darts whenever they try to crawl, on hunger-weakened limbs, toward the packet of rice cakes that constitutes the entire food supply in their 37,000-square-foot mansions. For most celebrities, the biggest meal of the day is toothpaste (they use reduced-fat Crest).
-Dave Barry

Benjamin Franklin proved an important scientific point, which is that electricity originates inside clouds. There, it forms into lightning, which is attracted to the earth by golfers. After entering the ground, the electricity hardens into coal, which, when dug up by power companies and burned in big ovens called “generators,” turns back into electricity, which is sent in the form of “volts” (also known as “watts,” or “rpm” for short), through special wires with birds sitting on them to consumers’ homes, where it is transformed by TV sets into commercials for beer, which passes through the consumers and back into the ground, thus completing what is known as a “circuit.” [Ed. I wish this wasn't indicative of how science is often reported.]
-Dave Barry

Here’s my proposal, which is based on the TV show Survivor: We put the entire Congress on an island. All the food on this island is locked inside a vault, which can be opened only by an ordinary American taxpayer named Bob. Every day, the congresspersons are given a section of the Tax Code, which they must rewrite so that Bob can understand it. If he can, he lets them eat that day; if he can’t, he doesn’t. [Ed: I like it! How about doing the same for health care reform!]

The Bush administration says the Mars mission can be accomplished for only 143.8 zillion dollars, but critics claim that the true cost is likely to be much more like 687 fillion dillion dollars. (These numbers are imaginary, but trust me, they’re as accurate as any other cost estimates you see about the Mars mission.)
-Dave Barry

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
-Dave Barry

Men: You know how, when your wife can’t open a pickle jar, she gives it to you, and you’re supposed to smile in a manly patronizing way as you effortlessly twist it open? That’s not what happens in our house. What happens is, after a grim struggle lasting several minutes, I wind up lying on the kitchen floor, exhausted and whimpering, while the pickle jar, unopened, laughs and flirts boldly with my wife. Sometimes it gives me a wedgie.
-Dave Barry

The weightlifting competition I saw was the women’s 63 kg class. I’m not sure whether this means the actual women weighed 63 kg or the weights they lifted weighed 63 kg. Or possibly the temperature in the weightlifting hall was 63 kg. There’s no way to know for sure without finding out what a “kg” is, and my belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won.
-Dave Barry

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Bare Necessities: Math

I love Dave Barry. He’s got the kind of turn of phrase I treasure that kills me by inserting something delightfully absurd (but I didn’t see coming) into nearly every sentence. When I was in labor with my eldest daughter, I literally had a friend read Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits out loud. My (now ex) husband insisted 23 hours on pitocin couldn’t have been that bad because I was laughing.

(I still treasure this little gem: “Specifically, it was a Yorkshire terrier, a breed originally developed in England to serve as makeup applicators. A full-grown ''Yorkie'' is about the size of a standard walnut, although it has more hair and a smaller brain.”)

Anywho, although Dave Barry has effectively retired, the Miami Herald has been replaying Dave Barry’s greatest hits and I’m not distribution, so I get something hilarious pretty much every Monday. I love Dave Barry. Have I mentioned that? Today’s article (another reprint), although hilarious, struck a chord with me.

The perception that basic math is of no use.

That just boggles my mind. People are always saying: I never use math. I never use algebra. All that time in school was a complete waste. Folks, if it was, you’ve been shortchanged, seriously. But, more than that, you ought to ask yourself how much your perceptions are responsible for your attitudes about the math you don’t think you’re doing (but, likely, are) and how much harder it is than it has to be.

Now, I can already hear the cacophony of complaints: You’re a Rocket Scientist. Of course, you think math’s easy or useful but, really, when do you really need to use math?

I’ll tell you one thing, I use it a damn sight more outside of work than I do inside. Not that math isn’t important for Rocket Science. Obviously it is, but we use spreadsheets and models and software to do the bulk of our calculations. Which is all the more reason having a basic understanding of math is so important. If I don’t understand how risks pile up, I can use a wrong assumption or miss an error input into a model that delivers an answer 4 or 10 times worse than it should be. I should know what kind of numbers to expect and I should be double checking when things don’t match my expectations. Many an engineering catastrophe stemmed from a number too few people compared and corrected. It happens. I’ve done it and I’ve known others that have done it.

But, even if I were never to use math at work (and I struggle to figure out what work would deprive me of that need), I need it day to day. And so do you. To know you have the right change (which is a small thing) to double check you have the right bill (and that the bill’s correct), which can be a big thing. To ensure that your outflow of cash doesn’t exceed your inflow. True, it’s arithmetic, but it’s algebra, too. If I’m going to be short this week because I’m paying my mortgage, I’d better pull some from savings? How much? I’m going to need at least answer=outflow-(inflow+balance). That, my friends, is algebra. If I buy and sell stuff on ebay or fix up cars or charge by the hour, I’m going to need to understand how to add, subtract, multiply and divide or I can be readily shortchanged and never be the wiser. If I can’t sell things for more than it costs to make and send them, I’m going to work myself into the poorhouse.

If I’m a seamstress, I need to understand basic geometry or I’ll go poor buying too much material or cutting out clothing only to find out I’m half a yard short. If I’m a writer, I better understand what my contracts are netting me for the time I’m spending. If I’m laying carpet or having a roof installed or painting a wall, area makes a difference. Why would I ever need to use pi again? What if I need to put a pathway around my round pool fill in a square area around it with patio stones or mulch?

We pooh-pooh those calculations as not really math which is likely the explanation why we had so many people lose their homes to stupidly expensive mortgages. If you let yourself believe math isn’t important or that you can just “trust” someone (who is likely making money from you) knows what they’re doing, you can hardly be surprised when you get cheated or find that you’ll be facing unexpected fees at a later date. If you can’t double check the calculations, on at least a top level, to make sure everything makes sense, you’ll be sorry later. It’s the kind of thinking that allows us to buy 200 dollar items for nearly twice as much because we amortize them for two years on credit cards at 17% interest. Or lets us think that we can lower down a load weighing twice what we weigh with a simple pulley and never leave the ground.

A basic understanding of math and algebra is absolutely essential for any technical field, but, for regular people, it can also mean the difference between having a life and being had.

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