I’m more than well aware of a certain famous quote, having had it demonstrated many moons back by my ‘A’ level Pure Maths & Stats tutor, laughing as she gave us data showing the correlation between cases of dysentery in Scotland with rising prices of phones bills and the suggestion that if you factored in a two year time delay, then you could argue that one caused the other…
And in the years since, I’ve seen numbers massaged to back very many things…
I find it interesting… people will distrust figures… even people who have no idea how numbers work will say they can’t be trusted…
(Which takes me off to a sideways ponder of why is it that there are people who will take pride in declaring themselves to be innumerate… I find that disturbing… especially coming from otherwise educated people who pride themselves on their reading lists… people who would be ashamed to say they were illiterate… yet no social stigma attached to being a numerical numb nut…)
But… what I find even more interesting is the blind faith and trust in quotes…
People jumping over themselves like lemmings to agree and oh…. yes… I so understand that… that’s sooooooooooooooooooo profound!
Really?
Or is it pseuprofound….
I wonder… do people just seek out words to bolster up what they want to be seen as…
Gleefully jumping on board, looking with just the one eye that fits their lopsided view of the world…
Choosing black or white and glossing over the shades between…
Closing the other eye, ignoring any hypocrisy… like a small child who believes that if they cover their eyes, then you can not see them…
I see words used to skew and screw far more often than numbers ever are…
How does that happen in a world full of the literate…
Full of the conscious…
Full of the aware… the awoken… the enlightened…
The mockers of sheeple…
Meh… meh…meh…
And for every quote… there is an equal and opposite quote…
Eyes?
Ears?
Which to believe?
Nose…
Yeah… some say you can’t polish a turd…
Others say… Yeah… but you can roll it in glitter…
I say…
Whatev’
A turd is a turd is a turd…
And no amount of glitter can mask the stink…
The pure and blessed way 