I Believe in Evolution But Not So Much in Gravity: A Collection of My Scientific Opinions By Moe by Mohammed Hassan

I Believe In Evolution But Not So Much In Gravity: A Collection Of My Scientific Opinions

Moe is not a scientist. He's just a dude. One day when a friend asks him "do you believe in evolution?", he understands it as the scientific community relaxing its rules and embracing everyone's opinion as part of the fact-finding process. So feeling guilty for never having studied science, and out of the goodness of his heart, he lists down what he thinks of every major scientific fact out there as a peace offering for scientists everywhere. These are his 'scientific opinions'.

I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION BUT NOT SO MUCH IN GRAVITY:

A COLLECTION OF MY

SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS By Moe

ISBN 978-1-304-67872-0

90000

9 781304 678720

Moe

ID: 14284626 www.lulu.com

I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION BUT NOT SO MUCH IN GRAVITY:

A COLLECTION OF MY SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS

I Believe In Evolution But Not So Much In Gravity: A Collection Of My Scientific Opinions By Moe

Mohammed Hassan 2013

Copyright ÂŠ 2013 by Mohammed Hassan All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. First Printing: 2013 ISBN 978-1-304-67872-0 Mohammed Hassan House 783 Road 1622 Block 816 Isa Town, Bahrain https://www.facebook.com/scientificopinions pinnokkiox@gmail.com @PinnokkioX

Contents

Intro ....................................................................................................1 Dinosaurs ..........................................................................................4 Fossils .................................................................................................5 Genes...................................................................................................5 Monkeys ..........................................................................................10 Cloning .............................................................................................14 Cryogenic Freezing ......................................................................15 Global Warming............................................................................17 The Big Bang ..................................................................................19 Parallel Universe..........................................................................23 Quantum Theory ..........................................................................24 Space-Time Continuum ..............................................................26 Theory of Relativity.....................................................................28 Time Travel....................................................................................31 Atoms ...............................................................................................34 The Nuclear Bomb .......................................................................36 Anesthesia ......................................................................................39 Bacteria ...........................................................................................41 Gravity .............................................................................................42 Photosynthesis..............................................................................44 Black Holes .....................................................................................47 Life on Mars....................................................................................49 Oxygen .............................................................................................51 The Sun and the Moon ................................................................53

Autism..............................................................................................56 Dyslexia ...........................................................................................58 Paralysis..........................................................................................60 PMS....................................................................................................62 Appendix .........................................................................................65 Twins................................................................................................67 Homophobia ..................................................................................70 Orgasms...........................................................................................72 Racism..............................................................................................74 Viagra ...............................................................................................77 Fog .....................................................................................................80 Lightning and Thunder ..............................................................82 Rainbows ........................................................................................84 Diet Soft Drinks.............................................................................87 Jello ...................................................................................................89 Sugar.................................................................................................91 3D Glasses.......................................................................................94 A.I.......................................................................................................96 The Wheel.......................................................................................98 Conclusions..................................................................................101 References ...................................................................................103

Intro I’ll never forget the day I discovered I was part of the scientific community. I was watching a football game with some of my friends a couple of weeks ago and things were getting boring. One of my friends turned to me and said “Hey Moe, do you believe in evolution?” I was astounded. Up until that point, I had no idea that my opinion was a factor in determining the outcome of scientific research. I felt honored just to be included. When I was a kid, no one ever asked me what I think of the stuff they were teaching me. They just taught it to me, labeling them as scientific facts that were proven by celebrated scientists in legitimate scientific experiments a long time ago. They just expected me to believe that plants convert sunlight into food and that we need something called Oxygen to be alive. They just assumed that I was that sleepy kid on the corner with nothing on my mind to offer. Now, thankfully, things are looking up. Science is no longer reserved for the scientists. Anyone can throw their personal views in the mix now. I feel grateful that the scientific community decided to relax its stiff rules and embrace my point of view as part of their conclusions. I also feel a bit guilty. If I had known, I would have actually studied some science or paid more attention to my science teachers at school. I mean, let me be explicitly clear on this: I am not a scientist. I have no formal education or background relating to any subject of scientific nature. I’ve never even looked up the word ‘science’ (or ‘fact’) in the dictionary. This is why I misunderstood what science was about for a very long time. Turns out, science is not about the truth. It’s about the truth and how I feel about it. Once I learned of this new approach to fact-finding, I realized that it’s unfair to limit the scope of our opinions to a single question about evolution. Why stop at evolution? Why not ask us how we feel about gravity or bacteria? Or whether or not we believe in black holes? What about twins, rainbows and jello? Why should evolution get its fair share of opinions while so many scientific facts could be scrutinized just the same? This is why I decided to write this book. This book contains my scientific opinions on several scientific facts. And let me be clear on 1

what I mean by ‘scientific opinions’. I didn’t come up with these willy-nilly. I used a reliable system in which I employ logic, reasoning and best-guess scenarios to confirm which facts are true and which facts are false. Luckily, I found that you can do this to most things just by looking at their names. Also, because I wanted it to showcase my most pure opinions, I made sure to stay away from any scientific resource for the entire duration of writing this book— since I didn’t want my opinions to be influenced by outside evidence. This book covers an extensive collection of my scientific opinions, ranging from fossils, cloning and quantum theory to oxygen, dyslexia and Viagra. I also had to leave out a few questionable ones, such as mangos, spleens and babies because I didn’t want this to be one of those heavy science books that discourage you from reading it. I wanted you to read this book and think of what it says about the state of science today. I implore every teacher to ask their students if they believe the subjects he or she is teaching them. Ask them if they think they’re real or not. Ask them if it makes sense to them that one plus one equals two. If they say yes, then we can all agree that it’s real and keep on learning. If they say no, just let them go home or play in the yard. Accept their choices. Let’s teach our kids to be nice and launch a new era of opinionated facts. After all, isn’t that what science is all about? This one is for you, science.

EVOLUTION Facts That Scientists Change Over Time

Dinosaurs Dinosaurs were these giant reptiles that were constantly angry. They roamed the earth billions of years ago, just going from one spot to the next and roaring at the sky in frustration. They were outraged. I have no idea why. The way I see it, dinosaurs had it pretty well. They had plenty of roaming space. They even swam and flew around carefree. Everyone else was smaller, so finding food wasn’t an issue. They just chomped air and something would end up getting eaten. Judging by their size, I’d say they were eating nonstop throughout the day. And back then, these dinosaurs were everywhere. Half the earth must have been covered in dinosaur crap, and this was way before they put Barney’s face on children’s backpacks. The media has always treated dinosaurs favorably. Kids sing and dance with them, they make sitcoms about them and filmmakers build parks for them. Dinosaurs have even been introduced into our everyday language. When people say “that person has a reptilian brain”, they’re praising that person’s intelligence and the dinosaur-ish size of his brain. Despite that, the media also gets a lot of things wrong about them. They keep showing humans and dinosaurs living together which is historically inaccurate. Humans weren’t alive in the times when dinosaurs roamed the earth because spears weren’t invented yet and humans can’t survive a dinosaur attack without them. Then, one day, dinosaurs disappeared off the face of the earth. Scientists say a meteor did it but I find it hard to believe that one meteor could wipe out every single dinosaur on earth. I mean, think about it. That one rock must have hit the ground then shot in a thousand directions in order to knock out every single dinosaur in the head if that was the case. But just for the sake of argument, let’s assume this meteor really did launch an attack on earth. Some of these dinosaurs could fly so they could have simply dodged the meteor and went about their business. I think the meteor theory is just lazy science. Scientists aren’t digging deep enough into what went on in the daily lives of these creatures. For example, scientists neglect the mental state that dinosaurs were in. Remember, they were dominating the earth and terrorizing all other animals. That means they couldn’t 4

form any friendships. They were lonely, yearning for companionship but instead, everyone else ran away, too preoccupied with not getting eaten. That can take a toll on anybody’s state of mind. I have a better theory about why dinosaurs went extinct. These dinosaurs started out huge, right? And by nature, evolution starts with small animals, right? Well, if these dinosaurs were big then how come they got to exist before the small animals just like that? They cheated the system. Evolution got mad. It wasn’t their time yet. That’s why evolution decided to punish the dinosaurs and turned them into oil that lives under the sand. It didn’t even need a hot rock to do it. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. Dinosaurs did exist a long time ago. They were huge and ate everything in front of them but not anymore. Evolution is all about survival of the fittest. That’s why the dinosaurs went extinct. Between their gigantic size and the readily available food a few inches away from their mouths, they never got enough exercise.

Fossils Scientists claim that fossils are the bones of species that existed a long time ago and then died out. But, honestly, I think they’re wrong. Well, they’re not entirely wrong but they are seeing this from the wrong perspective. It’s true that fossils are remains of old species, but I don’t think these species ever existed. I think that when evolution told them it was their time to exist, they started forming with these bones but then, for some reason or another, they couldn’t go through with it and those bones fell right on their skulls. So fossils aren’t remains of old existing species. They’re remains of aborted species that failed to ‘evolute.’ That’s why I never understand all these scientists cheering when they discover another buried fossil. Why are you happy? You just gave the world more evidence of evolution failing! These archeologists should be ashamed of themselves. They’re working so hard just to discredit the noble scientific invention of evolution. I don’t like these people. Another thing I don’t like about archeologists is how fast they lose interest in a fossil. It seems like every day, a new fossil is dug up and some information is released about what it was and when it existed but after that, nobody gives us any updates. Why did you stop? Why aren’t you checking on these fossils to see what they evolve into? It might give us valuable information about evolution and life itself! Keep an eye on them. And I don’t mean just give a passive glance. Squint real hard. You never know what you might miss. The fact that fossils are always buried underground makes me believe that evolution starts from the bottom up. These aborted bones probably take shape inside the sand but never evolve long enough to rise up and see the sunlight. I know scientists like to think that these bones were originally over the ground and eventually got covered by sand-carrying wind but that wouldn’t work because the wind would carry the bones along with it and keep going in an endless loop. In case you haven’t noticed, the planet is round. A lot of people think fossils don’t make a good case for evolution because of all the missing links. But I don’t see what the structure of a 6

skeleton has to do with anything, really. So what if a few bones were missing? Most of the skeleton is still there. Maybe those links were stolen at some point. Maybe they were used in the making of another species. That shouldn’t distract us from looking at the big picture here, which is that this particular fossil makes Darwin look bad. Good science is science that can be conveniently modified so it would last longer. Fossils are too rigid for my taste. They’ve been around for so long and their mere existence provides such an ultimate answer to the history of all living things that it seems near impossible to reject their role in understanding evolution. But, to my credit, I still managed. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. But that’s only because of what they are. Just change the definition of fossils in the dictionary and write the opposite of the information about them in encyclopedias, and I’ll gladly believe in them.

Genes Scientists say there might be a gene for homosexuality and even a gene for insanity too. You know what I think? I think there’s a gene for everything. Not just for the big things like race and diseases, but for every singular action and behavior. If you take the bus to work every morning, you’re using your bus gene. If you’re skilled at keeping secrets and staying up late nights, you have a good Mafia gene. And if you can’t keep a relationship going for more than a week, you have a problem gene. But it’s not always this direct. Modern life has forced our genes to be more complicated. As a result, when you make a choice between two things, then your genes are alternating in duty. For example, if you like soft drinks and decide to go with Pepsi for lunch, your Coke gene switched off so your Pepsi gene can become active. Or if you always like your pancakes with maple syrup in the morning, you have an active fluffy food gene and a dormant omelet gene. If you’re still struggling to understand how genes work, think of them as the letters in the final round of Wheel of Fortune. The ones that are lit are called ‘active’ genes and the ones that aren’t lit are called ‘dormant’ genes. Genes are triggered by environmental factors, exactly the same way the contestant’s choice of letters is determined by the audience’s woos and applause—except genes can’t fake enthusiasm. When you open a pizza box, you smell it and the smell triggers your pizza-lover gene to switch on. The same thing happened earlier when your lazy gene kicked in and you picked up the phone to place the order instead of going there yourself. You can trace everything back this way to the second you were born and your restfulness gene dried up. I agree with that Richard Dawkins guy. Genes are selfish, especially the ones that are active. They never seem to give a chance to the other genes that wanna be active too. There’s always that one gene that seems to control all the other genes and never gives anyone a turn. I call it the Chief Gene. The most common example of the Chief Gene can be found in Asian people’s faces. It’s literally impossible for a person with even a drop of Asian genes not to end up with an Asian face. That’s because the selfish Chief Gene refuses to let the other face genes have a crack at it. 8

By now, it should be abundantly clear to anyone reading this book that when it comes to spreading misinformation, I have a huge problem. I just don’t want you folks to learn things the wrong way. Out of all the topics in this book, genes are by far the one that I worry the most about people misunderstanding. That’s why I went out of my way to make sure I’ve been elaborate on this one. Could there by anyone out there who still doesn’t understand how genes work? Well, genes are who I am and I find that unacceptable. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. My only fear is that scientists abuse my ‘Gene for Everything’ theory by giving people a free pass to do unnecessary behavior, like allowing them to be born fat or have gay sex. Even though there’s a gene for everything, it doesn’t mean you should do everything your gene tells you. And don’t pay too much attention to what scientists say. For some reason, scientists seem to have this natural predisposition to explaining everything in a scientific way and I just can’t figure out what’s making them do it.

Monkeys There are a lot of false facts out there about evolution so, right off the bat, let me clear up the biggest one. We did not come from monkeys. Is that clear enough for ya? Let me repeat that. We did not come from monkeys. We came from Africans. And I think you’ll agree that it’s easy to mistake the two—because they both live in Africa, I mean. Though, I’d still say that monkeys are a part of our evolutionary process. In fact, I’d say they’re one of three parts. The way I figure it, humans are a mix that evolved out of part monkey, part parrot, and possibly part iguana. The monkey part would explain why we behave and look like apes, the parrot part would explain why we talk so good and the iguana part would explain why we can’t settle on one skin color. Every time a human of a different color is born, that’s the iguana gene changing its skin. It might be wise to check the wall colors of the room where the birth is taking place because I suspect the skin color changes aren’t random. The jungle is huge so the three could have easily bumped into each other at some point, probably in a secluded spot somewhere. I couldn’t tell ya where exactly but I know it had to be at night so no one can see them. Then, all three formed a circle by joining their heads together and dancing over a fire—as they generally do in Africa- where they spun around and around and around until they finally morphed into the first human being ever, most definitely a male. I’m not saying this is the only mix. I’m saying it’s the most common one. Now, remember, scientists say countless species that we don’t know about went extinct so we’ll never really crack the code of every single evolution formula. But using the humans we have today as samples, it’s easy to figure out the evolution of most people. All you have to do is link the well-known behavior of an animal to the well-known behavior of the person. For example, people with anger issues are probably part dinosaur because dinosaurs were constantly angry. And gay people might be part peacock, which would explain why they love to showboat in public and their obsession with fashion. Athletes are the best evidence to support this theory. The Olympics are basically a televised display of a human zoo. Sprinters are part jaguar, swimmers are part dolphin and jumpers are part kangaroo. The 10

art world has a bunch of these too. Actors—the good ones—have a predominant monkey part in their evolutionary history. In one go, this explains every instance of celebrity behavior that took place in Hollywood for the last 100 years. It’s important to note that most humans don’t have tails, so it’s real possible that there was a fourth animal in the jungle that night. My best guess would be that it was a fly. Flies fly around a lot and are known to be tail-less animals. A fly could have easily been buzzing by the three when they were dancing, got sucked into the mix and inadvertently became part of our evolution. It’s also a convenient theory because it would explain our passion for flying. Though, I gotta say that the fly part is just a possibility, not a probability. I don’t want to deviate too far away from hard facts. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. But that shouldn’t stop you from believing in them. They’re kinda cute.

SENSITIVE SCIENCE Science That Needs to Be Gentle Around Us

Cloning Cloning is the process of producing human copies out of anyone and anything, including other humans. It became a famous science thing when scientists managed to clone a human out of a sheep called Dolly the Sheep. Amazingly, the cloned human looked exactly like Dolly, complete with hoofs and wool. This made people worry what’s going to happen to the human race. They figured if scientists can clone humans out of sheep, what’s to stop them from cloning us into humans? You’d have to share everything with your clone. It’s another you, after all. It’s hard enough waking up in the morning and looking at your face in the mirror. Imagine having to see it when you’re in the shower too. You’d have to take turns wearing the same clothes because you share the same fashion sense, divide plates of food between you because you like the same cuisines and share the same bed because you both need a good night’s sleep. You can’t kick your clone out because you’d essentially be kicking yourself out of your own home. You can’t even complain about your clone because then people would know you behave exactly the same way and wouldn’t wanna be friends with you anymore. It’s crazy. Now picture not just one clone, but a world full of them. Nobody wears anything new anymore and everybody has to go to work on a half-full stomach. And think of it from the clones’ perspective. We’d have no choice but to treat them as inferiors. They’re literally taking our jobs and lowering our standard of life. It would be completely justified from our end, but they wouldn’t know what to make of it. Not to mention the other complications involved. Suppose we get so good at cloning that we put a cloning vending machine at every supermarket. Then, everyone would just clone themselves along with their wallets and walk away with two times the money they had walking in. Pretty soon, everyone will be too rich to work and the whole economy will collapse. The government will have to increase manpower to catch all the cloned criminals, but with no budget in this economy and no one willing to work, they’ll have to resort to cloning retired policemen and that will just add more unemployed clones to the world. Every top athlete in every sport would be cloned and entire teams would consist of nothing but clones of that one top athlete. No 13

team would win as it’s impossible for a clone to be better than the other clone and the game would go on as a draw forever. Top students will be cloned but again, there’d be no money to grant them any scholarships and no jobs would be available when they graduate, while Billboard charts and movie theaters would be dominated by the name of one single over-cloned artist. All this could happen if we start to believe in cloning. This is why I get angry when I hear cloning supporters. They refuse to be realistic and insist on things like cloning organs and curing disabilities, which honestly seem trivial and narrow-minded compared to my examples. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. No one lives forever. We are all immoral. So why would we make clones of ourselves and die twice? That’s just stupid. I can’t believe in cloning. I have a mortal obligation not to believe in it. Some people might argue that they can offer more to the world with two brains but in my case, a clone would be just another no-brainer.

Cryogenic Freezing Cryogenic freezing is when scientists put human bodies inside refrigerators in order to preserve them as food for humans in the future. At least I think that’s why. I can’t think of another reason why anyone would wanna stick anything inside a fridge other than to eat it later. And if it is for that reason then I think it’s extreme to say the least. I fully understand that discussing cryogenic freezing is uncomfortable for a lot of people. It combines the two touchiest topics ever: people and food. But our sensitivity shouldn’t let us gloss over the fact that cryogenic freezing is marred by poor planning. You’d think there have been enough arguments against cannibalism and frozen foods but for the sake of clarity, I’ll explain in detail why it’s a bad plan. The first thing that comes to my mind is that it’s something different and nobody likes that. For millions of people, the normal thing for centuries was to put makeup on a corpse and parade it in an open box at a funeral so others can see what went wrong and then dump it in a hole in the ground. It was dignified. But now they expect people to die while surrounded by ice? That’s just unnatural. It’s contrived and brought on by human intervention. Second, it hasn’t been thought through. Suppose we end up freezing everybody who dies. We still can’t freeze the freezers because they’re the only ones who know how to do the freezing. So without being frozen, the freezers just die out and the frozen remain frozen forever because nobody thawed them out. And before they die out, the freezers are subjected to long waiting periods that will only amount to nothing. That’s just cruel. They have lives too, you know. This is why cryogenic freezing is a bad idea. You either torture scientists or ruin good food. It’s a lose-lose situation. Not to mention it doesn’t take the effects of global warming into account—assuming most people decide to believe in it and it ends up having effects. We shouldn’t fret too much about what people are gonna eat in the future. Yes, resources are drying up but there’ll be other sources of food by then. I say it’ll probably be something like space fish or satellite fruits, whichever way evolution decides to go. And I know that as long as evolution has our backs, we’re gonna be okay. And 15

maybe we’re looking at this whole thing the wrong way. If you really wanna be pragmatic, then invent an elixir of eternal youth. That way, you won’t need to freeze anybody and the flesh won’t taste icky because it didn’t come from a fridge. Cryogenic freezing is savage and inhumane because it involves a lot of waiting and cannibalism. The whole thing is way too confusing for me. I still can’t understand why we can’t just continue to eat chickens instead. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I don’t even consider it a legit science. Just thinking of the words “cryogenic scientist” makes me laugh. Really? Keeping things cold makes you a scientist now? “Hey, look at me! I just put a soda in the fridge and now I’m a beverage scientist!” Some people are really dumb.

Global Warming The strongest argument for global warming is that there’s no reason for scientists to make it up. You can just see the effects for yourself. The polar bears are melting, and I’d say that’s a pretty hard sight to miss. I know people are skeptical about it and I get it. The Ozone thing was a lie, that’s true. But we know it is because there’s no evidence for it. If a layer really did get broken up there, we’d have seen something out of the ordinary, like sharp pieces of broken sky falling on our heads or at least a loud cracking noise between the clouds. Global warming is different. This one is happening and it makes perfect sense why. For those who don’t know, global warming is extra heat that’s coming our way soon because people around the world have excessively protected themselves from harsh winters over the centuries. All the jackets, coats, gloves, socks and scarves added up and made us literally immune to the cold and as a result, nature has decided to juice up its hot weather in response. I’m not sure what weather’s plan is exactly, but I’m thinking it’s just gonna try harder to make us sweat. This escalation could have easily been avoided if we weren’t so careless. Everything we’ve done contributed to this. Every time we made ourselves a hot cup of coffee or cuddled with a loved one, we were pushing ourselves one step closer to global warming. For those few minutes of warm pleasure, future generations will now have to suffer unbearable heat. Our selfish behavior cost the whole planet. Maybe next time you’ll think before you try to defy nature with your microwaved dinner. And I’m not just pointing the finger at people living in modern countries here. Remember, this is global warming. Every man, woman and child in the world is responsible for it. I’m sure baseball fans with beer hats in the West pack just as much heat in their heads as camel-racing fans with turbans in the East. What I really don’t get here is why we are so eager to challenge the world. If nature wants you to be cold, then just take it. Why would you put up a fight anyway? Some animals are spared feeling cold because they’ve been given fur. Not only do humans not have fur, but we also have heightened senses that almost repeatedly scream “Damn! This is really cold!” All this and still, we don’t get it. The problem as I see it is that humans are inclined to go against nature. 17

It’s ingrained in our natural impulses. Scientists keep complaining that no one wants to believe in global warming because they’ve been duped by the Ozone thing but I think it’s a completely different reason. I think people don’t wanna believe in global warming because they don’t wanna lose their winter fashion lineup. Every winter, you see the fashion industry producing the most beautiful clothing for both men and women, much more chic and elegant than summer or spring. Some people define themselves by their clothing. It’s their identity. If you take away their leather belts, they get unraveled. It’s what’s keeping them together. So of course, they wouldn’t wanna believe in global warming. But the best thing about science is that even if other people don’t believe in it, it’s still true because I believe in it. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. Not only do I believe in global warming but I regret being part of what caused it. I remember one time I made myself a steaming hot cup of cocoa and jumped right into a Jacuzzi while still wearing my snugly tied bathrobe and warm slippers in the middle of a humid summer night at a very cozy room temperature. That’s at least three years of global warming right there.

The Big Bang There are two words I have a problem with when someone mentions the Big Bang, “the Big” and the “Bang”. First of all, we need to remember that if the Big Bang really did take place, it would have taken place in space. There are plenty of big things in space, like planets, stars and empty space. It’s pretty big up there. And by comparison, everything in a big place is usually small. Big spaces also generate a lot of noises and most of them are blunt and wide like eruptions, not sharp and narrow like a bang. So I’d really like to know how we came to identify not just the size of the universe when it was being made but it also the sound it made when it did it. Let’s look at this logically. Pre-Big Bang, the universe hasn’t started yet, right? So if there was no universe then there were no humans. If there were no humans then there were no human ears or eyes. If we didn’t have eyes or ears back then then how can we possibly judge how big or how loud this Big Bang was? Who was it big for? Our eyes in a parallel universe? That doesn’t count. In essence, I’d say the idea is pretty good. The whole universe came from one source. That makes sense. I’m only contesting the sound and size aspect of that source. How did we determine it was big? And how do we know it sounded like a bang? Maybe it wasn’t a big bang. Maybe it was a small plop. Or an audible fizzle. Why couldn’t it have been a gigantic echo? Who came up with this shot in the dark they call the Big Bang?! I mean, I don’t wanna nitpick but I just hate it when people focus on the most trivial details and miss the big picture. This is definitely one of those ultra-sensitive topics. Why? Think of the universe. Think how enormous and empty it is. All that silence… All those lifeless rocks floating in nothingness… Then imagine that we actually came from that nothingness. In a way, that would make life meaningless. Having a purpose is good for you. So if you take that out, what do you have left? Just you lying down on the bed, depressed and staring at the ceiling for hours on end. Your eyes get bloodshot and your breathing gets heavier as you contemplate whether to wait for your inevitable demise or finish it off right here and now. It’s such a bleak view of life. Some people just can’t handle it. A lot of us are living in denial of our own existence. We just don’t 19

wanna deal with the truth of why we’re here. It’s scary. Our mind protects us by going in other directions to things that are safely far removed from anything that has to do with the origin of the universe. Ice cream comes in too many flavors these days. I get a headache just looking at the names at Baskin Robbins. By the time I end up eating the ice cream, I have to fight both the headache and a brain freeze. Why must we have so many options? I go to an ice cream parlor to eat ice cream, not to make a calculated decision. And I can’t just pick the first flavor that comes to mind because the minute I step in, they all come to my mind at once. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t even born. Still, though. My Scientific Opinion: I Love Rocky Road Ice Cream. It’s definitely my favorite one. I don’t even know why it took me so long to decide! I feel so much better now! All my anxiety’s been released. I like peppermint too but it packs too much flavor for my taste. It pumps me up. Comfort foods should relax you, not wind you up. But don’t unwind too much or you might come undone and end up rambling about nothing. Still, though.

CONFUSING PHYSICS Brainy Science That Gives Me a Headache

Parallel Universe When scientists talk about a parallel universe, they’re talking about a universe that mirrors ours in every shape and way except that everything in it is reversed and flipped upside-down (I figured that out on my own because things look parallel in the mirror!) People walk from where they’ve been to where they’re going and they step on the sky while shielding their heads from the rain that’s falling upwards from the ground. Pregnant women lie down on inverted beds as they watch themselves give birth to grownups. Spokespersons give speeches from the last word to the first and think of everything else in order to focus on the speech at hand. In a parallel universe, you would still be you, except you’d be hanging from your ankles and moonwalking to get to the bus stop in front of you—which is actually behind you. Just like when you work the late shift in this universe, you’d go to work at night and leave in the morning but in a parallel universe you’d never get paid for your shift because their clocks run anti-clockwise. You’d leave the theater when the movie starts and stand in line for tickets when it’s over but you wouldn’t mind the wait because you already know the ending. You’ll go through your whole life with absolutely no motivation because the second you’re born you’ll be at your oldest and already achieved all that you can achieve so you’ll just sit back and wait as you grow into an infant and eventually crawl back inside your mother’s vagina—by then, also an infant. In a parallel universe, time machines would have already been invented but there’s no point in using one because in order to get into it you’d have to step out of it and that renders the whole machine useless. You’d have to buy empty batteries from the stores and always lose in court because you sued the battery company before you bought the batteries. Unlike our universe, people will judge you before you do anything wrong, though just like our universe, only the ones who deserve punishment will get it—because long overdue justice already came by too early. Doctors will tell you that you have too many years to live and charge you nothing. Every single soft drinks and candy company will be broke before they’ve launched because they’d have already given you diabetes before you paid them for their products. Coffee will keep you up at night but you won’t need it because everyone else is up at night too. Chess would be the fastest board 22

game to play because it’ll take less than a minute to set the board up exactly the way it was at the beginning. Souvenirs are worth nothing and old products cost a fortune. Divorced couples are happy together and newlyweds won’t get married because they’re afraid they’ll gain freedom and waste their lives reminiscing about the future. Criminals abide by the law right before they commit a crime, lawyers work for free to defend executed inmates and policemen come to their own conclusions without anyone telling them what to do. Writing is reserved for the unenlightened, intelligence is contagious among stupid people and this book was never written because all the intellectual writers already agree with everything in it. I love science. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. The idea of having more than one universe seems appealing to me. I like having options. Yeah, I see myself believing in this.

Quantum Theory Let’s see, quantum theory… Quantum… theory… It could be something about quantity. Like, a “quantum” might be one quantity per square mile. It could also be the name of a mineral (or was that Quartz?) Maybe it’s something in Latin. Scientists love their Latin. Or maybe it’s phonetic speech for something else but I’m not sure what exactly. I gotta admit I’m kinda stumped on this one. But let me examine the name deeper, maybe I’ll find something. OK, so I know it’s a theory and I know it has something to do with quantum. I also know it’s controversial for some reason but that doesn’t help my case at all. Half the science these days is controversial. A scientist just has to open his mouth and everything that comes out will spawn enemies. I blame the scientists, personally. They know they will be on TV at one point and should have taken sensitivity courses to learn how to speak without offending anyone. It’s all in the language, trust me on this one. No one would have a problem with evolution if it was called ‘same-old-elution’. Maybe quantum theory has nothing to do with physics at all. Maybe it’s the name of the person who came up with it. Quantum is his first name and everyone knew about his passion for physics so they decided to call him Quantum Physics. I can see Quantum when he was a little kid, playing with his LEGO set to construct something only he can understand. I picture him in high school. He was a scrawny young man in dorky glasses and freckles, awkwardly smiling at every girl that passes by at the cafeteria, where—obviously—he eats alone every day. Then one day, Quantum came up with this theory about… Something, I guess. And that theory made him the most popular scientist in his field. And ever since that day, no one made fun of Quantum Physics ever again. But that’s just a theory. There’s a slight chance I’m overthinking this. That’s it. I give up. The name is definitely a dead-end to me. I have a headache now. Man, understanding science can be so frustrating sometimes! I don’t know why scientists can’t agree on one single method of naming their theories so everyone can understand. They’re turning science into this exclusive club that only people with scientific knowledge can join. Why? Share it with the rest of the world! Not all of us went to expensive universities, you know. Not all 24

of us were willing to dedicate years of our lives to studying a singular subject in order to earn a degree that distinguishes us from those who have no clue about that subject. But we’re here now so why can’t we have an equal say? So not fair. No wonder so many people can’t understand quantum theory. I honestly can’t blame them with such a difficult name. Unlike Theory of Relativity, this one can’t be cracked by name alone. On top of that, I don’t know how famous the scientists behind it are so I can’t decide if it’s a true fact or a false fact. At least with Einstein I can just go with the flow and believe everything he says is true fact. All this is making me inclined to not believe in it. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I don’t know what it is. How can I believe in something if I don’t know what it is? That’s not how it works. I tried, though. I really racked my brains on this one. I still don’t know what it is. At least it wasn’t through any fault of my own. I know that much.

Space-Time Continuum Space-Time Continuum refers to the continuous time astronauts experience when they’re in space, which is a night that goes on for twenty four hours without ever stopping—that’s the Continuum part. Space-Time is measured in units called light years. Astronauts spend many light years of their lives orbiting space, and since they can’t count days the same way they count on earth, they keep track using a time period called the Zodiac calendar. These calendars are calibrated by scientists known as astronomers, whose main job is to study the vast space and figure out what makes humans so special so as to stand out in such a unique manner. Basically, astronomers use planets and stars to tell people what kind of day they’ll have at work tomorrow. You’d think astronomers would be more respected for what they do but the entire scientific community dismisses all their work as hocuspocus and consider them glorified liars. That’s too harsh in my opinion. Planets exist and employed people exist so… What’s the problem? If someone falls into the Space-Time Continuum he’ll be stuck there forever because continuums tend to be in a continuous state of continuity. A light year in space is much longer than a normal year on Earth. That’s why you see astronauts floating very slowly when they’re up there. It’s only called a light year because the astronaut’s body weighs much lighter in space. The same thing happens to all these satellites they send to orbit. The actual thing probably weighs a ton but the second it reaches space it just flings upwards and takes its sweet time floating up there, stuck in a loop where it goes in a circle over and over again without going anywhere near other planets. That’s why there’s never anything good to watch on twenty four hour satellite channels. It’s hard to grasp the Space-Time Continuum because night and day are concepts that are dictated by sunlight. I can’t even begin to imagine how American astronauts felt the first time they landed on the moon. They must have been utterly confused. They’d look around and see night then they’d look at their watches and see it’s four in the afternoon. There they were in a definitive moment in human history and they couldn’t even tell what time it is? It must have ruined the whole experience for them. Imagine you’re an astronaut who’d just 26

been to the moon. You come back to Earth and tell everyone “I’ve been to the moon!” and skeptical people would say “When?” And you’d go “I don’t know”. That’s gotta hurt. At least they had video footage of when it happened. That helps. Space-Time is definitely real. No astronaut who ever fell out of a spaceship ever came back. That must mean they’re all up there floating infinitely within those twenty four hour nights. Hopefully, one day scientists will find out the length of a light month and a light week. Light seconds might be impossible to calculate because watches move slower in space, so by the time the watch’s second hand moves, a second would already be over. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I believe in it despite the negative connotation of astronomers. Scientists need to relax their rules a bit. It’s a free world. There’s no harm in believing whatever facts you like to believe. The medieval times when science was enforced by the law are gone. We’re in the modern world now.

Theory of Relativity I know nothing about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and I don’t wanna look it up because I only wanna give you my scientific opinion about it. But if I was to take a whack at it, I’d say it’s a theory that examines family relations and how they change the universe. I can’t figure out how Einstein could come up with such a theory because he never seemed like the family type. He always looked like a loner to me. But then again, that’s what made him Einstein. He was a genius. So the question you must be asking now is: how can blood relations have an impact on the universe’s physics? Well, put yourself in the mind of a scientist. Figure it out with scientific reasoning. Start with the first thought that comes into your head. The universe is big, right? And we’ve established a long time ago that the universe has a set of laws. Well, there’s a certain set of extended family called ‘inlaws’. Have you ever thought about why they’re called that? Now you do! If you put it in the context of Einstein’s theory, it all makes sense. But establishing the connection is the easy part. Now, we have to determine how they affect the universe physically. We can conduct a scientific experiment to figure that out. Call on any father-in-law. Sit him down and tell him that his daughter fooled around with every man in the neighborhood since she was fifteen and that she charges way too much for a girl with her average looks. The odds suggest that he will physically harm you, causing a radical shift in the daily routine of universal physics. And it’s not just in-laws. Remember, Einstein also had a ‘General’ Theory of Relativity, which means that any relative can physically harm you and impact the universe. A mother can spank her son, a cousin can run over his uncle with a car and grandchildren can set their grandparents’ house on fire and it would always end up making an impact. This is the genius of Einstein. No one can argue with his theory because we all experienced these things with our relatives at one point in our lives. So in a nutshell, this is how the universe works according to Einstein: physical laws start the day as usual, then a relative does something that disrupts the laws- which the laws reluctantly accept, and the changes in those laws manifest in a physical form that we all know as the universe. I vaguely remember something about a train 28

moving in the Theory of Relativity but I’m gonna leave that part out because I don’t see how that’s related. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. It’s Einstein. I don’t have a choice but to believe everything he says is true. To tell you the truth, it’s kinda comforting that we’re excused from having to think for ourselves whenever a famous scientist proposes something. It becomes an automatic true fact. The more famous the scientist, the less reason we have to think. And it doesn’t get more famous than Einstein. Guy was a legend.

Time Travel Let me cut to the chase. Time-travel is not and never will be possible. You can’t go back or forward in time because the past or future version of you would have to go with you for the ride. Think about it. If you travel to tomorrow today, the tomorrow-you would be a version of you that still hasn’t become tomorrow-you because you skipped a day and immediately went to the tomorrow-you before the tomorrow-you had a chance to get into the time machine and become the tomorrow-you. The only way for the tomorrow-you to be the tomorrow-you is if you kept going back and forth in the time machine day after day. And if you travel to yesterday, the yesterday-you would have to tag along for the ride back to the present otherwise the yesterday-you wouldn’t be the yesterday-you who went in a time machine and the today-you wouldn’t exist. The science just doesn’t work. Most scientists scoff at the idea of time-travel because it’s not practical. Consider the type of machine you’d build. If you build one that looks modern, it would be too showy if you travel to the past, and if you build one that looks old and travel to the future, people will think you’re a cheapo. Either way, they will hate you. More importantly, they will notice you sticking out like a sore thumb and you won’t get a chance to see how people live in that time when they burn you at the stake or lock you up in space-prison. Factor in the people who will look around for you when you go missing the day you do it and time-travel becomes a major inconvenience. As I see it, the problem with time travel is that people are too eager to try it. People can’t wait to time-travel. This is a result of the media’s false depiction of time-travel and time-travelers. Hollywood and science-fiction novelists managed to turn time-travel into this fantasy where you jump into a machine and you instantly jump to a point in time, when, logically, it would take the machine a while to get there. This is travelling we’re talking about here. Have you travelled anywhere and got there in just a second? Of course you didn’t. But Hollywood is more than willing to suspend disbelief by hyping up the small angles—like why the machine needs to be invented and used—and glossing over the important parts—like how much time does the time machine need to travel through time. 30

Personally, I don’t see what’s so good about time-travelling. The only way I see myself skipping to a point of time without experiencing the points of time that come before it is by falling into a coma right when time stops then waking up when it resumes. At least that way I wouldn’t miss out on anything. I have a life, you know. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I think it’s a waste of time and an overuse of travel. You wanna travel through time? Visit another country’s museum.

SCARY CHEMISTRY Science That Scares Me Right to Sleep

Atoms Atoms are these tiny little creatures that we can’t see, who run around the universe carrying bits of physical stuff on their shoulders. They make up the whole universe. When something is in motion, you’re seeing a crowd of atoms hustling along with their physical bits, and when something is still, it means they’ve stopped and put their bits down. Atoms are everywhere but no one can see them. It’s the best explanation for why some things move and some things don’t. They do everything without making a single noise and they’re superfast. They can’t even be seen under a microscope. That’s how fast they are. When something is built, a whole bunch of atoms climb up over each other’s backs with their bits in hand and place them next to each other until the thing takes shape. You can see this for yourself after you get up from the toilet. Something always takes shape in the bowl. By contrast, when something collapses, like a building, billions of atoms plummet down, tumbling over each other to the ground. You’ll see a lot of dust rising up after it falls too. This is because some atoms have been around for millennia. They’re very old and dusty. You can tell the age of atoms from the amount of dust generated where they live. A new piece of furniture will have little to no dust, which means it has child or infant atoms, while a decrepit, old building has many grandfather and senior citizen atoms, barely able to hold the bits up on their shaky knees. In fact, the knees of grandfathers themselves are made up of grandfather atoms, so it all ties in. Atoms don’t die. They infinitely split into tinier atoms. I’d say this is a good explanation of why food gets smaller when you eat it. When you bite into an apple, the atoms split and form smaller atoms, with shorter arms and legs. These short atoms—with shorter arms— have to drop small bits from the bit they’re carrying and as a result the apple gets smaller. Atoms have no facial hair and wear nothing. I like to think of them as mini mercury-blue men who are too busy building the universe to do anything else. Of course, I only refer to them as men for the sake of clarity. Atoms don’t really have a gender because they don’t have time to argue. A universe needs to be built and atoms don’t 33

wanna be distracted by anything else, like other atoms yapping all the time for not taking the trash out. This is how science works. First, you find evidence for something—like “the universe consists of things”—then you gun it to the conclusion, like “atoms put these things together and atoms are tiny blue men that no one can see.” This is why science always triumphs in revealing the truth. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. If we didn’t believe in atoms, we’d have to resort to believing in the universe being made up by mythical creatures like leprechauns and invisible LEGO construction men, which would be silly because it’s hard to believe orange beards and yellow helmets can be invisible.

The Nuclear Bomb The invention of the nuclear bomb allowed the murder of literally billions of Japanese people living in America in the 1950’s. It was a terrible bomb but Hitler didn’t care. He knew that bomb was going to annihilate many people yet he threw it anyway. In fact, he threw two. No wonder he’s one of the most reviled personalities in history. Only a bloodthirsty monster with no compassion and no love for freedom would feel justified in using such a deadly weapon. I’m glad he lost that war and countries who value human lives are now in charge of policing the world. It saddens me that science was used as an accomplice in this crime against humanity. Science should only be used for good, like when doctors remove a potential financial burden through the humanitarian act of abortion. The science behind the nuclear bomb is too scary. This is the only time that I’m grateful I’m not reading any scientific resources while writing this book because I’m scared at what I could find. In fact, I’m already scared. I’m typing this right now with trembling fingers. I keep looking out the window to see if there’s a rising cloud on the front lawn. I don’t even order pizza anymore because they won’t stop asking me if I want extra mushrooms. People will tell you that things have changed and that it’s unlikely we’ll see another nuclear war, but if you’ve been hiding in my house for as long as I have, the threat is very real. It made me fear for my sanity. Because of the nuclear bomb, I spent the better half of my adulthood pacing around my bedroom, pulling my hair out and shaking violently on the floor while thinking of ways not to go crazy. Thankfully, I’m getting close. The nuclear bomb threat still exists today even though Hitler doesn’t. It’s like he never left and is waiting in the shadows with his finger on a remote control that has one giant red button on it, about to throw a third bomb. My guess is that this time, he won’t throw it on Japanese-Americans. He’ll throw it on just plain Americans instead, because of their government’s commitment to ridding the world of oppression. Out of all the countries in the world, theirs is the one that waged the most frequent and out-of-control wars against violence and terrorism, something I’m sure Hitler wouldn’t have liked. 35

But this is not about Hitler. It’s about the science behind the nuclear bomb he created. Scientists still make nuclear bombs today. Why? At first, I thought it was a preventive measure in case Hitler comes back. But then I realized that if he really was frozen all these years, he’d be too limp to do anything by the time he’s thawed out. Then I thought it was part of a package and had to be made on an assembly line. But that’s just stretching it. So I’m officially out of logical explanations as to why scientists still make nuclear bombs today. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. And I will judge you harshly if you do. The sad part is that Germany used to be a nation with bright minds and scientific love. If you told people before the war that a German will be responsible for making the bomb that will make that many deaths possible, no one would have believed you.

SUSPICIOUS FACTS Science That Seems Fishy to Me

Anesthesia This one has question marks all over it. I’m sure most of you heard of anesthesia. It’s this magical drug that’s injected directly into your arm and somehow reaches your brain and somehow convinces it to go to sleep and then you wake up with absolutely no recollection of what happened when you were asleep. I’m sorry but I just have to shout ‘placebo’ at this point. Typically, drugs leave some trace of memory, like a bad trip or an open window into wisdom. At the least, it leaves you with a funny anecdote about how you climbed down from the ledge because you forgot to put your pants on. Anesthesia leaves no trace of memory. It’s almost as if—surprise, surprise—nothing was injected into you. The needle might as well be filled with nothing more than water that comforts hypochondriacs and gullible patients who are too simple to understand that passing out can’t work without a concussion. I know why people fall asleep under anesthesia and it’s a very straightforward reason. It’s called hypnosis. The first thing doctors do after injecting the patients is to tell them “relax, relax, relax” and then they go to sleep. Well, that’s what hypnotists do. They tell people to relax until they doze off. Hypnosis is obviously very real but I hate seeing it abused this way. It’s embarrassing that in this day and age, we’re treated like babies by scientists who pacify us with fake medicine like anesthesia and big penis pills. I’ve bought a hundred of these pills. Take my word for it. They taste nothing like a big penis. By now I bet you wanna ask me: “But Moe, if that’s the case, how come anesthesia became so widely accepted?” Well, like the saying goes, there are bad apples in every fridge. Some scientists take advantage of the scientific community’s appetite for breakthrough inventions and discoveries, deceiving them into believing they have a good apple on their hands. Of course, scientists are eager to accept anything that seems remotely groundbreaking without thorough investigation just so they can splash it on the news and say “science has done it again!” What a sham. These pretenders to science need to be held accountable for what they’re doing to their community. I happen to consider myself a member of that community, and as a vigilant member, I promise you I won’t rest until I find those anesthetists. 38

Everything falls so conveniently in place that nobody can even question the mere authenticity of this drug. Who remembers what happens when they sleep? Nobody does. What’s inside the syringe? Nobody knows. Why didn’t that triple bypass surgery hurt like hell? Nobody cares. They’re too busy celebrating their dad still being alive. Well, my dad is dead so you’re not gonna shut me up on this one. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. Nor do I believe in snake oil or magic beans. I’m a fan of science, not fantasy. As long as something doesn’t appeal to my own version of reality, I won’t support it. I refuse to be part of the problem.

Bacteria Bacteria are suspiciously similar to atoms (see: Scary Chemistry, Atoms). They’re tiny creatures that seem to be everywhere. I’d say it’s more likely that bacteria are diseased atoms who, instead of building things, end up eating everything. Mold would be good evidence for this. If you leave a loaf of bread out for a few days it gets covered in bacteria. This is because diseased atoms attack food first. Food is always a priority with things that eat things. Fresh bread in particular attracts atoms faster. Notice that non-fresh foods take longer to be diagnosed with bacteria. That’s because non-fresh food is harder to locate. Remember, atoms don’t have the same advanced sense of smell as humans. The strong scent of freshness helps. Mold appears to be green, which means the diseased atoms are green. It might be hard to decide the reason behind that, though. It’s a possibility that the green are blue atoms turned inside out. Or maybe it’s because they implode when they get hungry and eat themselves from the inside. That makes a ton of sense, doesn’t it? Everything starts with an atom, even an atom’s dinner. There are literally a hundred scientific explanations for this one. I’ll choose this last one. Bacteria are everywhere. Apparently, these starving atoms will munch their way through anything and spread at an alarming speed. By my assumptions, bacterial infections are the most contagious epidemic in the world. Every time I’m out in public, I look at the people around me and I react in horror at the numbers of bacteria devouring each face. It keeps me up at night. I even threw all my mirrors out. Why would anyone want to look at that? So why don’t bacteria ever feel full? They are eating everything, after all. The only reasonable explanation I see for this is that bacteria have holes in their stomach pouches. Every time they eat a part of the world, the crumbs falls through the holes in their stomachs before they have a chance to digest. I used to think that everything bacteria touch turns green because that was their digested poop. But now that I just found it they don’t digest anything, I’m sticking to my previous explanation that they eat themselves from the inside. They say bacteria can be seen through a microscope but what they don’t say is that they can only be seen through a microscope under scientists’ eyes. I mean, they’re the only ones who know how to 40

use microscopes anyway. In other words, the only people who can see it are the ones who see what they want to see. They miss some glaring facts (like bacteria are hungry atoms) and as a result, the fact-finding gets sloppy. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I really do, but not the bacteria that scientists believe in. I believe in my accurate portrayal of them. If you don’t believe I’m right on this one, ask a biologist if bacteria are diseased atoms that are hungry twenty four seven who eat every physical object in front of them and drop the crumbs through holes in their stomach pouches. If he says no, you’ll see firsthand what happens when a brain gets eaten by bacteria.

Gravity So Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree one day when he noticed an apple fall to the ground. This was his inspiration to come up with the idea of gravity which, according to him, is a force pulling everything smaller down to the center of the Earth. Right off the bat, I can spot three things that Newton got wrong. First, the ‘pulling force’ part seems to have come out of nowhere. If he’s gonna make such broad claims, then this can go in a million directions. Why assume the apple was pulled? Why not pushed? Maybe there’s some kind of grappling force that was holding onto the apple then slipped and let it go? Or maybe the grappling force gets weaker with time? Where did Newton get all his information about this ‘force’? Or is this some kind of hidden supernatural power that only the most skilled Jedi can access? It seems to me like he was overreaching us on that one. Second obvious error with his theory is just assuming body weight is a factor, especially the part about it being smaller. Is he telling me that if I fill up a balloon with air until it’s bigger and let it go, it won’t fly upwards? Come on! There are a lot of other things that need to be considered here before we lump body mass into the mix. If I was Newton, I’d stick to the obvious, which is the apple’s shape or color. I’m sure certain tones of color are more likely to fall to the ground. Apples are red. Red is a very bright color so it wouldn’t be too far a stretch to think things with bright colors fall faster and more frequently. So the only reason he spotted that apple is because it was easy to spot. The third and maybe the most glaring contradiction in Newton’s theory is the source of this voodoo force, which he labels ‘the center of the Earth’. You’d think Newton, a legit scientist and respected intellectual of his time, would have been more familiar with his own planet. It’s common knowledge that the center of the Earth is also its hottest place. It’s basically a flaming ball of unbearable heat. Did Newton seriously suggest that our bodies are automatically and unstoppably craving to come into contact with fire? I don’t know about him but ever since I was a kid, my body has been actively trying not to be engulfed by fire. This would have been very hard to 42

do if my body had been betraying me all this time and actually trying to be burned to a crisp. Let’s face it. The parts I just refuted are only the surface that I, a layman, could skim. Who knows how much more of Newton’s theory can be proven wrong if it was critiqued by someone who fully understands it? My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. The problem with this one is that it’s entirely based on assumptions and assumptions don’t make for good science. There was probably something wrong with that branch, anyway.

Photosynthesis Photosynthesis is a process that plants use to convert sunlight into food without getting stomach burns, acid reflux, hot fever or warm diarrhea. That’s right. It’s that absurd. Are these scientists aware that the sun is always up there so these plants would constantly be exposed to the sun? How is that not overeating? Add to that the fact that the sun hides behind the moon at night and basically these plants would have to endure yet another meal in the form of a midnight snack. How can any living organism sustain this much intake of food without puking? Nature is about balance. This is all out of whack. It’s plain to see that plants and trees already have food in and on them. There’s no need for an external source of nutrition other than water, which- obviously- they need in order to wash the fruits and vegetables on the inside so they’d be ready for human consumption. Now you have to remember that these plants use the roots in the ground to get their water, so they can’t drop their feces right on their only source of nutrition. It’s like defecating on the one banana your mother packed in your school lunch of nutella sandwiches. I also have a theory that fruits and vegetables are the excrement of plants—which would explain the taste of cucumbers and parsley—but this one is pure conjecture on my part, not real science like the rest of this book. I don’t even know how this one caught on so easily when everything about it sounds confusing. What the hell is photosynthesis anyway? What a suspiciously vague name! I bet that the scientist who came up with it tricked his way into becoming a scientist. He’d come up with a convoluted theory that no one would question because no one can prove the opposite, and no one was gonna ask him about the weird name because then they’d look intellectually inferior. His plan was genius, really. Now, without contributing anything useful, he got into the history books and his name is known to everyone who’s smart enough to be in the scientific community—whoever he was. This is an old theory. I remember they taught it to us when we were kids in school. Seriously, that’s how old it is! And back then, none of us stood up and called foul because we were still kids. We didn’t develop critical thinking yet. Now, we know that we should always question everything. And from my experience, the best way to 44

keep questioning everything is to reject every presented answer, no matter how true or false it might be. The science is much better these days. I’m sure we can update photosynthesis to mean something that makes more sense now. I hope they do it soon too. Trust me, you don’t want people believing that plants eat the sun. Next thing you know, they’ll believe plants eat human flesh too. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I applied every best-guess scenario I know and I found that photosynthesis is unlikely to be accurate. Now, maybe some of you did their own best-guessing and found it to be accurate but I can’t go on what you think is right, now can I? Modern science works on personal opinions not universal opinions.

CREEPY SPACE Science That Makes Me Feel Empty Inside

Black Holes Black holes are supposed to be these tiny black holes in the middle of space, right? Well, riddle me this. How can you possibly see a black hole in space when the entirety of space is black? I mean, I don’t wanna sound mean or anything but the scientist who first saw these black holes is Stephen Hawking and he’s not exactly known for his impeccable eyesight, is he? Have you seen the size of those glasses? They’re like rimmed telescopes for the blind. Couple that with the distance between us and space and you’ll probably agree that he’s not the best authority on the subject. Let’s start by looking at stars. Now, those are holes in space. Even from down here you can see them as white holes on a black background. Nobody would contest what they look like, so we’ve already agreed on a definition for them. Nobody will dispute that. But there is dispute over black holes and I think I see where the divide lies on this issue. You see, there are two types of scientists. There are black-hole scientists, those are the ones who use convoluted logic and excessive reasoning that leads them to believe in something like black holes, and there are white-hole scientists who come to a conclusion based on the first thing they see and solidify that conclusion with a gut feeling, like stars are white holes in black space. I’ve always felt I gravitated more towards white holes. They seem a lot more attractive to me than black holes. Black-hole science is excessive. There’s no point in making scientific facts more complex than we already think they are. They’re not even doing it right. A hole is made of nothing. There’s no room for space inside it. It’s just empty. Hawking is definitely a black-hole scientist. He’s always checking, comparing, experimenting and re-checking his findings and it ends up taking his time away from doing science. Most black-hole scientists never reach a final decision on true facts because they never stop checking to see if the fact is true or not. They waste their whole lives stuck in a loop trying to uncover the truth instead of living the life a scientist should lead. The only loop-hole out of the black-hole is the white-hole scientific approach. Of course, there’s no such thing as a black loop-hole. That’s just a hole. 47

I have a feeling that white-hole scientists crave equality even in scientific findings. They’re desperate to include black-hole scientists in the mix just because it’s a minority color, forgetting that the majority of space is black. It affects their judgment. Human compassion makes for poor science, I say. They’re betraying their white-hole principles. But I don’t wanna be too harsh on them. I always factor the feelings of my white-hole brothers and sisters in my scientific judgment. So that’s what I think about black holes. It might be too harsh to critique a paralyzed man with poor eyesight like this but that’s how science goes. It can be brutal at times. And with all due respect to Stephen Hawking, I just don’t think he should be considered the foremost authority on astrology. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe It. White-hole science and black-hole science are two completely different things. The science itself won’t get the attention and respect it deserves unless you pick one. I’m hopeful that one day a grey-hole approach is discovered. Maybe then, science will get it in both holes.

Life on Mars Mars is the closest planet to the sun (I think) and every day you hear scientists on TV insisting “there’s life on Mars, there’s life on Mars” yet they’re never really clear on what they mean. So I’ll try to explain. These scientists are trying to convince you that there’s a good life to be lived on Mars and that you’re wasting your life here on Earth. Every single day, in every form of media out there, at least one scientist brings up this subject and how they’ve found “good evidence” for a life on Mars. I can’t believe some scientists would push a marketing agenda so blatantly like that. The sad part is that those of us who are pro-Earth are completely ignored and our voices are drowned by all the hyped up chants of these scientists, even though there are millions of us who don’t wanna move and just a handful of people who wanna live on Mars. If there is such a thing as ‘planetism’ then this has gotta be it. People are entitled to live on whatever planet they like. I mean, I’m all for progress but switching planets like that seems a bit too hasty to me. We shouldn’t jump into this without giving it some serious thought first. Think for a minute what would happen if all humans left planet Earth at once. There’ll be no one to take care of plants, trees and other living things that can’t take care of themselves. There’ll be no one to assume ownership of animals as pets and no one to build factories so large spaces of land can be put to good use. There’ll be no one to consume food and other natural resources in very large amounts in short spaces of time. That whole equilibrium would be lost. It’s painfully obvious that planet Earth would be entirely different if we weren’t living on it. But the pro-Mars scientists don’t care. They’re obsessed with the red planet. Judging by the pure intensity of the way they argue for a one-way planetary trip of an entire species, I’d say these scientists have grown emotionally attached and are only cheering for this trip out of sentimentality. It’s not exactly for the greater good of the human race, is it? And don’t argue with me about running out of resources if we stay on Earth. I don’t care what you think. This is my opinion and I refuse to let go of it. Pro-Mars scientists are starting to sound like salesmen, trying desperately to sell the idea to a gullible population who don’t know 49

what they want. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re involved in some grand housing scheme with construction companies who wanna build some houses on Mars. The hilarious part is that by the time this plan unfolds and people would move into their new home, these scientists and construction company executives would all be dead and won’t see a single dollar of income. You’d have to be a one-of-a-kind moron to think of a plan like that. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I’m sorry but I don’t wanna pack up and go to Mars. There’s a lot left that I can do to this planet. The trees and minds that will be affected by this book are just the tip of the iceberg.

Oxygen Oxygen is a substance in the air that we can’t breathe without. It’s what’s preventing us from living in space. The second you leave Earth’s atmosphere, you choke and die because Oxygen doesn’t extend its courtesy beyond Earth’s sky, locking us in a perpetual prison of land and water. I hate it so much. Oxygen doesn’t just restrain humans. All living things can’t live outside of its strangling grasp. Not even birds can fly in space (though, considering the speed their droppings would pick up from that far up, that might be a good thing.) As of today, there’s no known way to separate Oxygen from the rest of the air we breathe (I think.) Somehow, it got tangled up in there pretty good. And what’s worse is that our lungs have been conditioned to love it over many centuries so even if scientists manage to cut Oxygen out of the air, we’d still need many years to get used to living without it. Look at the things Oxygen is depriving us from enjoying. Yes, we can send astronauts to space but astronauts not only have to carry tanks full of oxygen, but are bundled in these ridiculously air-filled suits which make it impossible for them to do anything except float while doing cartwheels. Who wants to spend a lifetime doing that? And even if we get to enjoy space, we won’t be able to take our pets with us. How many hours can you stay away from your attentionhungry kitten? And I doubt these astronaut suits come in any size that’s smaller than medium-chimp. I’m surprised at how easily the human race accepted living under the rule of Oxygen. What happened to our tenacious spirit that helped us start war after war, until we finally got it right? Aren’t we the same people who imprisoned, tortured and killed scientists for telling us what we didn’t wanna hear until we finally realized that the right thing to do is choose not to believe what they’re telling us and walk away? Those things never stopped us from doing what we do best, so why did we stop trying to destroy Oxygen? What could possibly be more evil than what’s keeping us from living life to the fullest? Ugh! This makes me so angry! I hate Oxygen so much! I wanna shout it out from the rooftops—but I can’t run up that many flights of stairs without running out of breath. I also get dizzy up there for some 51

reason. I need to check with a doctor why that keeps happening to me at elevated heights. Oxygen is man’s arch-nemesis. It’s the evil boss we must defeat in order to move forward as a species and the final obstacle standing in our way of getting the most out of our lungs. I urge scientists not to give up and to continue trying to separate – or better yet eliminate – Oxygen so we can finally breathe in the rest of the air. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I just realized I don’t need to go to a doctor to tell me why I’m afraid of heights. I can just Google it. I can’t believe I didn’t notice I have internet and a laptop—right while I was writing a book about science! Now, how ironic is that?

The Sun and the Moon Did you ever wonder why the sun and the moon are always taking turns showing up in the sky? Well, I just thought about it now and I figured out why. The sun is trying to catch up with the moon and the moon is trying to get away from the sun. The sun is larger and trying to engulf it in its flames but the moon is too shifty and can’t be caught so easily. That’s why they keep going in circles like an endless episode of Tom & Jerry—except the sun and the moon never irritated us by talking after years of silence. The entire thing can be observed by the plain eye. The sun rises from the east and sets in the west. From that alone, you can tell it’s doing a thorough, daily sweep in search of the moon, which is always clever enough to hide until sunset. After chasing the moon all day, the sun gets tired and goes down to relax. Nothing can be seen without sunlight, that’s why the moon is not afraid to be so high up at night. It feels safe. It also glows very brightly, which makes me suspect it’s recharging. It must be exhausting running away from the sun all day. So why does the sun want to eat the moon? Well, that’s how all living organisms work. One consumes the other in order to survive. The sun is so huge that it must have been consuming all sorts of things throughout its life. I imagine the sun evolved from a really small but hot asteroid. There are plenty of those in space so it could totally happen. I see the moon evolving from something like a pebble that somehow strayed out of Earth and over time gathered shreds of other planets and grew bigger. The moon might seem like the underdog between the two but evolution sometimes works that way. The big doesn’t always end up eating the small. It’s about the fitter one surviving. In this case, it’s obvious that the moon is the fitter one since it’s been surviving getting eaten by the sun for billions of years now. The Earth stands as a buffer between the sun and the moon. That’s why one is in the east and one is in the west. If the Earth moved out of orbit, the sun will immediately eat the moon. Obviously, the sun will never eat the Earth because Earth is made of seventy-five percent water and the sun would put itself out in the process. Not to mention all the living things on Earth that are made of water or live surrounded by water. I doubt the sun would risk eating 53

something that’s both made of water and lives in water, so eating a white whale is definitely out of the question. The sun and the moon have been around probably forever and although they’ve been doing their little dance every day since their first day, they don’t seem to be getting tired or showing signs that they’ll stop anytime soon. Really puts your life into perspective, doesn’t it? My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I believe in both of them. I can clearly see them so I don’t have a choice there. But I’ve never seen them together so I don’t believe in them ever getting along. I’m rooting for the moon, though. I always go for brains over brawns.

MENTAL ILLNESSES Brain Diseases That Never Seem to Target Me

Autism Autistic people are not retarded. They’re not mentallychallenged, they’re not slow and they don’t have special needs of any kind. In fact, they don’t have a mental condition at all. It’s all in their head. They also don’t have any psychological or behavioral problems. What they do have, though, is a major social problem: they’re incredibly boring. You see, autism isn’t really a brain disease. Autism is a lack of social skills in exchange for perfect math skills and a photographic memory. Autistics are quiet and have a problem connecting with people because no one else is interested in math and no one ever seems to remember anything. That’s why they end up alone. They have nothing interesting to say to us. And I’m not even gonna sugarcoat this one. It doesn’t help if you lie to them. I see the way they’re being coddled by a caring society and anyone with decency in general, and I always make sure to point out that I’m not a part of that. Remember, comfort is fleeting but harsh words never stop stinging. Be brutally honest. Tell them how excruciatingly boring they are. I bet you anything they’ll stop behaving so weird when they realize how they’re embarrassing themselves in public. I’m not exaggerating here, by the way. There’s absolutely nothing that comes out of autistic people’s mouths that’s worth listening to. And forget about going anywhere with them. They’ll spend the whole time looking at the floor. They suck the fun out of everywhere they go! The world needs to stop wasting time and resources on finding ways not to hurt their feelings and concentrate instead on making them more fun to have around. How about giving them a list of jokes to keep handy? We can build training facilities for them to practice charades and maybe try their hands at stand-up comedy. Or if stand-up makes them too nervous, we can start them off easy by putting them in clown outfits and shoving pies in their faces. Think of all the laughs they’ll get! And the best part is that we wouldn’t be laughing at them, we’d be laughing because of them. We can also make them do conga lines—and not wait for them to want it first. I mean, make them do it. They have to be the ones that start the conga lines. Otherwise, people will continue to hate them. 56

Scientists these days are quick to label everything as a disorder, especially with autism. They immediately classified it as a special need condition when they should’ve waited a few decades to see if it really was all that it was cracked up to be. Let’s not forget how many years it took for them to classify homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. It seemed like forever before gay people weren’t considered crazy for dancing half-naked in the streets. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. Autistic people do exist. They’re just not what we think they are. They’re bearers of incredibly tedious conversations. This is why I find it funny that scientists decided to classify autism as a disorder, when scientists themselves are the most boring company on Earth.

Dyslexia Dyslexia is a relatively new disease that’s infecting our hearing. Being dyslexic is like playing an endless game of Scrabble against your will—and never winning. When dyslexics speak, all that comes out is a bunch of jumbled letters. For example, if a dyslexic wants to say “I am hungry”, what you will hear is “hi ma angry” and you’re left to decipher what that means on the spot or risk missing the entire conversation. It’s a real threat to our language. A lot of famous people are dyslexic but you’ll never see them behaving like dyslexics because they only became famous after they beat the disease. That’s probably why they became famous in the first place. That’s no easy feat. It takes courage to stand up and fight. Dyslexia is a very real threat to us all. It’s putting our existence in danger. All you have to do is connect the dots to see it. Imagine for a second that dyslexia infected everyone and we end up with a world full of dyslexics. Conversations are flying left and right but no one understands what the other one is saying. Pretty soon, they won’t see the point and everyone will give up talking. With no need for conversation, there’ll be no reason for direct human contact so people will stop meeting each other. Without meeting each other, humans can’t find a way to reproduce and the next thing you know, you’re dying alone on your bed surrounded by nothing but utter silence while the whole world comes to an end. But it’s not over for the human race yet. There are measures we can take to keep dyslexia in check. We can quarantine dyslexics for the time being. I’m sure scientists are toiling day and night in labs, trying to find a cure to stop this disease from spreading. We can have international TV channels raise awareness on the issue by running ads advising people to stay away from dyslexics. And I understand finding the ultimate cure for this is no picnic. There are so many obstacles along the way. That’s why it’s taking so long. Scientists can’t test dyslexia medicine on rats because rats don’t speak English. But I don’t see a problem in testing it on dyslexics themselves. If it’s for a good cause, I don’t think they’d mind. Plus, by the time they decipher what they were told, the cure would be in beta stage. I’m an avid fan of communication. I love language, speech, speaking and the whole saying things part. It’s just that, you know. 58

You know what I mean. It’s like, I guess, I gotta say that I really like all that and all. I don’t know why, though, if you’re asking me, really. Well, I said it anyway. So that’s that, then. And that’s why communication is important. I feel like I have an obligation to protect language from dyslexia in particular. I want my ears to feel safe again. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I’m appalled at the lack of attention brought to this issue. How are people supposed to be educated on dyslexia if it’s not taught to them properly? This is our language we’re talking about here! I swear, people can be so cavalry sometimes.

Paralysis I used to have a theory about paralyzed people. I used to think that they’re not sitting still, they’re moving too fast. But then I cancelled that. I realized it was probably flawed. The biggest giveaway was that they’re not moving at all. Now, I have a feeling that they’re paralyzed because they think they are. Any biologist will tell you that life is based on constant change. Evolution never stops for anybody. She’s determined like that. With that in mind, the only explanation you’re left with for paralysis is that these people managed to make time stop for them and that’s just absurd. The science behind movement is pretty simple. You’re in one spot now and then you’re in another spot later. It’s impossible for anyone not to understand such a basic premise. Yet, more and more paraplegics keep popping up all over the world. This is why I’m extremely doubtful of paralysis being a physical condition. Even simpletons know how to move around, so why can’t paralyzed people do it? I’ll tell you why. They’ve been sitting down for so long, they forgot how to focus. They’re not paralyzed, they’re just absentminded. There’s something to be said about how time changed us as a species, though. People in the old days used to go into massive wars with nothing but a sword and assumed they’d survive without a scratch. Now, you turn on the TV and see the whole world fussing over a plane crashing into a building. Our values changed somewhere along the way. Our brains became domesticated. We’ve become lazy. It’s no secret that lazy people gravitate towards chairs. Add wheels to those chairs and they pretty much have no reason to ever get up again. Now, I’m not blaming this on them. Obviously, they can’t help themselves. There are ways to wake someone up mentally. If a scalp massage doesn’t work then I recommend reading some hard mathematics and maybe some brain-teaser trivia to help jolt their minds up. With no physical activity, their brains must have gathered a ton of dust by now. So they need all the help they can get to be like us. I’m not sure exactly how much they can be like us but I’m sure these exercises will reduce the amount of dust in their head, even if by a little. Every little 60

bit helps. Who knows, maybe someday, when the cobwebs in their brains reach a certain level, they’ll be where I am intellectually. Some people who used to be paralyzed claim they’ve been healed by supernatural powers, but I’m not getting into that because I don’t wanna deviate too far away into the science of magic. This is about the science of beliefs. Plus, there aren’t enough of them to make it a worthwhile science anyway. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe It. I don’t believe in paralysis but I definitely believe in the paralyzed. And believing is exactly what they need. They need to believe in themselves and pull themselves up—figuratively—from the wheelchairs they love so much—literally. And that’ll only happen when they admit that it’s all in their head and actually want to stop slacking off. And if they’re the kind of paralyzed who choose not to stop slacking off, then I’m sorry but they’re clearly dead on the inside.

PMS Everyone on Earth believes in PMS. It’s one of those things that no one dares doubting, like freshly baked goods will always smell good or your trips to the bathroom will never stop if you always eat freshly baked goods. Every month, a pile of evidence supporting the existence of PMS mounts up every day. Every second of every minute of every hour of every one of those damn days can be used as evidence. The pain it causes is painfully clear and the signs of a universal agreement that no would miss it if it’s gone are hard to miss. For the sake of clarity, let me define PMS as a temporary mental illness that afflicts women from their first day of puberty, shifting their typically suicidal tendencies to homicidal ones and rearranging their words into psychopathic speech patterns designed to intimidate innocent men nearby at the time. I haven’t checked if that’s the dictionary definition (and I’m not going to because I’m staying away from academic references as well for this book) so this is based on my own personal experience—that one time I remember yelling “Stop PMS-ing me!” Unlike another temporary female illness—pregnancy, with PMS, men’s pain is marginalized as collateral damage. Men could be exposed to real physical danger when the disease fully takes hold of a woman. I would go as far as saying that a woman could murder a man on a whim and justify that it was alright to do it by the time next month’s PMS comes along. They would say I’m exaggerating but I wouldn’t count anything they say as valid because you can’t reason with a lunatic. Judging by the fact that the woman has no recollection of the damage she caused while she was on it, I’d say the part of the brain that PMS attacks is affected long-term. Then, of course, the damn process repeats every month, like clockwork, which makes me suspect that some hints of chronic amnesia are thrown into the mix. My scientific view of this is that long ago, females were supposed to take over the human race by going on a bloody rampage and eliminating all the men in their species. Of course, that didn’t happen but PMS is like a remnant of that time in history. It probably got decreased in duration and mildly decreased in intensity since then. They must have been on a continuous psychotic fit all day long for 62

their entire adult lives. If they were still the same way today, they could realistically murder an entire men’s sports team from the sidelines. The physiology behind PMS is nothing too complicated but women often mask it by appearing complicated and behaving in a really complicated way. You can easily break down this mask by scientific observation. You probably noticed that men bleed a lot too but their behavior doesn’t change that much when they do. That’s because, unlike men, women were cursed by evolution with an insatiable appetite for destruction. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I believe in it so much that I even considered not including it in this book at first. I thought it was pointless. But then I decided to put it in because, at the very least, the female angle would serve to prove that I’m fit to be a fair scientific observer.

FREAK OCCURRENCES Natural Events That Produce Freaks

Appendix The Appendix is a worm that lives in your intestines and feeds on your flesh. It’s one of the oldest children’s horror stories I can think of and is one of the silliest notions to ever enter the world of science. Silly parents love to warn their kids about this evil worm so they wouldn’t eat junk food. They tell them it will only show up in your body if you eat unhealthy food in unhealthy amounts so you better be a good boy or the invisible tummy monster will get ya! Pure scare tactics. Of course, that was back then. Now, we’re adults. We’re not scared from monsters anymore because we’re finally used to sleeping with the lights off. The science behind the appendix is sketchy at best. Honestly, I expected more effort from the originator of a myth as old as this. Still, though, it has all the basic elements covered for any myth to work. The so-called Appendix monster is buried deep inside the kid’s body where—conveniently—no one can see it or hear it. And it only wakes up when he eats something naughty like a candy bar or soda. Of course, it won’t wake up if he keeps eating his fruits and vegetables. Oh no, no! It has to be something he enjoys eating. What rubbish. By now, you’re probably asking “But Moe, we get why parents would lie to their kids like that, but why are so many scientists behind the Appendix too?” Well, a lot of scientists are parents too. They’d gladly go along with it if they thought it meant better health for our children. Scientist or not, no one wants their kids to misbehave. Given the choice, an Appendix-pushing doctor is willing to be an immoral scientist for the sake of being a moral parent by lying to his or her kids about scientific facts so they’d grow up to be normal people. Believe it or not, they even go as far as performing a fake surgery on the poor kid! Here’s how the scheme works in the course of an unsuspecting boy’s dietary life. First, they lie to the kid by telling him that healthy food tastes good. Then they lie to him some more by telling him that if he eats unhealthy food, a monster will eat him from the inside. Then teachers, probably egged on by parents, get in on this and teach the kid that healthy food is better for you. Then the kid is taken to a predetermined doctor who confirms that the tummy monster really does exist. Then both the parents and teachers in cahoots arrange to have 65

scientists appear on TV to perpetuate the myth of the tummy monster. By now, the innocent kid has been so conditioned to believe in the tummy monster that when the inevitable happens and he eats junk food, he believes the non-existent pain in his side is real. The lie snowballs to the point where there’s no choice but to go ahead and perform surgery on the kid just so they won’t admit the truth. It’s a massive ploy with everyone in on it, from the parents to the teachers to the doctors to the scientists and even the little kids who won’t stop crying about the unbearable pain. All this and we’re supposed to just accept that living a lie is better for our kids? Some people seriously need a reality check. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe It. And I never will. No matter how well-acted the repeated pattern is across the world. Parents need to find better techniques of parenting. You won’t have to lie to your kids so much about what they eat if you just choose to ignore them.

Twins Twins have four of the same eyes, two of the same nose, two of the same mouth, four of the same ears and share the same build. Their parents always love emphasizing their uniformity by dressing them in matching outfits and giving them rhyming names, like Eric and Derek, or names that share an explicit common trait, like Jane, Janet and Janette. Throughout their lives, they never change in appearance so as to be distinguished from each other and their birthday is always the same day because they were born at the same time. The whole thing is terrifying. The reason why the twin phenomenon happens is (I’m guessing) unknown to scientists. But as I’m finding out during the course of writing this book, it’s only clear to me. Women often wear very tight underwear and that applies pressure to the center of the stomach where the baby is stored. If they wear one too tight, it’ll end up pushing their stomach all the way back to their spine, cutting the poor baby right in half and leaving two sub-babies as refuse in the woman’s stomach. That’s why when people see twins as the birth of two babies, I tell them that a more realistic way of looking at it is that twins are the discharge of two copies of one discarded product. Of course, that’s the scientific way of looking at it. I just look at it as sad. Twins weren’t common back in the old days. In fact, they were so rare that they were used as freaks in the circus. Today, they’re not considered freaks anymore because the circus is no longer entertaining and almost nobody goes there anymore. Ironically, the few people who still go to the circus are now considered the freaks of society. With Siamese twins, the stomach wasn’t pushed back far enough for a full baby split. I’d say about ninety percent of the baby was squeezed then the underwear eased up before the last ten percent, leaving the baby with a deformity. This makes me suspect that Siamese twins are only born to promiscuous women, since they remove their underwear several times a day. Still, though. I’d take a deformed baby over separate twins any day of the week. At least, I know the Siamese one is alive. You can tell by the way they keep popping up on TV every other day, begging for doctors to separate them. Only live people can be in this much pain. You’ll notice, of 67

course, that separate twins never seem to be in any kind of pain. Gee, I wonder why? As for triplets, they’re probably caused by pressure from suspenders, which is why you don’t see a lot of triplets these days. And of course, any number of twins more than three was caused by a straitjacket. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In (either one of) It. They’re practically zombies and I don’t believe in zombies. I don’t have the brain of a ten year old.

BODY LANGUAGE What One Body Thinks of another One’s Body

Homophobia This is something very personal to me so let me start right off the bat with this: there’s no such thing as being homophobic. Not wanting a man in your anus isn’t homophobia. That’s just good hygiene. I don’t wanna sound mean to homosexuals. I mean, I have a penis of my own and I get how the thing works so, obviously, I understand where gay men are coming from. It’s just that I’m single and I really love the ladies so I don’t want any confusion as to where I am when it comes to homosexuality. We all know the saying that goes “your body is your temple.” Well, you wouldn’t let someone else do the worshipping in your temple, would you? If homosexuality was meant to be natural then evolution would’ve given us genders that are homosexually compatible, not males and females. But that didn’t happen. Evolution just wouldn’t have it. Reproduction is the most important part of the sexual experience. Just look at all the multi-million dollar companies producing contraceptives. If it wasn’t so important, they wouldn’t be so successful. Vaginas are well-equipped for the passage of foreign objects. They can pull in a penis or pump out a baby at a moment’s notice. Anuses are different. Their natural role is more of an outbox-priority. That role was decided by natural selection when nature looked at men’s bodies and selected the anus as the exit hole. You reverse that role and who knows what kind of damage you’re doing to natural selection. Always remember, evolution is watching you. Lesbians don’t really have sex. Every lesbian encounter is hilariously marred with failure, yet they still do it anyway for reasons that are beyond my intellectual reach. I mean, their genitals barely scratch the surface! At best, the entire episode is like watching a metaphorical fist-bumping with vaginas instead of fists. And I did watch a handful of those videos but don’t worry, that was way before I decided to write this book and way before I remembered homosexuality also exists between men, so I didn’t break my noreferences rule. Phobia means fear and people’s fears shouldn’t be taken lightly. I don’t know how well this book will do but one thing I’ll predict is that as soon as it’s published, a lot of gay people would complain that 70

it promotes homophobia in a world that has homosexuals treated as inferiors and even facing violence in some countries. But I’m not worried about them. I’m sure they’ll be okay. They tend to exaggerate, anyway. I noticed they always blow up their issue to the point where it overshadows the other people who have certain needs, like the need to live in a strictly heterosexual world. Whenever I wanna remind myself that I shouldn’t be homosexual, I do this brain exercise. I imagine myself with a straight man’s penis on one hand and a gay man’s penis in the other hand. I take my time comparing both of them, real hard. And every time I come to the realization that only one feels right to me. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. I’m sorry to be so blatantly clear about my sexual tendencies. I had to paint such a vivid picture for you, guys, because between being called homophobic and being mistaken for a homosexual, I’d never get laid again.

Orgasms Some time ago, I found out that there’s no better subject for a scientific experiment than myself. That way, everything goes the way I want it to and the experiment has no choice but to be a success. I gotta say that when it comes to this topic, I personally never encountered or was involved in an orgasm during the entire course of my adult life. I even called up the other people involved in my past love life to make sure there’s no room for doubt, and she confirmed that not a single orgasm existed between the two of us. Now, that’s something to think about. Having a healthy brain, I always found that lacking evidence is the number one reason why I shouldn’t believe something exists. The complete lack of evidence for orgasms in my life makes me convinced there’s no such thing as an orgasm. Orgasms have to be the most amazingly successful case of propaganda I’ve ever come across. The number of people who actually believe in orgasms is unbelievable! Every form of media is about to explode with the number of fictional portrayals of happy women, satisfied from these orgasms. According to, well, everyone else but me, orgasms happen when a chemical reaction works in your brain and sends you on an almost magical state of euphoria. This is like a fairy tale for adults. You have to be a mental weakling to buy into such a plain concept and trust me, I’m no mental weakling. I value my time and I’ve always been a cautious thinker. I always think twice before taking the time to ponder something. I suspect the orgasm scheme is the doing of American advertising executives back in the 1950’s. They planted people to spread the idea that men can get so high on sex that they orgasm. Right after that, women’s rights groups stole the angle and pushed it further by saying even women can get high to magical levels from sex. With both genders taking the bait, they competed together for decades, each one trying to prove that they can orgasm harder than the other by having an amount of sex that’s excessive by any sane person’s standards and as a result, the number of people claiming to orgasm has been going up for over half a century and still going strong today. It even penetrated other areas of our lives, with people having delusional orgasms from sipping a hot cup of coffee or listening to a good song. No wonder no one talks about fake orgasms anymore. 72

Sometimes, people will go to great lengths to believe something is true, even though the truth is right in front of their eyes. The fact that orgasms have been around for so long makes me believe this was designed to be a long-term lie. And the number of orgasms women tell me they’ve had makes me believe it was a damn good one. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. Scientists have changed their mind in the past. I predict they’ll change their minds on this one. Out of everyone in the world, they’re the ones who have sex the least so this shouldn’t matter too much to them anyway. I gotta say that I’ll miss it, though. I couldn’t help but laugh every time I turned on the TV and heard a scientist announce that “we are all living orgasms.”

Racism We all know at least one racist in our lives. You know who they are. They’re the people who decide one race is better than the other no matter how much you prove to them that the other one is better. You can demonstrate to the whole world that race number one is, without a shadow of a doubt, better than race number two and get the whole world to believe you. But a racist wouldn’t care. He’d still believe the first one is better. There are certain races that excel in very specific fields, like European-Americans in athletics, Asian-Americans in academics, African-Americans in music and Americans in pornography, but it seems that it doesn’t matter how hard they try because racists will never give them the credit they deserve. They always boast that there’s another race—often their own—that’s better in all those things. Racism is a real problem today with virtually no race escaping it. Some races are better at racism than others, but none are better at it than Caucasians. White people have to be the most racist race of all time. Documented history shows us how long and innovative they’ve been at being racist. It’s come to the point where it’s safe to assume that a white woman giving birth to a white baby from a white father is an act of racism by itself. But I’d say that the racism bit starts even before that, since when the white father chose to have sex with the white mother, he was being a racist by deciding that white women would be better at sex than all the others. Or you can even go before that to when two white people decided to look at each other, dismissing everyone else in the world as non-important. But if I was to be specific, I’d say it goes back to the very second that a human being with white skin came to exist on the surface of Earth. That’s when real racism started. I think the science behind racism is complete by now. White people have been around for so long that we’ve had more than ample time to study how a racist behaves. Now, it’s time to focus on a cure. This is one area where we can finally take advantage of both Americans’ pioneering rocket technology and the vastness of space. Up there, there’ll be no other people for them to judge and they can focus on becoming normal. They can take all the time they need to 74

heal then come back. What I found worrying the most is how white racists—or all of Americans—seem like they’re oblivious of their generalizations. They don’t see how this reflects badly on their entire nation. They’re harming themselves more than others with their racism. I wish scientists would hurry up and launch them all into space already. I mean, I’m not racist but I always make it a point to categorically define each race according to its most visible general trait based on a handful of examples I’ve seen then assume all the others are the same. It helps in figuring out which ones are more racist than the others. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. Obviously, I can’t believe in it or then I’d be a racist too and every white American would be out to get me. Plus, I’m an Arab from the Middle East and I dread that if I ever go the United States, I’d have to live with people full of racism in their minds and hearts. I’d never fit in.

MEDICINE Extremely Necessary Medical Treatments

Viagra I don’t know the first thing about pharmaceutical products and I have no clue what a pill actually is but here’s what probably happens when you take one. Once the pill is swallowed, it goes to your stomach where it splits into several chunks and each chunk travels to several parts of your body. Each chunk finds a place inside a body part and snuggles in there real good, jabbing the body until it realizes it’s been pumped full of medicine. Naturally, the chunks dissolve into the body over time. The chunks that don’t dissolve get moved around every time you scratch your body until, eventually, it all goes back to your stomach and gets digested. That would explain why some excrement is hard and some is soft—when you touch it, I mean. Viagra works exactly the same way, except the biggest chunk goes to your penis. Once there, it communicates a signal to your brain, which in turn sends brainwaves to the female’s brain, rearranging her genetics and influencing her cognitive powers by selectively erasing memories and implanting new ones until she’s an entirely new person who doesn’t reject men on a daily basis. When the extremely difficult task of arousing a woman is accomplished and her security compromised, the contents of the chunks are telekinetically teleported into her own body until both bodies have been fully consumed by Viagra and they can finally do the easy part of having sex. Out of the thousands of men who use Viagra, only a few hundred call a doctor afterwards, which is a worrying sign that we don’t have enough doctors. We need to encourage our kids to grow up to be doctors and scientists instead of businessmen and businesswomen. Making money shouldn’t be their only goal in life. They should make it a priority to help their fellow human beings. They can still make money but they don’t have to compromise their principles if they do it with the right cause. That’s what they should be told. Tell your kids they can do it better with Viagra. Viagra solved a problem that men have faced for thousands of years. It made women want to have sex too. Now the coast is clear unless, of course, that other familiar problem gets in the way. That one is not a little problem, either. Impotence can be contagious. The 77

sex partner could immediately lose interest after the first partner confesses he’s unable to perform. If there were, say, thirty sex partners involved and it happens to only one of them, an epidemic would break out. Pills that arouse females are definitely a breakthrough but we need a cure for this too. Ideally, something that works like Viagra and rearranges women’s brains into thinking that what just happened is a good thing. I mean, I’ve had that problem quite a few times in bed so it would be nice to have a pill for that. Oh, well. At least, I’ve never had to use Viagra. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I just don’t need it.

SKY EVENTS Events That Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Take Place on the Ground

Fog We all know what fog is. We’ve all experienced it at one point. It’s that widespread eye condition where blurred vision is shared on a massive scale. You’ll see a layer of smoke right on your eyeballs and you’ll hear people constantly complaining that they can’t see a damn thing. It could get dangerous if you’re behind the wheel. I’m guessing a billion people in the world have it because I don’t know how many people there are in the world. I’ve noticed recently that fog only attacks the eye during winter. If you think about it, this actually makes sense. When winters get real cold, lungs produce a fire to warm up the body. The fog is a layer of that smoke escaping our bodies. You can test this out yourself by breathing out in cold weather. You’ll see the fog smoke going out directly from your mouth. That’s what fog is, really. It’s the accumulation of our lung smoke. That’s why the colder the country, the thicker the fog. No one treats fog like a serious medical condition. It just doesn’t last long enough. People have lives. They have jobs to get to and families to support. They’re not gonna remember they’re sick when they’re driving to work and feeling perfectly fine. So fog falls way down to the bottom of doctors’ to-do lists. I don’t know how they find this acceptable. Fog is probably the most common eye disease in the world. Eyes are probably the most important part of the human anatomy. But I don’t wanna scare readers so don’t worry too much if you do catch it. It’ll probably go away pretty soon, anyway. There’s no fog infecting our eyes in the summer because the sweat and humidity keep our whole body constantly exposed to water and our eyeballs squeaky clean. At least, I’d call them clean. Fog looks pretty dirty to me. You probably noticed that fog evaporates when you inhale the smoke back in. But don’t worry, though. I’d say that kind of fog is pretty safe since it’s been purified by the air. I don’t know exactly how bad our fog smoke is harming the planet but it’s gotta be pretty bad. The amount of fog produced from our mouths is huge. There are entire countries that get covered in fog. Imagine if a country borders another country and the fogs in both of them link up. Who knows how many oral diseases are transmitted that way. Luckily, I don’t have that problem where I live. I rarely see fog 80

in my country, which is why I considered placing it under Suspicious Science, but a lot of my friends who travel said they saw it in other countries too so I’m taking their word for it. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I have no idea why there’s no fog indoors but there’s definitely fog outdoors so my opinion still works in theory.

Lightning and Thunder One has sound and one has no sound but what lightning and thunder have in common is that they’ll both strike parts that are too filthy for the rain to wash. I’m sure you noticed that they’re always accompanied by rain. I hope this makes it come full circle for you. Both lightning and thunder bolts are white and both are made from bits of the sky. As the bolt gets closer to its destination on the ground, the pointy end gets pointier so it ensures that it completely decimates whatever it contacts—to clean it. As you know, the rain can’t wash every single part of the earth because of the long periods between each raining. So the filth hardens in these places and they require an extra oomph to get cleaned. And that’s why we have lightning and thunder. The reason why one has sound and one doesn’t is equally obvious. Yes, both are made of sky bits and yes, both are white but only thunder makes a sound because only thunder penetrates clouds on the way down. That’s the rumbling sound you hear. Lightning just goes straight from sky to ground and incinerates everything it lands on in absolute quiet. Most people are scared by the sound of thunder but they really should be more afraid of lightning. That’s the one that sneaks up stealthily on ya. You don’t even hear it coming. Just, BAM! You’re clean. That being said, thunder does have an added risk in that it could leave you with a ringing in your ear. Remember that the ear is one of the filthiest parts of the human body. It just produces wax all day long so it makes sense to assume thunder is trying to strike it. I’m sure you’ve heard stories about people who challenged that if they’re lying, may they be struck by lightning. Well, I bet you anything they were struck by thunder and didn’t even hear it coming from all the wax in their ears. I don’t feel sympathetic towards them, though. They probably even lied about having a clean ear. You always see TV weather reporters predicting “stormy weather” but they never tell you exactly if it’s gonna be a lightning storm or thunder storm. That’s because they don’t have the technology to go high enough and see if the bolt will penetrate a cloud or not. I could be wrong. I haven’t watched TV in twelve years so I’m 82

just riffin’ here. There could be a completely different reason why they don’t know if a bolt will penetrate a cloud or not. If you’re not a fan of being struck by bolts of either then you can stay away from their path by staying indoors. Lightning and thunder won’t go inside people’s homes because most homes are cleaned on a daily basis. The only homes that are at real risk of being struck are ghetto houses and slums because they can’t afford to hire maids, but on the plus side, no one would miss those anyway. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. There’s no need to be scared of being struck by a bolt of lightning or losing your hearing from thunder. Just shower daily and use Q-tips and you’ll be fine.

Rainbows Do you know what a rainbow is? A rainbow is a collection of all the colors not used by the sky. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that most skies are either blue or black. Well, now you know where all the other colors have gone. All the colors that the sky doesn’t use are lumped up in these overrated horseshoes. If you want a good description of rainbows, they’re basically the sky showing us how cheap it can be. It has all these lovely colors at its disposal yet does nothing with them and junks them all into an arch so tiny that most people won’t see. What a waste. Imagine if the entire sky was made of rainbow colors instead of the boring plain blue or snooze-filled black. But no! The sky is not interested in making us happy! That’s why every summer is too hot, every winter is too cold, every fall is too sad and every spring is just not good enough. I don’t wanna sound self-centered but I hate the sky so much. Rainbows can only be seen from our side. I have no idea what’s on the other side. I bet that’s where all the ugly colors go. It’s probably all beige and brown and grey and all the other depressing ones over there. This makes me suspect that directly behind the rainbow, the sky is really pretty. I’d be very upset if this was the case. Rainbows only show up in the daytime. This is because nature can’t see anything without sunlight. Even if a rainbow was up at night, it would just be black (yet another reason to hate the sky!) They also always show up right after rain has stopped falling. You can explain this by assuming that the rain falls down to wash all the colors of the sky in one go but doesn’t wash the unused colors. If you assume that, then you’d have a good explanation for why all the unused sky colors show up in a rainbow right after the rain stops. It’s enough that I hate rainbows for what they are, but the media keeps depicting it as this symbol of innocence and it gets on my nerves. They keep showing kids drawing them in kindergarten and dancing under them on children’s shows. Even adults, the minute they see one, they pick up their guitars and sing about peace and unity. Did we all lose track of what’s important here? Rainbows offer nothing of direct value to the human race or any race capable of enhancing the experience of the human race so why should we find them beautiful? I 84

wish scientists would unlock the mystery of why some people keep missing the big picture. The sky has always robbed us of many pleasures and made us miserable with its inconvenient fluctuations ever since the first human being came to existence. You can add rainbows to that list. My Scientific Opinion: I Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Believe In It. I saw one once. It made me very angry.

FOODSTUFF Stuff We Need to Eat to Survive

Diet Soft Drinks At first, I was skeptical that a diet consisting of nothing but soft drinks would do anything but kill you, but when I gave it some thought, I stopped being skeptical. It’s actually a good idea. There’s nothing that will get your weight down faster than not putting anything in your stomach except for soft drinks. But I can’t help but notice this diet is missing something. Humans would starve without food. Then again, that’s exactly what diets are for. You’re supposed to starve so you’d lose weight. So what to do? Well, I have a solution. I think it would be a lot better if soft drinks came with chunky bits inside. Humans need to chew. Otherwise, our teeth would be deemed useless by evolution and they’ll revert back to what they used to be, (devolute) which was probably some kind of funnel for consuming liquids. If these soft drink companies would just add chunky bits to their fizzy drinks, dieters can have fizzy chunks all day. Before you decide whether or not you believe in soft drinks, you need to know what they are. Soft drinks are made from frozen blocks of jelly-cola. That’s why they’re called soft drinks. They’re melted from hard blocks, poured into cylinders and sold for us to consume. It’s a carefully thought-out process. I always feel safe buying food items that came from a factory. They’re monitored by reliable professionals and probably have a billion rules and regulations to make sure our well-being is always taken into consideration. They know that we are their whole market and wouldn’t really put us in any kind of danger. If you take fruit from a tree, you’re eating something that’s been exposed to all kinds of pollution so you never know what you’re gonna get. That’s why I eat nothing but processed foods. I don’t wanna jeopardize my health. A liquid-based diet isn’t something new. They did the same with juice-fasting. People drink whatever juice they find in the supermarket and pretty soon they find themselves losing weight. Soft drinks are not that different from juice drinks. The first similarity that comes to my mind right now is that they’re both sold in cans and bottles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen soft drink in a box before but I’m sure it’s doable. There are other things that soft drinks and juice have in common but they’re not coming to me right now. By the way, I’ve 87

always found it funny that they called it ‘juice-fasting’. It sounds like you’re fasting from juice! But, anyway, back to soft drink diets. Today’s world puts a lot of pressure on people to lose weight. Everyone wants to look good. I get that. But it’s not easy. I know a lot of people who told me they were gonna go on a diet, but after a few days they give up. Anyone can start a diet but the real hard part is to take it to second gear. I hope these soft drink diets give people just enough gas to lose weight. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. Aside from missing chunky bits, I don’t see anything wrong with a soft drink diet. The best part is that with soft drinks, you gain weight but with a soft drink diet, you lose it. It doesn’t matter if you’re skinny or overweight, soft drinks will do their work on you.

Jello I never really trusted jello. It seems to lie in that vague gray space between solid and liquid. It’s soft but not so soft that it crumbles, and hard but not so hard that it doesn’t jiggle. It lives in abstract form. And it doesn’t help its case that it only comes in weird colors. I don’t know a single thing about jello. I don’t know what it is, what it’s made of, how it’s made, who makes it or where it grows. I don’t know if it’s better served hot or cold. I don’t know if it’s healthy or junk food. I don’t even know if it’s cheap or overpriced. It forces you to accept it for what it is and I can’t decide if it’s fake food or legit magic. It’s an edible illusion. I’d have an easier time understanding the Mona Lisa. Jello tastes like, as you probably have guessed by now, nothing else but jello and it smells like nothing else but jello. The same goes for its shape, bounciness and texture. It’s completely unmistakable for anything else on this planet, food or not. There’s nothing substantial or tangible about it. It stands on its own but if you touch it, it falls apart into a gooey puddle like you just put your hand through a mirage. Jello is meant to be a dessert but I think that’s a cop-out on our part. It doesn’t have to be any part of our meals. We’re just falling for the flashy colors. Desserts are meant to be satisfying. I can eat three plates of jello and still feel like I could go for more. Where does it all go? It’s surreal! What’s worse is that even though I can’t get enough of it, every time I eat it, I can feel it sliding down my throat and slithering in my stomach. I wouldn’t be surprised if morgues and dissection tables are filled with jello oozing out of dead bodies. There’s no way that thing gets digested. It probably latches on to a part of the body and just vibrates forever. It might be the best explanation for cellulite. I looked up the word ‘jello’ in the dictionary when I was ten. I didn’t understand a thing. I’ve never looked it up again and I never will. There’s nothing in there that makes sense of its whole existence. Some definitions do change over time but I don’t think it would make a difference in this case. It’ll probably be just as vague to me, even though it really was a long time ago when I read it. I was just a kid 89

who looked at everything with the mind of a ten year old, but I doubt anything has changed since then. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. Mostly because I have no clue what it is. It’s trying to make a statement on our preconceived notions of what food is supposed to be and refuses to conform to our standards. It’s more art than food. Art is not real. And that’s why I don’t believe in jello.

Sugar A LOT OF PEOPLE CLAIM THAT THE REASON CERTAIN FOODS AND DRINKS ARE POPULAR IS BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE ADDICTED TO THE SUGAR IN THEM CHOCOLATE CANDY JUICES AND SOFT DRINKS ARE SOME OF THE FOOD PRODUCTS THAT I LOVE AND THEY TASTE NOTHING LIKE EACH OTHER SO I HAVE TO DISAGREE AND IT’S NOT JUST THOSE ONES TOO MANY PRODUCTS COME FROM TOO MANY DIFFERENT FACTORIES WITH MANY UNKNOWN SUBSTANCES USED IN THEIR MANUFACTURING PROCESS WHY SHOULD WE BELIEVE IT’S THE SUGAR THEY DON’T EVEN TASTE THE SAME I SAY IT’S NOT THE SUGAR IT’S THE TASTE BUDS THEY’RE THE ONES CRAVING THE SUGAR WE JUST WANT TO EAT THE PROCESSED FOOD I’M EATING A LARGE JAR OF NUTELLA RIGHT NOW YOU KNOW AS AN EXPERIMENT IT WAS A TOUGH DECISION THOUGH AT FIRST I WAS LIKE “I’D REALLY LOVE TO DO SOME SCIENTIFIC TESTING ON THIS SUGAR THING BUT THAT WOULD MEAN I HAVE TO BREAK MY RULE OF NO SCIENTIFIC REFERENCES” THEN I FIGURED YOU KNOW WHAT TO HELL WITH IT I’LL DO IT FOR SCIENCE IN FACT IT JUST DAWNED ON ME THAT THIS BOOK MIGHT HAVE BEEN A LOT BETTER IF I HAD CHECKED SOME REFERENCES INSTEAD BUT THERE’S NO WAY I’M GOING BACK AND REWRITING ALL OF THAT NOW WELL I’M HALFWAY THROUGH THE JAR AND I CAN ALREADY TELL YOU THIS SUGAR ADDICTION THING IS A MYTH LIKE THIS CAN OF PEPSI I KNOW THAT WHEN I WANT TO DRINK PEPSI I WANT TO DRINK IT FOR THE SWEET TASTE NOT THE SUGARY TASTE OR TAKE THIS BAG OF SKITTLES FOR EXAMPLE AS SOON AS I OPENED IT I WENT STRAIGHT FOR THE RED ONES BECAUSE I LIKE THEIR RED TASTE THE SUGAR IS BARELY DETECTABLE UNDER ALL THAT COLOR THE ONLY REASON I’M EATING THIS NUTELLA RIGHT NOW IS BECAUSE I WAS JUST THINKING ABOUT EATING IT RIGHT NOW I CAN STOP AT ANY TIME IT’S NOT LIKE I EAT IT ALL DAY LONG ANYWAY IN FACT I JUST GOT THIS ONE 91

FROM THE FRIDGE WHERE I PUT IT LAST NIGHT AFTER I HAD IT FOR DINNER I TOSSED AND TURNED ALL NIGHT BUT I FELT A LOT BETTER WHEN I HAD IT FOR BREAKFAST THIS MORNING HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THE WAY NUTELLA DRIPS OUT OF A SPOON IN A VERY THIN LINE TAKING ITS SWEET TIME UNTIL IT’S ALL BACK IN THE JAR MMM THE PEPSI REALLY HELP BRING OUT ITS TASTE FIZZ FIZZ FIZZLE AND ALL THOSE SKITTLES AH I’M SEEING BRIGHT COLORS ALL AROUND I LOVE COLORS I LOVE WALLS AND A/CS AND WINDOWS AND BIRDS AND LIFE I LOVE MY LIFE IN SO MANY WAYS I’M SO UNBELIEVABLY LUCKY TO BE ALIVE WE SHOULD ALL DANCE AND DANCE AND DANCE FOREVER AND EVER AND JUST YEEEES MY SCIENTIFIC OPINION: I DON’T BELIEVE IN IT!!! EVEN IF I DO, WHO CARES?! I FEEL GREAT! I’M ALIVE!! My body feels so cold inside… Why do I feel so sleepy? I’M GONNA GO HAVE SOME HOT COFFEE!

TECHNOLOGY Hidden Science Discovered By Scientists

3D Glasses 3D glasses are special glasses for people with impaired 3D vision. Everything in the world is three dimensional, but some of us have weak vision and can’t see all the dimensions properly. These glasses are a real help to those people missing that third dimension gene. You never see people wearing 3D glasses outside because they’ve been monopolized by movie theaters and TV makers who made a killing by exploiting this condition. The electronics shops are full of TVs that are specially made for people with 3D eye disorder, and the theaters announce a new 3D movie every week. Between the two of them, so much money is being made that we’ll probably never see 3D glasses sold at opticians during our lifetime. I actually prefer the 3D glasses to the regular ones. People who wear glasses to see better—like me—have wasted perfectly good vision on years spent watching TV and playing video games. We brought this onto ourselves. But people who lack the 3D dimension were born that way. They’re the ones who deserve to wear glasses. I suspect there are also 3D contact lenses available but I doubt there’s such a thing as 3D surgery. If there was, all the non-3D movies and shows would be rendered useless and the entertainment industry would take a real hit. No disrespect but 3D people need to do their part for the community too. 3D glasses are a new science because the third dimension only came to our knowledge in recent years. Remember, people only had black and white TVs in the old days. No one even noticed there was a dimension missing in there. I don’t wanna brag but I gotta say that I did see hints of the missing third dimension whenever I watched black and white movies. I’d see these weird lines protruding from the bottom of the screen and I’d go “the hell is going on down there?” Now, I know what’s going on. Someone forgot to add a third dimension to Clark Gable’s face. I hear some people complain that they don’t like the 3D culture. They hate how everything is becoming 3D these days. Well, I think we are all part of one culture and should care for one another. I mean, come on, how can you even find the heart to mock someone with a medical condition? Don’t hate them just because they’re less 94

fortunate! What else do you hate? Do you hate hospitals that treat sick kids? Do you attend funerals and boo? Well, maybe you’re the one who should be in the hospital because only a sick, sick person would show resentment at a funeral. My Scientific Opinion: I Believe In It. I think it’s a very noble scientific discovery. People should have the right to watch as many dimensions as they want, whether it’s three, five or none. I just hope greedy cinemas would dedicate part of the profits to research so we can unlock the unsolvable mystery of why so many people buy 3D glasses in the first place.

A.I. A.I. stands for ‘artificial intelligence’, which means it’s not real. It only looks intelligent on the outside but if you dig deep down, you get nothing. At this point, I’ve covered quite a number of topics throughout these pages and exposed several shams disguising as real science, so when it comes to pretending to know everything yet being the dumbest thing on the planet, you won’t find better examples of that than in this book. A.I. is used a lot these days by “computer scientists” to move merchandise. Computers like to put on this big show where they pretend to be smarter than everyone human and we get suckered in and end up buying them. These people claim that their computers have developed their own kind of thinking and learn as they go along. For example, if you hold a glass of water directly over an open computer and tell it that it’s harmless, it’ll let you pour it down until you’re about halfway through the glass then it’ll realize that it was a trick and shout out “stop it!” That’s artificial intelligence. Humans are smarter than all the animals on the planet. We’re never outwitted. When we find a mouse in our kitchen, we might scream at first but we immediately throw a sandal at him before he disappears. Then, when we find out he’s hiding under the refrigerator in less than ten minutes, we coax him out with a broomstick in no more than twenty minutes. Then when he darts to the oven and disappears yet again, we pull out the big guns and put a trap with a piece of cheese on it before we tiptoe out of the kitchen. Come back the next morning and, assuming he’s been starved enough to go for the cheese, he’s a goner. Let’s see a computer do that. There’s always been this fear that computers will one day rule the world and I completely get why. It’s dangerous to put information in the hands of computers. There’s no calculating how often they’ll get it right. For all we know, they’re more prone to errors than we are. This A.I. thing doesn’t really work because it lacks something I like to call “emotional judgment.” That’s a natural indicator that tells you how you should behave right after something happens. Computers don’t know that when their daughters date guys that aren’t good for them, they’re supposed to yell and try to break them up. They don’t know that the first thing you do when your teacher accuses you of cheating 96

is to feel threatened and lie about it. Or that any instance of change in our society should be met with a barrage of hate. Computers didn’t live our lives. Their decisions are never influenced by personal emotions. Would you really trust something like that? These programmers can waste their time all they want but there’ll never be anything like human intelligence. It’s just unmistakable. You’ll never get the same result with a computer that you’d get with a human because computers have a completely different learning process. It doesn’t make decisions based on gut feelings. I’d be surprised if a super-intelligent computer was able to write any of the information I wrote on this page alone. It just wouldn’t compute. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. You can’t create intelligence. You either have it or you don’t. And once they take the initiative, it becomes painfully clear who are the ones who don’t have it.

The Wheel The wheel is the discovery that made all other discoveries possible. Because of the wheel, we were able to make cars, ships, rockets and maybe even the wheelbarrow (not entirely sure what that is.) It’s the discovery that made us realize that round shapes make everything possible. The problem is, the second we found that out, we’ve been on an unstoppable quest to make everything round. Every wheel, every gong, every drum, every CD, every DVD, every bracelet, every necklace, every belt, every hat, every helmet, every coin, every wedding ring, every engagement ring, every swim ring, every Frisbee, every round table, every hula-hoop, every basketball hoop, every halo, every scoop of ice cream, every cotton ball, every snow ball, every beach ball, every sports ball and every ball in general is round. The gears that make machines move from the inside are round so, basically, every machine invented has at least one round thing inside it. In Japan, they even went as far as rolling up their rice in a ball. I’ve never seen a more unnatural sight. Even the people in advanced countries are starting to look round, probably from all the round trips to burger joints and donut shops. It’s like we’ve never seen a round donut before. Yeesh. My explanation of our obsession with the round shape is that our thoughts behave in a round way. I noticed that when I think about something, I very rarely go forward in my thoughts and instead just keep repeating the same part over and over, over and over, over and over until I forget why I was thinking about that thing. It’s probably for the best, though. I can’t remember why I was going over and over about this but I do remember that we’ve abused shape inventing to a horrible level. If this isn’t a case of getting carried away with science, then I don’t know what is. I mean, yeah, the wheel was good and all but we’re neglecting all the other shapes out there. It’s high time we revolutionize our industries. Square wheels should be a realistic target. They have square pizzas now, so it could happen. I’m not crazy. I just hope whoever discovered the wheel took the credit for it. You never know. He could’ve discovered it then went away to get some food and someone else found it just lying there, picked it up and went back to his cave all like “hey guys, look what I discovered!” I 98

sure hope we discovered the wheel before we discovered lying, otherwise, I can’t even imagine what kind of process we set in motion. My Scientific Opinion: I Don’t Believe In It. It’s time we progress to the next step in inventing things based on shapes. Stop pushing this round-is-better mentality. We have a universe to explore. Even our dramatizations of UFOs are roundshaped, and that could prove to be the most dangerous one. We don’t have a clue how advanced they’ve gotten in the round inventions department. For all we know, they might have excelled at inventing all shapes. If that’s the case, then we better get out of this scientific loop we’ve been stuck in for centuries. We’d be the laughing stock of the galaxy if we encounter green aliens with rectangular antennae wearing square helmets in a triangle ship and we’re still flying around in circles.

THE END

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Conclusions Writing this book was such a thrill. I learned a lot about myself as a scientific contributor and as a human being. This had to be the most educating afternoon of my whole life. I gotta say, though, that while it was fun and all, it did bring out a couple of interesting points directly to my face. The first thing I realized is something about us as human beings. I noticed that, out of many things, there are only two things wrong when it comes to the human race: everything we do and everything we say. Now, an extremely important part of what we do is science. It lies behind all our actions. I think this book is a very good manual on what we should and shouldn’t do. It clearly states problems and solutions, as well as good, dependable alternatives to a lot of the false facts and things. So as far as the everything-we-do-is-wrong part goes, I definitely did my part. Now that the problems have been identified, we should move towards a real change in our mentalities. I have a suggestion for that too. You see, I like to think that there are several truths in the world. The problem with every single scientific experiment is that our tests are designed in a way to find the same one truth every time. We’re limiting ourselves to one when we can explore so many others. What we need to do is be open-minded, so open-minded that our brains fall out and we start over from scratch with brand new brains. It’s a good bet evolution will take care of the replacement. The second thing this book helped me see is that nothing works whenever I look at it. It’s just not understandable to me. I asked myself, why does that keep happening? Then it hit me. The problem isn’t just our facts and our science. It goes much deeper than that. It’s rooted in the words and terms we use. We label something that’s very easy to understand and then when someone like me tries to understand it, my mind draws a blank—because it’s been labeled wrong, I mean. The dictionaries, encyclopedias, text books, blogs and all the other writing tools are fundamentally flawed. It’s not their fault, obviously. It doesn’t matter what they write about any subject, it’ll always come out wrong because the letters, words and sentences are all built and structured wrong. And obviously, I couldn’t go into this in detail with 101

this book because I didn’t wanna take the spotlight away from the science. This is why I’ve decided that my next book would deal with the subject of language. My hope is that, what I did to science in this book, I get to do to language in the next. You might wonder why I’m so committed to highlighting these issues. Well, I’m just trying to show you something very messed up about us as a race and as people. That’s all I’m trying to do, really. The last thing I’m gonna leave you with is this priceless piece of advice that I mentioned earlier in the book. Always remember, the best way to keep questioning everything is to reject every presented answer. Never listen to anybody persuading you to believe something that you don’t already believe in, no matter how far they go to try to win you over. There’s never a need for others to tell you what they think. There’s no one else who knows more about what you are willing to believe than you yourself, so embrace your irremovable gut feeling and close your ears to the world. And that’s my scientific opinion!

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References Hearsay and my memory only.

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