January 3, 2014
Letter to the Editor
The Star Ledger
Star Ledger Plaza
Newark, New Jersey 07102-1200

RE: Something to do on a cold morning in Texas – Some comments on your editorial about Republicans, in addition to being mean-spirited and in favor of being unfair, not being on the correct band wagon.

Sirs,

I missed the word “consensus” in your homily to the great unwashed Republicans, doubtless Duck Dynasty devotees, who say “Not so fast” when it comes to, inter alia, evolution.

I say “consensus” as if it were a four letter word. It cannot, must not, ever be in the same sentence as “science”. There is no “consensus” in science. If there were Ptolemy would still be the top dog in astronomy.

Do you think we’ll find Atlantis at the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle? Will a Praetorian Guard of Piltdown men be guarding the entrance? Do you remember when tomatoes were considered to be poisonous? If broccoli isn’t the result of genetic modification then what is? Why can’t a woman be more like a man? Where did the other sock go? I once had a rural Mexican Indian tell me that there was no need to boil water. Assuming that there were invisible bugs in it they would drown, wouldn’t they?

“The best lack all conviction while the
worst are filled with passionate intensity”

[I’ll get to GlobalCoolingGlobalWarmingClimateChange, that’s GCGWCC for short, later. I just loooove it when a supposedly rational adult tells me that it is cold in the winter because of Global Warming and that is hot in the summer because of , you guessed it, Global Cooling. Thank God that Professor Vivaldi can still explain these things. Thank God for the continued existence and flourishing of the word bullshit.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Do umbrellas cause rain? Does anyone else remember Hoc post ergo propter hoc?

I know that primordial ooze become amoebas, became protozoa, became ferns, became velociraptors, became Neanderthals [I mention them because they still have a bad rap] became homo erectus, became modern American Liberals who believe despite proof and tons of evidence to the contrary that one more Summer of Recovery will enable us to get past the horizon and settle permanently in the Utopian - Pop quiz. What does Utopia mean? – Land of milk and honey, a land filled with acres of “rainbow juice” vines and groves of “balloon juice” trees because they have told me so. How could it be otherwise?

One question remains. It is no bigger than a man’s fist against the aforementioned horizon.

It sits there like a turd bobbing inconveniently in a punch bowl.

Darwin published “On the Origin of the Species” in 1859.

Pray tell, why, after 155 years is it still called a theory?

[Yes, I can tell the difference between Caravaggio and Chiaroscuro. I much admire Frederick Bastiat, another former Bayonne resident. “Witness” is the great autobiography of the 20th century. I played football with Chuck Wepner, the Rocky model, for Pop’s Corner in the Bayonne City League. I can argue both sides of the Burke/Paine debate. I know that the “scientific method” is not a parabolic curve. And I know that anyone who says elsewise is a boob.]

Einstein’s internet was the post office.

As soon as he thought he was on to something he told everybody in his tiny universe about it. He didn’t want their praise. He wanted them to take his findings and try to replicate them away from him. He only had to be disproved once. He liked it when he was because he could move on to something else. He wouldn’t waste his time trying to disprove a negative.

The conundrum is in area where Logic, the lynchpin of the Trivium, and science intersect.

I don’t have to disprove anything. You have to prove it.

[I was juror #2 in room 1104 at the Essex County Courthouse on June 3, 1993. Judge Leonard Ronco was presiding over a – Surprise! – car-jacking in Newark. Imagine a criminal justice system where the defendants had to prove themselves innocent. Check your 6/4/93 morgue.]

Considering all the things that were unimaginable in 1859 – Velcro, Facebook, microwaves, the knuckleball, hyperbaric chambers, artificial joints, McDonald’s, never ending Summers of Recovery, Affirmative Action, Mickey Mouse, chemotherapy, frequent flyer clubs, Churchill and Reagan, The Sopranos and Downton Abbey, fractional reserves, American magnanimity, the pill, the Concorde, DDT – isn’t it time for somebody to prove it?

By the by, I would much prefer to be descended from the bears.


Kevin Smith

PS – If the cold ever relents – Maybe Professor Ehrlich was right in 1969. Just kidding, just kidding – I’ll get to Global Warming.