by Warren Esby
I’m embarrassed to admit that I never vote. Well maybe I’m not really embarrassed. I don’t pretend to know enough to vote. And I don’t know how everyone else is so sure whom to vote for. I mean, the politicians all tell lies, all the time. It’s a prerequisite for being a politician. Those who lie best and without shame are the best politicians. And they all tell the most lies when they are up for re-election or trying to get elected for the first time which means they lie all the time. And you can always tell when they are lying, so I don’t understand why anyone believes them when they do. I mean, it is so obvious. How can you tell? Well duh. If their lips are moving, they’re lying. C’mon. You know that. You just don’t want to admit it to yourselves. And so, if everyone is lying, how can you make a decision. If you do, it can’t be an informed decision because you have been given lies instead of information.
Well, when I asked people how they get accurate information, they tell me they listen to the news and analysis on television or read it on the Internet. But when I tried to do that, it was obvious to me that the news stations and blogs were just repeating what the politicians had said and claimed the politician they liked was telling the truth and the other one was telling lies. I mean, if you can’t trust a news reporter, who can you trust? And the answer to that is no one because they are just repeating the lies they heard. And no matter how often you repeat a lie, it is still a lie, but in Washington, apparently, if you repeat a lie long enough it becomes the truth.
I swear that I did try after I came to Washington. I wanted to be well informed, so I started listening to news broadcasts and political pundits and I found out that there are certain stations that tell you that everything the Republicans say is a lie, but never tell you that the Democrats ever tell a lie. And another station will tell you that everything the Democrats say is a lie and the Republicans tell the truth. I guess in a way, they are all telling the truth about one thing. They all lie. And then they quote an “independent analysis” so people will know what the truth is. But that analysis always turns out to be someone’s opinion disguised as an analysis, because another station will give an “independent analysis” that arrives at a different conclusion.
But I do have a bone to pick with how people talk about things as being true when there is no solid evidence for making that determination. When I was in school in Boston and later when I worked at the Salk Institute in California, people kept trying to scare me and tell me that the world would end from global warming or whatever, and I needed to conserve and not squander the resources of our planet. There are a lot of people in Massachusetts and California that are into conservation, and I admire them for it. And I was into conservation too when I lived in those places, but mainly because I was a poor student and didn’t have any resources to squander. Now I do, but I tend to squander quietly so as not to be noticed.
But I have thought about the business of global warming a lot, especially when it gets real hot in the Cayman Islands where I live. But I am a scientist after all, and I know what scientific evidence is, and you really need to have a controlled study to assess the truth. But the reporters and pundits and politicians and conservationists must all have flunked science in school or else never taken it because it involved too much math, which they also must have flunked because they all look at the same set of numbers and reach diametrically opposite conclusions about what they mean.
Take global warming for instance. People say that they have scientific proof that it is caused by man and call it “man-made global warming.” They must not have studied history either. The earth has had warm cycles and cold cycles throughout its history. I mean, what was the Ice Age all about. Was that “polar bear global cooling?” And who caused the Medieval Warm Period. Was that “nightie Knight global warming?” Maybe that’s a bad example because it may have been true. But really, in order to be sure, you must have scientific evidence, not just scientific opinion that, if repeated enough, just like a lie, becomes fact.
I’m not disputing global warming, or cooling, for that matter. I can read a thermometer. But in order to know how much of it is due to humans, you need two different worlds to compare the warming, one with humans and one without and compare the two. But to have confidence in the results, you really need to have more than one of each to test the confidence limits. Maybe a half a dozen of each will give you statistically significant results. But having twelve different identical worlds circling twelve different identical suns is really science fiction, isn’t it? And that is appropriate since much of what passes as scientific proof of one thing or another that politicians or the media talk about is really science fiction.
But the media insists on repeating flawed studies and opinions as fact to support their point of view, and that is being misleading and why I think that most news people either are liars or dumb, or both. Or maybe I am being unkind and should just say that they are uninformed. But they are the ones giving us information all the time. I mean, that is really strange. We are being informed by the uninformed. And that is why I don’t listen to anything they say. I have repeatedly noticed that they don’t know what they are talking about.
The other thing I noticed when I tried to listen to what the politicians were saying was that they continually say how much they love our country. But if they love it, why are they always trying to change it? If they really love it, why do they want to make it something else and make it worse? From my vantage point, every time they pass a law to make the country better, they end up making it worse because of the law of unintended consequences which is right up there with Murphy’s Law or maybe the major part of it.
You may think that I hate my country when I talk like this, but that isn’t true. I probably love my country more than any politician does because I’m not trying to change it, I’m just trying to protect it from its enemies, and I may end up dying trying to do just that. And the reason I believe I love my country more than any politician, and more than any journalist for that matter, is because they all love themselves so much they don’t have that much room left for loving anything else. But I will continue to love my country and I say to you readers, “God Bless America,” and I really mean it.
Oops. I think I just made a big mistake by saying “God Bless America,” and now I expect the political correctness police to come knocking on my door. The political correctness police are really the most important law enforcement agency in the country. Even more important than the FBI and CIA, and more feared. I just realized that to say God bless you, to some people, is something that is now taboo in the U.S. because it might offend atheists who don’t believe in God and whose sensibilities must be protected by the political correctness police of whom everyone is afraid. And yet the politicians, who say we have to be considerate of them since we are an all-inclusive country, insult them in every one of their speeches practically. I mean they always end their speeches with something like “God bless you and God bless the United States of America.” Well to be politically correct and considerate of others, shouldn’t they say “God bless some of you and good luck to the rest of you. And God bless some of the United States of America and best wishes for the rest of it.” Or maybe the politicians think they are just talking to people in fox holes because I’ve heard that there are no atheists there.
And then there is the whole thing about what to do with, dare I say it, Christmas, because the political correctness police won’t let you wish anyone a Merry Christmas anymore in case someone you say that to practices another religion or is an atheist and may be offended. So now the season between the Day of Evil, which used to be called Halloween, and New Year’s Day, which is only New Year’s Day to some people if you have to be politically correct (for example, the Chinese and the Jews, among others, seem to have a different New Year), can no longer be called the Christmas Season. It has to be called the Holiday Season and people wish each other a Happy Holiday. But that is also technically wrong because holiday is short for holy day and really is a euphemism for
a religious day.
So, once again, to be politically correct, we should wish everyone a Happy Season or a Happy Year, but I know that for now, Happy Holiday is still okay. And now that marijuana is in the process of becoming legalized everywhere, people can really be happy during the Holiday Season and can really make it a high happy holiday season. And I feel sure that before we know it, the season will be known as the High Holiday Season and everyone will be high on the High Holiday Season or wish they were high or just say “hi,” and instead of saying “have a Happy Holiday Season,” people will say “have a High Holiday Season,” which should satisfy everyone and be all inclusive or at least highly inclusive.
While we were living in D.C. and I was working in the laboratory, Anya spent a lot of time walking Muffy down the Mall and around the Capitol on a regular basis. She got to see a lot of the sights in Washington, and I joined her on the weekends. We ended up enjoying a lot of M&Ms while we walked around Washington. Washington is filled with M&Ms. It probably has more M&Ms than any other city. I know what you’re thinking. He said he doesn’t like sweets and he is filling up on M&Ms. No, I don’t like sweets. The M&Ms that Washington is filled with are monuments and memorials. They have more of them in Washington than anywhere else in the world. And when you walk around with dogs, for some reason you tend to meet and talk to other people, especially other people walking their dogs, and there are a lot of them in Washington.
And the conversation usually starts with something like, “Oops, the leashes got tangled up” or “Sorry, she usually doesn’t jump on people” or “Don’t worry, she’s friendly and likes other dogs.”
We met one couple and ended up walking with them quite a bit on weekends. Their dog was kind of like Muffy, unique in looks and personality. The front of their dog looked like a hound like Muffy did, although Lulu was much bigger. The back end looked like a Rottweiler, at least it had a bobbed tail like a Rottweiler has. Lulu was friendlier than Muffy and wagged her stub more than Muffy wagged her tail. I even remember Lulu’s owner’s names. I usually don’t remember last names that well as I have already told you, but since Paul had two first names, I remember them.
He was Paul Benjamin and his girlfriend was named Liz. Or maybe his name was Benjamin Paul. Now I’m no longer sure. Did you ever notice how many people have two first names and no last name? Liz and Paul were from Washington, and when they found out that we were new to the city, they asked us what we had seen and liked. We told them that we really enjoyed looking at all the magnificent memorials and monuments.
Paul then asked us, “Did you see the two biggest monuments? The two monuments dedicated to waste, fraud and abuse?”
Well, I fell for it. I had heard all about waste, fraud and abuse ever since we came to Washington so I said, “No. Where are they?”
“I bet you’ve seen them,” he said. “They’re called the Capitol Building and the White House.”
Anyway, I got the training I felt I needed and when I was satisfied that I was sufficiently proficient, I decided to head back to Charleston. I didn’t need to take any meaningless proficiency exam at the end of my training. I only had to satisfy myself that I knew enough to convince those in charge of the Al Qaeda program that I was useful to them. Failure to do so would mean my death, so that was really more of a final exam than any one usually has to take in a training program. We loaded up the Expedition one more time, let Muffy pee on D.C. once again, and we hit the road early in the morning.
We got around fifteen miles south of the North Carolina-South Carolina border without incident and noticed up ahead a whole bevy of blue lights pulled off the side of the road and sandwiched in between them were two black vehicles, a big SUV and a black van. I counted six police vehicles including three deputy sheriff’s cars, two highway patrol cars and a small SUV that said Canine Corp on its side. Next to the van were four individuals who were standing there while Fritz was sniffing around both vehicles. We had stopped at the welcome center, so Muffy didn’t need to powder her nose. I recognized Buddy in the group and took a chance and pulled over in front of them. Buddy recognized us and came walking over to say hello.
I said, “Do I have to take a number and get in line to be searched?”
“Nope. I think we got us the ones we’ve been after so we don’t need any small fry like you. Hi there, Ms. Anya.” Anya smiled and blew him a kiss.
And then I asked a question that I finally felt comfortable asking, although I had always wondered, and I know most outside of law enforcement have also wondered about.
“So how come every time one of you guys stop someone, every cop in the surrounding ten square miles has to join the party?”
“Hey. Look. We’ll do anything to relieve the boredom of driving this road all day and giving out speeding tickets.” I could relate to the boredom part of it. And then he continued and said, “And besides, with the Carolina Clemson game coming up, we all have to take sides and place our bets and discuss the latest news.”
Now admit it. You thought I was going to give you some stale doughnut joke as the reason they all gathered like that, didn’t you?
“I see old Fritz is here,” I said. “You want me to let Muffy out so she can guard your cruiser.”
“Nah. Better not. I wouldn’t want to take a chance that Sam would arrest her for obstructing an officer in the performance of his duties. Besides, I think I’m safe for now. Fritz just soaked the wheels of both the SUV and the van. Where y’all been? I had expected a call about finishing up our hunting trip before now.”
“We were up north for the last month and have had our fill of pigs for a while.”
“Where was that?”
“Washington, D.C.”
“Amen, to that. Well, call when you’re ready. See y’all later.”
We drove off and got back to Charleston without further incident.
Chapter 32
Anya and I settled into our life in Charleston once again. I began working in the laboratory to experiment with the new techniques I had learned while in Washington and also to brush up on the skills I had acquired during my graduate studies at MIT but had not used in several years. I wanted to become quite proficient with the necessary laboratory skills so I would appear to be someone who could provide the skills that the Al Qaeda operation needed. It was good to be busy and not bored. I had Anya come in and work with me part time and tried to teach her the fundamentals of laboratory procedures since I didn’t want to hire anyone else, and she had given up her administration job when we had gone up to North Carolina.
In addition to making retroviral vectors that would express apoptosis-inducing factors, I also began experiments to see if I could incorporate genetic information into the vectors to shut down the process or abort it after only a little of the dangerous factors were produced. I didn’t think I had enough experience to be successful, but I wanted to test my skills and do something while I waited for Sick Sikh Singh to report on the fact that I was back. Also, in order to make that happen sooner rather than later, I had brought material with me to insure I could produce animal balloons at will, and I started producing them in quantities that would surely gain the attention of the sick Sikh.
It was actually an enjoyable time for us, and Anya and Muffy explored Charleston on a regular basis when I was at work and she wasn’t working with me. She met a lot of people when walking Muffy because of her natural friendliness and the fact that she was walking with a dog that liked most people and would provide an opening for others to stop and pet Muffy and begin a conversation with Anya. She came back from one of those walks and told me about a strange occurrence.
“Alex,” she said, and I knew this was to be a serious discussion because she called me Alex. “While I was out with Muffy, I was approached by two people who wanted to pet Muffy, and they were dressed with the strangest tee shirts. I, of course, let them pet her and made small talk, but I was really put off by the tee shirts. They had a large picture of a pig’s head on the front
. The pig looked something like Porky Pig but it wasn’t a cartoon tee shirt, and the pig was wearing a little cap that looked like a butcher’s cap, and on the back it said “I’m Big on the Pig.” I asked them what the tee shirts were all about, and they told me the Piggly Wiggly sold them, and a lot of people bought them to wear. Everyone knew they were from the Piggly Wiggly, and it was a very clever form of advertisement because people paid the Piggly Wiggly to be able to wear one and advertise for them. You know, on my way back, I realized that there were several other people wearing them. What a strange place this Charleston is.”
Well, I was curious, of course, so I drove up Meeting Street after work the next day, and sure enough there was a Piggly Wiggly, so I went in. It was a super market and a lot of the employees had those tee shirts on, and they had those tee shirts for sale in a variety of colors. I bought a green one for myself and a blue one and a grey one for Anya since blue and grey were her colors. Sure enough the tee shirts had a drawing of a pig’s head wearing a little cap on their front. When I brought them into the house and showed them to Anya, she didn’t seem as happy as I thought she might.
She said, “I would never wear those Alex. You know I don’t like pigs. And if you wear one, I might mistake you for a pig and shoot you, and I haven’t thought of you in pig terms in a long time.”