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Of all the mathematical concepts humanity has invented to help deal with reality — such as zero, infinity, numbers, etc. — surely the least useful and most toxic is the notion of “average.” Like empty calories — food that has no nutrition — the idea of an average something is without any real utility. In a heartbeat I can look up the average high temperature for today and it will not tell me what the actual high temperature will be, five or ten degrees above or below the average. So what use is it to know the average?
Meteorology uses a lot of averages. They rate the likelihood of storms of a certain size and destructiveness by labeling them, for example, storms that on average will occur once in 100 years, or once in 1,000 years. So far this year, the American Midwest has experienced four “once in 1,000 year” storms. In 2018, a single location, Ellicott City, Maryland, experienced two thousand-year storms in two years. Knowing the average chance of a serious storm where you live is content-free information. Continue reading
The biggest, loudest, most expensive scam ever perpetrated on the American people is underway right now and people seem not to recognize that it is, in fact, a scam. This despite the fact that they are being hammered with advertising promoting it 24/7. The TV ads feature broken down football quarterbacks and elderly actors and comedians pitching “Medicare Part C.” (At the end of each spot there is a shot of a bunch of tiny type that, should you stop the playback, get a magnifying glass and read it, informs you that the sponsor of the ad is not, in fact, a government agency. In other words, when it says it is offering Medicare Part C, it is lying.) 
A Republican candidate to represent Georgia in the United States Senate, Herschel Walker, had this analysis of global climate change this week:
There is another Big Lie circulating in the country — other than the one about somebody “stealing” the 2020 presidential election — that is just as corrosive to American politics. And this one comes not from the Trumpian right, but from everybody else. Bill Maher gave it voice the other night on his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher.” Now I like Bill Maher, watch him regularly, and agree with most of what he says. But this is what he said the other night:
The drumbeat began with the rattling of a snare drum or two; now the tympani are being bludgeoned with sledge hammers. As a 