TRUTH IS TRUTH

Why have we abandoned science? As a global society we have spent hundreds of years developing analytical methods, research approaches and testing protocols in order to prove something is true or not true. The scientific method serves us well and allows us to go beyond just believing an idea to testing the theory, repeating the test results and proving to others, even when they try to poke holes in your theory, that your claim is factual. Then again, I guess it’s just easier to believe that used car salesman with the fake Rolex watch about the quality of that older pick up truck supposedly last driven by a little old lady from Pasadena. “I didn’t know Grandma liked truck nuts.”

Standing in front of a microphone and stating a perception or an idea, even if declared with conviction and force does not make that thing true unless it can be proven. One person’s wild beliefs don’t make them true even if they angrily defend them. Sometimes truth and fact are hard to find and swallow, I get that, but truth is truth even if the facts are inconvenient for those who don’t like it.

“But, wait a minute.” (A lazy person might say) “That sounds like work. I’d rather just agree with someone who tells me what I already want to believe.”

“The Earth is flat.”

“Zombies are real.”

“Dinosaurs are only a couple thousand years old.”

“George Washington had wooden teeth.”

“Moon landings were filmed on a Hollywood sound stage.”

“September 11 was an inside job.”

“I know these things to be true because my sister-in-law’s, cousin’s hairdresser knows a guy who used to work for the FBI and his friend at the CIA says that all these things are still very carefully guarded and true government secrets. My church pastor also guarantees me endless financial blessings if I would just help contribute a $1,000 towards the purchase of his third private jet.” Or my favorite justification; “I saw it on the Internet.”

To help punctuate the weirdness of fake truths, one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard, aside from the endless stream of pablum coming from Washington DC, is a Turkish belief that chewing gum at night is actually chewing the flesh of the dead. That one is both weird and grotesque. That just had to be something a mother made up to keep their kids away from gum. Moms. They are inventive.

The Gullible, The Lazy

It always amazes me when I engage with someone who happens to believe one of these easily proven falsehoods. Generally, the topic is never broached at the beginning of a conversation but it drops in casually as a means to sarcastically argue against something mentioned in a previous statement. “Yeah, and Zombies aren’t real either.” Whoa. Now wait a minute. Say what?

I was at a funeral to support a friend some years ago and while the attendees gathered outside on a warm sunny day following the ceremony, it was casually mentioned that the deceased had written in her will that she wanted to be buried rather than cremated. “She believes in the zombie apocalypse and thinks she will rise again some day”, mentioned one of her other friends. I couldn’t help myself from smiling and quickly covered my mouth to hide the amusement. Months later I found myself in another conversation with someone at a wedding where the whole zombie thing came up again. In amongst a small group of people, about a third of them believed in some form of the story being true. Sometimes it was a result of a virus, or a nuclear apocalypse, or some other chemical induced killing off of the population only to see them awaken after death to roam the earth hungry, not for normal food, but of course for raw, uninfected human body parts. Frankly, if I’m dead and still hungry I think I would hanker for something more decadent, like a thick juicy grilled steak, or chicken Parmesan or wait a minute, that fudge covered “Bumpy Cake” from Sanders in Detroit!

Um, yeah.

Let’s go back to high school biology and chemistry class, shall we? I remember basic things about human muscle and tissue response working only if the body is alive and capable of producing electrical impulses. The nervous system and muscle movement requires a beating heart to work. Tissue that doesn’t get blood flow or oxygenated benefits will die off, rot and eventually turn to dust. So tell me again how a dead rotting body can raise it’s arms, walk, chase you or even outrun the fastest animals on earth like in the movie World War Z? I guess somehow all the moisture remains in their eyeballs as well allowing them to see perfectly.

“But, it could just be a virus that infects live people, making them behave that way”, one of them got defensive. I would follow up with what I remember about how viruses work, including the speed of virus growth especially the really nasty ones, leading to quick death. “You know, the body gets sick, stops working, shuts down and dies. Then it rots and that’s it. Remember COVID? But tell me again how you think vaccinations are bad for people.”

Flat Earth believers are another special group that continue to grow their following thanks to a number of YouTube videos “proving” their beliefs. There is a growing group of influencers like pro sports players and Hollywood actors supporting the flat Earth position. YouTube is simply the best entertainment for this topic. “Just look at this long, flat and straight road or the surface of this pond where the water is flat. If the earth were spinning, the water would wash away!” Yup. Looking down a 2 mile long stretch of road makes everything look flat, I admit. Water staying in your pond? I guess we’ll just have to forget about the pesky science around gravity, won’t we. Oh, and you’ve never been to the ocean or the Great Lakes to actually watch a tall masted ship disappear over the curved horizon? I have. That international trip that takes you up to 40,000 feet on a cloudless day is also inconvenient, because you can see the slight curvature of the Earth’s surface there too. NASA is also an inconvenient source of truth because of those fake telescopes in orbit or pictures of the Earth taken from the moon. To be a flat earther also means you have to think all space travel and evidence of rocket launches and satellites are fake too. I kinda feel bad for these people. Stop breaking your medication in half to save money. You’ll feel better.

My son was in middle school the year after September 11, 2001. He came home one day repeating some strange theories about explosions caught on camera from lower floors of the towers. That supposedly confirmed the existence of internal explosions causing the tower’s actual destruction, or so some other kids who saw it on the internet believed. That story spread throughout his high school and they all believed down to their core, that the “inside job” story was true. Except, massive explosions caused by plane impact with thousands of gallons of jet fuel don’t stay restricted to one floor of the tower. Expanding gas explosions will pop out in a bunch of places based on open paths available for explosive gas expansion. Anyway, because one idiot who watched the news close up of a small explosion pop out on a lower floor of the tower, we are to believe his story just because, you know, he’s convinced it’s all true. “Yeah, and steel just doesn’t bend like that”, he says convincingly although as expert metallurgists have already told you, “even massive steel beams will weaken and bend exposed to extreme heat and pressure”.

The anti-vaxers and snake oil people really piss me off too. Let’s not believe actual doctors who have, oh I don’t know, actually studied and tested these medical approaches and vaccines to prove their efficacy. Let’s believe Jenny McCarthy instead about the risks of vaccines and their direct link to Autism in children. After all, a former high school cheerleader, Playboy Bunny and B movie actress clearly has the educated background to know what she’s talking about. That’s why she strongly and publicly supported that whole “anti-vax” movement on social media. How about a political operative feeding you false information about the dangers of a disease, or how it should be treated without having any support from the medical community. There’s even doctors out there, if Doctor Oz can be considered reputable, who advocated for other cure all medicines for COVID despite the entire medical community and I mean THE ENTIRE MEDICAL COMMUNITY, calling those claims false, misleading and dangerous to the population. Or religious leaders telling their entire television audiences just to sit back and relax because God will “blow the disease away in the wind”. Yes pastor Billy-Bob, I will believe in you because you say doctors are fear mongers and charlatans. Here’s another $500 from my meager retirement account. Blessings be upon thee as I sow the those seeds of prosperity you keep asking for.

I Like Data

Sometimes data points can be gathered from your own personal experiences. When I was much younger and a good chunk of my extended family lived up in Michigan’s northern Grand Traverse County, I would marvel at how high the snow would accumulate in Winter, every year. The snow drifts would routinely reach up to the roof line of my grandparent’s stone cottage. My grandfather would periodically have to get outside with a roof rake to remove the “feet” of snow weighing heavily on the roof timbers. I remember walls of snow lining sidewalks in Detroit and remaining there all Winter, every Winter. We just don’t get snow like that anymore. Inches, yes. Feet, no. Yes, there is a freak storm once in a while to provide a small dumping, but it is not as it was 50 years ago.

But, those observations were from a 1960-1970 little kid’s point of view. They could be flawed, you know? It’s only my perspective and it could actually be wrong, so I looked into it. I am in fact, wrong about my assumptions. My understanding of snowfall facts are flawed. The heaviest snowfall year in Detroit since 1969 was in 2013. I guess I’ll have to trust the information gathered by the National Weather Service, those known liars and propagandists.

It would be impossible to research every “known fact” that comes out of the average person’s mouth. It’s not like you’re constantly Googling every assertion made during conversation. That would be rude by the way; your face stuck gazing into your phone as someone spoke, but it’s almost what we have to do.

Picking Trusted Sources

It’s sad, but even supposed research data needs to be vetted further, especially in an AI world that simply consolidates what it gleans from the internet. All that tariff data that was used to support Peter Navarro’s position on tariff benefits was developed by an unknown researcher named “Ron Vara”. While Wall street and expert economists warned about the negative impact to the economy, Navarro pressed on. Except, Ron Vara the researcher doesn’t exist. It’s an anagram for “Navarro”. What a great way to help support your assertion of fact. Simply create your own narrative and put somebody else’s name on a research paper you wrote to give it more credibility. Maybe next time try not using a name that can be tied back to you.

Used car salesmen, politicians, prosperity preachers and dedicated television viewers of the “Walking Dead” franchise are not your best sources of the truth. Snippets of wild and controversial claims found on the internet, TikTok or YouTube are most likely just that; wild and controversial. You can’t trust crazy things you hear, in fact there’s a simple sniff test you can perform. It’s been around for decades and it goes something like this: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Let’s expand that sentiment a little to fit within the bounds of this rant. “If someone is excitedly pushing an unorthodox position as fact, and the educated expert community says it’s bat shit crazy, look into it a little before making up your own mind.”

Maybe you and I aren’t going to agree on some things we believe in. That’s okay. It’s America and the first amendment protects both of us regarding what we want to believe, what religion we choose to practice, and what we choose to say in public. I love the simplicity and power of the first amendment, right up to the point where the exercise of your first amendment rights steps on mine. You can’t impose your bat shit crazy beliefs on me. I’ll get to the truth in my own way, doing my own follow up and research and getting counsel from real experts on the topic at hand.

Hey, Isn’t This A Woodworking Blog?

Man, have I strayed from the original intent of this blog or what? I’m not sure what got me going on this topic, but it wasn’t a wood shop thing. In fact, I haven’t spent much time in the shop at all these past few months. I have some projects planned, just waiting for me to get off my butt and get started.

I have been working on other things, like the makeshift repair of a large crack in our sea wall that has started to cave in on my neighbor’s side of the property. It was a lot of digging and concrete repair and new retaining wall construction, none of which was woodworking so no videos there. The lake we live on will be returning in the Spring of 2026, so the repairs were needed and timely while the lake bed remains dry. This was all part of a four connecting lake dam failure in Michigan back in 2020 that flooded an entire county. The return of the water also means I’ll need a way to safely launch my cedar plank canoe without scratching up the bottom. I’m actually designing my own canoe and kayak launch with dock platforms you can step on before getting into the canoe. Perhaps I can make a set of free build plans on that project too. That will be a video to watch out for in the Spring.

So as I calm down from my rant and continue to ponder the question about why zombies prefer human meat to a nice cheesecake, I wish for you a pleasant, safe and healthy Summer.

Stay frosty my friends.