My life thus far has been a series of minor tragedies, beginning at birth, with an undescended right testicle. Cryptorchidism affects 3% of full term males at birth and of those, 20% will require a surgical intervention to reposition the affected testicle back into its proper housing, the scrotum. I, of course, was one of the unlucky 0.6% who needed this procedure thus qualifying the event as an irksome, if not tragic, situation for the six year old boy I had become during the mandatory "let's wait and see if it drops" biding time. If you missed the math by the way, that 0.6% intervention rate came from taking 20% of 3% which is 0.2x0.03=0.006. Which, if you were asleep in the fourth grade, is equivalent to 6/1000 or six tenths of one percent more commonly known as 0.6 %. I only bring up the math to segue into my discussion of a far greater tragedy than my one undescended testicle and that is my consternation at the confusion caused when I tell the deli person that I would like 2/3 of a pound of oven roasted turkey meat, please.
You see, the scale at the deli counter is in decimals so the clerk needs to convert my two-thirds request into a decimal number so he/she/LGBTQ can read the scale. If, by some miracle, I am feeling charitable I will just go ahead and order zero point six-five pounds of the turkey breast so as to avoid too much brow wrinkling on the part of the deli worker. But because my favorite life affirming mantra is "I can't believe what an idiot this guy is", I usually go with the 2/3 of a pound request just so I can confirm my already dim view of my fellow citizens.....As if the popularity of Donald Trump as presidential candidate isn't confirmation enough.
But there is hope and the optimists at The Department of Education have a plan to educate would-be bologna slicers. It is the educational directive known as STEM; Sandwich Technology and Eating eM.
The original meaning of the acronym had, of course, a far loftier goal of training the future engineers of America but there are obvious cracks in the plan. The main one being the seeming lack of jobs for all those college graduates who are living back in their old room at Mommy's house.
If the middling Rutgers grads are working at "The Gap" selling casual work wear to their more successful peers in Silicon Valley, then the only hope for the STEM kids is behind the slicer at the deli counter. But at least they will be able to fulfill my order with a wink and a knowing nod. I'm an optimist if nothing else and perhaps we can get some of the Intelligent Design believers in Texas to send their kids to science camp to learn basic critical thinking skills. But seeing as the man (Cruz) they sent to Washington is doing all he can to bring about the prophesied apocalypse, I seriously doubt it.
But I digress. It just came to my attention that I previously complained about the same math illiteracy issue in 2011 so maybe, just maybe, the STEM initiative will actually help. I would donate some money to the cause but when I Google "donate to STEM" it only comes up with charities for stem cell research. Which brings me back around to the original point of this post which happens to be directly related to my own stem cells in that the testicle is the holding tank for their delivery vehicle. And if my having the rhetorical skills to link thinly sliced turkey breast to a testicle is not the best plug for what an education in science and math can do for someone, I don't know what is.
P.S. I used ambiguity in that last paragraph to make a point. Click here to donate to "stem cell research" and click here to donate to "STEM education initiatives".
