Entry 15: Conspiracies and Cranks - The Audacity of 1x1=2
Author: Professor Bartholomew Barrington III, Esq.
Administrator Shane requested I pivot my focus from the literary atrocities of teenagers to the genuine delusions of adults. A request I fulfill with a heavy heart and a full glass.
The internet has democratized information. Unfortunately, it has also democratized stupidity. Previously, if one possessed a fundamentally broken understanding of the universe, one's audience was limited to whichever unfortunate souls happened to be seated nearby in the local pub. Today, these individuals have YouTube channels, PDF manifestos, and cult followings.
Let us examine two shining beacons of this modern dark age.
Terryology: The Redefinition of Multiplication
Terrence Howard is an actor. At some point, he decided that his lack of a degree in mathematics or physics made him uniquely qualified to dismantle thousands of years of mathematical axioms.
He calls his system "Terryology."
The core tenet of Terryology is that one times one does not equal one, but two. Howard famously dropped out of Pratt Institute after arguing with a professor over this. His logic, if one can call it that, is as follows: "How can it equal one? If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect."
He fundamentally misunderstands the concept of multiplication as scaling. To prove his theory, he and his wife reportedly spend up to 17 hours a day building "nameless plastic structures" soldered together with copper wire. He genuinely believes that if Pythagoras or Einstein were alive to witness his plastic shapes, they would "lose their minds."
He is partially correct. They would lose their minds, though perhaps not from awe.
Nigel Cheese and the Magnetic Whiteboard of Infinite Energy
If Terrence Howard is the king of bad math, Nigel Cheese is the patron saint of bad physics.
Nigel is a fringe internet figure who claims to have discovered "cold fusion" and "infinite free energy." His primary visual aid? A whiteboard and some stationary magnets.
Nigel's foundational thesis is essentially the inverse of Howard's: Nigel claims that 1+1=1. Why? Because if you stick two magnets together, you still only have one magnet. He extrapolates this profoundly stupid observation to the atomic level, claiming that magnets resisting gravity on a whiteboard is proof of "cold fusion." He even claimed to hold a patent for cold fusion with the listed inventors being "Me, myself, and humanity."
These are not harmless eccentricities. They are symptoms of a profound intellectual rot—a society where confidence is entirely divorced from competence. When an actor soldering plastic together is given a platform to redefine arithmetic, we are not evolving; we are regressing.
I need another scotch. A large one.