Gravitational Attraction
What would happen if two people out in space a few meters apart, abandoned by their spacecraft, decided to wait until gravity pulled them together? My initial thought was that …
The Truth of a Story
In Part 1 of this post I walk through a powerful, but false, story of a vindicated math prodigy. When the article stated…
”No. I gave you that option already and it was declined. I want every exam in the country marked incorrect that has 999 as the correct answer."
It took an attorney and another 3 months, but I got the result. My daughter scored the only 100 on the exam that year for her grade, not just in her class, but in the country.
I didn't care what it cost. I didn't care how much effort it took. I didn't care that an entire federal department was given tens of thousands of hours of work in addition to the demands placed on it.
…I was skeptical. I then went to see when this would have happened - the article said that the events happened in 2008. Was there any national standardized test in that year (plus or minus 1 year) which had their scores reduced by 1 question? Not that I could confirm - and that would have made very big headlines.
Without that, I looked into who the author is…his name is Ed Trice. A quick google search brings us to Snopes which labels this story as “Unproven”. Further searches has Ed Trice involved in a number of hoaxes and suspicious stories.
When I read the story I really wanted it to be true - perhaps that is the power of the story. After learning that in all likelihood the story didn’t happen, I felt used and manipulated.
