SOME people think mathematics is the language of God. Others think Elvis is God. And so, it is not surprising that two books that recently landed on my desk caught my attention. Figure this: God,
Elvis and calculusOne is called "Elvis' Search for God" and the other is a "million-copy best seller" entitled "Calculus Made Easy."
I had an eerie feeling that there was some common ground to be found in these two apparently wildly dissimilar books.
As far as I knew, Elvis' search for God consisted of ingesting large quantities of chemicals and cutting the occasional gospel album. I suspect that the phrase "calculus made easy" was invented by God to remind us how stupid humans actually are. The basic function would be something like: If God (G) made the world (W) using concepts much more complicated than calculus to the third power (C3) and if you (U) can't learn calculus (C) even by using a book (B) called "Calculus Made Easy" (CME), ergo, you are a big, fat idiot (BFI).
I took some calculus a long time ago. The only thing I remember is: "Constants are terms in an equation that have a fixed value, like you are constantly going to get an 'F' if you stay enrolled in this course."
I also remember that calculus involved a lot of "Ys," like "Y is the teacher making all those funny squiggles on the board?," "Y am I sitting here when I could be taking art?" and "Y don't we all just forget this junk and go get a beer?"
But here's this book suggesting that calculus not only can be learned, but learned easily. Can it be true? I mean, since my original foray into calculus we have constructed the space shuttle and we have invented non-stick cookware, portable CD players and microwave popcorn. Perhaps they did find a way to make learning calculus easy.
So I waded into the book, wondering just how many pages I could read before a current of befuddlement swirled around my waist, a tidal bore of confusion surged over my head and before I drowned in a sea of mathematical bewilderment and mystification.
"What one fool can do, another can," said an introductory proverb apparently intended to calm the reader and to which I responded, "Huh?"
AS it turned out, I cruised through the first several pages easily, since they only concerned the history of calculus. I did not run aground until page 11 when I hit the sentence, "A square's diagonal is the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle. We know from the Pythagorean theorem that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides."
Well, this was simply untrue. We know of no such thing. My brain hurt. I put the book aside. It was hopeless. Y bother?
So I moved on to Elvis' search for God. Like the book on calculus, I could only get through the first several pages. Not because it was hard to understand but because it was so dumb. It purported to be an account of Elvis' spiritual life based on memories by his hairdresser.
According to this guy, Elvis believed in everything from ascended masters to UFOs. This hairdresser also apparently had an audio-graphic memory because he could recall entire conversations wherein Elvis said things like: "It's ridiculous to think we're the only life with millions of planets in the universe. This planet is obviously being monitored by superior beings to prepare us for the transition into the New Age."
I guess we are to believe that Elvis made this deep observation between consuming five deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches and a handful of Percodan.
And so I discovered the common ground: Both books are full of it.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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