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Life imitates ‘Lite’
and other stuff

As many regular readers know, we here at the world offices of "Honolulu Lite" and "Alo-Ha! Friday" have a saying: "When the going gets tough, just make something up." The weird thing is that we can hardly make things up fast enough before they start coming true.

The most recent example was last week's "Alo-Ha! Friday" April Fools' piece in which I suggested that the makers of the Sharper Image "Ionic Breeze" air cleaner were going to come out with a new model called "Ironic Breeze." Instead of cleaning the air, the "Ironic Breeze" would actually blow nasty stuff into your house. And when you called the company to complain about an air cleaner dirtying the air, the spokesman would say, "Ironic, isn't it?"

Not only was that column ironic, but prophetic. Just this week, Consumer Reports, a nonprofit magazine that accepts no advertising, said that not only does the Ionic Breeze not remove many particles from the air, it actually releases possibly dangerous levels of ozone into your house.

Does that mean Sharper Image might actually now change the name of its product to "Ironic Breeze?" Stay tuned.

NEXT IN THE "Life Imitates Lite" file, I did a "Honolulu Lite" last month about the state Legislature raising the tax on cigarettes in an alleged effort to protect people's health.

I called it nothing more than a moneymaking scheme for the state that will turn smokers into criminals. If not, why aren't lawmakers jacking up the taxes on other unhealthy products like hot dogs and mayo?

Reader Dennis Anderson spammed me an Associated Press story pointing out that the Senate in Washington state already is planning a hefty tax on canned meats like Spam, Vienna sausages and chili con carne.

Putting higher taxes on canned mystery meats is expected to bring $11 million more into that state's coffers, or state coffee cans.

Are Hawaii legislators crazy enough to pass a "Spam tax"? Stay tuned.

Finally, I never learn my lesson when it comes to staying away from commentary on scientific issues. This week, I wrote about a German surgeon who discovered the largest prime number in the world. In my extensive five minutes of research, I learned that there are all kinds of prime numbers: twins, Mersenne and the strangely named "Sophia Germain" prime numbers. Because editors know of my penchant for simply making stuff up, I assumed they would think the Sophia Germain reference was a stupid joke, not knowing that Ms. Germain was actually a 19th-century mathematician who discovered a strange breed of prime numbers far too complex and boring to go into here.

As it turned out, the editors had no problem with Sophia, they had a problem with the type of prime numbers called "primorial." Except I cleverly misspelled it "primoral," which isn't even a word.

Luckily, a sharp copy editor caught it and changed it to "primorial." Unluckily, the next and final copy editor caught that and changed it to "primordial," which is a great word, a fabulous word, just not a word connected to numbers divisible by only 1 and themselves.

(Unless a primordial prime number is one discovered by prehistoric man.)

This was a prime example of how my primordial instincts should have told me that someone who took roughly 17 semesters of algebra and geometry in high school (do the math) should steer clear of writing about the science of numbers.

Have I learned my lesson? Stay tuned.