Bad Theory

True news item: Super Math Geek Stephen Hawking announced last monththat he was wrong about his Black Hole Theory all along. Speaking at a Relativity and Gravitational Conference in Dublin,Hawking now says the surface of Black Holes have "quantum fluctuations"on them, which explains everything.

Sorry, but it turns out I was wrong about some things after all.

Now that Mr. Hawking has come clean with this deal about Black Holes, I think I owe it to everyone to clear up some misconceptions I have beencirculating for many years.

Southern Hemisphere: As it turns out, the people who live south of Earth's equator don't actually walk upside down.

That famous theory, which I first advanced in the early 1960s, was the result of studies initiated soon after receiving a free Explorer World Globe when we purchased the entire set of the Encyclopedia Britannica onthe installment plan.

When I studied the globe, I noticed that the lower half represented by the Southern Hemisphere is beneath the equator, so it stood to reason that people who live down there probably do walk upside down.

But I was wrong. So sue me.

Time: During the past decade, I have erroneously declared that I had solved the mysteries of time and eternity.

As you'll recall if you've read my articles, my mathematical calculations concluded that time began at the precise point of an especially dynamic crystal healing in Carmel Valley, an event thatretroactively triggered the onset of life as we know it. I furtherconcluded that time would end with an unfortunate meth lab explosion in Prunedale.

I've since reviewed my equations and, to my horror, I discovered I mistakenly utilized a diffusion coefficient when I should have dividedthe number of atoms passing through a sphere by a compound diffusion.

My bad.

The DaVinci Code: For a while there, I was running around telling everybody that the foundations of Christianity were proven wrong once and for all by Dan Brown's book.

Then I happened to notice that "The DaVinci Code" is a work of fiction. Now I feel like a big goof for taking it so seriously.

Seems like the book publishers ought to be more clear about stuff like that.

Evolution: Perhaps my most egregious error is the theory advanced two decades ago that apes evolved from humans.

The premise for this Darwin-in-reverse theory was sparked by irrefutable proof that humans are genetically predisposed to travel the path of least resistance.

According to this theory, the mysteries of life are so complicated that humans will naturally "dumb down" as a survival instinct.

This natural progression ultimately results in human beings who have been functional and thinking beings, but who eventually devolve into mouth-breathing cro-magnons, followed by Libertarians, followed by apes, followed by beer commercial copywriters, followed by fish who walk back into the ocean to "get away from things," followed by Dennis Miller.

But this theory turned out to be wrong, due mainly to "quantum fluctuations."