Category: Numbers

The continuum of colors of the human race

100 each of black men, white men, Asian men, Hispanic men and Native men, beautiful badass looking men, should go to the White House and stand apart in their respective groups silently and peacefully for one day. Halfway through the day, after the press and everyone with a phone has shot lots of photos, the whitest white guy and the blackest black guy walk to opposite ends of a city block and then the rest fill in as best they can. 

It would be a great reminder to them of what America actually looks like and that it won’t roll over for the ugly monochromatic men demanding it.

This is America. 

Power to all the people. 

continuums/continuui?

Dichotomies. Black and white. One or the other. Except of course for the gray areas where everything we consider “black” or “white” actually resides. There’s no true black (completely and absolutely black) and no true white (completely and absolutely white), but a continuum of black to white and back again. But that’s confusing, right? So we’ll just talk black and white. 

Nope. Introvert/Extrovert, Asshole/Saint, Liberal/Conservative. Two “opposing” sides of anything are in fact the two ends of a continuum. They touch each other like the two sides of a coin. That’s why questions at the doctor have like eleven choices: agree, somewhat agree, just sort of agree, thinkin’ about agreeing, meh, I’m intrigued… 

Atheism/Religion. Even those who’d scream “There is a god!” or “There is no such thing as a god!” right into your face, spittle and all; within each of them, at the very least, there exists a seed that if watered properly through whatever experience or experiences will grow and lead them to think somehow otherwise. We all have the ability to learn, to change; and we can’t help but evolve. 

Enemy/Friend. From frenemies to mortal enemies; from ghosting someone to killing them. But even mortal enemies would come together if it were truly needed of them – like if two mortal enemies (I don’t know about you but I’m picturing medieval chainmail mortal enemies) had to jump into a lake to save an old woman in a sinking Oldsmobile. They’d do it! Although chainmail and ponds make for a dangerous combination.

Bad thoughts/Good thoughts. Maybe it’s like a bell curve continuum, so there’s a long, sort-of plateau in the middle, the middle ground, where our thoughts go from bad to good, but the closer you get to one or the other the faster you fall into it. Or maybe not.

Remember the continuum. No one is all good. No one is all bad. 

Numbers

I find it fascinating how numbers are portrayed in the media, mostly news media. I’ve thought about it myself as I was writing, like, should I write “two hundred million”, or “200,000,000”? Each will have a different effect on the reader. Sometimes I think that the full nine-digit number will seem larger than the written number. I guess I’m not sure. Different for everyone, I suppose.

I was reading an article in the newspaper about Oakland and their struggles as a city. Toward the end they wrote, “The city has lost 15,000 residents since the pandemic began…” That’s a very small city or large town, depending on your point of view, that up and moved out of Oakland since the pandemic. Then, I looked back to the front of the article and reread, “…Oakland, a city of 420,000…” and wondered what percentage it was and what it would look like if that had been presented as such. %.035. So, “The city has lost about %.035 of residents since the pandemic began…” Different. But the same.