A Shreveport Judge's Report on Iraq

[The Braden Files]

Last Wednesday night, I attended a lecture by Judge Don Walters, a federal judge who was asked to serve as part of a 12 man team in Iraq to evaluate their justice system. It was most interesting, and afterwards, I asked if he had a book or a recording of any of his lectures. Since he did not, he was generous enough to give me his notes from the evening.

For those of you interested, I will give you a slightly abridged version of his lecture which I found difficult to cut down due to its wealth of information.

I really am not into public speaking as I am sure you are about to find out. But my adventures in Iraq taught me something that I would very much like to share with you. I have been fortunate over the past 5 or 6 years to get to such exotic places as Bosnia, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Morocco. But, Iraq is my swan song. First, I am too old for such adventures, and second, Charlotte (my wife) won't let me. In mid-April, I got a call from DoJ asking if I would be willing to go to Iraq for up to 3 months to evaluate the justice system and make recommendations. When I went home, Charlotte said without a pause, “How could I possibly tell you, no?”

Let me begin with a disclaimer, I was in Iraq for fewer than 40 days, I was in Baghdad for a little over three weeks and in the three provinces of the far south for two weeks. I am limited in what I saw and heard. Needless to say, the opinions are my own. I want to make it clear that, initially, I vehemently opposed the war.

The team of 12 that went to Iraq was to access the judiciary and to make recommendations for the future. We were sent too soon and without sufficient planning and forethought. Accordingly we were forced to play our part by ear. Ultimately, we were successful. No thanks to the civil authorities in Washington or Iraq.

We were divided into 4 teams. We were the southern team: Mike Farhang, an AUSA from Los Angeles, Harvard Summa Undergraduate, Harvard Law Review, Linguist, 5 languages including Arabic; Rich Coughlin, Federal Public Defender from New Jersey, who abandoned his wife and 23 month old daughter to volunteer for this; and me. We were accompanied by an interpreter and protected by what I called our “minders,” four Iraqis well-armed with 9mm hand guns and AK47's.

During the first two weeks, we talked to a few hundred Iraqis and interviewed about 60 judges. Our help came from our Danish colleagues and the First Armored Division (UK), not from the civil authorities – OPCA, Office of the Provisional Coalition Authority, (formerly ORHA), Ambassador Brenner's group.

Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam sheltered and financed terrorists, absolutely, we should have overthrown the Baathists, indeed, we should have done it sooner.

What changed my mind?

When we left mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable.

I have seen the machines and places of torture. I will tell you one story told to me by the Chief of Pediatrics at the Medical College in Basra. It was one of the most shocking to me, but I heard worse.

One of Saddam's security agents was sent to question a Shiite in his home. The interrogation took place in the living room in the presence of the man's wife, who held their three month old child. A question was asked and the thug did not like the answer; he asked it again, same answer. He grabbed the baby from its mother and plucked its eye out. And then repeated his question. Worse things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Baathist regime.

Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the UN. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the UN were making millions administering the food for oil program.

We cannot, I know, remake the world, nor do I believe we should. We cannot stamp out evil, I know. But this time we were morally right and our economic and strategic interests were involved. I submit that just because we can't do everything doesn't mean that we should do nothing.

We must have the moral courage to see this through, to do whatever it takes to secure responsible government for the Iraqi people. Having decided to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us. I fear we will quit as the horrors of war come into our living rooms. Look at the stories you are getting from the media today. The steady drip, drip, drip of bad news may destroy our will to fulfill the obligations we have assumed. We are not getting the whole truth from the news media. The news you watch, listen to and read is highly selective. Good news doesn't sell. 90% of the damage you see on TV was caused by Iraqis, not by US. All the damage you see to schools, hospitals, power generation facilities, refineries, pipelines and water supplies, as well as shops, museums, and semi-public buildings (like hotels) was caused either by the Iraqi army in its death throes or Iraqi civilians looting and rioting.

The day after the war was over, there was nearly 0 power being generated in Iraq. 45 days later, 1/3 of the total national potential of 8000 MW is up and running. Downed power lines are being repaired and were about 70% complete when I left. There is water purification where little or none existed before…this time to everyone.

Oil is 95% of the Iraqi GNP. In order for Iraq to survive, it must sell oil. All the damage to the oil fields was done by the Iraqi army or looters. The 14 story office building of the Southern Iraq Oil Company in Basra was torched by Baathist, destroying all of the books, records and computers of the company. Today, the refinery at Bayji is at 75% of capacity. The crude pipeline between Kirkuk and Bayji has been repaired, though the Baathist keep trying to disrupt it.

If we are doing all this for the people, why are they shooting us?

The general population isn't. By my sample, 90% are glad we came and the majority doesn't want us to leave for some time to come, but there are still plenty of bad guys, the Baathists who lived well under Saddam. The thugs of the old regime still hope to return to power, and there are plenty of them, mostly located in Sunni areas. Then too, Saddam, in the Ramadan amnesty, let every murderer, butcher, rapist and violent criminal loose on his own people. There are interests, including organized crime, with a desire for anarchy and profit. There are disruptive forces from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.

We saw poverty on a scale that I have never witnessed except in pictures of Haiti. I saw one little girl: she was slender, very pretty, about 5 or 6 years old, in a tattered dress with a broad red hem, part of which was torn and dragging in the dirt. She would touch her heart and make hungry gestures. She was duplicated a thousand times during the journey.

The poverty in Iraq is a sharp contrast to the lives of Saddam and his sons. Saddam alone, not counting Ouday and Qusay and the leading Baathists, had 43 palaces. We are using several for civilian government. The one where OPCA is located is the main republican palace occupying over 2000 acres. It is a monument to narcissism, four 25 foot tall heads of Saddam decorate the front of the palace, and his portraits and statues are everywhere.

We went to a second palace by the airport. It is surrounded by a lake which was created by diverting the Euphrates water which limited agricultural irrigation downstream. His palace in Basra was used by him only once I am told.

Basra functions fairly well except for the power. There are 6 lines into the city, but it does not have a standard power grid. Saddam used power and other essentials as a method of punishing a city of 3 million! He would cut power for days to punish them. When I tell you the temperatures there, you will understand how bad that was. I am told that in igh summer, it will hit 155 degrees, even 160! He has made no investments in this area which is overwhelmingly Shiite. He has few friends there. Consequently, it is easier for the Brits to govern, unlike Baghdad. And they are doing a good job of it. They are doing it at the moment by using pre-war personnel, perhaps contrary to Brenner's de-Baathification order.

The problem with Brenner's policy is that it removes almost all of the people who ran the country. The Brits have been pragmatic: they have largely left the judges and police in place and are removing them as they see the need and they are able to train and replace the bad ones. That was our problem in Haiti, we trained a police force but did not put the judiciary in place so that the jails just filled up and then overcrowding forced criminals out. And the Haitian police have largely quit. (Ouday had a solution to overcrowding, when he received a complaint of overcrowding, he went to the prison and personally shot every 3rd prisoner.)

We want to keep Iraq a secular state, and that will present some difficulties as there is no real concept of separation of church and state in Islam. Attaturk was a true revolutionary where this was concerned. The tribal and sahria (religious) courts are functioning, and if we don't get a move on, they will replace the civil and criminal courts.

I find it difficult to explain how differently they think. I remember telling Mike, “I don't think we are on the same page with this fellow.” Mike said, “Don, I am not sure we are in the same library.” For a large percentage of the Iraqi people, and they are most adamant, family and tribe are everything, religion and state are one and the same. That they don't understand us is our biggest problem in the middle east. They perceive our way of life as a threat to theirs,…and it is. They fear the modern world is about to run over them, destroying family life as they know it, educating and freeing their women, forbidding honor killing…Coca Colas, jeans, lack of parental respect and respect for the old ways and religion. And to defend their way of life and their religion, they will die with the same fervor with which the Christians marched to the lions. In their fear of western life, some will fight and kill us; but I remain convinced that the majority want a secular society and the best that the west has to offer. We are not hated by everyone. Of the hundreds I talked to, the overwhelming majority thanked us for being there. Hundreds of adults and children on the roads waved and smiled as we passed by.

We went to the law school with about 300 students, about ten of whom were female. There we were, three Americans and they wanted us to fix their school and they thought we could. They thought Americans could do anything. They were like children expecting the genie from the bottle to immediately gratify their needs.

The law students were the finest example of hope that I encountered. They told me that the future was theirs and that they needed and wanted our help. I believe we should be paying more attention and giving greater effort to restoring higher education. These law students are the immediate future. When we met with them a week later, they had formed a protective association, a bus for transportation, found a disused grammar school for classes, and got their assistant dean to round up some professors who were teaching them. Still they need help and I am trying to get some help for them from our law schools. LSU has refused, Seton Hall and Rutgers have promised to help; I have not contacted Tulane, Loyola or Southern yet.

Upon returning to Baghdad, I went to the Ministry of Justice to review the situation in the south. I took advantage of the situation and said the following: “I have read a little of your history. I know you are a proud people who have risen from the ashes in the past, so I must tell you that I am saddened and disappointed. I have talked to hundreds of you over the past five weeks, almost everyone educated and privileged. What I have heard is what you want from us, how the Americans have to fix this and give you money and equipment, protect you from you own. The only adults planning on the future were those law students in Basra who had lost everything – their books, their desks, their records, their school. And they were doing something about it on their own. You need to do some of these things for yourselves. If you are depending on us to do everything, you are going to be sadly disappointed.”

I got a few nods from the judges, but the translator said to me: “Thank you. I have been waiting for someone to tell them that.”

Our soldiers, God love them and keep them; they smiled every time I got a chance to talk to them. They want to come home, but I did not hear one word of complaint nor a question as to why they were there. This is boring, hot, dirty, and dangerous work. They stand in 120 plus degrees in full body armor. They are amazing. Their entertainment was largely self-generated; boredom doesn't stop when they stand down. Write a letter, send a note or email; send a book, CD, tape, or magazine; Do something.

How are you all doing? The proud warriors of Baker Company wanted to do something to pay tribute to our fallen comrades. So since we are part of the only Infantry Battalion left in Iraq the one way that we could think of doing that is by taking a picture of Baker Company saying the way we feel. It would be awesome if you could find a way to share this with our fellow countrymen. I was wondering if there was any way to get this into your papers to let the world know that “WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN” and are proud to serve our country.

Semper Fi
1stSgt Dave Jobe “Baker 8”

I thought installing Tortoisecvs and CVSNT would be a fifteen minute exercise. I was wrong. I spent most of the day trying to figure out why I couldn't get in. I eventually figured out that I needed to modify the config file for the repository to set SystemAuth=yes so I could use sspi. I could retrieve it but I could not commit the file. So I stopped the service and edited the file directly. I am not supposed to do that but it works. Tortoisecvs is pretty cool but it does not like network drives.

Steve Kirks suggests a new Elements of Style for weblogs. [Scripting News]

This is an interesting solution for a problem I am not sure exists.

I have been corresponding with Sven Tofte about a piece he published about Date formatting in Javascript. I was really pleased to see his code since I am planning on upgrading my Dreamweaver macro and streamline my RSS item creation. I wanted to use a RFC822 date and a custom date. I guess I could of written it myself but I think he did a much better job at it. There was a minor correction to his code but it looks solid and straightforward for almost all platforms.

“Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”

H. L. Mencken. “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.” [Quotes of the Day]

Financial Times: The BBC's lessons for America. It also required a bit of creative thinking. For the natural intuition of content owners is control. The very idea of giving up perfect control over how and whether content is re-used is treason among insiders. But as the BBC understands, it does not live in Disney World. [Tomalak's Realm]

It is a little bit easier for the BBC to adopt a “Creative Commons” type attitude to their vast news archive since they have governmental support. It is very pragmatic and constructive for the BBC to allow people non-commercial use to “old” news since the taxpayers probably believe they have already paid for it. However, the BBC's pragmatic philosophy to intellectual property rights contrasts starkly with the RIAA. In the last couple of days the RIAA has just settled a file swapping case with a 12 year old girl. Common ground is sure hard to find on this issue in America. I would not be surprised if people are already starting to think of RIAA as a four letter word. Next thing you know, RIAA will become a verb like, “Boy, I really RIAA-upped it today!”

I had a relatively uneventful day. I updated my crm data on salesforce.com, sent a couple of emails about Habitat's Build on Faith week,  and installed the beta for Quickbooks 2004.

Dave Barry does the math

Many of us consider Dave Barry to be the best newspaper humorist around. He does have a thing about mathematics. He clearly couldn't stand his math teachers. And he clearly is worried about the state of mathematics in the USA. First below is his latest. I've appended some of the things he's written over the years (three of which appear to be a connected commentary on Isaac Newton — a commentary that took seven and a half years in its telling).

August 31, 2003
The Washington Post

I have here a letter, which I am not making up, from a teacher named Robin Walden of Kilgore, Tex., who states:

“I teach math to eighth-grade students. This is an unnecessary task because they are all going to be professional basketball players, professional NASCAR race car drivers, professional bass fisher people, or marine biologists who will never need to actually use math.”

This is a sad commentary on the unrealistic expectations of today's students. Because the harsh statistical truth is that, in any given group of 10 young people, only a third of them, or 22 percent, will actually succeed as professional bass fishers. The rest will wind up in the “real world,” where, like it or not, they will need a practical knowledge of math.

For example, I recently found myself in a situation at a bank where suddenly, without warning, I had to add up four three-digit numbers by hand.

Fortunately, I went to elementary school in the 1950s, when we were in the Cold War, and American children were forced to learn addition, because the Soviets were making their children learn addition.

Thanks to that training, I knew that, to get the correct answer, I had to “carry” some numbers. Unfortunately, I could not remember how to do this.

For some reason I could remember that “pi” is the ratio of circumference to diameter, but that did not help me in this case. (To be honest, it has never helped me.) But addition had leaked out of my brain, along with subtraction, multiplication, long division, the “cosine,” the Smoot-Hawley tariff, and most of the other things I learned in school, although of course my brain has carefully preserved the following jingle for Brylcreem hair ointment:

   Brylcreem, a little dab'll do ya.
   Brylcreem, you'll look so debonair.
   But watch out, the gals'll all pursue ya.
   They'll love to get their fingers in your hair!

Which is a total lie: Touching Brylcreemed hair is like sticking your hand into the nostril of a sick pig. But I digress. My point is that I finally gave up on adding my numbers and asked the bank teller, who added them with a calculator, which uses tiny computer chips, which were invented during the Cold War, which we won. I am not saying this was totally because of my mathematics training; I am just saying it was a factor.

And that is why we must stress to our children how important education is. We must tell them: Study hard! Learn as much as you can! Because we, your parents, are getting stupider by the day. We're experiencing massive Brain Leakage. Soon, even the commercial jingles will be gone, and our heads will actually implode. Before that happens, we need to get out of the driver's seat, and turn the wheel over to you, the younger generation.

Don't ask us what we did with the keys.

June 18, 1989

A major recreational activity for American tourists is attempting to mentally convert everything to U.S. money despite the fact that they possess – study after study has shown this – the mathematical aptitude of cheese.

November 5, 1989

When the hunters were out hurling spears into mastodons, were there also prehistoric guys watching from the hills, drinking prehistoric beer, eating really bad prehistoric hot dogs and shouting “We're No. 1!” but not understanding what it meant because this was before the development of mathematics?

April 28, 1991

In a recent study done by the American Association of Recent Studies, 74 percent of U.S. high school students – nearly half – were unable to solve the following problem:

“While traveling to their high school graduation ceremony, Bill and Bob decide to fill their undershorts with Cheez Whiz. If Bill wears a size 32 brief and Bob wears a 40, and Cheez Whiz comes in an 8-ounce jar, how many times do you think these boys will have to repeat their senior year?”

Here is the ironic thing: America produces “smart” bombs, while Europe and Japan do not; yet our young people don't know the answers to test questions that are child's play for European and Japanese students. What should be done about this? The American Council of Mathematicians, after a lengthy study of this problem, recently proposed this solution: “We tell Europe and Japan to give us the test answers, and if they don't, we drop the bombs on them.”

Those mathematicians! Still bitter about not having prom dates! Seriously, though, this nation is a far cry from the America of the 1950s, when I was a student and we were No. 1 in math and science, constantly astounding the world with technical innovations such as color television, crunchy peanut butter and Sputnik. What was our secret? How did we learn so much?

The answer is that, back then, math was taught by what professional educators refer to as: The Noogie Method. At least this was the method used by Mr. O'Regan, a large man who taught me the times tables. Mr. O'Regan would stand directly behind you and yell: “NINE TIMES SEVEN!” And if you didn't answer immediately, Mr. O'Regan would give you a noogie. You can easily identify us former O'Regan students, because we have dents in our skulls large enough for chipmunks to nest in. Some of us also have facial tics: These were caused by algebra, which was taught by Mr. Schofield, using the Thrown Blackboard Eraser Method. But the point is that these systems worked: To this day, I can instantly remember that nine times seven is around 50.

It's good that I remember my math training, because I can help my son with his homework. He'll be sitting at the kitchen table, slaving over one of those horrible pages full of long-division problems, having trouble, and I'll say, “You know, Robert, this may seem difficult and boring now, but you're learning a skill that you'll probably never use again.” If more parents would take the time to show this kind of concern, we Americans could “stand tall” again, instead of being a lazy, sloppy nation where – prepare to be shocked – some newspaper columnists, rather than doing research, will simply make up the name of the secretary of education.

December 22, 1991

A sport like this does not determine who is No. 1 in the nation by some easy, logical, obvious, namby-pamby Mister-Mathematics-Professor method such as having the two teams actually play on the same football field simultaneously and seeing who gets the most total points. A sport like this determines the No. 1 team by taking polls.

August 22, 1993

Seriously, young people, I have some important back-to-school advice for you, and I can boil it down to four simple words: “Study your mathematics.”

I say this in light of a recent and alarming Associated Press story that said three out of every four high school students – nearly 50 percent-leave school without an adequate understanding of mathematics.

Frankly, I am not surprised. “How,” I am constantly asking myself, “can we expect today's young people to understand mathematics when so many of them can't even ponit their baseball caps in the right direction?”

I am constantly seeing young people with the bills of their baseball caps pointing BACKWARD. This makes no sense, young people! If you examine your cap closely, you will note that it has a piece sticking out the front, called a bill.

The purpose of the bill is to keep sun off your face, which, unless your parents did a great many drugs in the '60s (Ask them about it!), is located on the FRONT of your head.

Wearing your cap backward is like wearing sunglasses on the back of your head or wearing a hearing aid in your nose. (Perhaps you young people are doing this, too. Uncle Dave doesn't want to know.)

So to summarize what we've learned: “FRONT of cap goes on FRONT of head.” Got it, young people? Let's all strive to do better in the coming school year!

We also need to think about getting these math scores up. A shocking number of you young people are unable to solve even basic math problems such as the following:

A customer walks into a fast-food restaurant, orders two hamburgers costing $2 apiece, then hands you a $5 bill. How much change should you give him?

a. $2
b. $3
c. None, because the question doesn't say you WORK there. You could just take the money and run away.

The correct answer, of course, is that you should give the customer:
d. Whatever the computerized cash register says, even if it's $154,789.62.

You young people must learn to handle basic mathematical concepts such as this if you hope to become a smug and complacent older person such as myself.

I was fortunate enough to receive an excellent mathematical foundation at Pleasantville High School as a member of the Class of 196.5 Billion Years Ago.

There I studied math under Mr. Solin, who in my senior year tried to teach us calculus (from the ancient Greek words “calc,” meaning “the study of,” and “ulus,” meaning “something only Mr. Solin could understand”).

Mr. Solin was an excellent teacher. Although the subject was dry, he kept the class's attention riveted on him from the moment the bell rang until the moment, several minutes later, when a girls' gym class walked past the classroom windows every single day, causing male students' heads to rotate 90 mathematical degrees in unison, like elves in a motorized Christmas yard display.

During those brief periods when we were facing Mr. Solin, we got a solid foundation in mathematics, learning many important mathematical concepts that we still use in our professional lives as employees of top U.S. corporations.

A good example is the mathematical concept of “9,” which we use almost daily to get an outside line on our corporate phones so we can order Chinese food, place bets, call 1-900-BOSOMS and perform all the vital employee functions that make our economy what it is today.

You young people deserve to have the same advantages, which is why I was so pleased to learn in the newspaper story that some professors have gotten a $6 million federal grant to develop new ways to teach math to high school students.

The professors know this will be a challenge. One of them is quoted as saying, “There is a mentality in this country that mathematics is something a few nerds out there do, and if you don't understand mathematics, it's OK – you don't need it.”

This is a bad mentality, young people. There's nothing “nerdy” about mathematics. Contrary to their image as a bunch of out-of-it, huge-butted Far Side professor dweebs who spend all day staring at incomprehensible symbols on a blackboard while piles of dandruff form around their ankles, today's top mathematicians are exciting, dynamic and glamorous individuals who are working to solve some of the most fascinating and challenging problems facing the human race today (“Let's see, at $2.98 apiece, with a $6 million federal grant we could buy . . . WHOA! That's 2,013,422.82 pocket protectors!”).

So come on, young people! Get in on the action!

Work hard in math this year, and remember: If some muscle-bound Neanderthal bullies corner you in the bathroom and call you a “nerd,” you just look them in the eye and say, “Oh, yeah? Why don't you big jerks . . . LET GO! HEY! DON'T PUT MY HEAD IN THE TOILET! HEY!”

And tell them that goes double for your Uncle Dave.

June 5, 1994

I constantly see evidence that Americans do not understand basic scientific principles. For example, the great mathematician and dead person Sir Isaac Newton (who also invented gravity) proved in 1583 that, no matter how hard you push, you cannot fit an object into an airplane overhead storage compartment if the object is way bigger than the compartment. Americans still do not understand this.

March 16, 1997

Later on Newton also invented calculus, which is defined as “the branch of mathematics that is so scary it causes everybody to stop studying mathematics.” That's the whole POINT of calculus. At colleges and universities, on the first day of calculus class, the professors go to the board and write huge incomprehensible “equations” that they make up right on the spot, knowing that this will cause all the students to drop the course and never return to the mathematics building again. This frees the professors to spend the rest of the semester playing cards and regaling one another with hilarious stories about the “mathematical symbols” they've invented over the years. (“Remember the time Professor Hinkwattle drew a 'cosine derivative' that was actually a picture of a squid?” “Yes! Students were diving out the windows! And the classroom was on the fourth floor!”)

January 2, 2000

But the greatest scientific advance of the century came in 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton, after watching an apple fall off a tree, wrote his famous Principia Mathematica, which states that there is a universal force, called “gravity,” inside apples. Later scientists would expand this definition to include grapefruit, but the basic concept remains unchanged to this day.

April 22, 2001

President Bush says our schools need to do a better job of teaching mathematics, and I agree with him 150 percent. Many high-school students today can't even calculate a square root! Granted, I can't calculate a square root, either, but I USED to be able to, for a period of approximately 15 minutes back in 1962. At least I THINK that was a square root. It might have been a “logarithm.”

But whatever it was, if I had to learn how to do it, these kids today should have to learn it, too. As President Bush so eloquently put it in his address to Congress: “Mathematics are one of the fundamentaries of educationalizing our youths.”

I could not have said it better with a 10-foot pole. We all need mathematics in order to solve problems that come up constantly in the “real world.”

For example, suppose four co-workers go to a restaurant, and at the end of the meal, the waiter brings a bill totaling $34.57. How much, including tip, does each person owe?

If the co-workers do not know mathematics, they will just guess at the answer and put in random amounts of money ranging from $9 to $11, unless one of them is a guy I used to work with named Art, in which case he will make a big show of studying the bill, then put in exactly $4.25.

But if the co-workers know their mathematics, they can easily come up with EXACTLY the correct answer.

They can do this using “algebra,” which was invented by the ancient Persians. (They also invented the SATs, although they got very low scores because in those days there were no pencils.) The way algebra works is, if you don't know exactly what a number is, you just call it “X.” The Persians found that this was a BIG mathematical help in solving problems:

PERSIAN WIFE (suspiciously): How much have you had to drink?

PERSIAN HUSBAND: I had “X” beers.

PERSIAN WIFE: Well, how much is THAT?

PERSIAN HUSBAND: It's a (burp) variable.

PERSIAN WIFE (not wanting to look stupid): Well, OK then.

Historical Footnote: Several years later, when the ancient Romans invented Roman numerals, and it turned out that “X” was actually equal to 10, there was BIG TROUBLE in Persia.

But getting back to the four co-workers at the restaurant: To figure out how much each person owes, they would simply use the algebraic equation AEPO 1/4 $34.57+T((( SA?)(+NSOB!)(-SITE)(H), where “AEPO” is the amount each person owes, “T” is the tip, “SA” is whether the waiter has a snotty attitude, “NSOB” is whether the waiter has a nice set of buns, “SITE” is a variable used if you think somebody in the kitchen is spitting in the entres, and H is hydrogen.

Using this equation, our four co-workers easily can calculate that each one owes exactly, let's see E carry the 7 E OK, it would probably be somewhere between $9 and $11.

So we see that algebra is a vital tool for our young people to learn. The traditional method for teaching it, of course, is to require students to solve problems developed in 1928 by the American Association of Mathematics Teachers Obsessed With Fruit. For example:

“If Billy has twice as many apples as Bobby, and Sally has seven more apples than Chester, who has one apple in each hand plus one concealed in his knickers, then how many apples does Ned have, assuming his train leaves Chicago at noon?”

The problem is that these traditional algebra problems are out of date. Today's young people are dealing with issues such as violence, drugs, sex, eating disorders, stress, low self-esteem, acne, global warming and the demise of Napster.

They don't have time to figure out how many apples Ned has. If they need to know, they will simply ASK Ned, and if he doesn't want to tell them, they will hold him upside down over the toilet until he does.

And then Ned will sue them, plus the school, plus his parents for naming him “Ned” in the first place.

Ultimately the ACLU will get the Supreme Court to declare that the number of apples a student has is protected by his constitutional right to privacy.

So what is the solution? How do we balance our children's need to learn math against the many other demands placed on them by modern life? I believe there IS a solution, one that is both simple and practical.

I call it: “X.” 

[The Braden Files]