Contrary to belief,
one is
not the loneliest number

Saddam Hussein was recently re-elected as Iraq's Big Whatever with 81% of the vote. When you consider that he was running unopposed, that's just pathetic. Any despot worth his salt would simply have eliminated those 19% who didn't vote for him (or wrote in Perot), bringing his total back up to a 100. If he wanted to save on nerve gas, he could have declared that 81 is now officially 100. Who's going to dispute his math? Nobody in Iraq, that's for sure.

I can't solve the arcane mysteries of higher mathematics, I can only take consolation in the knowledge that numbers, like everything else, are relative (except to the IRS). And numbers can be factors in more than the whims of tyrants.

Last month's Million Man March certainly brought this home. In his speech at that singular event, Louis "White-people-are-devils-but-hey-let's-talk-about-it" Farrakhan told us that the statues in the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials were each 19 feet high. Moreover, he intoned, Lincoln was the 16th president and Jefferson the 3rd. Add them up and what do you get? 19.

What could this possibly mean?

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