Why I Hate Kenneth Eng

Ever wonder what becomes of your nightmare student, the one who's convinced he's got a mind-blowing idea, and, despite your greatest efforts, is unable to see that he is literally spouting nonsense? Well, here's a cautionary tale, ripped from today's headlines:

Kenneth Eng authored a stupid article ("Why I Hate Black People", appearing in his column in Asianweek) that caused a little tempest this past week in San Francisco. He also happens to be a science fiction author. The opening sentences of his book are absolutely priceless - if it were a parody, it would deserve an award for capturing the essence of pseudo-scientific pseudo-thought that comes from the worst possible kind of philosophy student - but it's earnestness makes it laugh-out-loud funny:

"Time is not a concept. It is a word. And like any word, it can be manupulated according to one's subjective state. Just like quantum mechanics and relativity are unified in that they require perception to create reality, every passing trice can be toiled at one's will -- or against one's will."

Here's a gem from his blog on Amazon, which indicates that he took a philosophy class at SUNY-Stonybrook (my deepest sympathies to the department):

" ...a class at the University of Stony Brook... led me to think—What if logic is an invalid premise? ...Should inductive reasoning actually be a solid basis for determining truth, then perhaps the Goldbach Conjecture, the 3x+1 procedure and every other mathematical mystery might very well be proven through repetition—NOT LOGIC. This would make logic irrelevant, which in essence, disproves logic.
Thus, it seems that logic’s antithesis would be a mathematical theory that is true yet cannot be proved true through logic."