Sir: In reference to yesterday’s correspondence from Dr. V. L. van Wafel (“Schools Are for Learning, Not Sports,” Letters, p. A-14), I am very much afraid that Dr. van Wafel has completely misunderstood the problem. I would like it to be understood that I wholeheartedly endorse his premise: viz., that the purpose of school is learning. However, when he goes on to give examples of the kind of learning he endorses, he fails to understand the entire basis of the modern world we live in. My son Ervin attends Blandville High School, so I am familiar with the course of instruction there, and I have been reliably informed that it does not differ in substance from the curricula in other schools in our metropolitan area, except of course the Friends school, because Quakers are nuts.

Consider, for example, the math classes Dr. van Wafel insists are so essential. What do they teach that will be needed in the real world, the world into which Ervin will be unceremoniously thrust after his education is completed? Absolutely nothing! Every day, my son Ervin walks out the door with a phone in his pocket, and that phone has a calculator app that knows all the math he will ever need. And don’t tell me he needs to know algebra or trigonometry. Algebra is just a series of puzzles where you have to guess the secret number hiding behind a letter, and that’s fine if you like that sort of thing, but you don’t find prices expressed as “2x * y” at the Aldi. And nobody even knows what trigonometry is, let alone what it does.

But what about English? Well, here’s a little secret: Ervin already speaks English, and he learned to do it before he ever got to Blandville High. So all they ever have him do in English class is read stories and write essays about them. Fine, but he can read stories on his own time if he wants to do that. And if there must be essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne, we can have AI do them. That’s why we have artificial intelligence: so nobody has to waste time writing essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I could go on about all the other classes, but they’re all useless. Spanish? We have Google Translate! Science? Everyone knows science is a left-wing conspiracy. And as for sex education, he’ll get much more up-to-date information if he just hires a prostitute.

No, the only teachers who teach anything actually useful are the coaches at Blandville High. Ervin is on the football team, so I can see the valuable life skills he brings home every day—how to use physical violence to get what you want, how to hit people where it hurts the most, and above all how to cheat and get away with it. That is the only skill that truly brings success in the real world. If you learn trigonometry, I suppose you can be a high-school math teacher. If you learn to write nice little essays about Nathaniel Hawthorne, I suppose you can stand at the entrance to the Liberty Tubes with a cardboard sign. But learn to cheat and get away with it, and you can be anything you want. Other parents tell me that the coaches in the other sports teach that same lesson, and Blandville’s enviable record in everything but lacrosse shows that they teach it well. I don’t know what’s wrong with that lacrosse coach.

So I would urge Dr. van Wafel to reconsider, not his principles, which are sound, but the application of those principles. Schools are indeed for education. They are places where our rising generation can learn the kind of ruthless dishonesty that will be necessary in any career path they take later in life. But the place where that education really takes place is the athletic field, not the classroom. The only real education our children get happens in school sports. —Sincerely, Abel Funkengast IV, President, Dubious Investments LLC.

The Ohio River Boulevard was closed for six hours yesterday afternoon when an overturned truck caused a hazardous spill involving both sides of the highway. According to police reports, the truck was bound for the Ampersand Sons warehouse in Chateau carrying one gross of Tenth Day of Christmas Gift Packs when the driver realized he was missing the Beaver Avenue exit and panicked. Swerving, he caused the truck to turn on its side and break open, releasing 1,440 lords a-leaping onto the highway. More than 150 vehicles were damaged, mostly with footprints in the hoods and roofs, but at least half a dozen windshields were kicked in. Crews from three PennDOT divisions worked with Animal Control to round up and contain the cargo. A spokesman for Ampersand Sons Department Stores referred all questions to the Upper Ohio Valley Consolidated Freight Transport Company. A spokeswoman for the Upper Ohio Valley Consolidated Freight Transport Company referred all questions to Ampersand Sons Department Stores.

Just before Thanksgiving, the entire October and November runs of Organic Hills brand Free-Range Tofurkey Dinners were voluntarily recalled by Organic Hills, LLC. A spokeswoman for the company told reporters that the “difficult decision” had been made after the company had discovered that the tofu from its suppliers did not meet the strict standards for “free-range” that Organic Hills products promise. Shockingly, the soybean plants from which the tofu was made were kept under conditions that the spokeswoman described as “amounting to nothing less than being rooted to the soil.” Customers who bought Organic Hills brand Free-Range Tofurkey may return the unused portion for a refund, or may exchange it for an equal amount of Organic Hills Broccolurkey, which the spokeswoman explained is just as good but carries no “free-range” claims.

For the first time in its history, the All-Asian Tai Chi Open in Hong Kong has been won by a member of the vegetable kingdom.

Judges awarded first prize to a prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura) in the possession of Mr. Winston Leung, following a month-long demonstration in which all the other competitors had dropped out by the third week.

Judges praised the plant’s “impeccably smooth and slow” movements, adding that the plant “demonstrates extraordinary dedication to the fundamental Tai Chi principles of flowing and deliberate action.”

Mr. Leung told reporters that he plans to spend the prize money on compost.

Sir: As a culture, we are dangerously shortsighted. We make no plans for the long term. We just waltz along, or sometimes Charleston along, whistling a carefree tune and trusting that the future will take care of itself. That is what our forefathers did before us, and look what happened. It is therefore the duty of every forward-looking citizen to point out looming catastrophes that will come crashing down on our descendants. Otherwise our civilization will march off every cliff and tumble into every crevasse.

This is why I am writing to you today: to point out that we are leaving a mess that will cause headaches and possibly indigestion and scalp itch for our children’s children. I am speaking, of course, of the matter of dates. In every way we use dates as one of the principal organizing principles of our affairs. Databases are sorted by date. Birth dates are the form of identification universally required in the health-care industry. Yet no one seems to have taken into account the fact, which one would have thought was obvious to a six-year-old, that, in only 7,975 years, the year will have five digits.

Fortunately, it is not too late. We have a little less than eight millennia to address the Y10K problem, but if we start early and put our backs into it we should be able to get the work done in time. We need to begin at once, however, because it is a titanic task. Every database on the planet must be migrated to a new system that has space for six digits. I say six because it is obvious that, if we added only one more digit, we would merely be buying ourselves a temporary reprieve.

Of course there will be pedantic types who will point out that, in 997,975 years, the year will have seven digits. But I think it is silly to worry about problems so far in the future, and we can dismiss those pedants as the cranks they are. —Sincerely, Dr. Marcus Wudge, Ph.D., Executive Director, Int’l Ass’n of Pedantic Cranks.

From 1915, a small newspaper story proving that everything Pitts­burghers say about the borough of McKees Rocks is true.

Pittsburgh Post, September 9, 1915.

Sir: I was walking on Butler Street this morning when, quite suddenly and without any warning that I had noticed, my phone screen went blank.

This was the most appalling catastrophe I could remember, although I couldn’t remember much because how could I without my phone? Suddenly the familiar real world, the world I live in every day through my phone screen, was snatched away from me and extinguished, and in place of the rational digital universe that makes sense to me, I was plunged into a nightmare realm cobbled together from primitive material parts. Human-like creatures made of some sort of meat-like substance were marching up and down the sidewalk, some rationally gazing into phone screens, but others staring straight ahead of them like beasts, as though navigating in this surreal world of flesh and dirt could be accomplished with the eyes alone, without the assistance of Gemini or Siri. Most horrifying of all, some of them appeared to be engaging in unmediated conversation, mouth to ear, without the interposition of cameras and microphones.

What a dreadful state of things! I saw colors and heard frequencies the human mind was never meant to process. Above all, the mad world I fell into was appallingly huge, with a hugeness that could never be compressed into the sane dimensions of a phone. I felt cast adrift on some kind of body of water so enormous that one could not even see the other side of it, if such a thing were possible.

Now, my terror was brief, as moments later my phone started up again, and a reassuring message appeared on the screen to say that my operating system had been updated.

But what if it had been a real failure? What if the battery had discharged completely? What if one of the internal components had failed? The universe would have been destroyed at that moment, and I would have been forced back to the animal state of poking my way through a world of material objects by instinct!

Clearly there is a weak spot in the fabric of our reality that requires reinforcement. Immediate action is essential if we are to prevent tragedy. First, and most importantly, we must take steps to make sure phone screens are no longer capable of going blank. Even the thirty seconds during which my screen was black plunged me into depths of terror that must have taken years off my life. But second, while we are strengthening our electronic infrastructure. some temporary measures must be taken. I suggest that, if it is possible for government agents to venture into the world of the material without losing their sanity, the government should undertake to drape the most terror-inspiring sights, such as the uncanny bipedal meat agglomerations, with some kind of material popover, so that they cannot be seen without deliberately tapping on them. It may require effort, but think of the consequences if the effort is not made! Any mass-blanking event in our phone population would result in a epidemic of insanity, and insanity is fun only when it is experienced through social media. We must take steps now to prevent good sane Americans from falling out of the real world into the material world, and we must do it before the insidious forces of materiality have a chance to sneak up on us. —Sincerely, Japheth22843, Facebook.

The Rev. Dr. Gug of the East Allegheny Primitive Methodist Church discovered fire Wednesday evening. He was discharged and excommunicated for heresy, and the church council has formed a search committee to begin the process of calling a new minister.