Being a former politics afficionado is somewhat like being a former drunk. To an alcoholic - one nip of the devil water and before you know it, you may be rolling in the ditch with an empty bottle of Cutty Sark. To a political junkie, reading a single news story may lead to a relapse of incomprehensible proportions.

This hypothetical situation came true today after reading an [sarcasm]unbiased[/sarcasm] piece on rabble.ca I have been spurred into an angry tornado of politics, and without calling my sponsor may relapse into the life of a political junkie again. This gem of a ’story’ features such exquisitely crafted passages as:

In contrast, Harper went to the trouble of sabotaging a very low-key publishing event — an almost pathological dedication to denying climate change. But the more disturbing strategy is avoiding the actual science. This hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach is alive and well in Harper’s troubled mind.

After such a tempting passage, I must do something rash to to avert falling off the wagon into politicshood.

I have formulated a scientific theorem. It is called the Theorem of Hippie StankWriting. Created primarily for those uninterested in following daily news, it provides a method of quickly identifying ‘bandwagon journalism’ and avoiding ingesting it.

In a nutshell, it is based on a logarithmic scale with higher scores indicating greater likelihood of poor quality Journalism. The scoring system is complex, but as an example ,the following factors contribute to the total score:

# of Points Identifying Factor
5 Each occurrence beyond 3 uses of “George Bush”, “George W. Bush”, or “Stephen Harper”
5 Any sort of all seeing ‘big brother’ reference, stated or implied.
10 Mention of Haliburton.
10 Beating the dead horse of the well-known relation between the Bin Laden family and powerful Texas Oil families.
10 More than 3 references in the article to the Kyoto accord.
15 Nicknaming places with greed-implied names - i.e. “Oilberta”.
20 Any occurrence of the names “Bush” or “Harper” alone without any further clarification.
20 Absurdly claiming ‘Bush’ or ‘Harper’ (see above for combo points) caused a local or state problem. i.e. ‘Bush caused the Brooklyn nursing home to use toxic cleaners - that’s who killed those geriatrics’ or ‘Harper caused my tire to go flat’.

Again, this is only a sampling of all the factors used, but it certainly gives you an idea of the strength of my theorem. Look for it soon to be published in Science.