Probably the most effective display of who Michelle Bachmann is:
Nine years ago she was combating curriculum standards that in her view strayed from Christian truth. You can see her
in a short film of a presentation she made on that topic. It's xenophobic, Enlightenment-phobic, and contemptuous of any government that's perceived to be operating on secular grounds.
She complains that mathematics would be presented as "arbitrary and man-made, contrary to common sense". She probably believes that Euclidean geometry is the only one possible and that Riemann work's on the zeta function should never be mentioned. Nor Cantor on infinity. There's a lot of mathematics that doesn't comport with common sense and a lot that is "other worldly".
Just like when Fox News strayed into science to declare that the First Law of Thermodynamics proves CO2 can't cause global warming, Bachmann's foray into mathematics exposes the
literally insane nature of the person.
posted by Quiddity at 8/12/2011 03:14:00 PM
OTOH, her intelligence is a perfect representation of an imaginary number, in that it has no counterpart in the real world.
"She complains that mathematics would be presented as "arbitrary and man-made..."
Actually, I think most mathematicians would say mathematics is not man-made. E.g., they usually don't speak of "inventing" theorems, but rather "discovering" them.
