Are your thoughts being controlled by rocks?

This is not crazed paranoia talking. Really. My Latin prof. in college pointed out that the root for the words "calculate" and "calculus" was the Latin word for "rock," presumably because piles of stones were used as markers in accounting. (Not, I suppose, at all unlike the beads on an abacus or Incan "talking knots.")

Understand that I have a huge respect for the power of numbers in giving our human undertakings a precision that makes our whiz-bang-gee-whiz-gizmo age possible. That being said, from time to time I find myself scratching my head over how numbers--meaning counts--meaning, ultimately, piles of counting-rocks--can drive human behavior.

Two cases-in-point from tonight:

1. Me at the gym, on the elliptical machine with the wonky heart rate monitor which varied between 64 and 170. But I couldn't stop checking it anyway.
2. My husband snagging a pack of Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookies, and backtracking up the stairs as if to return them to their box after I called, "Forty calories apiece, by the way." As if the number somehow made them even more nutritionally toxic.
   

But what's even more mind-boggling to me is the tenacity with which people choose to latch upon a number--never mind how many corrections to the metrics come along to adjust reality. Songs are now 99 cents. So are iPhone apps. The bank bailout would set us back $700 billion. Recall that invading Iraq would be a $60 billion--chump change by comparison. Or maybe you're old enough to remember when gas cracked a buck a gallon: Remember the national freakout? If not, how about the freakout at the $2/gallon price-point? That's the stuff I'm talking about. Numbers are sticky in a way that most things other than bumper-sticker slogans are not. Whether they're true or not (just like bumper-sticker slogans).

All of which really, really brasses me off, given that I've taken more than my share of Math classes. Numbers are incredibly powerful--some even give a peek into the stuff of which our world (and perhaps the Universe) is made. And to see them confected and corrupted by slimy marketers and political spin-meisters makes me want to steal the batteries from their calculators and stick them into their ears just to watch their eyes light up...and not in a good way. Grrrr.

The point is, never underestimate the power of a number once it goes viral. Then it's pretty tough to crack or wear down. Rather like a rock, wouldn't you say?