intelligent aim

Intelligent Aim

    "We want this irrational, unproven exercise stopped, and we want it stopped now!"
    Perkins peered through his coke bottle class glasses at the angry array of torch-waving, pitchfork-toting citizenry. Perhaps he needed a new pair, because what he thought he was seeing certainly didn't seem credible.
    "Ah!" he replied at last. "I get it! You have me confused with someone else. Some irrational, unproven exercise-perpetrating fellow. I'm just teaching young Amy here how to drive."
    "Hhhhhhh!" gasped the small group of people who had blocked his further progress along the street. Their collective breath intake produced a temporary vacuum that made Perkins a bit light headed.
    "What did I say?" Perkins looked at Amy. Amy shrugged her shoulders.
    One of the citizens stepped forward.
    "You are corrupting the youth with your unproven theories of ... so-called 'driving,'" he said. "We are proponents of the rational explanation of vehicular motion: Intelligent Aim."
    "I don't understand," said Perkins. "I'm just teaching Amy how to drive. It's a time honored, effective procedure. You know, turn the key, press the gas pedal with your foot, watch where you're going, obey the traffic laws, share the road, and all that."
    "Ah," countered the Intelligent Aim advocate, "but traffic patterns are too complex for individual drivers to negotiate successfully. There must be a Master Traffic Plan that guides everyone to their destinations. That's Intelligent Aim."
    "Uh, I still don't understand," said Perkins. "You want to replace driver's ed with this ... Intelligent Aim stuff?"
    "Not yet," said the IA advocate. "You are to be allowed to continue to teach driving. For now. But Intelligent Aim must have equal time. Not everyone has been hoodwinked yet, so we're selling this as a scientific debate. For now."
    "Your campaign seems to have an almost religious fervor behind it," remarked Perkins. "Would you explain that?"
    "Nope! Nope!" countered the IA guy quickly. "Not a thing religious about it! Nosirree! Completely scientific!"
    "And what, exactly, would you teach ... for half of a student's time?"
    "Simple," said the IA advocate. "So-called 'driving' is a hodge-podge of unproven methods, and you can't possibly handle the complexity of traffic by such methods. Therefore, there must be a Master Traffic Plan, and Intelligent Aim must guide our cars."
    "So ... you don't actually teach anything," interjected Amy. "You just criticize driving instruction."
    "See how you have misled the child?" the IA advocate smiled unctuously, patting Amy's head. "This is just the sort of misunderstanding we have to correct."
    "What misunderstanding?" snapped Perkins irritably.
    "I'll just take a bath when I get home," said Amy.
   "When I get done teaching Amy how to drive," said Perkins, "she will go to the DMV and take a driving test, which will demonstrate that she knows how to drive. How will the DMV test your Intelligent Aim?"
    "Knowing that you're wrong, and I'm right is the test," replied the IA guy.
    "But if you take up half of the time with your ... intelligent ... whatever, I'll never learn how to drive!" complained Amy.
    "Ah!" smiled the IA guy. "Now you understand!"