"The incessant need to be correct is not a virtue."

There is no field that surfing’s renaissance man Kelly Slater doesn’t expert. He’s smarter than most doctors, wiser than historically inaccurate trolls what with his Chinese girlfriend bonafides, a master of math, or maths if the reader finds him(her)self Australian. Yes, the Pipe Masters is currently rounding into its final heat but who cares?

Not me.

I care about the equation 60 ÷ 5 (7 – 4) =

It just so happened to appear on The Tinder Blog, a meme account, with the caption “What’s the answer?? We beefing hard about this in group chat.”

As it also just so happens, I am a pre-K through 5th grade math(s) teacher having accepted the role of “Senior Math(s) Faculty” for a private school consisting of my child and my friends’ children. I failed abysmally at the subject through my own education and figured I could right wrongs.

In any case, Slater jumped straight into the comments with a searing comment, penning, “Amazing confidence in wrong answers here, even from math teachers. It’s 4. But I suppose younger people learning common core math might be confused. Gotta handle the parenthesis first and that includes multiplication before division.”

Shockingly, the GOAT was wrong.

I worked the equation and came up with 144 though that may be wrong too.

In any other case, many came in and pointed out the 24 ÷ 2 World Surf League Champion’s fault and did he take it?

No.

He spent multiple hours arguing his case before, at the end, rolling over with a banger, declaring, “The incessant need to be correct is not a virtue. Get some rest, take the W, and have a little fun with the mistakes in life.”

Slater, wrongly, adding a comma before the “and have a little fun with the mistakes in life.”

Does he strike you as someone who heeds that poignant advice?

I hate surfing.

But what is the answer?

Gotta teach tomorrow.

The tower to rise again.

The five ringed circus of Olympic surfing’s reprise in Teahupo’o is really… something. From glee in all corners, save Filipe Toledo’s, about the show being put on at “The Place of Broken Skulls,” to talk about replacing the old wooden judging tower with a new fangled aluminum one to “testing” how ecologically friendly it would be by driving a barge over the reef, it has all been nothing if not… comical.

Oh certainly not for the blessed few who actually call Teahupo’o home. For them, and by extension surfers everywhere, this is a matter of right and wrong. Of fighting the almost un-fightable battle against greed. Well, the French organizers, yesterday, declared that work on the tower will begin, again, this week after agreements were reached with the protesting locals.

According to the Associated Press, Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris Olympics organizing committee, is pressing ahead after sorting out a smaller barge that will run between the reef instead of over it. He also agreed that the first test “went very badly.”

There was no note regarding which protesting groups agreed and what they agreed to. Hopefully everyone is satisfied but, man, I’ve got to hand it to the French Olympic committee. The folk who live down at the end of the road are about as kind as they come. Infuriating them all a very heavy lift.

Also, importantly, what does Kanoa Igarashi think?

Faire un paiement est simple comme bonjour.