This pseudo-"scientific" way to cut a cake is the sort of thing that makes people think scientists are idiots

Is this what happens when you've never had a birthday party?

by Ken

"Is This A Scientifically Superior Way To Cut Cake?" asks Elite Truong on WNYC's "Sporkful" blog ("It's Not for Foodies, It's for Eaters"), and while I undoubtedly wouldn't have seen this crackpot video if not for the blogpost, which can therefore be held to task for actually giving this sad person the attention he seems to crave so desperately, now that I have seen it, I have to say I'm glad someone blew the whistle on it.

This Alex Bellos is supposed to be a mathematician, which grieves me, because I have always thought highly of mathematicians, who in my experience have seemed highly sensible and creative people. In this video he dredges up an old crackpot idea about cake-cutting, and at every step shows himself to be possibly the stupidest and most clueless as well as most pretentious twit on the planet. For cripes' sake!

In this video, Alex -- if that's his real name (and if I were Alex, I would be doing everything possible to conceal my identity, because it's just a matter of time before the torch-bearing villagers descend on him) -- claims to have discovered a problem with the normal way of cutting a round birthday cake, which is to cut triangular slices from the center of the cake. The problem, he says, is that if you cut one slice out and then put the cake in the refrigerator overnight, the cut-away sides get dry.

Already I think we can guess at one of the sources of Alex's problem. He is such a pathetic loser that he has never had a birthday cake -- or, perhaps sadder still, has bought himself a birthday cake and, since clearly no one would be caught dead eating birthday cake with a yutz like him, got it in his head that birthday cakes are eaten at a rate of one slice per day, since apparently his was. Is it any wonder that he has no clue as to the actual behavior of birthday cakes in the real world?

The scientifically arrived-at solution to this "problem," as you'll learn from the video, is to cut out a long sliver along the diameter of the cake, producing an alleged "slice" of cake that has never been, and will never be, served at any birthday party attended by people of at least low-to-medium intelligence. Left unaddressed is the question of how two of these alleged "slices" of cake might be cut in the apparently unlike event that more than one person was on hand to celebrate the alleged birthday.

The alleged genius of this method is shown when, after the alleged slice has been cut and removed, the remaining severed halves of the cake are rudely shoved together. One additional precaution has to be taken, however. After all, whereas in the traditional cake-cutting method only the two edges of the removed first slice are exposed to the air (and remember, only one supposedly "dry" edge is going to be part of the next slice, which is the whole problem this madness claims to be counteracting), now two entire nearly full-diameter surfaces are exposed. The "solution"? Put a rubber band around the shoved-together cake halves!

For the Day 2 slice, Alex crosscuts a perpendicular diametrical sliver, which produces not a "slice" but two half-"slices." Yum! And he proposes that the procedure continue for each succeeding single-person no-longer-birthday celebration, until there's nothing left but a cake "center," which, it must be said, will be abundantly frosted.

In the "Sporkful" blogpost, Elite Truong writes:

Eater Azara Golston of Denver strongly objects to this method and emailed us, attempting to debunk Bellos' layers of madness: “One of the best things about cutting a round cake is that the cake-to-frosting ratio will always be consistent,” she writes. “In the case of the proposed method, the ratio would be absolute chaos.”

Golston also opposes rubber-banding cakes together unless the cake is covered in fondant or sugar-paste. “Trying to rubber band a buttercream cake would end in tragedy,” she argues.

Well, yes! And yes! Obviously! These are things that poor Alex, in his perpetually friendless and likely cakeless existence, apparently has no way of knowing about. I suppose pity rather than scorn is called for. But it's hard to shift smoothly into sympathy gear when you're being told by such a dumb-ass that you're a dumb-ass for cutting a cake the obvious way.

I DON'T HATE THE ENGLISH, BUT --

One last thought. If you've watched the clip, you'll have noticed that Alex is conspicuously English. I don't say this in an automatically critical way. There are many English people past and present for whom I have great admiration and/or fondness. But boy, have we come a long way from the days when we Americans assumed that anything side to us in an English accent was consummately wise. Just listen to what silliness can be dished out in an English accent.

Which leads you to wonder, reflecting on the events of the past week, whether the course of history might have been altered if the Scottish nationalist partisans, in approaching Thursday's vote on separation from the United Kingdom, had thought to do everything possible to saturate their fellow Scots with this video. Who in his/her right mind wouldn't have jumped at the obvious strategy of voting "yes" just to formally dissociate him/herself from this yo-yo?

Also, if you've watched the clip, you'll have noticed that Alex -- if, again, that's really his name -- has had a book published. You'll have noted too that it has different names in the U.K. and the U.S. They're both pretty stupid names, but then, wouldn't you assume it's a pretty stupid book?

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