Many years ago I was on a San Francisco city bus, called the MUNI system, and it was very late at night.

It won’t surprise any of my readers from San Francisco that, before too long, a completely crazy person boarded the bus and sat right next to me.

He opened a newspaper and proceeded to quickly flip through the pages. When he came to the end, he threw the paper down on the floor of the bus in disgust and shouted with paranoid certainty, “Lies, all lies!”

I turned to him and said, “Oh, that would be a good thing.”

(I’m telling you, you haven’t lived until you get a look from a crazy person when they think they have just encountered someone crazier than they are.)

I continued,” You see, if it really was all lies in the paper, then you could read it reliably by simply believing the opposite of whatever it said. But here is the real frightening idea: Every newspaper prints exactly 50% lies and 50% truth. Now when you read a newspaper you can never know which is which and you will not know what to believe.”

This new idea so clearly disturbed the man that it actually made him get up and change seats further from me.

Yup. Just performing my public service by further frightening the already frightened.