The delightful Science Creative Quarterly is giving away a new iPod to anybody who links to the truth before December 13, 2007. I’ll now link to the truth because I want to win (the battery on my current iPod Mini lasts about as long as a Big Mac in front of Michael Moore) , but more because I’m a huge fan of the truth.

The SCQ’s goal is to have the truth come up as the #1 Google search for keyword “truth.” (As of this morning, the conspiratorial 911truth.org is ranked #7, which turns my stomach a bit…) This tactic, sometimes called “Google bombing” or “viral marketing,” works because the Google ranking algorithm puts great weight in how frequently a site is linked by other sites (and especially high-traffic sites).

The truth, for those who have not yet clicked away from this page, is a list of 15 declarative sentences that I wish all of our teachers and policy makers recognized as true. I won’t list them all here, because I want you to find truth yourself. But my top three:

  • Wilco is good, sometimes exceptional, but often inconsequential. (see the Wilco effect)
  • It’s not all relative.
  • Science, for better or for worse, is all around.