Canadian teen math whiz solves intractable problem.

CC News -- Feb 6, 2005.

For most of us, balancing the family chequebook at the end of the month is the head-scratching height of our mathemetical prowess.

For a 14-year-old Calgary junior high school student, solving a 500-year-old geometry problem is "fun, not work".

Daniel Bezdek, a Grade 9 student, has won major national and local science fair awards for his efforts in unravelling a mathematical mystery first posed by German artist Albrecht Durer in the early 16th century...

While the published title of Bezdek's work may sound intimidating, the result itself is actually straightforward -- Bezdek has established that it is mathematically impossible for the U.S. Social Security system to go "bankrupt", as many prominent conservatives have claimed lately.

"I first got interested in the problem," explained Bezdek at a recent press conference, "when I was watching President Bush's State of the Union address. He said something about the Social Security system going 'bankrupt' or 'flat broke', and that struck me as kind of funny. So I asked my math teacher, Mr. Feinstein, about it and he encouraged me to look into it. Mr. Feinstein's kind of cool that way."

"Anyway," continued Bezdek, "we'd been covering some pretty neat stuff in advanced math class lately so first I applied the Poincare conjecture, but that didn't seem to do much. Next, I tried to use a modified version of the Reimann hypothesis and quadratic fields, but I kind of ran into a dead end there, too."

"Finally," said Bezdek, looking almost sheepish, "I resorted to some pretty basic arithmetic -- you know, just addition and subtraction. And the result just fell right out."

As Bezdek explained, given that the Social Security fund is continually replenished via payroll taxes, it's theoretically impossible for it to go bankrupt.

"I mean, it's kind of obvious when you think about it," said Bezdek. "As long as you have money coming in, you can't go bankrupt. It was kind of a no-brainer. You'd have to be pretty dumb not to realize that."

Most reporters in attendance quickly grasped the financial implications of Bezdek's work. However, given that there were several Fox News personnel at the event, Bezdek was forced to repeat the explanation, this time more slowly with several pictures.

The reaction from the right-wing blogosphere to Bezdek's proof wasn't long in coming. Donald Luskin, a self-proclaimed economist at National Review Online, sarcastically responded to Bezdek's work by saying, "The kid's 14, for crying out loud. 14! How can he possibly know as much as me about economics?"

When several reporters present pointed out that, based on recent writings of his, Luskin clearly knew absolutely nothing about economics, Luskin quickly changed the subject.

Several conservatives representing the right-wing website Free Republic also were quick to announce their disapproval of Bezdek's work. "How did we react?" wrote a senior freep wanker. "The same way we react to everyone who tries to present a differing point of view to us. We deleted the posting, removed the thead and barred him from posting ever again. I mean, think about it -- if we let everyone with a different opinion post here, pretty soon, we'd actually have to start considering arguments on their merits. And nobody here wants that, I'm pretty sure."

Right-wing hack and banshee Ann Coulter was more blunt when being told of Bezdek's work. "That snot-nosed, treasonous little socialist shit. We should invade his country, kill all their math teachers and convert them to Republicanism."

Finally, although no one asked him, gay, conservative ex-blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote a short piece. "Well, I've officially stopped blogging but, given the significance of Bezdek's proof, I thought I'd share with you a recent e-mail I got from an adoring fan explaining how I changed his life ..."