if you click through to the linked Vannevar Bush article and scroll down there are a bunch of vintage ads around the prose that are kind of interesting. And some of the predictions have been well overtaken by events!
It is better stated that: since there are "so many more" irrational numbers than rational ones, if you were to pick a real number "at random," the probability that it would be rational is zero. The "many more" and "random" ideas are made precise in measure theory (and elsewhere).
When I was in high school my desk had a graffiti carved in it of the three most important numbers: 69, 2112, and 714. 2112 was the Rush album (which I liked), and I had to ask a friend about 714: he explained that it was the number printed on Quaalude pills (as if everybody knew that).
My own thought (I know there is a great deal of room for disagreement) is that the J6 crowd saw no consequences for the attempts to obstruct the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation and thought the rules had changed. One of them was shot in the neck, many others are still incarcerated two years later despite a clear constitutional right to a speedy trial. I'd rather the Capitol Police had just cracked heads at this point. You might think one protest was more justified than another, but the differential in response works to dissolve confidence in the fair application of the law. At any rate, the participants in J6 have been broken, so you're not likely to seen that again...yet I feel we could get another riot season provoked by police brutality at any time.
There is garbage and tent encampments thoughout much of my city, and I am told that nothing can be done about it. I've been invited to engrave something on my catalytic converter. I wonder what good that would do.
> Although widely held, the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure in the world is demonstrably false. This is not least because merit itself is, in large part, the result of luck. Talent and the capacity for determined effort, sometimes called ‘grit’, depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing.
Heads-I-win, tails-you-lose, or: since merit is mostly luck, you might as well choose your students at random. Show us how it works, Princeton!