One Two
One Two
[A television set with The Count from 'Sesame Street'.] The Count: One! Ah ah ah... Two! Ah ah ah... ...Many! ah ah ah... Primitive cultures develop Sesame Street.

The comic parodies Sesame Street , an American children's TV show. The Count is a character in Sesame Street who teaches counting to viewers. The Count usually laughs after counting numbers, an innocent version of the sinister laugh that is a stereotype of old Hollywood horror films. In the book One Two Three ... Infinity , the writer describes African tribes that only have words for numbers up to three and their inability to distinguish or comprehend larger numbers. The Pirahã language of Brazil was originally thought to only have numerical terms for one, two, and many, although it is now thought these words are relative terms like "few" rather than absolute terms like "one." Similarly, see Edmund Blackadder try to teach Baldrick to count beans .
In the title text Randall predicts that anthropology majors will write to complain that this view of primitive tribes is a myth no longer held true by today's anthropologists. He makes a jab at them saying they would have time to write letters to complain about things because they don't have to spend time doing real science and thus real research.
[A television set with The Count from 'Sesame Street'.] The Count: One! Ah ah ah... Two! Ah ah ah... ...Many! ah ah ah... Primitive cultures develop Sesame Street.
