Miasma theory was one of those things you sometimes hear about in history and they sound so screwy you almost can't believe people actually thought it was real.
So, the area of this parallelogram is sort of a screwy roundabout way to describe the vector's y-coordinate; it's a wacky way to talk about coordinates, but run with me.
所以, 这个平行四边形的面积是一种奇怪的绕圈子的方式描述向量的 y 坐标;这是一种很奇葩的方式谈论坐标, 但请跟着我的思路走。
Fred had even mentioned his military service in previous interviews with police, referenced killing people in Vietnam as a reason why his polygraph was screwy.