Stupid is the New Smart*

A hundred years from now, scholars will refer to this as The Benightenment, a period in American History during which fundamentalist Christians led a headlong retreat from reason, empiricism and intellectual integrity. As The New York Times reports today in A New Test for Imax: The Bible vs. the Volcano:

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject — or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth — fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

No editorial gloss I could put on this would be sufficient to express my outrage and sadness about the triumph of the small, fearful and stupid of this country over the values of The Enlightenment. We are (ostensibly) fighting fundamentalism abroad while embracing here at home.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie [Volcanoes] after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, “some people said it was blasphemous.”

Blasphemous. That’s now the standard for science in the United States. It’s the New American Century in one word: a courageous leap backward into ignorance and superstition.

I’d say the last thinking adult to leave the country should turn out the lights, but they’ve already been extinguished.

* I wish I could take credit for this title, but it’s shamelessly stolen from ‘s brilliant song of the same name. You can find some of his other songs available for free download at his Music Page.

Travelin’ Man

These memes courtesy of :

Countries to which I’ve traveled:

create your own visited countries map

States to which I’ve traveled:

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

States in which I’ve lived (Note: I’ve spent months at a time in Arizona, Rhode Island and Maryland, but for this meme I didn’t consider any period shorter than a year as having lived someplace):

create your own visited states map

Writer of Light

I was surfing my friends list, and I came upon ‘s very funny riff on the works of artist Thomas Kincade. Kincade’s latest outrage is a series of inspirational scenes painted on the side of model 18-wheelers. If ever there was Red State kitsch ripe for lampooning, this is it. But, oddly enough, I felt moved to come at least partly to Kincade’s defense in ‘s blog. And because he gave me the chance to say something I’ve been thinking about for a while, with uncharacteristic brevity, I reposted it here.

You might want to read ‘s original post first.

Here’s my response:

Well, I was impressed by god’s 18-wheeler; I previously thought of Kincade as just a painter of treacly cottage scenes.

But you know, I understand his appeal. As a teenager and young man I immersed myself in Lord of the Rings and other fantastic fiction, at least in part to spend time in those idealized worlds. Kincade’s work is the visual expression of that impulse, I think.

I worked at an art college for six years, and I saw a lot of mediocre art in that period. You have to say this for Kincade: he had good technical skills; his works are representational and comprehensible; and his works evoke emotion.

Of course most of his stuff is saccharine, and he’s not breaking any new artistic ground (die-cast truck decoration notwithstanding). He does one thing, and he does it competently. I would say he’s a cottage industry (pun most definitely intended), but he’s more like a global conglomerate now, and it’s easy to dismiss his mass-produced kitsch on those grounds. But I have at least as much respect for him as I do for the Billyburg hipsters who are scrounging street trash for found-object art in willfully obscure, self-referential gallery shows that six people will see (four of whom are relatives and lovers of the artist).

P.S.—Henceforth you shall refer to me as Bob Howe, Writer of Light.