I'm sitting here punching on the keyboard, in another room, my old lady is watching a cheesy vampire flick on the Sci-Fi channel in the next room. I catch a snippet of dialogue, something about how they know the Devil is on furlough from Hell because they had a lunar eclipse only six days after a solar eclipse. Perhaps the average member of the booboisie can be forgiven for not knowing that this is flat impossible, but any grade school kid who knows what causes eclipses and that the moon takes a month to orbit the earth should catch this. Certainly, people who watch and work for the Sci-Fi channel should know this.

What really pisses me off is not that this is scientific nonsense, after all, we are watching a film about vampires, right? Willing suspension of disbelief and all that. No, what steams me is that the general level of ignorance about even the simplest and most fundamental things in the world is so widespread, and that it is so unchallenged. I find it inconceivable that anyone capable of putting together a motion picture (even a dreadful one) has so little understanding of science and nature that something like this could slip through. Especially since it is totally unnecessary to move the plot. It is either phenomenal ignorance, or a profound contempt for the audience. Among all the artists, writers, technicians, managers and businessmen involved in making a movie and putting it on TV, is there not one who can raise his hand and say "Cut!".

College-educated people today cannot tell you the difference between a galaxy and a solar system, or an element and a compound. They can't explain why we have seasons, or how we know atoms exist, or that there is no Dark Side of the Moon. But they are expected to be polite and accept astrology, Feng Shue, acupuncture, intelligent design, the Bermuda Triangle, Face on Mars, and a thousand other superstions and inaninities foisted on us by commercial culture and popular media. Everyone knows about Gilligan's Island, but most adults can't read a compass.

There has always been ignorance in the world, but I can't think of any place or period in history where it has been treasured and honored the way it is here and now. Knowing stuff just ain't kewl.