Was lazin’ around this afternoon and bumped into the first The Matrix again on one of the hundred or so channels. [Here is an important general warning about the movie, don’t Think too much when you watch it. It doesn’t make much sense. Like how come you leave a virtual phone in a trash can and the virtual bad guys can find you. What the hell is that phone about? It’s not there!! But you can forget about all that when Neo and Trinity blow up the lobby.]

Anyway, in the movie there is this world that people think is real, but it isn’t. The fake world looks like our world, except a bit cleaner. But there are bad guys that want to control folks’ minds. The real world is dark and yucky, but the people are free.

A colleague told me that she didn’t care if evolution was taught next to creationism. Her idea is that kids who live in a house that believes in evolution, will believe in evolution. And kids who live in a house that teaches creation versus evolution at home will believe that.

Hunh?

So you get to CHOOSE whether or not you believe in a set of facts. Like I don’t believe in neutrinos. I mean they don’t even have mass. Can’t be real. But I do believe in the Bat Boy, because I saw a picture in the Weekly World News. Isn’t this the way we should make sure we close that math and science gap?

Rather than develop a general understanding of the truth based on facts and the vetting of said facts by people who have actually studied them, we should just go with whatever makes us happy. If people historically thought that the world is flat or that the holocaust didn’t happen, why should they be disrupted by the actual truth? For hundreds of years, Jews and Christians believed that God made the world in seven days. So, it’s okay to teach this even if there is a bunch of evidence that contradicts this–let’s teach it because it makes people feel better.

WMD in Iraq, anyone?