What are you doing?

I ran into one of my old professors today and like many people who have not seen each other in a while we asked one another what we were up to.

I asked him about what he was teaching, and he cut that off and asked me point blank:

"Forget about that though. What are you doing?"

It was right about then that two thoughts came into my head. One was a screaming shallow noise machine designed to mask its quiet and powerful partner. This first thought gave all of the normal excuses:

"Looking for work."

"Working on my writing/painting/underwater basket weaving."

"Taking care of the puppy."

All of them true but useless and unspecific.

The other thought that was hiding right behind them was far more terrifying. It whispered its quiet poison into my mind:

"nothing"

It was then that Nietzsche's abyss stared back into me for it was also the moment that I realized I had been staring into it ever since I had lost my job. Or, more ominously, longer still.

Like all good questions it opened up into many more, but only two really mattered in this transcendental 'oh shit' moment: "Why?" and "What are you going to do about it?"

At this current time I don't know the answer to either one.

Conveniently by the time I got home I had come down with one of those psyche shattering migraines I am prone to and as such had a great excuse for lying curled in the fetal position in my bed. I spent the rest of my day running on automatic as my mind raced through oblivion and arrived at nowhere.

It was definitely one of those damn days.

Read until your Irony Meter detonates.

I remember back when I was not a boy scout. It was the whole of my twenty four years of life from the outside looking in and being vaguely envious of those jerks and their camping trips. But the thing that almost made me take the plunge was the idea of merit badges.

The whole concept appeals to me to this day. Reward and recognition for learning a new skill? Hot damn.

Their compliment, the Girl Scouts, do basically the same thing except for chicks since both groups have genital based discrimination policies. (There are some skills I am sure they do not want to issue merit badges for.)

So I was surprised when I read this article about a girl being given the highest honor available for teaching children about creationism, acquiring a creationist library for her church, and building a model of Noah's ark.
Now, on the surface these seem nice. Working with kids and helping your church are community service, building a model of some sort is some great arts and crafts, and talking about creationism is creative story telling. (Which if they offer a badge for story telling I am so kicking myself for not joining the scouts way back when.)

The part that had me laughing was the name of her project. Alternate Reality. I shit you not. I can only imagine this statement being delivered with a straight face, followed by beaming pride and possibly a single tear rolling down her cheek.

Which brings to light, if that is what she believes her teachings and statements are, then WHY IS SHE TEACHING THEM TO CHILDREN.
According to dictionary.com:
Alternate ( awl-ter-neyt)

1.	to interchange repeatedly and regularly with one another in time or place; rotate (usually fol. by with): Day alternates with night.

2.	to change back and forth between conditions, states, actions, etc.: He alternates between hope and despair.

3.	to take turns: My sister and I alternated in doing the dishes.

4.	Electricity. to reverse direction or sign periodically.

5.	Linguistics. to occur as a variant in alternation with another form.

Reality (ree-al-i-tee)

1.	the state or quality of being real.

2.	resemblance to what is real.

3.	a real thing or fact.

4.	real things, facts, or events taken as a whole; state of affairs: the reality of the business world; vacationing to escape reality.

5.	Philosophy. a. something that exists independently of ideas concerning it. b. something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.

6.	something that is real.

7.	something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.

This alone should bring to light that she is deriving something other than the reality we all live in and teaching it to small children. That is so many levels of not right that I don't know why it could, or would be honored in the slightest.

Then again, maybe I am being a bit harsh. I don't have all the details, so it may be a different situation all together (if so let me know). But based on what is here, I think my envy for the scouts has waned just a tad.

Um... is this thing on?

Yeah? Good.

There has been something that has been bothering me the last few days (years) and I finally drug it kicking and screaming out into public.

Why the fuck do we have ignorant people in this day and age that are using the internet? If you are using Firefox (and I assume IE and others have something comparable) there is literally a box with a capitol G in it for you to type something into and be overwhelmed with information on any given topic!

With this the case, why do we continue to see, day after day, in forum after forum, and blog after blog the same stupid old wives tales, myths, and lies propagated. It is as if... though hard to believe... people are actually remaining ignorant ON PURPOSE.

(Insert a roll of thunder and lightning searing across the black ether of night.)

Is this some sort of conspiracy? A plague that causes someone to be unable to see results or search engines? Perhaps some allergen that makes you unable to cross reference or verify claims? Or, perhaps the most nefarious, someone has tricked you into thinking you don't need to?

What exactly am I talking about? Such myths as: There being no scientific basis for evolution, that people choose to be homosexuals, that the Earth is not 4.5 billion years old give or take, or that all conflicting view points should be taught to children no matter their level of divorce from reality.

Don't worry though, there is a cure, and we can do it the hard way or the easy way.

Here is the easy way.

The hard way is actually digging through page after page of information, cross referencing materials, and actually checking for little nuggets of reality known as 'facts'.

Good luck out there in separating the wheat from the chaff. There are those in this world, believe it or not, who actually do not want to tell you the truth.