Adam And Eve. And Dinosaurs.

Every time I read something like Supreme Court justices hearing cases on whether it is Parveen or Prameen that is salty, or religous fanatics burning DVDs and demanding the closure of barber shops in NWFP, I shake my head. Why are people in my country so dumb? Really, there's no other word for it. They're just...dumb.

Which is why this story was such an enormous relief to me. It reminds me, if one needed reminding after the Iraq war, that Americans (and the rest of the world, no doubt) can be pretty stupid too. It details a museum opening in Kentucky. Boring, right? Well, hold on. The museum is a creationist museum, built on the principles that there is no such thing as evolution and that, well, I'll let the writer tell it.

Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall.

The museum also has a display in which prehistoric children play around near a waterfall, with dinosaurs chilling not too far away. Frankly, I cannot get over the irony that these most unscientific of opinions are being permanently enshrined in the most scientific of places - a friggin' museum.