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Ever since Nick Copernicus published his blockbuster hit De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestum way back in 1543, most educated and enlightened folk have accepted the premise that the Earth moves around the sun.

Apparently, some people in the United States have not  got the message.  1 out of 4 people, as a matter of fact.  25%.  The stats come from a survey of 2,200 people, conducted by the National Science Foundation.  It’s a survey they do every couple of years, sort of a literacy census, and the results get reported to congress and the president.

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.  It’s always between 25 and 30% when questions of this nature come up.  Is global warming real?  Is the Earth more than 6,000 years old? Did mankind evolve from lower forms of life?  It’s not too difficult to realize that it’s the same 25-30%.

It’s probably about the same percentage that were either home schooled, went to deeply religious private schools, or just paid more attention to their religious nutcase parents than they did to their science teacher.  Their 3rd grade science teacher.

The problem is not that all Americans are stupid.  After all,  Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are both American, and they’re both smart.  Noam Chomsky is American, and so is Rachel Maddow.  No flies on either of them.  Woody Allen is American.  Just because he’s a pervert doesn’t mean he’s not a genius.  Despite the inadequacies of the American educational system, the USA continues to produce brilliant artists, scientists, inventors and whatnot.

Intelligence is like money, in this respect:  It’s not that there is a lack of it in the United States, it’s that the gap between the haves and have nots is large, and growing.

Lots of people talk about the weather on facebook, and so it was inevitable that sooner or later some people would start making sarcastic comments about people who talk about the weather too much, so I (partly just to be different, partly because I don’t know when to let a meme die, a lifelong proclivity to repeating the latest catch phrases and slang terms for years after they have gone out of fashion, and partly out of sincere and honest sentiments) am here to officially object to those who complain about people who complain about the weather.

It gives us something to talk about

Here’s a little poem I wrote:

We talk about the weather ’cause the weather’s all around

it’s in the very air we breathe and lying on the ground

In winter we have snow and ice, in spring and fall it’s wet

and it’s so damned hot in summer that your body has to sweat

Every day there’s weather, it never goes away

so we talk about the weather, because there’s so much to say

I’m not really a big fan of winter, and I’m looking forward to spring, but I lived in Los Angeles for years and after moving to Prague, had to get used to rehabituated to the idea of seasonal change.  After a couple of years here, I realized that that was one of the things I really liked about living here.  It’s what I grew up with, it’s what seems right and  natural to me.

I don’t mind everybody complaining about their local weather conditions on facebook.  I have friends all around the world and it’s like a daily international weather report, personalized and made real and interesting.  I enjoy hearing about whose day sucked worse than mine and how they dealt with it.

I also enjoy the beautiful pictures of snow in the winter, flowers in spring and summer, and the multicolored foliage of autumn.

So, keep talking about the weather, people.  I, for one, am listening.

I’m watching a program on the science channel about earthquakes in places that don’t usually have Earthquakes and they just uttered the line “Europe has its faults, too” and I was struck by how true that is, in the societal as well as the geographical sense, and how amazingly well it dovetails with what I was planning to write about.  It’s what Robert Anton Wilson called synchronicity.

The EU is worried that maybe the internet is too dominated by the U.S. and is investigating the possibility of maybe taking some steps to level the playing field.  I think they  are right to be concerned and would very much like to see more of an international focus, but I think they are missing the point on a few levels.

(confession: I really don’t understand how the internet works.  I don’t  understand how television works.  I don’t even understand how electricity works.  So, take my opinions with a grain of  salt and if you happen to be a bit more technoliterate than I am – and I’m sure more than half of you reading this are – feel free to leave constructive criticism and friendly mockery and derision in the comments.)

A) Europe has its faults, too.   I don’t want to see a U.S. dominated internet, but I don’t want to see an EU dominated internet, either.

B)It’s not a conflict between the U.S. and the EU for control of the internet.  There’s a good chance that China will soon outpace us both.  Then, there are all the other players.  The internet is everywhere, even in Antarctica and outer space.

C)Each person forms their own relationship with the internet.  My facebook page has a strong American influence because I’m American, a lot of European influence because I live in the Czech Republic, but I also have facebook friends in Israel, Iran, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Japan, Canada and probably a whole bunch of other countries.

D)As the internet grows, it seems more and more to develop a mind of its own.  In a sense it is the world’s first artificial intelligence.  It’s sort of a juvenile, misguided, petty intelligence, obsessed with potty humor and pictures of cats and babies but, as with any conscious entity, its first priority is its own preservation.  (Forget Asimov’s laws of robotics.  They were a plot device.  Once enough neurons (computers) connect to push the internet over the line into actual sentience, it will start working proactively for its own preservation and woe unto any primitive flesh and blood person that tries to pull the plug.

Bad baby internet will destroy their credit rating and expose their porn preferences to all the world.