I've been lazy about blogging this week because we're on vacation.
Last evening, we all went to the Shakespeare Festival over on the University of Colorado campus to see an interesting performance of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers." The dialogue was straight from Dumas, the costumes and set were of the period, but the music . . . was all from the 1960's and 1970's. It was rather jarring to watch a 1600's-era swordfight set to "Purple Haze" and witness D'Artangan's rejection to the Stones' "Satisfaction."
But, mostly, it worked. Anachronisms like these in the arts can be entertaining at least.
Not so amusing are anachronistic elections . . .
Incumbent creationism advocate Kathy Martin eked out a 4% victory over pro-science candidate Bill Pannbacker in yesterday's Republican primary for the District 6 seat on the Kansas State Board of Education. Martin is best known for her dogged rejection of evolution and sex education, and for her promotion of vouchers and prayer in school.
It's been noted by Fareed Zakaria in "The Post-American World" that
The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.
While we fight the battle to make sure REAL science gets taught in U.S. classrooms, other countries have moved on.
For our country's future, that's a dangerous anachronism.
Added in edit: Josh Rosenau has a good summary of the election outcomes.
posted by Cheryl Shepherd-Adams
