It was my turn to be on-call this weekend. The someone and I saw a really interesting exhibit at the Boulder-CU natural history museum, ran some errands and generally had a lazy Sunday since I was on my electronic leash.
As we were in the grocery store, I saw this magazine cover:
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. But not unexpected…
I won’t get into the political fracas about Murdoch and his ideological leanings.
What I do know is that a once great and influential magazine seems to be going the way of other schlock in our society.
What’s the harm some may ask? When we as a society tolerate such obvious garbage and malarkey, it is very easy for the people in power to constantly erode our rights, take away liberties and deceive the populace.
Carl Sagan wrote prophetically about this concept over twenty years ago in Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. When we routinely accept pseudo-science as normal and acceptable, we check our brains and do not question other things.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
This makes me incredibly sad. The Guardian has a decent write up of this story. Read it. NG can now dismiss geology, history and decency. Who will take up the good work that this magazine used to produce? Where can one go to find such beautiful work? Good work Mags.
I will have to read the Guardian article. I think of how much I read and learned be cc’d a user-pay of natgeo when I was young…. no more apparently.