Currently reading: Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould, now my other favourite author of readable intellectual discourse alongside Alain de Botton. The late Gould covers an astonishing array of genuinely interesting facts and sniffs out the fascinating, often wryly amusing stories behind them. One of them, and not even the most intriguing, is that apparently 30% of Americans still believe man and dinosaurs co-existed at some point in history. Well, they’ve seen them fighting on TV and in movies. It must be true, raht Cleetus? (2% probably think Jeff Goldblum killed the last one a few years ago, just before he fought off an alien invasion with a Powerbook.)

My reactions to this were roughly in the order of: * So few? * I bet research would find a similar proportion in Britain. Civilisation is skin deep but ignorance goes to the bone(head). * Small wonder a majority accept without question that al-Qaida, Iraq and 9/11 are linked, and Bush is doing a great job of defending their interests. (In truth, it’s not that they have been linked by Bush; it’s that they are linked by Bush. Hey, Bush is the missing link! What a shame Gould isn’t here to witness this evolutionary discovery.)