Anywho. Great article. America is a strange and terrifying place.

Wes, next time you go to central PA, drop me an e-mail first. You were pretty close to my neck of the woods.

And, yes Lancaster is extremely backward. Did you know that it's actually legal there to have sex with livestock as long as it's of opposite gender?! That's actually in the law-books there!

I've never thought of Shoo-fly pie as some kind of local delicacy, though. I always thought of it as just a normal type of pie. You might find it less-overwhelming if you had a large glass of milk to go with it.

And, yes the Adam and Eve story is insane. I especially hate the Anthropocentric aspect of it. Anthropocentrism really offends me.

I have no problem with "God" per se. I think evolution makes more sense if you consider the possibility of intelligence guiding it. But, I think, pure creationism is nonsense.

I see commercials for "Sight and Sound" theaters all the time. And, this article pretty much confirmed my worst fears about them. Thanks for taking the bullet (or bullshit) for me, Wes.

this is what happens when you go to WWE Raw live and then Waffle House on a school night..

p.s. - you should remove your Pop Arena button.. - it looks like to the domain is vacant..

De: Maybe those people don't explicitly adhere to a belief that dinosaurs and man lived side by side, but a literal belief in the six-day creation pretty much entails it since it doesn't allow for millions of years of dinosaur rule prior to the creation of man. I suppose one could argue that the dinosaurs died out in a single day or that they never existed at all, but those positions are also pretty stupid.

Brian: Thanks! Though admittedly I'm not entirely fond of SC being described as a "personal" site (though I know you meant it in a positive way). I mean, some openness is good, but I do think that -- at least with this kind of site, or what I'm trying to do here -- there should be restrictions regarding just how personal things get. (Of course, certain kinds of articles warrant exceptions, but I don't think this was one of them.) When I think of a personal site, I think of something where the writer him/herself is regarded as being just as if not more important than the subject of the article -- and while that's fine for a blog, I tend to find it somewhat annoying in E/N websites.

I'm probably not explaining this terribly well (and I'm probably reading far too much into your phrasing! ), but there's a difference between the writer serving as the camera that captures a subject and the writer who insists upon jumping in front of the camera and staying there at length for no discernible reason. Not that there aren't perfectly valid reasons for inserting oneself into articles at various points -- hence the "no discernible reason" qualifier -- but I try not to do it too carelessly in my own work.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the article! These are among my favorite kinds of pieces to write.

I think the thing that bugs me about this whole evolution brouhaha is that the same folks who make the biggest stink about it are the ones who probably benefit most from it. After all, modern medicine is more or less based on the assumption of evolution being the driving force for biological change.

I would say though that their portrayal of angels as freaky-ass things is in keeping with the Bible. At least what I've read of it implies that our popular concept of "angelic" is totally off base. And heaven? Have you read Revelation? It is one freaky-ass place. Almost like a machine with all these layers of beings going through repeated motions and cries of worship. Jesus was described in it as being like a lamb with 7 eyes and 7 horns, slain. So not only is the Lord a freaky mutant goat, he's a bloody dead freaky mutant goat.

Religion is strange shit.