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Cosmos, Anti-Science and the rise of the celebration of dumbness.

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For my very first job out of college I worked as an associate producer for the science radio seriesPulse of the Planet, and for my very first assignment I was sent to interview the newly appointed director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We talked about another new guy, Hale-Bopp, a recently discovered comet that eventually appeared so brightly in the sky that one night from the light-soaked streets of Manhattan I watched it blaze beside the peak of the Empire State Building. This week, 18 years later, Dr. Tyson spoke to me about comets again, though he was simultaneously talking to four million other people via the third episode of my new favorite show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey on Fox. His description of our ancestors watching comets transform the sky into omens of doom was accompanied by startlingly beautiful animation of flaming death’s heads ripping through the night.

That animation was developed and produced by my pal Kara Vallow. Kara’s a TV cartoon guru and executive producer of Family Guy and American Dad!, but I first got to know her from her blogs Teen Sleuth and The Haunted Library. A few years ago I raved about her relentless curiosity, though she’s better known for her relentless progressivism. Kara’s notorious for her readiness to rip into politicians and ‘Mericans who trade intelligence and reason for willful ignorance and self-centered asshattery–the type of people who tried to refute Cosmos’s explanation of evolution, who called the show anti-Christian leftist propaganda, and who, when the next great comet swings by, will likely have Americans digging hidey-holes to shoot AR-15s at it from behind stacks of Lunchables and Vitamin Water.

With that in mind, Kara kindly exchanged a few emails with me about the rise of anti-science.

For more:
http://www.sethmad.com/2014/03/cosmos-animation-producer-kara-vallow-talks-to-me-about-fending-off-anti-science-wackaloons/

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