Stupid Gets Ridden Hard

Image credit: P. Z. Myers

So many people have used this image already, I saw no need until today.

Dealing with so much political stupidity left me longing for a simpler, less harmful form. Prof. PZ Myers provided it today, thanks to Creation "Museum" chief huckster Ken Ham. Prof. Myers and a group of students had toured the museum to, as they put it, study the opposition. Some commenters to a Ham blog article demanded Myers apologize for riding the plastic triceratops model, since there was a sign that said it was meant to be ridden only by people twelve and under. The model came with a saddle, suggesting that humans had ridden dinosaurs. Believe it or not, there are people stupid enough to believe that happened. They're "young earth" creationists, who believe the world is only 6,000 years old. Yes, I wrote that correctly; that's 6,000, 6 x 10³, not six million or six billion, either of which would be closer to the truth.

PZ goes on to explain why he didn't feel the need to apologize:

Ken Ham claims that the world, which by all objective, scientific measures is 4.5 billion years old, is actually only 6,000 years old. Scaling ages by this metric, that means that greying 52 year old geezers like me are only 36 minutes old — obviously, I was created with the appearance of age. 36 minutes is much, much less than 12 years, so I was clearly within the allowed range. What that sign really means is that you must be under 90 million scientific years to ride the dinosaur.

No Apologies

I wonder if Ham's marks customers even understand why that's funny.