If you google ‘google’, it comes up with ‘tax evading bastard billionaire world dominating monopolist scum with no social conscience or sense of civic responsibility’.

Well it should do. If it was honest. But Google’s not honest. And that’s the problem. What we should do in light of ‘tax-gate’ in which the tech-giant has condescended to pay £9.32 a week in tax on income of £785 zillion, is abandon Google. ‘Talk with our feet’. Stop using it.

But how can we? Its just impossible. Google is software heroin. Once you’ve used it you can never ever go back, never stop being a ‘user’, never revert to Yahoo or… another ‘search engine’. That’s what we used to call them; search engines. Now we don’t. We just say ‘google’. They have become the noun, the verb, the everything to do with any kind of required knowledge or information.If I need to know if I’m hungry, I google it. Taking a piss is different; I use satnav. Or sat-lav.

Meanwhile, there has emerged an issue so old, so anachronistic, so ‘done that been there’ that I didn’t even realise it was still an issue. They’re thinking of stopping teaching evolutionary theory in schools. Not because evolution has stopped. Well, maybe it has, we’ll know in another 50 thousand years. But because it might offend religious sensitivities. Whooooaaaaahhhhhh; we’ve done all that. Nineteen twenty-something, the famous (ish) Scopes trial in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee; one of those southern states with too many repeated vowels (always a bad sign). The teacher, Mr Scopes, Science 101, was ‘on trial’ for teaching evolution in the bible belt so they had a show trial to try and establish whether the terrible crime of sacrilege had occurred. He was represented by Clarence Darrow, the greatest of all American trial lawyers, with the best hat. The wonderful stage play ‘Inherit the Wind’ tells the story.

Basically, Scopes tried to introduce Evolutionary Theory into science. As approved by all right-thinking, open-minded, tolerant, good people interested in giving children an ‘education’ worthy of the word. But the forces of evil, the religious zealots, the bible-bashers, the dogmatists, the biblical literalists, the KKK, probably the NRA, Donald Trump’s grandpa, the paedophiles and a host of others from the cast of the Dukes of Hazzard, resented science for daring to challenge the literal word of ‘God’.

“YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT SHIT!” they shouted. “GOD CREATED THE WORLD IN 6 DAYS AND PLACED IN IT EVERY SINGLE CREATURE WE SEE TODAY, AS THEY ARE RIGHT NOW!!! THE WORLD IS 1004 YEARS OLD, NOT A DAY MORE!!!”

“What about all them dinosaur bones then? Whass’at all abart?”
“Ahh, God put those there too”.
“Why?”
“Because he can do whatever he wants. He’s God, for God’s sake”
“How could you form a mountain range in 1000 years?”
“Don’t question the bible!! Motherfucker!!!!”

And now we’re there again. Maybe we shouldn’t teach the Theory of Gravity in case it offends the Floatationists. Or integral calculus, because it upsets everybody.

Here we go again.

Happy Friday

A xxxx