MAR 5, 2007 - Zen & the Art of Debunkery is an essay the reading of which is indispensable to a functional education. In brief, it exposes the foibles and fallacies of the self-appointed rationalists who make a go of debunking anything that rubs their scientistic (not scientific) egoes the wrong way. Notice to debunkers: you read this essay at your peril to your own pomposity. Everyone else will have a wonderful time. Except those of us who wonder when it became acceptable for otherwise articulate and cultured people to start sentences with the word "so" - as the first sentence of this essay does? Sorry, just a pet peeve, on a par with my frustration with pundits who refer to a "piece" they've read or written somewhere. For heaven's sake, people, it's not a piece. It's an article, or an essay, or a column, or some such specific noun of that ilk. I suppose if hip-hop can get away with outright ugliness, then even the intelligentsia will be forgiven a little sloppiness in the wordcrafting department. It's one thing for the general dumbing-down of culture to pervade the pop world, but when it rears its ugly head on National Public Radio and among the literati in general, can the Apocalypse be far behind?
