The Solar System for simpletons


Bill O’Reilly is a well known and, sadly, influential US TV pundit. He specialises in a brand of arrogant ignorance which is amusing until you realise that a lot of Americans take it as guiding principles. He recently outdid himself by claiming that tides were evidence for God. When it was pointed out to him that it’s been known for centuries that tides are driven primarily by the Moon (with a 30% or so input from the Sun) he came back with a selection of questions designed to silence his critics-

“How’d the moon get here? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the moon get here? How’d the sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it?”

Tough, tough questions. Which have all been answered, of course. Starts with a Bang gives short, coherent answers to all of O’Reilly’s questions. It’s just a shame that neither he nor the majority of his followers will bother to read them and actually learn something.

But, as a bonus, here’s a clip from The Colbert Report which was included in the post-