My wife and I visited the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in August (aka the Permian Sea). I mention this because evolution, and the need to deny it, is in the news again.

One of the Republican up-and-comers,  Marco Rubio  was asked how old the earth is. He answered that he didn't know, and that it might have been created in seven days.

The scary fact is that he is not alone. According to the NPR article, forty-six percent, or nearly half, of Americans have a nonscientific belief about the creation of our Universe. My question is why? Why does your God deny you salvation because you accept some proven facts? But wait, it gets worse.

2001: A Space Odyssey was boring. There I said it. I know you were thinking it. After the chimpanzees smash bones to Thus Spoke Zarathustra there is about a hundred minutes of nothing until we get to, "Open the pod bay doors," followed by a light show that requires the high of psychedelics to be appreciated.

That 2001 was boring did not stop it from becoming the most influential film made in my lifetime. The accurate (1968 accurate) depiction of space flight with ships matching rotation and a Pan Am stewardesses clomping along in gravity boots were a needed reality check to Star Trek's Enterprise and Lost in Space's Styrofoam sets.

Whenever my monopoly-controlled internet connection fails, and Alexa cannot turn off my bedroom lights or tell me the time, I am reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's vision and that glowing eye of Hal. (Hal is not a Wake Word for Alexa because the false positives generated by a single syllable sound).

(Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL died on the day I started writing this post. Like Arthur C. Clarke, his best work was not 2001: A Space Odyssey. For 32 seasons Douglas Rain played Shakespeare's most intriguing and iconic characters for Stratford Festival, but HAL is how he will be remembered).