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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, March 24, 2010 Basic Black by Arthur Black Still nutsoid after all these years The two most abundant commodities in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. -- Frank Zappa Vivienne and Knox could be forgiven for thinking they'd landed at Stupidity HQ. They came to earth a couple of summers back as twins born to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Their arrival was greeted with a $14-million inaugural nest egg lobbed in from deep right field. That's how much People magazine, in partnership with Hello, another dumbass tabloid, paid for the privilege of publishing the first, exclusive photos of the kids. Fourteen-million dollars for a one-time photo with a couple of newborns -- pretty stupid alright. But such rags are devoted to sustaining the lush groves of celebrity egos that thrive in the Hollywood Hills and stupidity is the manure that nurtures celebrity. How else to explain the continuing fascination with patent airheads like Christina Aguilera ("So where's the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?"); Don King ("He speaks English and Spanish and he's bilingual too."); and Arnold Schwarzenegger ("I think gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.")? And if that's not bummer enough for you, consider this grim stat: as of this writing Britney Spears has more than 4-million followers on Twitter. The irony is we live in a supposedly sophisticated age. People have never had easier access to the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Our libraries, museums and art galleries are open to all. We have wallto-wall radio, TV and Smart phones. The latest information on everything from aardvarks to zyzzyva is available at the punch of a Google search button. And yet...Sarah Palin. We seem to be getting actually dumber. That may not be an illusion. A University of Wisconsin anthropologist has analyzed human skulls collected from around the globe and spanning the past five millennia. His conclusion: the human brain is shrinking. According to John Hawks' data, human brains have shrivelled by about 150cubic centimetres over the past 5,000 years. That's about ten percent shrinkage of total brain mass. Professor Hawks says that's not necessarily bad news; smaller brains don't have to be punier brains. It could be simply biological streamlining at work. "Maybe we got better with smaller brains," says Hawks -- who then adds, unhelpfully: "But maybe we're getting dumber. How can we know?" Thanks, professor. Perhaps we can't nail down the human stupidity factor but we can certainly read the portentous crayon scrawls on the wall. Such as the fact that Fox News, featuring the spittleflecked ravings of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity (and, oh yes - Sarah Palin) reels in 2.6-million viewers on an average weeknight. Still, put in perspective, that's not quite as scary as it sounds. Two-and-a-half million viewers amounts to less than one percent of the American population -and we don't even get the service in most parts of Canada -- or Canuckistan, as Bill the Loon likes to refer to us. On the other hand...Andy Warhol. I note that a silkscreen of Andy's, entitled "200 OneDollar Bills," sold at public auction last fall at Sotheby's in New York. The painting is about eight-feet square and consists of a graphic representation of, er, onedollar bills. Two hundred of them, side by side, marching across the canvas like a brick wall, only green. It sold for $43.8-million USD. Ah, well. The sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens once said, "What garlic is to salad, madness is to art." I guess that goes for art collectors too. And for the forces of officialdom, come to that. While attempting to board an aircraft in Newark, New Jersey recently, Mikey Hicks was taken down by airport security. They were on to him right away because his name was on a suspected terrorist watch list. Only problem was, the Newark Mikey Hicks was an eight-year-old Cub Scout from Clifton, N.J. His mother says he's been stopped, frisked, patted down and questioned at airports since he was twoyears old. Crazy times. As Rita Mae Brown says, "One out of four people suffers from some form of nuttiness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." Donations always appreciated at the C l a r i ng t o n East Food Bank 905-987-1418