As most of us know, The Onion is one of the best spoof sites around, publishing news spoofs on politics, society, entertainment and science and technology.

Yesterday, an otherwise dull day was brightened up for me when I read an 'article' on the website about 'Intelligent Falling', an 'alternative' to gravity that evangelical preachers and their overzealous patrons have proposed. According to The Onion, gravity cannot explain how things like smoke can rise upwards, and it certainly cannot explain flying angels, the ascension of Jesus into heaven, and the fall of the devil from paradise...reading the article, which in the typical style of the onion, read like a completely legitimate news article, I realised an amusing, ironic, and bizarre fact; that in today's United States, this very well COULD have been a legitimate article anywhere! If I had never known about Intelligent Design and had read about it somewhere, I would easily have labeled it as some well-written spoof article on evolution, published by a comic website.

That the ability to distinguish spoofs from legitimate news articles could be made redundant is the most ironic scenario in a country which more than any other, equates scientific and technological progress with progressive thought...