Color me shocked: Everything we in the West think we know about China’s famed Shaolin Temple dates all the way back to…the 1970s. And we have the TV show Kung Fu to thank for that.
What’s more, the former school for Secular Disciples “licenses its name to anything and everything, even including instant noodles, coffee, take-out foods, tea, car tires, beer, and cigarettes, pulling in untold volumes of cash.”
Can I admit to being a little disappointed? I generally dig Brian Dunning’s work over at Skeptoid—particularly when he’s calling B.S. on questionable legislation or Gwyneth Paltrow’s “nonsense products”—but I sometimes feel like the cold, hard light of truth, when he’s shining it on cool stuff like aliens and pyramids and the Great Kentucky Meat Shower, makes the world a little less interesting and mysterious.
As a college friend of mine used to say, “If ignorance is bliss, then stupidity must be ecstasy.”
