The Enlightenment Marches On

Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber notes with approval that more than 83% of Americans now think that interracial dating is acceptable. Now, some of you might be thinking, "Hey, that means that there's still 17% of Americans that think interracial dating is not okay." Well, yes. But everything is relative. Apparently the folks at the General Social Survey, just for kicks, decided to ask Americans to come clean about their feelings toward heliocentrism. As it turns out, about 18% of Americans are in the "Sun moves around the Earth" camp. A full 8% prudently declined to have an opinion, leaving only 74% to go along with Copernicus. (Of which, nearly three-quarters understood that it took a year for this process to unfold.) So, you take what you can get. I hope our blog didn't confuse them.