Thursday, October 28, 2010

Deceiving children

Children of the world ... you are being deceived! Just as generations of children before you have been deceived! You think the sun is yellow!

Oh, the pity of it! Open any illustrated children's book. Find an illustration of children playing in the happy grass beneath a benevolent, glowing sun. Every time, that sun is colored yellow! Horrors! The sun, children, is white. Sure, kids, the sun looks yellow, or even red, late and early in the day as it sets or rises and has to shine through much more of our gunked-up atmosphere than it does from high in the sky. But sunshine actually is - we learn as we grow up if we pay attention in science classes - nothing but white light. You need a prism of some kind to find colors in it. Yet, brain-washed as you children so sadly are, you think the sun is yellow. You know enough not to stare at the noontime sun, but if you did, it would look, yes, white.

Would that were the only deception. But, sadly, children, even your eyes deceive you. It's enough to make one weep.

When the setting sun appears to be perched on the horizon - just kissing the earth - it actually has already set! Oh, the lies! It turns out the earth's atmosphere bends the sunlight, a refraction just about equal to the sun's diameter. So when, children, it looks like the sun is just ready to begin sinking under the horizon, it actually already has sunk below it! Do grownups tell you this? No! This is not right! It is not honest! Children, you are being deceived!

Children, it makes you wonder what else grownups are lying about!

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