Cigarettes Popular in the Stone Age

Harry Clarke has a great summary of cigarette advertising as part of a series of posts on tobacco addiction and impact.

The evolution of advertising is fascinating with early promotion developing a mass market for cigarettes from nothing within 20 years at the turn of the century. The early sales pitch emphasising the development of positive associations, unbridled optimism and sex appeal, rugged Cowboys and cool French Cafes. In the last 20 years we have come full circle with the banning of cigarette advertising, anti smoking adverts and the promotion of tobacco substitutes and quit smoking products. All of this within a Century.

As a non smoker, no bad thing. In the early years of my career, smokers were definitely a larger number, not a majority. Now in my office they are a distinct minority. They have been pushed out of public spaces and marginalised. I just don't like all the cigarette stubs on the ground at the nearest point of exit from a public building. I am happy that the work environment is no longer polluted. Going to visit my boss in Singapore was a fairly unpleasant experience, not just for work reasons.

What is not so good is just as the markets for cigarettes dive in the West, they are increasing dramatically in countries like India and China, major mass markets. I wonder what themes are being used to push the cancer stick onto these populations?

Dino The Creationists Best Friend

According to the television news tonight, Creationists are creating Theme Parks in America to push their wacky views. As you can imagine, there are some strong polarised opinions. I just laugh, but what is an atheist cynic to do with such preposterous material. I was most amazed at the amount of money being poured into these projects. Don't they have better things to do with their money?

As far as I can tell the only other place where humans and dinosaurs coexisted was in The Flintstones.

That said as a gesture to balanced coverage, I did a little research and found this old article from the Los Angeles Times, which is a good summary.

A 45-foot-high concrete Apatosaurus has towered over Interstate 10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists. Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes the fact that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet.

Dinny's new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah's Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution."

The Cabazon Dinosaurs join at least half a dozen other roadside attractions nationwide that use the giant reptiles' popularity in seeking to win converts to creationism. And more are on the way.

"We're putting evolutionists on notice: We're taking the dinosaurs back," said Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a Christian group building a $25-million creationist museum in Petersburg, Ky., that's already overrun with model sauropods and velociraptors.

"They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people," he said. "Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs. That's their star."

The nation's top paleontologists find the creation theory preposterous and say children are being misled by dinosaur exhibits that take the Jurassic out of "Jurassic Park."

"Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

Tyrannosaurus rex and his gigantic brethren find themselves on both sides of the nation's renewed debate over the Earth's origins and the continuing fight over whether Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" or Genesis best explains the development of life.

Science holds that dinosaurs were the Earth's royalty for about 160 million years. Their reign ended abruptly, possibly after a meteorite smacked into the planet, but they're considered the forebears of birds.

It makes these guys seem pretty run of the mill.
Editors Note: I have made my mind up about this one.