…About the new banner, up top? I was never really satisfied with the old one, nor with the tagline. Then, I recently came across the Da Vinci quote and just had to incorporate it, somehow.

The background is actually a cropped section of a Da Vinci sketch, which I then subjected to Adobe Photoshop and messed around with the hue and saturation. No disrespect to Leonardo intended. You can see the original here, at the Metropolitan Museum’s website. It’s the one in the upper right corner, which you can click to enlarge. The caption reads:

Cataclysmic Storm Striking a Landscape with a Cavalry. Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, 1452–Cloux, 1519). Charcoal or soft black chalk reworked with pen and golden and dark brown ink, brush and brown wash, on cream-color paper smudged gray in many parts with charcoal; small traces of white gouache highlights on group at lower right; 266 x 409 mm (10 1/2 x 16 1/8 in.) maximum; lower left corner cropped. Lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Royal Library, Windsor Castle 12376. (Cat. no. 115).

Well, since my blog deals in large part with the downright insanity in politics, culture, and civil society that I witness on a daily basis, I thought “cataclysmic storm” was about the most fitting thing I could find.

Perhaps the most common criticism I get about this blog is the apparent disrespect I often show for the intelligence of others, illustrated perfectly by the Da Vinci quote. But, in reality, there is no such disrespect. My wife sometimes asks me if I think that most people are stupid, and I always answer in the affirmative. After all, I’m certainly not immune from stupidity myself, but I think the first step in becoming un-stupid is to recognize the breathtaking stupidity that begins virtually from the moment people realize that they have the ability to think. Too many people think themselves stupid. That is, they think themselves to the point of stupidity. Rather than take the time to explain exactly what I mean, I’ll let Beck do it, from a recent post that goes into a bit of the historical depth of the matter.

I’d only add that being in a state of stupidity is not the same as being unintelligent. We’re all intelligent. But the greatest stupidity of all is ignoring the facts of reality and using that intelligence to intellectualize a “reality” that does not exist. And that’s my beef with all of you.