Mark Twain once discovered to his horror that his story “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” had been hideously translated into French. He went so far as to publish the original story, the translation, and his own retranslation of the French back to English to show just how badly it had been abused. “I claim that I never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life,” he declared.

I was reminded of Twain’s experience when a reader drew my attention to a creationist attack published yeserday against an article I recently wrote for National Geographic. It is always a weirdly compelling experience to read such stuff. It’s as if my words