Have The Simpsons been lying all along?
It is recognised as the world’s longest running sitcom and has millions of fans around the world, but have The Simpsons been lying to us all along?
The animated series, now in its 26th season, pokes fun at middle-class America and parodies US culture and society, but blogging astronomer Phil Plait has suggested they may not be American at all.
In his blog Bad Astronomy, Plait suggests The Simpsons is actually set in the southern hemisphere, citing a scene from a recently-aired episode where the points on the crescent moon seen from the family home point to the right.
He argues that in the northern hemisphere the tips of the waxing crescent moon point to the left, so the Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield could not be in the United States at all.
“I don’t even know how to react to this information. It’s as if … my whole world has been turned upside down,” Plait wrote on his blog.
Of course for this to be the case, we would have to ignore the episode where the family travels Down Under after Bart makes an expensive reverse-charge call to Australia asking if the water in the toilet spins the other way in the southern hemisphere.
So many questions left unanswered!
But let’s just remember it is just a cartoon and there is every chance the animators were simply not that interested in which way the moon was pointing.
News break – February 24
