This is our relationship to news

And for the apropos comment o' the week, that I wish I had written:

"Kids, i remember when the media used to report news. news traveled slow, so you only got some basic facts about a thing at first and then later as stories were researched and collaborated, you the fine viewing or listening audience got a finer story.

Now, as soon as 'it' happens, it's a rock thrown into the e*versal stream of consciousness. What's happening with 'it' NOW? Were experts wrong about 'it?' What does Obama/Cameron/Beck say about it? Has 'it' shown any drunken skin at an awards show? To the Googles.

Instead of being the observer of the 5 blind men with the elephant, we've become 1 billion blind men with the elephant."

The trouble with the Internet

"South Park did a decent job encapsulating a skeptics view of the Joseph Smith story, but in the main I would take Tacitus over South Park for historical accuracy, and South Park over Tacitus for poop jokes.

It's funny if you read The Annals (heh heh) of Tacitus that he's largely objective about events and other cultures, and saves all his mouth foaming for Christians. I guess Paul must have been as popular in Rome as he was with the Jerusalem church."

This is a quote taken from a rather popular Internet forum that acts as a sendup of dozens of contemporary news items. The first paragraph may be taken as strict opinion, and not subject to any meaningful comment.
The second paragraph is more interesting. The first sentence presents an opinion of Tacitus, a complete unknown to more one half of one percent of persons currently alive. It then states that Tactus is somehow historically accurate about "events and other cultures," and only irrational about Christians.
Well, someone reading this might then go and read a translation of Tacitus, or read some hideous scholarly article about Tacitus, but by and large that sentence will sit in their memory like some tiny, poisonous toad, unquestioned. In fact, Tacitus was a historian in the sense that what he said was accepted up into modern times as "historical," but some of what he says is factual, and some is just risible. In between, we have such things as his commentary on the Germans, who Tacitus chose to present as a moral model to contrast with the Rome of his own time, which he despised for its decadence and corruption.
The Germans were described as strong, simple, sturdy folk with good bedrock moral values and great integrity…in fact, superior in just about every way Tacitus could think of, except, of course, that they were barbarians.
This presentation of the Germanic tribes was taken out of its Taciturn context and was a standard reading in classrooms throughout Germany well into modern times. German youth were presented with an opinion (what was, in fact, simply whole cloth from some Roman who had never been near Germany or the Germans, except perhaps some he had run into in Rome) as if it were demonstrable historical fact.
Generations of German youth were persuaded to accept Tacitus' account as the basis for the superiority of the Germans and German culture, which was part of the foundation on which the Hohenzollern Empire built its theory that Germany was entitled to its "place in the sun," and on which the Nazis built their theories of race and world conquest.
So much for objectivity.

Science is in Intensive Care

Attempts to popularize Science and rationality as it was purveyed 30 or 40 years ago was invariably done by someone with credentials, and who approached it in a systematic manner (Martin Gardner comes to mind), and where what you learned invariably made sense in one's further readings*.
Now.....the best way to put it is that we are screwed. The popularization of Science has been taken over by movies, TV and the mass media, and there is so much that is twisted, rampantly Procrustean, or just plain wrong that there is literally nowhere to begin.
It may be that Mass Man never had any real chance of integrating Science with spirituality and a balanced view of the world, but we'll likely never find out.

*My citations here should in no way be construed as to apply any label of atheist or rationalist to me. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Taking the Pulse of the Patient

As far as the inability of the COOTWH* to govern, this Newsweek article by Mickey Kaus makes some excellent points. An appeal to common sense, and that leadership must actually involve some.......leading.

*Current Occupant Of The White House

How Can I Interpret This?

The following was recounted to me, and did not happen to me personally; I should feel myself having suffered temporary insanity if it had.

The interlocutor of the person relating the story was talking about a boy who grew up with parents who were both deaf.

He remarked, "Isn't that a wonderful way to grow up?"

Does this carry the probable meaning, that in the case of this particular boy, growing up with deaf parents enabled him to better relate to the disabled (however arguable the point), or

...does it imply that all persons would be better off being raised by parents with disabilities?

I think the first is questionable, the second preposterous, and yet I cannot escape the feeling (knowing this person only slightly) that he really believes the more global proposition to be true.

We live in a marvelous age, wandering around in our tiny hermetic worlds.

Rallies, then & now

"Do you believe, as do the many, that certain young men are corrupted by sophists, and that there are certain sophists who in a private capacity corrupt to an extent worth mentioning? Isn't it rather the very men who say this who are the biggest sophists, who educate most perfectly and who turn out young and old, men and women, just the way they want them to be?"

"But when do they do that?" he asked.

"When," I said, "many gathered together sit down in assemblies, courts, theaters, army camps, or any other common meeting of a multitude, and, with a great deal of uproar, blame some of the things said or done, and praise others, both in excess, shouting and clapping, and, besides, the rocks and the very place surrounding them echo and redouble the uproar of blame and praise. Now in such circumstances, as the saying goes, what do you suppose is the state of the young man's heart? Or what kind of private education will hold out for him and not be swept away by such blame and praise and go, borne by the flood, wherever it tends so that he'll say the same things are noble and base as they do, practice what they practice, and be such as they are?"

(Republic, 491e - 492b), translated by Allan Bloom

Is American information dead?

President Obama held a "town hall meeting" yesterday. While not inquiring as to how many people find the name ludicrous, I would be interested to know the percentage of people who believe that any -any- such things are not as staged and scripted as a movie. Does anyone believe that some 30 year old law graduate seriously and earnestly asked the President "Is the American dream dead?"

This is all quite preposterous, but the most difficult thing for me to believe is that a graduate of Princeton and some equally prestigious sounding law school (Indiana, I believe) would be enough of a dupe to participate in such a charade. Since I can't believe someone of his putative intelligence would do such a thing, I can only assume that he was performing from a memorized script.

Watching these things is more a waste of time than staring at the wall; the latter is more likely to produce thought.