Visit: A Tale of Two Movies
Weather: It got down to 19 degrees(F) last night. "Froze my hose!" -- outside, of course.
Charity Alert: The Hunger Site and five others -- give with just a few clicks!
In The Community: The final Honors Symposium for 2005 was Public Opinion and the Media: Looking Glasses or Fun House Mirrors? by Dr. Christopher Muste, an adjunct professor at the University of Montana and poll analyst for the Washington Post.
He pointed out good news/bad news aspects of different issues. One instance showed that the general public's once-positive opinion towards "privatizing" Social Security has become opposition as facts, figures, and debates have become common in the mass media. Another sad instance shows that a majority of Bush supporters believe that experts think that 1) Iraq had WMD, and 2)Iraq was involved in 9/11.
Real experts agree that neither of the above were true at all, nor was there any evidence to support them, but the public has been slow in reversing their misconceptions.
Chris Muste didn't say it, but lies can have an awfully long life when they are stated as facts. He was a genial speaker, and very magnanimous -- even when speaking of people like William Kristol -- a blackguard who would just as soon see most U.S. citizens working behind barbed wire in prison camps, so long as he prospers by dealing self-serving propaganda for the world's amoral masters-in-training.
Media Watch: We taped a show about "Punk Rock" off of PBS last night. Whatever musical movement it represents started thity years ago. My sister chatted with the leader of the "Circle Jerks" at a gig in Salt Lake last month, while her son was lurking outside the 21-and-over "Velvet Glove" club without her knowledge. (He was glad to talk to someone near his own age for a change.)
I re-read Isaac Asimov's View From A Height, and by coincidence, neutrinos were back in the news forty years after I read about them in this book. Fermi Lab Experiments
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