41 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Michael Crichton’s Why Speculate?
    Excerpt:

    Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)
    Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
    In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
    That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t…

    h/t Americandigest.org/sidelines

  2. Another interesting story from Breitbart.
    Leaders with Ginni Thomas: Andrew Breitbart
    What are the big stories the establishment media has refused to cover?
    http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/19/leaders-with-ginni-thomas-andrew-breitbart/2/
    Out of some 118 actual black farmers in Illinois, more 90,000 are would be black farmers that are getting $50k checks for being would be farmers, while the actual 118 farmers are not getting anything, which should be pointed out, is actually right.
    What’s wrong is, that those other more than 90,000 of would be farmers are getting money for would be farming.
    Confusing? Not if you are socialist/fascist.
    Isn’t life great in socialist paradise?

  3. “You know, like, stuff, and stuff.”
    Obama blings it:

    “I want America to have the best stuff. I don’t want to go to China and see their airports better than ours, or go to Europe and see their railroads faster than ours.”

    He’s always had a lot of big ideas about stuff:

    Obama proposed spending 200 million dollars on a Portland to Milwaukie light rail line. Milwaukie, a city in Oregon, is less than seven miles away from Portland. You can drive there in 15 minutes. It has a population of 20,000…

  10. Also from the UK Daily Mail.
    Well it has been a whole month! Just weeks after 17-day Hawaii vacation Michelle hits the slopes with daughters on Aspen ski trip
    With the economy on its knees, many American families have had to forgo their annual holiday just to make ends meet.
    But barely a month after returning from a luxury Christmas break in Hawaii Michelle Obama is on holiday again – this time at the exclusive Colorado ski resort of Aspen…
    Michelle Antoinette isn’t really happy unless others are miserable while she’s partying. (See her Food Police confiscating school kids’ lunches.)

  11. @EBD,
    I’ve pushed the “Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” myself a few times. Here are a couple of supporting quotes.
    “Everything you read in the newspaper is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you have first-hand knowledge.” Erwin Knoll
    I’ve also read that nothing shakes a person’s confidence in the media like reading a story about their home town.
    For an inside view of the media, here’s Fred Reed.
    An Oozing Of Gray Sludge, Reflections On Our Media of Communication
    “Why are the media not very good?
    In thirty years of in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness….
    This isn’t my first rodeo.
    In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant. The military reporters didn’t know the history, the weaponry, the technology, strategy, tactics, or how soldiers work. Almost none had served….
    Over the years I’ve noticed several things. First, in print publications, most reporters aren’t very smart. A few are very bright, but probably through a mistake in hiring. (The prestigious papers are exceptions, hiring Ivy League snots of the sort who viscerally dislike soldiers, cops, rural people, guns, etc.)
    I first quoted Fred here almost exactly a year ago.

  14. “Anonymous targets Toews over ‘lawful access’ bill”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
    …-
    This helps explicate the virulent hostility/death threats directed at Minister Toews.
    “The real offense in the world today is not to tell the lie, but to refuse to talk in code.”
    Minister Toews did not talk in approved left-liberal code.
    The liberal-left/libertarians are insane. Re-read Kinsella’s words again in this light. Re-read Pony Trudeau’s words.
    …-
    “Play the Game”
    “As an expression of the collective consciousness of the cultural elite, the media’s memes are nothing less than a kind of insanity; a window into an dreamscape in which everything is inverted; where ordinary people are seen as freaks and freaks are seen as paragons of sanity. This is sometimes called alienation; the average person is alien to them and they are alien to the average person.
    Someone observed that the system of political correctness was really a process of encryption. It created code words for everything so the public discourse could be sanitized while allowing every hatred to fester unseen in the settings that were, by common consent, to be left unmonitored. After all, the only way you can keep a plantation system going is to pretend it doesn’t exist.
    Within unmonitored settings people could speak their minds provided they knew how to shut their mouths when entering the public space. If you weren’t already on a plantation then you had to join one quick. Otherwise the system might leak truth.
    Thus public obsession with “racism” or the recent inordinate sensitivity to “religion” does not actually reflect some deep desire to show respect or a rooted sense of shared piety. Instead, it represented an outrage that the hypocrisy is not maintained; that the supports holding up the facade are showing.
    When former press secretary Robert Gibbs said that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum was “well over the line” for questioning President Obama’s Christian faith, was it because ‘faith’ was so important in the White House? Or was it just one more little prop to beat the other guy over the head with?
    “It’s wrong, it’s destructive and it makes it virtually impossible to solve the problems we face together as Americans,” Gibbs told me in an exclusive interview Sunday on “This Week.” “It’s just time to get rid of this mindset in our politics that if we disagree we have to question character and faith.”
    Nobody can talk about national, religion, patriotism or a personal life unless you happen to truly take it unseriously, otherwise you’re a bigot or worse, a hypocrite. But we’ll all pretend as if we cared.
    In today’s world the most oppressive regimes in the world chair UN committees on human rights, theocracies claim to be “persecuted”; racial supremacists can cry ‘discrimination’ at every turn; and billionaires proclaim themselves champions of the poor. But nobody thinks these absurdities are in the least bit strange; the focus is on what they say. For as long as they deviate not a jot or tittle from the prescribed narrative, then all is well. But once they depart the language of political correctness it is time to break out the tar and feathers. The real offense in the world today is not to tell the lie, but to refuse to talk in code.”
    http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/02/19/play-the-game/#more-20557
    Reply

  15. “EBL”
    “I’m a cow… and sometimes I write about cow related things.”
    “I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.” H. L. Mencken”
    “Sunday, February 19, 2012
    It is all Greek to me (and you too)…is this our future?”
    “A glorious civilization, now in ruins…”
    “Blogs to watch:”
    http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2012/02/it-is-all-greek-to-me-and-you-toois.html

  16. Trueman*: The Playboy of the NYSlimes.
    “*KRUGMAN: That’s right. I’ve gotten some grief for my remark that if it were announced that we faced a threat from space aliens and needed to build up to defend ourselves, we’d have full employment in a year and a half. But that’s true.”
    …-
    “The British journalist Sam Leith recently opened a review of Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis: The Biography with the following question: “Where’s Invasion of the Space Invaders? That’s what I want to know.””
    “Like most Amis fanciers, I had heard of the existence of this video game book –- the full title of which is Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addict’s Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines –- but knew very little about it. What I did know was that he dashed it off at some point during the time he was writing Money, one of the great British novels of the 1980s, and …”.
    http://www.themillions.com/2012/02/the-arcades-project-martin-amis-guide-to-classic-video-games.html
    *Trueman:
    http://www.playboy.com/magazine/playboy-interview-paul-krugman?cm_sp=WEBMA-_-MOREP02-_-playboy-interview-paul-krugman

  17. alarum !!! alarum !!! bolsheviks in our midst !!!
    reuters.com/article/2012/02/17/us-charliechaplin-idUSTRE81G28U20120217
    (well, according to senntor mccarthy)

  18. BOY, 5, lives his life as a GIRL after becoming one of the youngest ever to be diagnosed on the NHS with ‘Gender Identity Disorder:
    “His mother, Theresa Avery, 32, said Zach used to be a ‘normal’ little boy who loved Thomas the Tank Engine, but suddenly at the end of 2010, he started behaving like a girl…
    The primary school he attends in Essex has even changed the kids’ toilets to gender-neutral Unisex in support of Zach since his diagnosis.”
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103686/Boy-5-lives-life-GIRL-youngest-diagnosed-NHS-Gender-Identity-Disorder.html#ixzz1mvCSZ8oe
    Maz2 – Radically divide and conquer has been meatheads strategy from the very beginning. The MSM thrives on controversy and has willingly taken the bait. Good piece.
    Enjoyed the vet video, brought back memories of my cat and dog that both passed in the last year and a half. We’ve been lucky to have a couple of vets for neighbors – the university here has an excellent veterinary program.
    Many good reader tips tonight too btw.

  19. Ugh, Global BC ‘news’…..since its family day everywhere else, newscasts/financial news is abbreviated this morning, while I wake up over morning coffee, so, grudgingly, I tune to the decrepit Global BC morning news, with Steven Dahling, and Sophie wahts her name, one of the worst, milquetoast casts you could ever watch or listen to. The porky host is your typical metrosexual dude that you will see, soft spoken, semi-effeminate, a perfect male representative of lefty lala land.
    He reports of ‘a conference’ (unnamed) where a UBC researcher (unnamed) reports that the preicted rise in sea levels will be much higher than the 1 meter previously predicted, flooding most of Richmond. Moving on…….
    Typical LAZY MSM reporting, no names, no specifics, but lets read that SCARY (Count Floyd style) headline, and repeat the politically correct meme of ‘climate change’.
    Despite up to date evidence shattering the fantasy of the truly converted of the Church of Global Warming, the MSM is 29 years behind reality.
    That would involve real work and real research, rather than just reading anything put in front of your face.

  20. As a young fellow I grew up with a large animal vet. I did the running for drugs etc. Occasionally my small hands would be used to help the birthing of piglets when man hands wouldn’t do. The holding of the uterus during in the barn caesarians would separate the men from the boys.
    Real vets, real farmers, real men. Not to be confused with the gang of PETA loving pansies which the public perceive as vets now.

  22. CBC community is looking for suggestions as to how they can get their readers more engaged.They are asking for suggestions from us. Slip over to CBC.ca and give them your suggestions. I’m sure SDA ers
    have some great ideas!!

  23. Daniel hates Red Tories @ 1:35 AM. That NDP MP is the only one on that side of the house that knows what he is doing.

  24. via: http://www.theospark.net
    I was eating lunch and drinking my coffee with my 6-year-old and I asked her, “What is the 20th of February?”
    She said “President’s Day!”
    She is a smart kid, so, I asked her, “What does President’s Day mean?” I was waiting for something about Washington or Lincoln, etc.
    She replied, “President’s Day is when President Obama steps out of the White House, and if he sees his shadow we have one more year of unemployment.”
    You know, it hurts when hot coffee spurts out your nose.

  26. Rob in Vanc.
    Mark Steyn: What if the world turned Muslim? (short video)
    What is sad is only 31,000 views. The side bars show his other videos and again less than 30,000

  27. more from the ‘religion of peace’…now the Temple in Jerusalem ‘never existed’ before muhammed…it certainly existed for the Romans 800 years before muhammed supposedly lived…for awhile…where do they stop and why doesn’t the western media pick up on this lunacy ?
    once Israel finishes disposing of the various muslim armies after their inevitable attack, as they should have done when they had the chance in 1973 and let the UN frantically talk them out of it, the Temple Mount should be cleared off completely and a new Temple built..the mosques that are there are the ‘new construction’ and aren’t built to code for that area.
    Muslims stone Christians on Temple Mount
    http://www.israeltoday.co.il/News/tabid/178/nid/23122/language/en-US/Default.aspx
    A mob of some 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned a group of Christian tourists atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Sunday morning. Three of the Israeli police officers who acted to protect the Christian group were wounded by the stone-throwers.
    Police arrested 11 Palestinians, several of them minors, for their role in the attack.
    The attack is believed to have been instigated by the former Muslim mufti of Jerusalem, Ekrama Sabri, who told Palestinian media over the weekend that Jewish groups were planning to break into the mosques that occupy the holy compound and desecrate them.
    Sabri urged all local Muslims to protect the mosques from “the Israeli conspiracy against the city and its holy places.”
    Muslim religious figures regularly claim that Israel is plotting to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque to pave the way for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, which the Muslims now insist never previously existed.
    Because of the constant threat of Muslim violence, and despite the fact that the Temple Mount is the most holy place on earth to Jews and many Christians, the Israeli police comply with Muslim demands for harsh restrictions on non-Muslim visitors to the site. For instance, Jews and Christians are forbidden to carry Bibles atop the Temple Mount or to utter even silent prayers within its walls. Jews and Christians are regularly detained for violating these conditions.
    In other violence, Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired a Grad-type missile at the southern Israel city of Beersheva on Saturday. The projectile landed in an open area just outside Beersheva and did not cause any injuries or damage. Two more short-range rockets hit nearby Israeli towns.
    Palestinian forces fired at least two rockets at southern Israel – one at the coastal city of Ashkelon – on Friday, again causing no injuries or damage.
    Israel’s air force responded to the unprovoked missile attacks by launching aerial strikes against terrorist installations in Gaza, including a missile production facility.

  30. Of socialism and Spain: Then and Now.
    20 February, 2005: Then.
    “Finally on 20.02.2005 Spain became the first European Union member state to agree to the European Constitution in a referendum. Figures released by the Ministry of the Interior showed the Spaniards had said a resounding “Yes” , (76.73%). The level of turnout in Spain was of more than 42 per cent. Nonetheless it was the lowest in any vote since the restauration of democracy following the death of military dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975, prompting opposition parties to interpret the result as a slap in the face for Zapatero’s Socialist government.”
    http://www.unizar.es/euroconstitucion/Treaties/Treaty_Const_Rat_spain.htm
    …-
    20 February, 2012: Now.
    “Spain Sinks Deeper Into Periphery on Debt Rise”
    “Spain’s debt load is set to double from where it was when Europe’s sovereign debt crisis began, eroding the economic advantages that distinguished it from the region’s periphery and helped shield it from Greek (1004Z) contagion.”
    ““The problem with Spain lies with the hidden risk from the potential transfer of banks’ debt to the state’s balance sheet,” said Thomas Costerg, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in London. “The government is skating on thin ice.””
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/spain-descends-deeper-into-periphery-as-debt-burden-explodes-euro-credit.html

  33. BREAKING NEWS just now on ctv: Mercedes Stephenson just announced Bibi Netanyahu coming to visit PMSH and Canada,prior to going to visit US.According to ctv,this is ‘somewhat controversial’

  34. According to Delacourt,’Canada is somewhat out there re Isreal’..panel on PowerPlay discuss how Bibi’s visit will impact on Jewish vote.

  35. Of left-liberal Google.
    Where’s the outrage/fury/contempt from the faux-conservatives? the libertarian libertines? the left-liberals?
    Google attacks/subverts privacy & not a twitter.
    …-
    “Google on its heels after Safari privacy breach”
    “Google has been scrambling to give Internet users more power to block advertisers from tracking their online behaviour, as it seeks to limit the damage from the latest privacy scandal to dent its corporate image.
    As part of the effort, it will adhere to “do not track” requests from individuals when serving up adverts from its own DoubleClick network, according to a person familiar with the plans, a move that would make it the first big online advertising company to limit itself voluntarily in this way.”
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/google-on-its-heels-after-safari-privacy-breach/article2342507/

  37. ” Obama proposed spending 200 million dollars on a Portland to Milwaukie light rail line.” Posted by: EBD at February 19, 2012 10:52 PM
    I’m wiling to give Obama a break on that one regarding the train. He likely was envisioning Milwaukee,Wisconsin and a high speed pot/beer exchange.
    The man doesn’t know how many states are in the USA,he should not be held to task about cities.

  38. Of Left-liberal Google’s dirty tricks.
    Leftists own Cookie Monster is snooping into your privacy.
    Any twits from the left/libertarian libertines/faux conservatives twitting ’bout this?
    …-
    “Google tricks Internet Explorer, foils privacy settings, Microsoft says”
    “Google has secretly been bypassing your privacy settings in Internet Explorer, Microsoft claimed Monday afternoon.
    The startling accusation came in a blog post Monday by Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for Internet Explorer. On Friday, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the search and advertising giant was bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Safari browsers on iPhones and desktop computers.
    “When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Hachamovitch wrote.
    “We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.””
    http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/20/google-tricks-internet-explorer-foils-privacy-settings-microsoft-says/

  39. Socialist media has been snoopdogging for how long now?
    Wait for the outrage from the Left/libertarian libertines/pseudo-conservatives. Wait and wait and w…..
    …-
    “Not just Google: Facebook also bypasses privacy settings in IE”
    ZDNet”

  40. What is this? A message from Cookie Monster Google.
    …-
    “Please enable cookies to save your changes. Learn more”

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation