Comment to “Kofi Annan and populists”

Those of us who have the interest or the time can access a large variety of news and make some sense between opinion and facts.

Unfortunately, too many people get their news and opinion from a half-hour or an hour of watching a rather limited number of facts or opinions.

See

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/05/09/kofi-annan/?utm_term=.de64780f9b30

Contradictory thoughts on contradictory thoughts

"Apes and Humans" was one of Wisconsin Public Radio's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" (TTBOOK) broadcasts for 2013-06-09.  One segment was about the so-called "monkey girl", a five-year-old girl kidnapped in Columbia and then abandoned in the jungle.  Supposedly she survived with the help of monkeys who "adopted" her.  She, Marina Chapman, and her daughter, Vanessa James, wrote a book on Marina's experiences – "The Girl with No Name".  Philip Sherwell of the Telegraph was asked to go to Columbia to check up on her story.

There were some inconsistencies in the stories he heard, but considering the events were fifty years ago, he would have been concerned if they were consistent.  He came away not establishing anything that would make him "believe that she'd made it up…"

In other words, by compiling a mosaic of thoughts, Sherwell came away believing Chapman's story in general.

On the other hand, in the preface to his satire, "L'Ile des Pingouins", Anatole France claims if you have a "fact" about certain events from one person, you should believe it, but if you have reports from several people then their reports are always contradictory and always unreconcilable (my translation).

Unfortunately, too many people today rely on one source of news, and whatever is said by that source must be true.  They just don't want to believe that some of what the source says may be true, some may be partly true, and some may be completely false.

How to vote intelligently

We went to a League of Women Voters meeting, supposedly to watch "Patriocracy", a movie about the divisiveness in this country.  For some reason, the movie never made it to the meeting place.  Instead we had an impromptu discussion about the subject.

One of the complaints voiced is how many news organizations don't separate fact from fiction, treating every pronouncement from politicians as fact, especially on TV.

I gave these four suggestions for voting intelligently:

Don't watch TV
Don't answer the phone
Read lots of newspapers
Show up and vote

If you don't follow my advice on the first three points, do me, yourself, and your country a favor by proudly acting on the fourth point.

Libya - how to tell hot news topics

I've been watching Al Jazeera's Libya Blog for several weeks, always hoping that the end of Gaddafi was close. Sometimes the news has been sparse; sometimes the news comes flooding in. Sometimes I have gotten immediate access to the blog; sometimes I have to wait and wait for any items to even show in the window.

Today, after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, is one of those latter times. The little circle is going around and around in the corner of Firefox' window and the lower corner has "connecting to aljazeera.com…" I wrote the first paragraph and part of this before the loading of the page was complete.

I assume that aljazeera.net is so popular around the world, that its servers must be overloaded.

Whatever, let's hope for a long life for a free Libya.

P.S. A few hours after I wrote the above, access to Al-Jazeera is quicker. It must be because it is past midnight in that part of the world.

What I'm not reading about

I often base a blog entry on articles I've read in newspapers, in print or online. Last month with a flood of news that I didn't care to read about in depth, if at all, I made a short list of what I wasn't reading about. The next paragraph is my note on what I'm not reading about.

Michael Jackson, Michelle Obama, fashions of whoever, Jaycee, Edward Kennedy, letters knowing that we're headed for socialism, letters telling us how bad war is, almost anything predictable by the headline, the sexual affairs of the high and the mighty.

This weekend there was a flurry of news that I haven't been reading: the Vikings-Packers game, the Twins, the stadiums in the Twin Cities, and some guy named Letterman. Is he a sports figure who couldn't cut his ties to his high school or college sports team?