Entries from November 2004 ↓

On a mailing list I’m on, a man named Eduardo wrote: “Women should have the responsibility of taking care of NOT getting pregnant, instead of fighting for the right to cover up their mistakes by murder.”

This attitude just reinforces my prior belief: men should not be allowed to opine on abortion.

And there was a crash on the Metro this afternoon. One train plowed into another. The photo speaks for itself.

Fortunately, one train was empty, and the other wasn’t crowded because of the time of day. 20 people sustained injuries, none major. I’m surprised it wasn’t far more. If this had happpened in the middle of rush hour, there could could have easily been 500 injured.

And a non-political entry: Programmers hold funeral for old code

Schroeder’s a law student in Fort Worth, TX. One of his law school professors didn’t know that Ulysses S. Grant was a president. Schroeder had to argue about it with him and the rest of the class! Unbelievable story, which really is a great metaphor to the kinds of “debate” going on in the public policy arena these days.

In the last few days, there’s been some talk of a “reality-based community” that’s supposedly separate from some kind of non-reality-based community. The “reality-based community” uses facts and logic, whereas the others uses emotion and faith. Basically, a Blue vs. Red thing. The lingo sounds so elitist that it seems like something lying liars would have made up to make the left look bad.

But there’s a valid point in all that: these days in public discourse, non-facts are given the same weight as facts. Kerry said he earned his medals and some Vietnam vets said he didn’t, so the media reported on both without trying to conclusively determine whose argument was true and whose was false. One of them’s gotta be wrong!

If the media won’t analyze arguments anymore, we need to o it ourselves. Look at the original source material. Contact the authors — journalists are always willing to talk. Don’t believe a factual claim just because someone says it’s true. Otherwise, have no right to bitch when a law school professor teaches his class that Ulysses S. Grant wasn’t a president.