As I got into the car yesterday leaving work, the AM station I listen to was breaking into normal broadcasting with a news bulletin: “This is an ABC Special Report” the announcer declared solemly, with that gripping intro music playing. Uh, oh, I thought. What’s happened? Has the President been shot? Did North Korea just fire a nuke into Hawaii? Has the government of Iran collapsed?
None of the above. Michael Jackson has been rushed to the hospital.
For the next thirty minutes the broadcast was taken over by several news correspondants covering every angle of the story: Michael’s career, Michael’s music, Michael’s health, Michael’s legal problems, ad nauseum.
Gimme a break. If media big shots really want to figure out why our culture is so debased, they can start by examining their own reporting. When this weirdo gets more coverage than the far more important issues facing this country, the media have lost their bearings.
Even as the U. S. Congress is on the threshold of enacting a cap and trade bill, which some fear will turn into the largest tax in U. S. history, other governments around the world are finally waking up to the hucksterism behind the science, and are pulling back from the brink.
It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
More and more scientists are speaking out against the media-driven alarmism that has fueled this “crisis.” In Australia, Dr. Ian Plimer has published a book, Heaven and Earth, that has taken the mask off the charade. Even some believers among the media are beginning to question the “consensus” view. Australian columnist Paul Sheehan acknowledges that the book is
an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.
True science has never been the enemy of truth in the climate debate. The culprit, as always, has been political ideology cloaked in scientific jargon.
From Roland Emmerich (director of “Independence Day” and “Day After Tomorrow”) comes another epic disaster flick: “2012″. From the trailer it looks like this will be a great movie — as long as you don’t take the science too seriously, says Phil Plait.
Johanna Ganthaler and her husband, Kirk, were scheduled to fly Air France Flight 447 back to Europe after their vacation in Brazil. In one of those odd twists of fate, they were late to the airport and missed the flight — and certain death.
After returning to Germany on a later flight, they rented a car and headed for home in Italy. Driving through Austria, they were involved in a head-on collision. Johanna was killed.
While the deaths of so many on a downed airplane is a tragedy, the truth is that all of us will die some day. It’s just a question of when and how.
Twenty years ago, the image of a single protester defiantly blocking a column of tanks near Bejing’s Tiananmen Square became the icon of the failed movement to secure individual freedom in China. It has been called one of the most significant photos of the twentieth century.
Tank Man is to the left, off in the distance, framed by two trees. The tanks are emerging from the right.
Photographer Terril Jones recently released a photo that he took of that same event, but from a different angle. You have to look carefully to see the drama that was unfolding between the man and the tanks, but the surrounding details capture the sense of confusion and fear that make the man’s courage all the more remarkable.
We do not know what happened to Tank Man. According to the article on him on Wikipedia, the most likely scenario is that he was executed by the Chinese government. Whatever his fate, his solitary act of defiance that day will forever stand as a symbol of the human desire for freedom.
How many times have we used that expression to describe how Congress uses our tax dollars? Actually, as Glenn Reynolds notes, we should be so lucky.
I think that expression is actually unfair to drunken sailors. Drunken sailors generally spend cash that they’ve already earned themselves, rather than running up debt to be paid by others. If our politicians started spending like drunken sailors, it would in fact represent a dramatic improvement.
