Note Well:
This blog is intended for rational audiences. Its contents are the personal opinions of its author. If you quote from this blog, which you
may do with attribution, please assume personal accountability for any consequences of mischaracterizing these expressed intentions.

Monday, March 23, 2015

Purveying Perfidy for Fun and Profit

The race to the top is indistinguishable from the search for the lowest common denominator. In both cases, the goal is worthless.

Related source » No, California won't run out of water in a year: 'via Blog this'
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]

“State water managers and other experts said Thursday that California is in no danger of running out of water in the next two years, even after an extremely dry January and paltry snowpack. Reservoirs will be replenished by additional snow and rainfall between now and the next rainy season, they said. The state can also draw from other sources, including groundwater supplies, while imposing tougher conservation measures. […]

The headline of a recent Times op-ed article offered a blunt assessment of the situation: 'California has about one year of water left. Will you ration now?'” Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a professor at UC Irvine, wrote about the state's dwindling water resources in a March 12 column, citing satellite data that have shown sharp declines since 2011 in the total amount of water in snow, rivers, reservoirs, soil and groundwater in California.

In an interview Thursday, Famiglietti said he never claimed that California has only a year of total water supply left. […]
— LA Times, March 20, 2015 (latimes.com)


Back in the day, before the 24/7 news cycle, our so-called "paper of record" was the New York Times. If the NYT published it, you could virtually take it to the bank. Back then we also had what was known as a code of honor (moral absolutism), which many (perhaps most) people aspired to. We also had a banking system that paid interest on one's deposits (but that's another issue, albeit not entirely unrelated).

Today we are innundated with: isotropic shitstorms of sensationalism and perfidy; relatively expensive fish wrapper; and, banks that expect to be paid for accepting your deposits. Moreover, as Big Al Einstein fortold, everything is relative, even morality. All of which, of course, raises the question, "How the heck can you differentiate between shit and Shinola?" Truth be told ... but can it be trusted?

We all seek information that is reliable. Whence does it emanate? I submit this is a serious problem in our age of (mis)information. Freedom of information allows us to aggregate it, often free of charge. But verification is much more difficult than ever before. Because, you know — ignorance, perfidy, moral relativism.

Disgusted yet, bitch?

Post 2,586 Purveying Perfidy for Fun and Profit

No comments:

Post a Comment