Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Missing the point ...

Yesterday, I posted this.

I gather, from the comments appended thereunto, that it was taken by some as a sort of martial tub-thumping. As it happens, that was not its point. The point - which I think ought to have been fairly obvious from the actual words that I wrote - was to indicate the lag time in reporting the mainstream media often displays. Yon has been doing this for years. Only now has the New York Times got around to noticing it, apparently. To the Times' credit, they did notice it, and have brought it to public attention. Now the rest of the media world may pay attention as well, since it often seems that the Times is their principal source of information (there are other ways of finding things out). What I did not realize myself is the Pavlovian response anything pertaining to the war in Iraq that does not feed into opposition to such often elicits. My post had to do with reportage, getting information about a story out there - I do the same with issues such as the one designated by the redundant phrase "climate change." Let's all repeat with Michel de Montaigne: Que scais-je? What do I know? A lot less than some of us are inclined to think.Justify Full
A further clarification: By calling the phrase "climate change" redundant I am merely noting that climate is never static but is a process of continuous change, sort of like the ocean, which is never really still.

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