Storytelling

Remember, when you're debating with someone, always keep in mind that what you're really trying to do is teach the audience.

Quoted from: Difster (in a comment at Vox Popoli)

Recycling is one of the sacraments of the lefty/greenie religion. Sometimes, it is actually a good idea, too. Sippican offers an experiment to determine whether all that washing and sorting of your garbage is an act of faith or an exercise in reasoned stewardship of nature’s bounty:

I'll give you an experiment you can try at home, whether you're a raccoon or not. Strip the aluminum siding off your house, or the copper wiring, or steal a few manhole covers, or rip out all your copper plumbing, or cut all the steel fenders off your Prius. Go to the Yellow Pages and find a scrapyard and go there. They will weigh those items on a big scale for you. You don't even have to get out of your now fenderless vehicle. They'll weigh your vehicle coming in and out and calculate the difference. They will count money in your hand, because that stuff is worth money.

I was a subscriber to the daily Christian Science Monitor. After a couple of trials, I judged their reporting to be from a neutral viewpoint. Religion appeared in every issue, but did not color the news. The coverage, although U.S.-centered was truly global. And the lighter features were usually interesting (they had great, brief film reviews).

My full-time subscription began around the time the world was preparing to invade Iraq in 2003. I let it lapse after a couple of years because I wasn’t finding the time to read all the coverage they packed into a daily paper. I still followed the website regularly (it’s offered in NRR’s news rack).

ZMSFFTNAAK8Y

H/T: Division of Labour

Whatever the reports from mainstream media, remember that at best they are telling only part of the truth. My intimate knowledge around Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the I-35W bridge, and countless minor events revealed that reporters get confused, lazy and often just make things up.

This maxim should be applied to the coverage coming out of Haiti: The news is not what is happening, it is just what the media is telling you.

I haven’t written much about it on NRR, but a big part of my life over the past few years has been spent walking around my neighborhood as a volunteer crimefighter. It’s not as tough-guy and vigiliante as that sounds. We more or less just find ne’er-do-wells and stand where they can see us until they leave.

It’s not dramatic. Not very often, anyway. We’ve been so successful that there haven’t been many bad guys to annoy. Tonight, we found some. And we pushed them off their our corner.

We had several new people out in our group, and this was the first time they got to see what a handful of dedicated people can do. Even if our presence was short-lived, we were noticed, and we made a difference.

Those fascist crazies are at it again. The intertubes are buzzing with claims that the current President is going to deliver a speech to every schoolkid country. The wackos say the speech is part of a coordinated effort to shape young minds.

There’s evidence posted claiming the address will be preceded by planned activities to help prepare the kiddies to receive Barry’s vision for them:

Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States.

The current President cracked some jokes at last week’s White House Correspondents Dinner. The evening’s entertainment was comedienne Wanda Sykes, who targeted Barry with some zingers:

"The first black president. That's unless you screw up. Then it's going to be 'What's up with the half-white guy?'"

The bits I watched made it feel like a lame, tame version of a celebrity roast. Media types and comedians talk about finding it hard to poke fun at Barry. He’s so popular, and so smooth, they’re afraid to make him the butt of jokes.

It’s Earth Day, and many outlets are picking up some version of this story:

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that overweight people were likely to be more responsible for carbon emissions than slim people because they consume more food and fuel.
…
‘Staying slim is good for health and for the environment. We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.’