On news.

[kyrielle]

I was following the Virginia Tech story today. And I came to several conclusions. The first is that I have no real right to an opinion (other than anyone's right to make an idiot of themselves), since the sum total of my knowledge is what I have seen while glancing at the wire reports. The second is that I think I would rather get my news in final form, a day after such events, than watch everyone sit and spin in circles trying to work it out. Immediate reporting of what is known may be of great value to those close to the event, but the constant rehash of half-a-dozen "facts" (some inaccurate) is of little use to most anyone, least of all someone not involved and not knowing anyone there.

And finally, I neither understand nor want to understand how any human being could do these things to other human beings. Because I would prefer to believe that such a person is Other, apart from us. And in a way, he is; but he's still human. I don't want to understand what motivates someone to act like that, because I can barely encompass the thought that he did.

Unrelated to the shootings, the articles on global warming are (not unexpectedly) alarming reading. I wonder, if Dad were still alive, whether he would still be thinking they are also alarmist. And I wonder whether they are, because, while I don't believe that, he did - and that's my Dad, and Dad knows everything, or knows how to find it out. I agree wholeheartedly with several of his points (some of the things we do 'for the environment' are stupid and don't help it; there probably is a natural warming cycle that we would be coming into now anyway), but I don't think they counter the fact that we are doing unfortunate things to our environment that are not helping us out any. That said, I'm not a scientist and I haven't done very much research on the matter. Of course, the news articles are rather designed to be alarming reading, and even alarmist. Whether it's justified or not - and I tend to think it is, at least partially - they're very, very good at that.

Blah. Now I go to bed.

Comments

[katbyte.livejournal.com]

I agree about watching a big news story after the fact. I am tired of seeing one guys cell phone video. I personally do not think there is a reason, other than insanity, for all the carnage. I finally turned it off and will read about it later.

They had it all wrong most of yesterday anyway.

Global warming I know nothing about.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Phil Kerr wrote that the greatest horror of the Holocaust was not the six million Jews, gypsies, political dissidents and gays who were killed. The greatest horror was how straightforward it was to understand. We like to describe crimes as "unimaginable" and "incomprehensible" as our way of defending our sanity against these horrors.

I used to sleep a lot better at night before I read Phil Kerr.