Oh Noze! We're All Gonna Die!

Yeah, that's the basic content of half the emails and ButtFace FaceBook posts from my reactionary friends and family (the ones referred to in my last post as pessimistic suckers) regarding the Japanese reactors.

In the interest of spreading more level-headed information (as opposed to the ignorant crap at Prison Planet*), here is the email message I composed to some of my wild-eyed family members today:

I'd recommend taking anything on Prison Planet with a grain of salt. They tend toward the sensational and are notorious for playing fast and loose with the facts. Just to put this all into perspective, here is a trio of informational sites, from folks that know something about nuclear power (which the Prison Planet guy clearly does not) and are closely monitoring the situation:

It's P. T. Barnum's world

"This curmudgeon fellow
really annoys me."

As I get older, I've learned to (usually) bite my tongue when this happens, but it's nearly every day I hear someone say (or read it posted online) something that only a sucker would repeat. The list of these offenses is as long as my arm, and getting longer every day, but they all have the same root cause: a complete and utter lack of critical thinking skills. The Public Miseducation System has been nearly a complete success. Virtually nobody can think any more. Nobody even tries to think, because they believe that they are "thinking" when they regurgitate whatever it is they read online, or saw on television, or heard on the radio. This is not a left vs. right issue; it's not Republican vs. Democrat. It's a complete inability of the vast majority of people in this culture to think, to question their own assumptions, to "trust but verify" no matter the source. It's the result of intellectual laziness coupled with a subtle kind of arrogance: laziness, because most people will simply not lift a finger to verify the veracity of a "fact" they've been fed; arrogance, because, despite the knowledge that they haven't done so, most people believe they have actually thought through their beliefs and practices.

I often find myself guilty of the same crime. I will realize that something I have heretofore accepted unquestioningly may or may not be the truth. I've taken to reading a lot of stuff that I completely disagree with, in the interest of actually proving to myself that I know what I believe and have considered the opposing viewpoints. My own pursuit of truth has cost me personally, but one thing my parents instilled in me from the earliest age was that truth is its own reward, and the cost of truth is irrelevant.

Truth has an enemy: the sucker.

I was going to post something about the trivium and quadrivium...

...but I decided against it. Instead, I stoked up the fire in the woodstove and made our (the kids' and my) favorite comfort food for lunch: mac & cheese with hot dogs. Yep, that's right: mama is out and about, and papa is feeding the kids. Sadly for them, my culinary repertoire is primarily grill-centric.


I say "sadly" only from the perspective of the parent that realizes the lunch he just made for his children is not exactly what those skinny dieticians would call "healthy" -- but then again, I can't recall the last time I looked at a dietician and thought, "You know, she looks really healthy." Nope. Every dietician I've ever known or met looked like an extra from one of those "Feed the Poor African Kids" commercials Sally Struthers used to do on TV when I was a kid. I look at them and immediately think, "This person will not do well in an economic collapse." They've got no stored body fat, so if they start going hungry, their body will immediately start consuming muscle mass instead of utilizing the body fat that God designed for exactly that sort of situation.