Murder in the Loop

Today a gunman killed 3 in addition to himself, and wounded one other person. No names or motives yet, and in cases like this, you should always wait at least 24 hours to make sure the story is straight before coming to any conclusions. I was about to head to that train station just as the news started to spread about the shooting. That enabled me to change plans and take a different train line to get home without too much time lost on the start of my weekend. About 10 minutes after the initial reports, rumors circled that the gunman had escaped, but I see now that he was killed in the office where the shootings occured.

There have been lots of stories where something tragic happens, the initial stories have important flaws in them, yet the media and media-figures jump on the bandwagon of condemnation. Then the corrections come in, they aren't trumpeted as loud as the initial outrage, and those who made foolish judgements simply walk away. Tragic stories are used to advance an agenda or to prove a preconceived notion. When the story doesn't pan out that way, instead of correcting the record and learning to be prudent, the loudmouths waltz away and hope no one holds them responsible for things they said in the heat of the moment.

That doesn't appear to have happened in this case, but it happens all too frequently.

Pearl Harbor

Today is the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. According to news reports, this is the last time the survivors of that attack will gather at the Arizona Memorial in Hawaii. That saddens me, because I'm a huge WW2 buff and would like to some year be able to visit that memorial on Dec. 7th. It appears that the time for that has run out. We're losing an important link to an important event in the consciousness of this country. Just for the record, I think the Roosevelt Administration could have put all the intel pieces together to see that Japan was going to attack Hawaii, but don't believe that they did. The attack was done in secrecy and was not aided in any way by Roosevelt. At the time of the attack, battleships were considered the centerpiece of any naval battle. If Roosevelt had really wanted Japan to bloody America so he could declare war, I doubt he would have allowed his precious battleships to take the brunt of the damage. It wasn't until later that aircraft carriers became the dominant chess pieces in naval operations. We suffered a huge loss of life, and whenever something catastrophic occurs, conspiracy theories arise from those who have an ideological reason to dislike those who were in charge at the time. The same thing is occuring today. Those who dislike Bush, or at least Republicans, believe somehow there was a vast conspiracy to blow up the Twin Towers in NY on 9/11. Today's conspiracy theorists are just as misguided as those who thought Roosevelt was behind the attacks on Pearl Harbor. I am glad that today we have things like Popular Mechanics magazines that take on the conspiracy theories and debunk them. No amount of factual information will disabuse the theorists of their bogus beliefs, because they aren't based on facts, they're based on bias.

Blogging

I have a lot of subjects I'd like to cover and get my ideas on paper, or at least in pixels! Yet I find that there are an awful lot of distractions in the way. I'd like to sort out my ideas on what I'd do foreign policy wise if I were the President, and I'd like to comment on the media and on religious issues. Yet I have a hard time carving out the time it would take to do any of those issues justice. How do the prominent bloggers manage to do that? I know some bloggers are linkers, and some are in-depth writers. I'd like to be a combination of the two, yet that requires a time committment I don't seem to be able to manage. Or maybe once I get the ball rolling, I'll find the time. It all comes down to priorities, right?

Editing the Old Media

The old media will continue to lose influence and credibility as long as the new media can so quickly point out easily-refuted flaws in facts and logic. Jim Lindgren at The Volokh Conspiracy offers a few corrections to the New York Times for a reference appropriate to Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

The Rules

There are two rules:

1. There is a God
2. Neither you nor I are God