Sunday 12 September 2010
My moral for the day, don't believe everything you read and check your sources. I've been caught out too often now and how ever much I would LIKE to believe something, it still needs checking. If you are a firm believer in.... for example.........''Obama is not a citizen'', everything you read on the topic will be slide into your brain as truth carved in stone. I'm as guilty as anyone, if I read something that appears to confirm a previously held belief of mine, my automatic response is a smug.............''told you so, I'm right'', and the danger is; that particular snippet of information could be false. I've been conned once too often now, first I do a search and see if I can find the same story from several different sources, then I look in urban myths and then I check out satire, The Onion etc to see if what was originally intended as a piece of fun has somehow made its way into mainstream information. And even with these precautions, I still get caught. This has happened to a friend of mine recently, and it brought home how even the nicest and most trustworthy people can be conned. Just imagine how much easier it would be if every one approached every piece of new information with an open mind. The teabaggers would be de-teaed and the muslim bashers would be de-bashed, fundamentalist Christians would be pacified and the world would be a happier place. :-) And...............now that I've got that off my chest, I'm going out to paint, have a nice Sunday every one.
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amen to that loretta we know :)
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice idea in theory Loretta, unfortunately human nature is that even when faced with indisputable evidence of the facts, people with still cling to their own little bigotries and prejudices. Many don't WANT to know the truth, it would upset their own worldview. That's why we live in such a f***ed up world.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with that one. Too many rubbish "truth" are doing the rounds. I google everything I get or see and never forward anything unless I have checked it first. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteWell it is a good thing that you are skeptic about whether he was a citizen. He was born here and screwy laws at the time of his birth were iffy. The laws were changed in 1986 to clarify those children born in USA..
ReplyDeleteMy mother said believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. I watch most of the cable news, and some network, All are biased one way or the other in their commentaries. The real news shows are usually the same, after all the happenings in the world are pretty much for all to see. There is a reporter on CNN that slips and says WE when talking about what the President is planning.
ReplyDelete"i view a mans opinion was i do his dog
ReplyDeletei reserve the right to admire it, without taking it home with me"
~ mark twain
sadly - most of what goes around anymore is opinion
:)
And sometimes I don't believe what I see. You're right, of course. My brother-in-law recently commented about how the different news sources treat the same piece of news.
ReplyDeleteAs difficult as it can be at times, always consider the source and what they have to gain from the story. Stories that are negative and offered up without evidence are, and should be, immediately suspect.
ReplyDeleteWe seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas. Everyone wants to be right and no one wants to be wrong. This may be the primary driving force behind the fact that when people look at neutral evidence before them, they almost invariably focus on what seems to confirm what they already believe while ignoring what might count against their beliefs.
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying "Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see", a warning against 'over-reliance' on one's own experience and familiar sources. A related Middle English saying warns that 'You should not believe everything that is said or that you hear', and from the 18th century - ‘You must not take everything to be true that is told to you.’
So it is not just because of the Internet, those who would BS us to gain their own end have been around forever. The Internet simply speeds up the sharing of misinformation, intended or otherwise.
As far as the news sources and reporting, it is always helpful to know who or what special interest owns the news channel or paper.
Ben stole my mom;s saying? lol
ReplyDeleteSo did Marvin Gaye.
ReplyDeletehe was born in Hawaii and it was a state and his mother was an american no ifs ands or buts about it
ReplyDeleteActually , yes he was born in Hawaii. His mother was an American, his dad a Kenyan, the law at that time said," An American parent with a foreign parent, the American parent had to be of legal age for 6 years, she was 18. So yes you are right and yes the law was changed ( clarified ) so that is why he has a certificate of birth and not a birth certificate. a small kink in the way the law was written and was corrected . that is why people cannot get a birth certificate. and he has presented his certificate of live birth in Hawaii. I do not dispute his being American born. i was explaining why people got the wrong idea.
ReplyDeleteI see what you are saying tee :)
ReplyDeleteIt would be so much easier if there was a news source where you could read one story on one page with one point of view and the facing page would be the other point of view so that you could assume the truth was some where in the middle. But as it is you have to go searching out various sources to try to get the various sides and determine the truth in there somewhere. I find checking foreign sources such as Reuters and BBC to be a good reality check to compare with CNN and CBS and the like. And I don't bother with FOX. I consider it on the same level as The National Enquirer.
ReplyDeleteI keep stressing this point continually. You cannot believe anything you read or hear anywhere until you have checked as much as you can. I came across another blatant lie last night in a tv documentary from an eminent and recognised Egyptologist who read out the vital glyphs on the Merneptah Stela. He didn't even flinch as he pointed to the hieroglyph for the letter 'R' and said it was the 'L' in Israel.
ReplyDeleteWe know that this is false now, since Egypt was in full control of its colonies later known as Judaea and Galilee and more importantly the main enemy of Egypt at that time - 1200BCE was ASSYRIA and that is what the glyphs really spell out.
Furthermore Israel at that time was still Lower Egypt. I have all the evidence if anyone would like to check this further.
There are more lies perpetrated about religion than anything else I have ever come across. I had to learn Egyptian to discover the truth about what was really written in the ancient texts.
I have to admire your tenacity, much as I love the truth I'm not sure I would go to the lengths of learning to read hieroglyphics.............. :-)
ReplyDeleteThey really aren't all that difficult and they do make more sense than some English sentences which could have double meanings. Egyptians got over this by adding a 'determinative' glyph.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Mark 8:33 could be read in English as if Jesus was addressing Peter as Satan. Even in English the word 'Devil' has more than one meaning - 'Old Nick', 'a politician', 'the Pope', etc. OR it might just mean to season food with pepper. Most of the time we can tell by the sentence which is meant.
However in Egyptian they made sure that the sentence was understood correctly. The 'N' on the end of Satan is really the genitive case, so Satan really means 'Of Sat' who was the evil brother of the God Asar, and uncle of the Son who was Iosa (Egyptian and Gaelic for Jesus).
Sat (Sometimes translated as Set or Sut) was not only this name, but it could also mean 'hillock' or 'ROCK'. The meaning was made clear by adding a determinative glyph for a 'god' if Satan as in Devil, a 'truncated hill' if the meaning was 'hillock', or a tiny 'diamond' shaped glyph, for 'ROCK".
Since the gospels originated in Egypt with the Copts we can be pretty certain that they were written by Egyptian scribes and this is evident in Mark 8:33, where Jesus is calling Peter 'ROCK" and not "Satan".
Matthew incidentally comes from the Eyptian "Ma'at" meaning Truth or Justice. The letter W is the plural letter in Egyptian, like the English 'S', so Matthew really just means 'TRUTHS'.
I've personally found that if I get interested in a topic then it takes quite a bit of research until one can even begin to write on that topic with any awareness that one might be writing in any sort of authority. I have to admire a good journalist who is able to source facts and present an editorial - and that includes opinion - and then present it to the public and feel confident in what they have written.
ReplyDeleteI know myself when I have felt confidence to write on a topic, sometimes and at the last minute almost, another snippet has come along as a clarificationor expansion on the topic. In much we can only present our own views, but facts in terms of cited references will give an article substance.
Having said that, and, if one has got something worthwhile to say - then write!
This is also true. I have to research until the bottle is empty before I am confident that I am on the right track. The trouble with this is that I used to put far too much trust in others more learned in the subject than myself.
ReplyDeleteOne case was with Ralph Ellis - author of "Tempest & Exodus", "Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs", and a number of other books. Ralph has discovered some amazing facts about Egypt and it appears from his books that he knows his glyphs inside out.
But when he wrote about the Pharaoh Jacob's cartouche he overlooked a very important determitive glyph which I discovered had a second meaning. Then when I emailed him for his opinion on a column of glyphs on Twt's shrine he gave me a wrong translation of one of the glyphs. I accepted what he told me and it wasn't until a few months later that I saw that he had got it wrong.
So even after checking as much as you can, one still has to remain open for other possibilities.
At present I am trying to get to the bottom of the Abydos Helicopter. There is a skeptical website rubbishing it and claiming that somebody carved over an older glyph. I could see immediately that this is rubbish, as there is no glyph anywhere near the helicopter, plane and sub.
Now I have found more evidence from the book on Dorothy Eady who was put in charge of the Abydos translations and lived and died there between the 1950's and 1981. She knew every carving in Abydos and these were an unsolved enigma even to Dorothy.
He Who Knows Not, And Knows Not, That He Knows Not,
ReplyDeleteIs A Fool - Ignore Him.
He Who Knows Not, And Knows That, He Knows Not,
Is Igonrant - Teach Him.
He Who Knows, But Knows Not, That He Knows,
Is Asleep - Awake Him,
He Who Knows, And Knows That, He Knows,
Is Wise - Follow Him.
The most dangerous type is He Who Knows Not & Knows Not That he Knows Not !!!!!!
What stage are we all at ??? lol
a variation of the original socrates quote I believe..............amazing what we have forgotten in the last two thousand years or so........
ReplyDelete