Comments on: Esoteric Knowledge

By: Jammie

Jammie — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:56:00 +0000

There is to much censorship and it needs to be brought under control and to justice. In order for there to be real change in the world. I am a recent and current victim of our justice system. Innocent until proven guilty, my ass, your guilty until proven innocent. The truth about America is, money buys power, police, government, friends, and lifestyle, but will never supersede will power, love, and faith. As humans we must find new ways of getting the truth out to the people, because knowledge provides power and ignorance breeds ignorance.

By: Redshift

Redshift — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:15:47 +0000

In all honesty, why would a TV channel be a good medium for this sort of information? We do have a medium for it that works, and you linked to it. Explaining bills before Congress is something that works much better in print, so it’s not like the failure of TV news shows to do it is a great loss. There are important things that are much better conveyed with video, but detailed analysis of legislation isn’t one of them.

By: spyder

spyder — Sun, 16 May 2010 01:23:55 +0000

Still wondering what exactly constitutes a good “vintage year” in trade allowances. “My that was a good vintage, all those carbon atoms linked with oxygen in one to one and one to two rations well above the norm? It also had more than a hint of oxygen bonded in threes making for a somewhat bitter aftertaste on one’s palate.”

By: Brian137

Brian137 — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:25:34 +0000

“On, and I think the country has moved on from watching Bieber and is now watching Greyson Michael Chance”

Yesssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yesssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By: Imran

Imran — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:12:03 +0000

For international news, neither CNN or BBC can come close to Al Jazeera’s breadth and depth. Their presentation is from a decidedly non-American or non-Western POV, which is refreshing if nothing else.

For national news, News Hour is pretty much it. CNN does a good job with breaking news, but not much else. I don’t classify FOX News or Comedy Central as legitimate news organizations, though both can be very entertaining.

By: Z

Fri, 14 May 2010 18:06:10 +0000

I second the Amy Goodman comment. Also, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC isn’t too terrible, although it’s obvious she has no science background. The US version of CNN is beyond terrible, but CNN International isn’t all that bad although it’s no BBC (which is having it’s own issues with rigor).

By: Miguel

Miguel — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:28:20 +0000

As an example, Amy Goodman with Democracy Now provides some good information news. One program is obviously not enough, as no one can cover all sorts of issues satisfactorily, but a possible model is already there and others could certainly develop it further if they’d wish to do so.

http://www.democracynow.org/

By: Sleeth

Sleeth — Fri, 14 May 2010 15:42:10 +0000

I agree with Mike that The News Hour on PBS had done an excellent job, especially in finding people who can explain the complexity of issues. But maybe we are expecting too much from television news. Newspeople, who are not experts in the fields they are reporting on, are faced with the challenge of condensing complex issues into 2 minute segments, and they have to appeal to the general public at the end of long workdays when viewers are tired and trying to relax with family. Instead of lambasting current news media, it is our challenge to identify and cultivate alternative news sources that do thorough jobs of reporting. If you find a good source of news, tell others, blog about it, facebook it, YouTube it, twitter it. Perhaps, as people seek other information sources, the traditional news establishments will take notice. That is how we change the news landscape. There are other things we can do as well. Today is graduation day at my university, and, though the field is new, seven students are graduating with COMMUNICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY degrees. Hopefully they will be a part of filling this news void.

On, and I think the country has moved on from watching Bieber and is now watching Greyson Michael Chance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxDlC7YV5is

By: Phillip Helbig

Phillip Helbig — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:49:44 +0000

It seems one can comment on blog entries which are too old, which is why this is here and not
in the “Attack of the Boltzmann brains” thread.

What do you think of http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.3778 ?

“To make predictions for an eternally inflating “multiverse”, one must adopt a procedure for regulating its divergent spacetime volume. Recently, a new test of such spacetime measures has emerged: normal observers – who evolve in pocket universes cooling from hot big bang conditions – must not be vastly outnumbered by “Boltzmann brains” – freak observers that pop in and out of existence as a result of rare quantum fluctuations. If the Boltzmann brains prevail, then a randomly chosen observer would be overwhelmingly likely to be surrounded by an empty world, where all but vacuum energy has redshifted away, rather than the rich structure that we observe. Using the scale-factor cutoff measure, we calculate the ratio of Boltzmann brains to normal observers. We find the ratio to be finite, and give an expression for it in terms of Boltzmann brain nucleation rates and vacuum decay rates. We discuss the conditions that these rates must obey for the ratio to be acceptable, and we discuss estimates of the rates under a variety of assumptions.”

I think that qualifies as “esoteric knowledge”.

By: wds

wds — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:40:06 +0000

At times like these I can’t help think back to Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. I think his analysis still stands: you can’t do TV without entertainment, and you can’t truly inform people if you also have to entertain them.

Some shows manage because they have a subject that leads to pretty pictures and it’s not necessary to really be complete (i.e. nature documentaries). But for news? The best way to stay informed is still to read, not to watch.

Sean mentioned doing it “in an entertaining way”, which I think is exactly the problem here. Of course for some of us, interesting == entertaining, but there’s a difference in effort required from the viewer between Larry King’s narrative (blah blah, let’s see them talk this way out of this one), versus actually analyzing what is in a new bill.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:00:34 +0000

Six or seven years ago we banned all TV signals from our house. People whose main source of news and analysis is TV, always seem to have a high ratio of arrogance to understanding. What a waste of time.

By: Lug

Lug — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:51:54 +0000

Factcheck.org and Politifact.com do a great job of summarizing the provisions of major pieces of legislation. The downside, however, is that they’re not news organizations, so their coverage is not always comprehensive or timely. (For instance, right now neither has an article on the climate bill. I expect they will, when the debate on it revs up.)

By: Low Math, Meekly Interacting

Low Math, Meekly Interacting — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:50:28 +0000

It’s not TV, but I like Market Place quite a bit, and it’s a good way fill my brain while driving home. Outside of viewer-supported news, I’m afraid you’re going to find nothing but disappointment.

http://find.publicradio.org/search?site=mkp&proxystylesheet=mkp&client=mkp&output=xml_no_dtd&filter=p&sort=date%3AD%3AS%3Ad1&q=climate+bill

By: diogenes

diogenes — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:17:36 +0000

Oh, yeah, the Daily Show, for those who can’t stand their “news” without it being diluted by “comedy” and snark. Mike had it right on recommending the News Hour.

By: Pieter Kok

Pieter Kok — Thu, 13 May 2010 19:14:34 +0000

Well, there’s the Daily Show…

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:00:28 +0000

Back in its early years, CNN was a hard-news operation. That business model didn’t work. To have a news channel that does something more than to try to maximize profits, one requires some source of subsidy with an ideological motivation. Unfortunately, there are a lot more eccentric right-wing billionaires than billionaires interested in financing objective news.

By: Rohan Mehra

Rohan Mehra — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:01:57 +0000

Stephen Spielberg?!?

Did you really think that remark through?
The guy who digitally removed guns from the hands of soldiers in the re-release of ET and shot a lot of the film ‘Berlin’ in Prague and Budapest hoping no one would notice!
And there’s always the worry that he’d get his friend George Lucas in on the deal…

On the plus side at least it would get young children interested in politics and the economy!

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:53:06 +0000

The News Hour on PBS does an excellent job compared to all the other news outlets. Sometimes on business channels like Bloomberg you can get important details, to the extent the business community is impacted one way or the other. That’s about it though.