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News Briefs 29-06-2006

The inquisition, let’s begin…

Quote of the Day:

I think anybody who doesn’t think I’m smart enough to handle the job is misunderestimating

George W. Bush

Editor
  1. Exactly what I’ve been saying all along.
    Picknett and Prince are right on the money about The Da Vinci Code.
    I think that people are jealous of Brown because I have seen some very caustic comments about him and the book.
    I am envious of the working relationship he has with his wife.I think anyone would be, but good luck to him.We should all have such partners.
    On some sites I have seen absolutely venemous stuff from people who haven’t the ability to write a shopping list.
    The time was right,the 21st century, for this revelation about religion and it’s ratbaggery.
    I wish someone had presented this to me many years ago when I was struggling with the garbage the Catholics taught me and what I knew to be reality.
    All power to those who reveal the truth, in whichever way.

    About euthanasia….I think people should just be quiet and let it be.
    Doctors have been helping people to die for many many years and those in the know, well, they know about it.
    Blessings upon these doctors…that when their turn comes, someone shows them the same compassion.
    I know for certain that a number of people who chose to die with assistance from certain ‘doctors of death’, did not suffer from the illnesses from which they thought they were suffering, and had they had counselling, they would be alive today.

    shadows

    1. good points about right-to-die
      There are many compassionate doctors who will quietly help people die when the time has come. In many cases you can’t ask a patient to make a rational decision – with the threat of severe suffering looming, a lot of people naturally become depressed. That is no state of mind to make a life-or-death decision.

      If a society regulates this kind of thing too much, leaving the decision up to bureaucrats and bean counters, many people will die needlessly, and many others will suffer just as needlessly.

      1. don’t be bitter, shadows.
        Dan Brown tapped into something everyone was afraid to say twenty years ago. I predict in twenty years from now, they will remake the Davinci Code without the fluff of tintle town. oooo, shadows, don’t be bitter!(laughing)The ratbaggery eventually gets lost in the wash and irons itself out.

        1. Paul you are so hopeful and positive
          which is nice.
          There is a lot of ratbaggery I would like to see washed out of stuff.
          One can only hope.
          You are right though about what will eventually happen.
          Unless the loonie raptured ones get hold of everything first.

          shadows

    2. The Da Vinci Hype
      Dan Brown’s TDVC is hardly original. Lewis Perdue wrote about the same subjects 25 years ago, but lacking Random House’s publicity machine, his books enjoyed only moderate success and slipped beneath the radar. John Case has touched on Vatican conspiracies. Alan Folsom is another author worthy of serious attention.

      TDVC is mega-successful because it received the same hype as Pokemon and Harry Potter. I’m not knocking either of them, they’re all good in their own way, I just think that such phenomena are elevated to lofty heights not because they’re exceptional works of art (that’s subjective) but because people are sheep (no offense!). I worked in a bookstore at the time TDVC peaked, and I could not get ANYONE to read other books about the subjects Brown raises. I recommended Picknett & Prince, I recommended Baigent & Leigh, I recommended Simon Cox’s guide, I recommended other fiction novels dealing with the same themes. No one was interested. The impression I got was people were reading TDVC simply because everyone else was and they believed the publicity machine.

      I was bored by TDVC, the characters were cardboard, and I found the story to be predictable. I stand by my opinion that it is a very over-rated work of fiction. It’s a fun read, no more no less. That being said, I also think TDVC is immaculately structured. Brown is a master of plot and structure, he knows how to write and he does it well, and I’m not knocking him for being successful at all (I wish him the best of luck!). I’m not saying people can’t enjoy TDVC — all I’m saying is I’m allowed to not enjoy it! Taste is subjective, and objective criticism is valid.

      Shadows and Paul, I highly recommend reading the other authors I listed, especially Lewis Perdue. TDVC was around 20 years ago, it’s just no one was paying any attention. It’s all a case of right place, right time, and a whole lotta hype.

      1. Thanks Rick
        It’s interesting isn’t it the way people are persuaded by hype.That’s the reason I bought the book as well.

        I have read most of Baigent and Leigh and Simon Cox although I believe he has a new book out.
        The other authors I must get hold of.
        I have read that Elaine Pagels is also in there.

        How’s your writing going?
        I must admit I have hardly done anything lately.The parrot demands a lot of my time.We are best friends.

        shadows

  2. Bandwagon Jumping naysayers? Come on…
    What wagon are you referring to? A comment like that portrays some bitterness. Holding out for universal popularity is a futile endeavor, as I’m sure you are aware. A comment like that also implies you believe it is currently “trendy” to dislike Mr. Brown’s novel. I would have to disagree, as it seems I cannot go anywhere without running into an advertisement for the movie or novel, or running into people who want to know if I’ve read it, and wanting to discuss the ideas presented therein. All the popular culture references I’ve seen are very favorable to Da Vinci (with the obvious exception of the religious fundamentalists.) It seems to me the wagon exists with those who are fans of the novel and movie.

    As a student of the ideas presented in Da Vinci I was very excited when I learned of the novel’s existence, as I felt a fictional novel would be great for spreading the ideas to a public who would probably otherwise never learn of them. I still feel that way, and while I don’t agree with the way all the ideas are presented I still think the overall effect of the novel on society was good.

    All that being said I guess you could label me a naysayer. I don’t like the book, and I only got about halfway through it before I had to put it down. I found the writing melodramatic, and almost as if he were a 7th-grader doing his damndest to impress his English teacher. Opinions are like butts and all that, right? I can assure you that not all of us who dislike the novel are disliking it because of some kind of bandwagon.

    1. How did you read all that into one short comment?
      Sheesh, I always feel I am missing something on this site when people say stuff like that.
      You can’t get anything more harmless than that particular comment.
      The news editors here put comments with all the news links every single day.
      I suppose it stands to reason that every now and then someone will take exception to a comment.
      I think you are doing a bit of nit-picking though because there actually is a bandwagon of people who are out to discredit Brown.
      I’m sure Brown can take it though so I’m not worried about him.

      I didn’t like the book either because I don’t read fiction of that ilk, but I finished reading it because I thought it was an important book of our era.

      Bitterness?
      You cannot possibly read ‘bitterness’ into a throwaway line.

      shadows

  3. Thin grasp of reality
    For those of you who haven’t yet read the article ‘Do we all have a thin grasp of reality, or is it just a scientist saying ‘stupid sh*t’?’, it’s basically a mini-rant about how journalists frequently misrepresent the nature of the research they’re reporting, occasionally due to (mis)statements by the researchers themselves.

    I’ll have to give you the gist of the article first, in order for my comment to make sense.

    The author prefaced his rant by explaining the memory research he uses as an example. One thing he says regarding this research is, ‘Source monitoring has been a hot topic in memory research because of its connection to false memories, which in turn connects it to some important practical issues, most notably recovered memories and eye witness testimony.’ [my bold]

    According to the article, the individual parts of our memories – location, context, smells, etc. – are each stored in different areas of the brain, and whenever we recall something, our brain has to reconstruct the memory by piecing all these parts back together.

    ‘Source monitoring’ is the term memory researchers use to describe how we decide whether a memory is something we actually experienced, or something we just imagined or dreamed.

    The author of this article is ranting about how journalists who reported on this preliminary research, which is on one small aspect of ‘source monitoring’, erroneously inflated its scope by saying it shows we have a thin grasp of reality.

    But apparently, their notion that it shows our thin grasp of reality came from the researcher himself.

    Frankly, although his statement did over-step the bounds of this particular study, I tend to agree with him because, over the past few years, I’ve noticed more and more instances of friends and acquaintances getting certain aspects of their memories screwed up.

    For instance, a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine brought up a particular movie that she said we’d recently seen together. When I said I hadn’t seen the movie, and told her she must have seen it with someone else, she insisted that I was the person she had seen it with, and got downright pissed off at me for continuing to deny it. I finally asked her what day and time she’d gone to see it, and luckily I was able to show her a receipt from WalMart – which showed that I was shopping there on the day and time in question – to prove to her that I wasn’t the person she’d gone with.

    This sort of thing has been happening so frequently to me that I’ve begun to wonder what could be causing it. Has anyone else here noticed an increase in this type of false memories? Have you noticed that the people experiencing them tend to get unusually upset when you deny the reality of their memories? Has anyone else had someone demand that you supply proof that the memory in question is false?

    Kat

    1. common feelings
      There are frequently common mixtures of thoughts, and memories.

      Extentions of these are dreams, and those dreams can reveal a lot of things.

      Dreams are a mix of memory, and imagination, and analysis.

      You can also say that imagination is a mix of dreams, and memory, and analysis.

      And then you can order these things in any way you want.

      I am not being metaphycisal now. Very serious people in the field of artificial intelligence believe that memory is all there is to intelligent thought.

      So, if you go with that theory, then thought is just memory projected into the future.

      Of course that is a gross simplification.

    2. Yep
      This happened recently when my son denied that he had been to a certain restaurant with a friend.He said he went with his wife but he didn’t.He went with his friend and remembers it differently.She keeps wanting to go there and he says he went with her already and doesn’t want to go there again.
      I’ve had people argue this with me, that I was with them somewhere when I wasn’t.
      It has not happened to me where I was the one claiming something.I don’t know why.

      The worst thing though is the media, particularly the ABC here in Oz.
      The early radio news carries news stories you never hear again.
      For instance, if you listen to the ABC in the early morning you get all the overseas news.Then the government gets to it and the next news report carries a different perspective of that news or even none of it at all.

      I have had arguments with people when I swear I heard something on the early morning news and it is never heard again.
      Not so much now, but just before the war in Iraq began was bad.

      shadows

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