Monday, February 21, 2005

Firsthand knowledge versus pc

The Boston Herald (and the BBC and over the weekend, CNN International) is discussing the blogs v the MSM and the problems with the press...
One reason is that the MSM assumes you think they are the experts, but often they merely show their naivity...it's like when I read Chomsky...sounded very persuasive, until I compared his claims versus what I had actually seen, and they didn't fit.
And even the Herald article shows another reason: You can't just jot off a note telling the writer your opinion, you have to "REGISTER" and then get a password before putting your opinion down. Last time I tried that was a NYT board, and I found it full of anti Christian bigotry worse than anything one finds on places like Free Republic, which unlike the sophisticated NYT, has a nice "report abuse" link which is easy to use...
Here is an example of what I mean, about the war against the murderous FARC in Colombia...in the past, I wouldn't have access to such a rebuttal of pc ness...
And here is another: Did diet and lifestyle increase this lady's risk of cancer?
Yup. promiscuity increases greatly your rate of cancer of the uterus, and having children decrease the rate of breast cancer. Now, I'm not convinced that abortion increases the rate of breast cancer, but I suspect that birth control pills and increased estrogen in the environment and pseudoestrogens from pollution do. But don't mention such things...

Then there are these articles on the NYTimes...after loud broo haha about the "dangers" of Vioxx, they finally report that the FDA says ok but with caution, that every drug has risks, and they then "balance" that out with a bunch of "experts" who say these drugs should be removed because they are "risky"...Hello. You want to hurt, fine. Maybe a tiny risk is worth not hurting...and if you are worried about the small increase of blood coagulability it causes, take a bayer aspirin...

And in an earlier post, I mentioned non embryonic stem cells for regeneration of breast tissue...here is research on regenerating limbs...nope, I don't understand it, but it's interesting...

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