Back in March, Google announced a new search algorithm that would display websites and news stories based on their factual content at the top of the list and the factually-deficient results at the bottom. This is radically different from current practice where Google puts the top read results at the top and less read to the rear. But is this the way it should be, given people may be reading too much bollocks and not enough factual, scientific material?
Should creation science websites or climate denier sites be at the top of searches because most people read them, or at the bottom because they are not factual? If the former is acceptable, then really all we have is a popularity contest. Is that valid for those seeking genuine information as opposed to PR and nonsense?
Interestingly, when Google first announced this new search program, there was instant blowback and outrage from FOX News (which consistently ranks low in accuracy at Politifact.org and Factcheck.org.) Why would FOX be howling its head off? Maybe, just maybe because their honchos know most of what they put out there is gibberish and distortions. From O'Reilly to Hannity and Fox n' Friends, none of it can be trusted.
FOX wasn't the only bunch screaming. Others included: climate change deniers, Vaxers (those against childhood vaccinations), and birthers. Again, why are they howling like stuck pigs if they are offering valid information? There'd be no reason for such outbursts.
Sadly, Google has no plans to start using the program but it's interesting to consider the uproar if they did given all the liars, PR-mongers, disinformationists and others would have to come out of the woodwork. They'd not sit still or remain quiet given it might jeopardize their interests.
But think of the benefits!
For example, employers could fact check job candidates' resumes and LinkedIn pages, identifying bogus credentials including inflated education credentials that might eliminate many job seekers on the basis of fudged resumes.
Even more importantly, kids and others interested in advancing their educations on the subject of climate change, evolution and American history wouldn't be driven first to nonsense sites such as those of Roger Pielke Jr., Ken Ham and the history revisionist Larry Schweikart, see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/08/48-liberal-lies-how-about-50-tea-party.html
Imagine how much more efficient educational web searches would become if all the detritus could be instantly ranked at the bottom instead of the most relevant and factual material - forcing truth seekers to plow through page after page, even after refining searches.
But it seems this is what we will have to settle for until Google implements its truth algorithm. That means facts and truth will not come easily but only after diligent work. Of course, in this quest reading can also do wonders, because it upends the popularity ranking systems prevalent for existing web search engines.
Point of fact, babble such as put forward by the likes of Larry Schweikart, Ken Ham or Roger Pielke Jr. wouldn't stand a chance at being seen as credible if people read more diligently from the pool of books shown to be factual or scientific. Books such as Darwin's Origin of Species, and James Loewen's tour de force ('Lies My Teacher Told Me') exposing the bogus American history taught our kids- but more importantly also disclosing the actual history omitted!
Moral of the story: read first, or at least read to check any web searches you pull up - don't just accept the first ones as the factual ones.
Showing posts with label Deficient American history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deficient American history. Show all posts
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
P. J. O'Rourke Wants the 60s Taken Off "Life Support" - Is He Ignorant Or Just a Fool?
Tragically, too many Americans - particularly some of the more or less influential wordsmiths of the Neoliberal media - have found a common refrain in why America "remains obsessed with the 60s." They feel the decade has long since passed, the events have been noted, and hey- it's more than past time to move on. Such is the case with part time humorist and author P.J. O'Rourke - who's made a living skewering cultural obsessions, fixations and idiosyncrasies for what Bajans call "donkey's years".
He takes them up again in his recent TIME essay (January 13), 'Keeping the 60s on Life Support', mocking the notion that this decade is worthy of any such prolonged attention. In many ways O'Rourke's take mimics that of songster Bob Dylan who, two years ago, in a CBS Morning Show appearance said:
“I can’t imagine people making such a big fuss over the Sixties. Unless things are so dull now they just have to think of some time when times were better.”
Leaving one to wonder if Dylan even was semi-conscious for the 60s, or merely survived them in some kind of stoner haze. Yeah, why make a "fuss" over the decade that saw two signal pieces of legislation passed (The Civil Rights Act in 1964, and Voting Rights Act in 1965) that basically conferred the practical basis for the exercise of rights to a minority of the population, that hadn't been manifested for over 100 years? Oh, and then there was the legislation that gave us Medicare, which nearly 45 million seniors depend on now and without which they'd likely be dying in ditches, unattended and impecunious.
Let’s also be clear that only an idiot, or semi-comatose stoner fool would opine that people reference the 60s now as “some time when times were better”. Are you effing kidding me? A decade of upheaval with four major assassinations – including of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King – essentially the entire solid core of American liberalism at that time. (Accounting for how we veered into namby-pamby, free market Neo-liberalism as a capitalist, whore substitute for the real McCoy).
Sadly, it seems O'Rourke is no better informed, and finds it easier to set out semi-facetious word play on the decade than to do a serious analysis. He begins, of course, with the centerpiece event - the JFK assassination- which effects still cascade through time as we behold the "anti-Nation" that never would have materialized had JFK lived. By that I mean the arc of recorded history would likely have seen no Vietnam War, no 58,000 Americans killed there, no early termination to the manned space program (on account of $269b wasted on Vietnam) and NO election of Ronnie Raygun -with the massive inequality it ushered in. Oh, and likely no Gee Dumbya Bush shoehorned into power 37 years later! (With no 9/11, Iraq war or Afghanistan either!)
One of the saddest lines ever penned occurs in O'Rourke's essay as when he writes:
"I was driving my 15 year old daughter and three of her class mates to school on Nov. 22, and I asked them if they realized it was the day President Kennedy was assassinated. The three girls had no idea. Two girls (my daughter included) had no idea who President Kennedy was."
Truly, I'd have been ashamed to admit such a thing in a widely circulated medium, even TIME. It reveals the author to be defunct (as a parent) in his own contributions to his daughter's education, in failing to provide what her school didn't. It also says more about the currently deficient high school history curriculum than it does about an event O'Rourke presumes is passé. It again, shows that if today's kids are being denied knowledge of this defining event (which likely saw a coup d'état and our nation's future course permanently altered) than they really do need to avail themselves of other sources i.e. via the Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1450964693/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-the-graphic-adaptation"
That O'Rourke's daughter and her friends don't know that they likely wouldn't even exist today had Kennedy not defied the Joint Chiefs' plan to bomb and invade Cuba in October, 1962, is beyond incredible. And yet, O'Rourke sees fit to mock the importance of the event to the extent of even asserting (likely in his gross ignorance - in which case he needs to check our my JFK FAQs from November):
"Almost any adjective can be applied to the 60s except 'serious'. ....We had heroes in the 1960s ...their flaws didn't lead to their destruction, they were killed by deranged fools".
If P.J. truly believes this he needs a thorough course in deep politics. Indeed, none of the liberal core slaughtered in the 1960s were killed by "deranged fools" although that is the way it has been made to appear by a PR-tainted corporate media. Sadly, not enough Americans - like O'Rourke - dig deeply enough to find the real answers, say in understanding why Lee Oswald was no "deranged fool" but rather a targeted (by the CIA) asset to be manipulated into being the decoy. I went through the explanation for this in detail, in two October blog posts on 'The Pre-Assassination Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald'. Does any of this matter to O'Rourke? Seemingly not, so long as he can get some passing jollies on perhaps the most significant (historically) decade of the past 150 years.....and get paid for his balderdash.
O'Rourke in his phony (funny?) essay declares: "Other Golden eras have had bad ends - Edwardian England and the Roaring 20s, but they don't have the deathless, Keith Richards staying power of the 60s."
That may well be so, but if the reasons accounting for this exception aren't clear to O'Rourke, then perhaps he ought to leave out any further ruminations on the decade until they are. To that end, perhaps he needs to avail himself of learning the real history of that decade, not the phony one on offer from the Neoliberal historical revisionists and their national security state accomplices ....who'd just love it dearly if all Americans were as fallow, ignorant and lazy as P.J. appears to be.
But then, what do you expect from a part time humorist who has zero exposure - far less grasp - of recent American history?
He takes them up again in his recent TIME essay (January 13), 'Keeping the 60s on Life Support', mocking the notion that this decade is worthy of any such prolonged attention. In many ways O'Rourke's take mimics that of songster Bob Dylan who, two years ago, in a CBS Morning Show appearance said:
“I can’t imagine people making such a big fuss over the Sixties. Unless things are so dull now they just have to think of some time when times were better.”
Leaving one to wonder if Dylan even was semi-conscious for the 60s, or merely survived them in some kind of stoner haze. Yeah, why make a "fuss" over the decade that saw two signal pieces of legislation passed (The Civil Rights Act in 1964, and Voting Rights Act in 1965) that basically conferred the practical basis for the exercise of rights to a minority of the population, that hadn't been manifested for over 100 years? Oh, and then there was the legislation that gave us Medicare, which nearly 45 million seniors depend on now and without which they'd likely be dying in ditches, unattended and impecunious.
Let’s also be clear that only an idiot, or semi-comatose stoner fool would opine that people reference the 60s now as “some time when times were better”. Are you effing kidding me? A decade of upheaval with four major assassinations – including of John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King – essentially the entire solid core of American liberalism at that time. (Accounting for how we veered into namby-pamby, free market Neo-liberalism as a capitalist, whore substitute for the real McCoy).
Sadly, it seems O'Rourke is no better informed, and finds it easier to set out semi-facetious word play on the decade than to do a serious analysis. He begins, of course, with the centerpiece event - the JFK assassination- which effects still cascade through time as we behold the "anti-Nation" that never would have materialized had JFK lived. By that I mean the arc of recorded history would likely have seen no Vietnam War, no 58,000 Americans killed there, no early termination to the manned space program (on account of $269b wasted on Vietnam) and NO election of Ronnie Raygun -with the massive inequality it ushered in. Oh, and likely no Gee Dumbya Bush shoehorned into power 37 years later! (With no 9/11, Iraq war or Afghanistan either!)
One of the saddest lines ever penned occurs in O'Rourke's essay as when he writes:
"I was driving my 15 year old daughter and three of her class mates to school on Nov. 22, and I asked them if they realized it was the day President Kennedy was assassinated. The three girls had no idea. Two girls (my daughter included) had no idea who President Kennedy was."
Truly, I'd have been ashamed to admit such a thing in a widely circulated medium, even TIME. It reveals the author to be defunct (as a parent) in his own contributions to his daughter's education, in failing to provide what her school didn't. It also says more about the currently deficient high school history curriculum than it does about an event O'Rourke presumes is passé. It again, shows that if today's kids are being denied knowledge of this defining event (which likely saw a coup d'état and our nation's future course permanently altered) than they really do need to avail themselves of other sources i.e. via the Kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1450964693/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-the-graphic-adaptation"
That O'Rourke's daughter and her friends don't know that they likely wouldn't even exist today had Kennedy not defied the Joint Chiefs' plan to bomb and invade Cuba in October, 1962, is beyond incredible. And yet, O'Rourke sees fit to mock the importance of the event to the extent of even asserting (likely in his gross ignorance - in which case he needs to check our my JFK FAQs from November):
"Almost any adjective can be applied to the 60s except 'serious'. ....We had heroes in the 1960s ...their flaws didn't lead to their destruction, they were killed by deranged fools".
If P.J. truly believes this he needs a thorough course in deep politics. Indeed, none of the liberal core slaughtered in the 1960s were killed by "deranged fools" although that is the way it has been made to appear by a PR-tainted corporate media. Sadly, not enough Americans - like O'Rourke - dig deeply enough to find the real answers, say in understanding why Lee Oswald was no "deranged fool" but rather a targeted (by the CIA) asset to be manipulated into being the decoy. I went through the explanation for this in detail, in two October blog posts on 'The Pre-Assassination Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald'. Does any of this matter to O'Rourke? Seemingly not, so long as he can get some passing jollies on perhaps the most significant (historically) decade of the past 150 years.....and get paid for his balderdash.
O'Rourke in his phony (funny?) essay declares: "Other Golden eras have had bad ends - Edwardian England and the Roaring 20s, but they don't have the deathless, Keith Richards staying power of the 60s."
That may well be so, but if the reasons accounting for this exception aren't clear to O'Rourke, then perhaps he ought to leave out any further ruminations on the decade until they are. To that end, perhaps he needs to avail himself of learning the real history of that decade, not the phony one on offer from the Neoliberal historical revisionists and their national security state accomplices ....who'd just love it dearly if all Americans were as fallow, ignorant and lazy as P.J. appears to be.
But then, what do you expect from a part time humorist who has zero exposure - far less grasp - of recent American history?
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