opinions

I begin each day with a sense of excitement that someone I never met will piss me off. I am rarely disappointed, for tucked into my morning paper is one of the few true venues of solicited opinion. As much as the cup of coffee, it serves to open my bleary eyes- literally and figuratively. I have on occasion added my own words to those pages, have even been picked up by other sites whose cause I have added more words to and by bloggers who parse them for evidence of an addled mind. Both are equally fun. But I really have only ever espoused one opinion, and it is really more of a commentary. vis; Some opinions are genuine and deserve consideration but most are the unexamined residue of some past indignation, like that impervious layer of brown crud around the edges of a Pyrex baking dish. Studies have shown (to use one of their own most commonly deployed phrases) that the human mind is [qualifying adjective here] unable to separate fact from fiction if something is presented as fact from (just) two separate sources. Never mind that both versions of 'fact' may have origins in the same source. And never mind that one or both of those sources may never have purported to be presenting something as fact. And also never mind that in many cases the LACK of evidence from any particular source to support a contrarary stand can itself be used to qualify an opinion. So here is the recipe for the circular thinking that comprises most of the opinion floating around out there. Step One- the earth is hollow, I read it in a book. Step Two- I asked Sister Charles Bronson about it, she said it certainly WAS true- "where do you think God puts all the sinners!". Step Three-I looked down a well once- I couldn't see the bottom. and D- If scientists are so smart, how come they Draw pictures of the center of the earth, this book I read had Photos.
Any MSNBC junky will tell you this; when someone starts off with "Look, the fact of the matter is..." your skeptical human brain has been warned.