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Recently, I started volunteering with the Rescue 100 Horses Foundation. They’re a group that formed several years ago when a previously well-established Arabian breeding operation went under and left all its horses to starve. The original hundred horses have all been fed up to healthy weights and found homes, but unfortunately there are still cases of abuse and neglect and there’s still work for the foundation. My volunteer duties are (1) to socialize the horses, and teach them that when a human shows up in the pasture, it’s a good thing; and (2) photography.
There are currently three foals in care, who were born last spring to mares who came in pregnant. The rescue has brand-new baby pictures of them, but nothing current. The other day I went out to get some current pictures, and discovered that photographing baby horses is even more challenging than photographing puppies of the same age. They are curious. They are rambunctious. They want to nibble on you. Unlike puppies, they weigh several hundred pounds and have pointy hooves that they kick with when they are startled. I didn’t get very many quality shots.
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Isn’t being on a run away train fun?
Media Lens is an invaluable source to in describing and measuring how far the “respectable media” kowtows to state and corporate interests. This excerpt from their latest media alert illustrates the mendacity that is common place in what is considered to be “acceptable journalistic practices”.
“The key to what is precisely wrong with corporate journalism is explained in this nutshell by the US commentator Michael Parenti:
‘Bias in favor of the orthodox is frequently mistaken for “objectivity”. Departures from this ideological orthodoxy are themselves dismissed as ideological.’
Examples of bias towards the orthodoxy of Western power are legion every day of the week. On January 30 this year, David Loyn reported for BBC News at Ten from Bagram airbase in Afghanistan as US troops prepared to withdraw from a blood-strewn occupation. Standing beside a large US military plane, he intoned:
‘For all of the lives lost and money spent, it could have been so much better.’
The pro-Nato perspective of that remark masquerading as impartial journalism is stark. By contrast, Patrick Cockburn summed up the reality:
‘After 12 years, £390bn, and countless dead, we leave poverty, fraud – and the Taliban in Afghanistan…60 per cent of children are malnourished and only 27 per cent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water…Elections are now so fraudulent as to rob the winners of legitimacy.’
The damning conclusion?
‘Faced with these multiple disasters western leaders simply ignore Afghan reality and take refuge in spin that is not far from deliberate lying.’
BBC News has been a major component of this gross deception of the public.”
Hmm. What is troubling is that many outside of the UK look to BBC as a “better” source of news that is more reliable that what is available in North America.
Admittedly, I would take BBC reporting hands down over anything from the propaganda mill known as Fox News, but how many people have the time to really sink their teeth into multiple news sources? How many people even care about the news that much anymore?
I’m shocked that so many people have consciously chosen ignorance as their strategy for dealing with the news and world events. Denial of the world ‘out there’ can only lead to insular thinking and simplistic interpretations of complex problems. We need more people, not less, grounded in rationality with a gist of how the world actually works. How can you effect change in the world if you know nothing of how it works?
Funny how things George was talking about are still, well, problematic today.
Where do you draw the line between taking on bad arguments and lending credence to corrosively stupid notions? This was one of the meta-debates that went on before, during and after the Nye v. Ham debate. It is a fine line to walk as savaging creationist stupidity publicly lends said stupidity, a veneer of credibility that it most certainly does not deserve. Bill did a fairly good job of making Ham’s arguments look like the silly pap that they are, but also brought more attention to the creationist set of bass-ackward notions as a whole.
Creation “science” needs to pack up its silly bags and go away. But I’m unsure if this is the right way to go about it. Anyhow, enjoy the post debate analysis. :)
I set myself a challenge to get these done before the Olympics closing ceremonies, and I did!
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
Your opinions…