I read the following line in a story about one man's lament at having purchased a car that was not made in the USA or by union workers:

[ The shirt I'm wearing right now was made in the Philippines. My pants are from Bangladesh ... I would never even think of buying a Japanese car. For me it's a matter of principle ... as much as I can, I choose to spend my money on products made by union workers in America ... Not only was my new Fusion assembled at Ford's plant in Hermosillo, in the Mexican state of Sonora, where there is no UAW, and auto workers earn less than $5 an hour. What's worse, almost none of the parts that went into it were sourced in the U.S. or even Canada ... ]

You have to look closely to see (I'm guessing the author didn't even see it), but its a belief that is at the core of my problems with lots of the immigration and "outsourcing" complaints.

The author complains that none of the parts were sourced in the US or even Canada.  Think about that.  Only a few short graphs earlier the author states he tries to buy American (read, U.S., unless Mexico isn't a part of the American continent, anymore), union-made cars.  He has also complained about, lets see, his shirt from the Philippines, his Bangladesh-originated pants, and his Mexico-sourced car.  And then he proceeds to say he wanted car parts sourced from "the US or even Canada." [emphasis is mine].  So, parts from US, OK; parts from Canada, OK; car from Mexico, not OK.  

He does note that wages are higher in Canada.  But if higher/highest wages are the sole important factor, doesn't that make presumably even higher U.S. wages the best?  Does the ranking for best vehicle to buy go by wages, and thus US, Canada, X, Y, Z?  No, clearly from his earlier statements it isn't a wage thing, its a unionized, country-of-origin thing. 

Mexico.  Phillippines.  Bangladesh.  Let us take a trip to Seasame Street: What do these three have that the fourth, Canada, doesn't?  Oh, right.

Stupid stories

I thought maybe this story on digital drugs was the worst thing I had seen in a while, having managed to make a mountain out of a mole hill all while also being late to the party; however, then I came across this little jem about a city fining a lady for picking up an air conditioner off the street (with permission).

The death of society by technology has been greatly exaggerated

I'm kinda a contrarian by my nature. I know that.

I wouldn't say I'm cynical, I'm actually pretty trusting. Almost to a fault. But I love when the facts and logic of a situation play out differently than the emotion or "common wisdom."

And I usually enjoy shouting it from the rooftops. Which doesn't always make me a great person with which to have a conversation. But I think its what drew me to news and reporting. At least in part. Also, I like to laugh at stupid people.

So, with this in mind, here is another contrarian posting that aims to dispute the "good old days of yore" meme and the idea that the world is falling apart, largely thanks to technology.

- Socrates warned his fellow man against writing (writing!). He thought it would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls."
- He also thought (perhaps properly) that children couldn't tell fiction from reality, so he suggested that parents never tell them created stories and rely instead on stories from real life.

Wait, it gets better
- Conrad Gessner warned against the modern world and how it the overwhelmed people with information. He suggested this information overload caused confusion and damage to the mind. He died in 1565.
- A frenchman (0f course, right?) - Malesherbes - warned that getting news from the printed page would isolate readers. It was more uplifting, he thought, to get your news from the pulpit. This is the same newspapers that today are held as bastions of civilized society and whose demise is heralded as the end of the world by some.
- Even schools have been targeted, with some early studies suggesting that organized schooling exhausted children's brains and nervous systems
- Excessive studying was once thought to cause madness.

Its the same, but worse , from there on out. Radio is the dirge of a well-0rdered society ... TV will destroy the nice, wholesome radio-based community ... the internet will crush the wisdom we have all gotten from the TV.

Its worth noting that early worriers thought "Email hurts IQ more than pot." That's a Daily Telegraph headline, not National Enquirer headline.

So, next time someone laments the "shortened attention spans" created by TV, the internet, or the InterGoogle, or whatever is next, keep in mind that no studies show this to be the case. In fact, according to this slate.com article, not only does the evidence not suggest this, it actually suggests the opposite. Technology is making our lives better, with social networking sites providing better better offline social lives and video games allowing players to better absorb inforamtion information without a loss of accuracy.

And don't forget the studies showing that television viewing doesn't have a negative impact on our health. Or our ability to... um, wait, its on the tip of my tongue... if only I had been able to avoid schooling I could probably remem... of yeah, our ability to concentrate.

These fears about the ever increasing media, often fueled by the existing media, are exactly the reason why media isn't implicitly worth saving.

1) We are almost always better off with the new media
2) if the best you've got is "fear this new thing," we are better off without you.

That reminds me of the college acquitance acquaintance who was sure the internet was merely going to be a phase or trend. This was circa 1999, so it wasn't quite as crazy then.

Nah, it was just as crazy then.