-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Friday, February 16, 2001 3:15 PM
Subject: Re: NASA Watch comments on the Fox Apollo crapumentary
>
>In a message dated 2/16/2001 11:36:09 AM Alaskan Standard Time,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
>> It may be that Fox knows the average american better than I.... how else
>can
>> you explain that you can air Alien Autopsy and also claim that we can't
>land
>> people on the moon? Just keep flashing sensational muck before your
>audience
>> to keep
>> them watching through the ads.
>
>One of the most thought-provoking comments I've ever heard came from one of
>the 20th century's greatest politicians (although, Bill Clinton probably
also
>could have written something similar). The politician I'm referring to?
>Adolf Hitler. The quote?
>
>'Repeat a lie long enough, and loudly enough, and people will start to
>believe it'.
>
>Remember Orson Welle's 'War of the Worlds' broadcast of 1936? Some things
>never change. But, that's what scientists are FOR. To debunk
superstition.
>You can't grow strong analytical 'muscles' in the absence of challenge.
>
>-- John Harlow Byrne
>
Actually, I think it was Goebbels who said it -- not Hitler himself
(although dear Adolf did say, "A new age of magical interpretation of the
world is coming -- of its interpretation by the will rather by the
intellect. There is no such thing as knowable truth, either in the moral or
in the factual sense.")
And as for Clinton -- well, not to get into an ideological piefight in this
web group, but Ronald Reagan was even more notorious for it. (One of the
neglected parts of Edmund Morris' controversial biography -- although it was
reporinted in "Newsweek" -- spends one whole page simply listing Reagan's
long parade of literally grotesque misstatements of the most elementary
facts, after which Morris notes that Reagan kept cheerfully repeating the
same howlers over and over no matter how many times other people, including
his own staffers, corrected him. Not a man significantly concerned with his
level of accuracy, in short.)
The Fox documentary, however, is notable because it's a perfect reflector of
two other important facts. First, the fact that we live in the "Media Age"
(just as predicted by Arthur C. Clarke) doesn't mean that we live in the
"Information Age" -- because we're being deluged with a tidal wave not just
of true information, but of lies and misinformation, and we're all still
faced with the tremendous problem of trying to sort out the truth from the
lies. Second, we have here further proof that -- at the same time that
human society becomes more and more dependent upon scientific and
technological knowledge -- the average person remains just as ignorant of
elementary science as ever. If this keeps up, scientists and engineers will
end up as a sort of High Priesthood, probably complete with tall headdresses
and human sacrifices. What do you do about this? Damned if I know.
Bruce Moomaw
==
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