Hello Peter >How to sort out information from disinformation?
Yes, the problem. Here we are in the midst of the dawning Age of Information and just about nobody knows how to sort t'other from which. Lots of people think they do though. In some cases at least, the more confident they are about that the more thoroughly spun they're likely to be. They sure don't teach this stuff in schools, what a surprise! Meanwhile the sheer quantity of disinfo and the resources put into it have reached unprecedented levels. We'll somehow have to deal with the Age of Spin before we get to have a real Information Age. >Important issue for anyone trying to work off web >sites - but also important for everyone, everywhere. >How do you know whether any claim is true or not? >What if you base your start-up sustainable biofuel >business on poor information and bad technology, spend >a few thousand dollars, and wind up with nothing - or >worse, a huge mess on your hands? > >Here is a good place to begin thinking about these >issues: > >http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/counterfeit.html Nice, thankyou. Actually the best place I know for anti-spin resources is the list archives, very relevant to biofuels issues, IMHO. Along with John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's PR Watch: http://www.prwatch.org/ Center for Media and Democracy >Note: I'd be pretty skeptical about a lot of the 9/11 >'conspiracy theories'; many of them are so blatantly >ridiculous that the only 'conspiracy theory' that >makes sense to me is that they are deliberately put >out there by some government PR agency trying to make >Bush administration critics seem 'crazy'. As they >say, caveat emptor, or, consider the facts carefully >and trust your own reasoning abilities. I fear that's not going to help much with 9/11, I've seldom seen such thoroughly muddied waters. I see no reason to be any less sceptical of the official versions than of all but the whackiest conspiracist stuff and every reason not to be. No matter how whacky it gets I'm glad the objections and protests and questions are getting louder and louder and ever more insistent, and spreading far beyond the conspiracist fringe. Just about everything about 9/11 and what's happened since stinks very badly. In a way, if David Ray Griffin is helping to raise the clamour level and spread the questioning wider I don't much care what he's claiming. Best Keith _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
