Thanks to Instapundit I came across this link to a speech that Michael Crichton gave, aptly entitled “Aliens Cause Global Warming”. The entire speech, and his view on concensus versus actually scientific discovery are very good. I was particularly interested in the portions concerning second hand smoke.
January 2, 2004
Political Parties
Found a fairly interesting platform comparison tool here earlier this evening. My wife and I were discussing political issues because of something she saw on TV and I hunted it down. It is interesting how different our results were. We are very different politically but that’s what keeps true democracy going strong.
I looked at the long and short versions, went through the short one in it’s entirety. I ended up with 1 democrat, 1 republican, and 5 libertarian. No surprise to me, but I liked seeing the different comparisons. It also offers links to each parties (including Green) platform on their own web sites for your perusal.
What I think is interesting is how people get their information, and how strongly they are influenced by that. My wife watches alot of TV, therefore her viewpoints are influenced by that. She also teaches, so has first hand experience with some issues that I would know nothing about and just make blanket statements about. On the other hand, I get 90% of my information from the Internet, and read the occasional newspaper that gets left lying around at work. I very rarely watch television. probably 4-5 hours per week, and that would be a heavy week.