[ale] Mapathon?

[david w. millians]

Jeff Lightner wrote:
> Because US news is more about who is ahead on American Idol than
> anything meaningful.
> 
> We have a strong anti-evolution movement, talking heads on the radio
> that give opinions rather than news and TV news that talks mainly about
> entertainment gossip.   It appears that somewhere along the line someone
> decided that if "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" then it
> follows that a lot of knowledge is extremely dangerous and should be
> avoided at all costs.

In the words of pogo, 'we have met the enemy and he is us.'

They're selling ads to pay for their costs. Ads only sell when people 
watch. People only watch what interests them. Ergo...

I'm not disagreeing with you, mind you. I'm just saying that if you 
don't think something like the Beeb is useful, then you get what 
everybody pays for. And paraphrased from MiB, persons may be smart, but 
people are willing to be entertained and hoodwinked.

Re: news. (I have a journalism background.) Every so often, somebody 
who's low in the ratings decides that they need to do 'happy news' since 
when you do polling, everybody says that there's too munch violence and 
destruction on local news. And they get slaughtered in the ratings - pun 
not really intended - by 'if it bleeds it leads' news programs.

So... the market doesn't always give what's "best" but it does give what 
sells. The two are sadly not as congruent as they should be.

It's the free market at work. This is usually what most computer people 
want, in theory, if you look at political orientation charts. YMMV.

/wishes we DID have something like the beeb
//in spite of libertarian prefs.