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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

I'm Back!

Okay, not quite completely, absolutely caught up, but getting there, with enough time for an occasional comment on my favorite blogs to read (known as the post-Judd Alliance over at The Daily Duck).

Not only did I not post or comment anywhere for the last five months, but I didn't read any news at all either. Now that I've started looking at the news again, I'm amazed at how little I missed. We're still in Iraq, we haven't invaded North Korea or Iran yet, Peter Burnet hasn't posted in months, the economy is still pretty decent, global warming is still a hot topic - life goes on.

Even the news that happened elicited such utterly predictable responses. For example, the Virginia Tech shooting resulted in gun control proponents claiming that if only more strict gun control had been implemented, it would have never happened, and pro-gun folk claiming if that only concealed weapon permits were easier to obtain, the carnage would have been greatly limited. The instant I heard about the shooting I knew such bloviations would result. What I would've like to have heard was something like the following: yeah, the shooting is a shame, but the odds of dying in a shooting spree by a madman with a gun is several orders of magnitude less likely than dying in an automobile accident, so perhaps this sort of thing should not instigate any further policy actions since such actions are about as likely to cause harm as good.

I don't get a daily newspaper and I haven't had one for at least ten years. In fact, other than Technology Review, which seems to arrive complimentary because of a small annual donation I give to MIT, I haven't gotten any dead tree media for quite some time. You'd almost think I was an environmentalist or something.

Given that nothing seems to happen when I miss months of news, I feel pretty confident in the decision not to worry about news on a daily basis.

1 comment:

Oroborous said...

Mostly-caught-up is still a good place to be in.