We all know that American journalism and mass media is heavily skewed and censored, but this sort of one-way media manipulation just irritates me… and I’m not even a diehard Ron Paul supporter.  One of my good friends, Nick, is a diehard Ron Paul supporter, so he emailed the following letter directly to CNBC.  Even though this is off-topic for my blog, I feel strongly that Nick’s letter should see the light of day beyond some CNBC executive’s email trash bin.

Dear Old Media,

In response to your “Open Letter to the Ron Paul Faithful,” you only gave half of the story.  While many of the claims you made were not outright false, your analysis of the situation is incomplete.

First, let’s stop with the childish implications of “hacking”.  Nobody is hacking anything and you know it.  Millions of Internet transactions take place securely every day that would be much juicier targets for hackers than a silly Old Media poll for which there is no gain and which is censored as soon as Ron Paul pulls ahead, as many of them have been – this is not the first.  Just admit that several thousand real people took the time to go to your website and vote in your poll.

The Ron Paul Faithful will admit to organizing to vote in your poll.  You claim this amounts to “…a well-organized and committed ‘few’ [throwing] the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of ‘the many’…”  Perhaps, though I hope for the future of this great country and its future generations that we are a well-organized majority.  That point aside, your claim is hypocritical because this is exactly what the Old Media and the “legitimate” polling organizations (as you call them) have been doing all along.

The Old Media is itself the well-organized minority that is throwing the results for the majority through censorship, misleading data and half-truths.  Take for example the amount of questions and response time that Ron Paul is granted during these debates.  He is consistently granted the least amount of time out of all the candidates, despite polling higher and raising more funds than many of them.

Let us also examine the “legitimate” polls that you reference to imply that Ron Paul’s support can’t be so high.  As you well know, these phone polls are unscientific and biased.  You are claiming that the opinions of a few hundred Republicans with land-line telephones represent the opinions of the majority.  Furthermore, the polling companies regularly leave candidates like Ron Paul off their list of poll choices, naming only “mainstream” candidates to choose from.  These polls that you swear by and reference so often represent the opinions of the majority no better than the poll that you took down when you didn’t like the results.

So who is the well-organized minority that is trying to sway the majority?  Is it really us, a sincere group of citizens trying to get the word out concerning our candidate?  Or is it you, an Old Media giant and biased polling community who tries to enforce their personal choices of “mainstream” candidates on the citizens of this country?  We were not given equal voice in your format so we organized and took voice in our format, the Internet.  We’d do it again.

The Old Media seems to have forgotten the meaning of, and it’s responsibility to, unbiased journalism.  If you are going to present an editorial as news because it is more entertaining, you must strive to give equal time to all opinions.  Otherwise, just go back to reporting the facts and keep your predictions and opinions to yourselves.  When a well-organized few has such an effect on the opinions of the many and on the outcomes of our political process, I get very worried.  You do the entire nation a great disservice.

Sincerely,
The Ron Paul Faithful

A vast number of articles have been written on the topic of Google’s privacy policies.  I know because I’ve probably read most of them.  Many of these articles discuss the specifics how Google stores and secures their user’s personal information.  Sure, I like to know that my personal data is secure…  But have you ever actually compiled a detailed list of your personal information that Google does know?  I just did, and it’s slightly startling!

Here are 16 things Google knows about me and how they acquired the info:

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I have compiled a list of 6 digitally traceable tracks we unconsciously leave behind as we trek through our daily routines.  I have also included a hypothetical example of how easy it can be to track someone down online by tracing their online affiliations and dabbling with the information that is found.

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In reality, most 2007 college freshmen were born in 1989 and probably barely remember any the following… it’s scary:

1. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
2. Ronald Reagan
3. The Cold War and the Berlin Wall
4. Hardback (Funk & Wagnalls) encyclopedia sets
5. Getting tangled up in a long kitchen phone cord
6. Setting the record timer on your VCR
7. When Michael Jackson and the moonwalk were cool
8. Recording music off the radio
9. Desert Storm
10. A floppy disk
11. Windows 95
12. The Nintendo Entertainment System (and Duck Hunt)
13. The Oklahoma City Bombing
14. The O.J. Simpson Trial
15. Life before the World Wide Web

At some point in time everyone involved in an exclusive relationship experiences a momentary thought of infidelity.  It’s the flirtatious glimmer in your eye that indicates a brief superficial curiosity for someone of the opposite sex, the simple act of wondering.  For that split second your values misalign, placing shallow emotion ahead of your true moral character.  This momentary shift is a direct reflection of your instinctual emotion splitting away from your moral values.  When your sound moral values and your fickle emotion are disconnected, your mind is divided and thus your judgment is muddled.  Most people’s acts of infidelity are innocent, left hanging to expire in brief, insignificant moments of thought.

It is the strength of our character that realigns this momentary disconnect and prevents innocent thought from transgressing into an act of infidelity.  Reliability, honesty, and trustworthiness can be directly measured by one’s strength of character.  When the act of infidelity occurs, it has nothing to do with love; it is solely related to the shameful weakness of one’s character… weakness that is driven by senseless emotion.

People whom have never actually taken part in the act of infidelity would probably also deny the allegation of ever experiencing a momentary thought of infidelity.  This can be attributed to the fact that the thought never actually enters the conscious mind, but instead lingers in our subconscious.  The thought process is a natural instinct, and although we may be oblivious to it, our minds are instinctually aware of it.  It’s the combination of this subconscious awareness and our general human curiosity that will continue to foster the mass market interest and popularity of infidelity.

I’ll wrap it up with a quote from one of my favorite artists:

Everyone here is wondering what it’s like to be with somebody else.
Everyone here’s to blame, everyone here,
Gets caught up in the pleasure of the pain.
Everyone hides shades of shame,
But looking inside we’re the same, we’re all the same.
And we’re all grown now, but we don’t know how
to get it back to good.

– Rob Thomas

You are alone out there.  That’s the bottom line.  Nobody will be there to save you from your own stupidity.  Likewise, nobody will be there to save you from someone else’s inanity.  The mere act of traversing your daily routine places you evenly on a fine line between absolute triumph and utter defeat.  Freedom in life is a fragile privilege resting gently on the edge of muted detention.  Thus, our reasoning and rationale may fall on the deaf ears of those we employ to save us.  All the laws of society are only 50% assured at any given moment, so plan on uncertainty and injustice ahead.

Sorry about the negative rant.  My buddy was beaten in the face a couple days ago by some drunken college-age asshole.  He was attempting to break up a fight outside of a popular downtown watering hole.  The SOB left a large bloody gash across my buddy’s broken nose after he swiftly head-butted him for no reason other than for telling the drunk guy that fighting some other guy was foolish.  The cops detained the jerk for about 10 minutes, wiped their hands clean of the mess, and let the guy walk.  My buddy received a police department case number, followed up by a phone call the next day.  The policeman said that after a thorough investigation, there was no criminal fault made by the other party involved.  It was simply a quarrel between two parties that resulted in an injury.

Thorough investigation… my ass!  I guess the fact that my buddy never laid a finger on anyone is just an extraneous detail.  Oh, and assault and battery must be legal nowadays.  I witnessed this injustice firsthand… and it makes me sick to my stomach.

3757

Update (2-6-07): A few site visitors have pointed out that this photo was actually taken at much lower altitude than the ISS resides at.  It seems as though the Kennedy employees that gave the photo to Nick were just messing with him.  I know nothing about avionics, so I was equally fooled.  See the comments on this post for further details.  I apologize for the inaccuracy of this post.

When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a girl dry heaving behind her car, which was located almost directly in front of my truck.  After about five minutes of nastiness, she got in the driver seat, turned the ignition and drove off.  Then two vehicles parked across from each other on opposite sides on the same parking row backed out simultaneously and bumped each other.  Both drivers pulled back into their space… then one left following the other without ever checking to see if their vehicles were damaged. 

Just then a BMW 3 Series barrel-assed around the corner and was forced to come to a skidding and screeching halt to avoid running over two girls who were attempting to make it back to their car.  They were parked about five vehicles down from the space in front of me.  When they made it back to their car a sudden commotion erupted and both girls started screaming at someone.  I poked by head out the window only to catch site what appeared to be a drunken guy urinating on her car’s front driver side tire.  After startling him, he jumped and started pissing on the hood of the car in front of hers.  Then he staggered away mumbling back at the angry ladies.  He got in a Blazer with one of his buddies that could barely stand up straight, and they both drove off as well.

This was just ten minutes of observation in one parking garage on one side of town.  Let’s just say, I was a slightly blown away.  The roads in downtown Orlando must be five times more dangerous after 2AM than they are at midnight.  I guess we sort of knew it all along.  But witnessing it firsthand broadens your perception.

Oh, by the way, Angel hacked my PIN number last night… and she hacked your PIN number too.  It appears in the list below:

0000 0001 0002 0003 0004 0005 0006 0007 0008 0009

0010 0011 0012 0013 0014 0015 0016 0017 0018 0019

0020 0021 0022 0023 0024 0025 0026 0027 0028 0029

0030 0031 0032 0033 0034 0035 0036 0037 0038 0039

0040 0041 0042 0043 0044 0045 0046 0047 0048 0049

0050 0051 0052 0053 0054 0055 0056 0057 0058 0059

0060 0061 0062 0063 0064 0065 0066 0067 0068 0069

0070 0071 0072 0073 0074 0075 0076 0077 0078 0079

0080 0081 0082 0083 0084 0085 0086 0087 0088 0089

0090 0091 0092 0093 0094 0095 0096 0097 0098 0099

0100 0101 0102 0103 0104 0105 0106 0107 0108 0109

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