Richard Jernigan -> RE: COVID-19 start of a new era (Feb. 23 2020 2:42:51)
|
I lived for 18 1/2 years on a small tropical island. There were about 2500 Americans employed by the military base there, almost all civilians. The circulation of gossip and rumor on the "coconut telegraph" was notorious. While I sat on a park bench one day I was approached by an acquaintance, who quoted a current rumor. The rumor was about me, and false. My response was, "Rick, you know that you can sit right here on this bench and eventually hear any declarative sentence in the English language asserted as fact." My secretary's husband was an air traffic controller. He made a hobby of starting rumors, and tracing the speed and extent of their spread. While true official notices of an approaching typhoon were posted, he said at lunch that the military was ordering huge C-5 air transports to the island, to take residents to Las Vegas, where hotel rooms were plentiful. At 2:30 that afternoon my secretary heard his fabrication repeated at the beauty shop, with additional details as to which hotels, and what meals would be provided. As far as the most reputable mass print media go, I used to keep a copy of the Scientific American displayed on the bookcase above my desk. When, as intended, people would occasionally say something about it, I would give them my planned response. "It has an article in it about the Space Surveillance Network. It is the only article I have ever read in a public source about a large military project which I was familiar with, which has no serious errors of fact or emphasis." This was not always the case, even with Scientific American. There was an MIT physics professor whose articles criticizing military research and development projects were frequently published in the magazine. I was casually acquainted with the author, and ran into him from time to time. Once I said to him, "I read your article on our ICBM countermeasures against the Soviet strategic missile defenses." "Are you involved with that?" "Yes. Rather deeply." "I detailed in my article how to defeat all of your countermeasures." "Yes. The Soviets are working on some of the ideas you mention. They will be successful in about ten years." "Then your countermeasures will be useless." "Precisely. But we know what the Soviets are working on, and we know how to defeat it. We will begin testing next year. This is war. Neither we nor the Soviets are standing still. We have consistently maintained about a ten-year lead in technology to counter their strategic missile defenses. You might mention this sort of thing in your articles criticizing the military." This is just to illustrate that even the most reputable print media are not necessarily accurate in the facts they present, nor balanced in their views. It is not to say that at present we maintain a lead in strategic missile technology over either the Russians or the Chinese. RNJ
|
|
|
|