Because Even If The Earth Were Flat, You’d Need More Than That To Prove It

It is, of course, always important to “get the facts,” but be sure to get all the facts so you don’t decide the fact that your house’s foundation shows no significant signs of curvature means that the Earth must also be flat.

Step Four

You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

– Robert A. Heinlein

(But remember they are clues!  Like I referenced yesterday, it was a fact no big animals lived in the area; that fact alone didn’t necessarily preclude the possibility of something big being in the area.  New facts come in all the time.  Use them!)

Not My Idea Of A Good Morning

Me:  *Gets up, glances at the news playing on T.V., and counts no fewer than three innuendoes in the absence of facts over the course of a two minute “report”*

Me:  *Turning and walking away*  Nope . . .

A Little Knowledge Can Be A Ridiculous Thing

George Washington invented instant coffee.  It’s a fact!

(It really is, but it’s also a potentially deceptive one depending on framing and how credulous you are.)

– With thanks and due credit to theoatmeal.com.

Because I’m Not Having Much Luck On That Front

Today my six-year-old son grasped the concept that just because you agree with an opinion, that does not make it a fact, not even if the opinion is a very, very good one.

May he someday teach this concept to the rest of the world.

Because Only The Amateurs Actually LIE

With an important election upcoming, I feel the need to once again address a subject near and dear to my heart, namely, the use of facts to sensationalize or deceive, and today’s example of “figures never lie, but liars often figure,” comes from a news report I heard the other day:

Hurricane Matthew was undoubtedly a powerful and devastating storm, and it unmercifully pounded Haiti in particular, and it is a fact that by most reports, Matthew was responsible for the deaths of well over a thousand people in that country.  But presumably this wasn’t “punchy” enough for someone, because they felt the need to add one word to their report that took that fact and used it deceptively.

That word was “alone.”

To say that Hurricane Matthew was responsible for the deaths of well over a thousand people in Haiti “alone” implies that the total death number must have been something dramatically larger than the over a thousand suffered in Haiti, but as I look this up right now, the actual number of reported deaths from Matthew outside of Haiti was . . .

55.

While this is bad, it’s not what’s implied by adding the word “alone” to an otherwise completely accurate fact.

So watch yourselves out there when people start rattling off facts in your face.