Saturday, June 27, 2009

Someone talking sense about the economy

A few years ago the "economic experts" were laughing at Peter Schiff when he predicted a collapse in real-estate and a recession. But he turned out to be right.

Here is an interview with him on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Peter Schiff
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political HumorJason Jones in Iran

Monday, June 01, 2009

Wikipedia - The Controlled Encyclopedia

I've long suspected that Wikipedia was as free as the biases of its core owners and editors allowed. I've seen articles about individuals that are simply hatchet jobs, for example, the entry of one individual in particular who is a natural health advocate and has written best selling books very critical of the pharmaceutical industry, is about as objective as a profit hungry Big Tobacco CEO when asked if he thinks cigarettes cause cancer. (I'm not linking to it because I refuse to spread the lies about the man that the article contains. If you are interested then check out his book: Natural Cures .)

Now the high priests of Wikipedia have decided to ban edits of Scientology related articles by church members. Can you believe that? Wow, what next? Only allow KKK members to edit articles about Jews and African Americans? Ban Mormons from editing articles about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

Who made these Wikipedia nerds the arbiters of all knowledge? So much for community editing and contribution. Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia as long as the high priests approve.

To be honest, I have rarely found Wikipedia to be useful because you never really know where the data is coming from. Who wrote it? What is their bias? Then there are all the annotations indicating that something is not backed up or that it is disputed. I'd rather go to a source that tells me who wrote the article so I can evaluate it for myself.

Now and then I have used Wikipedia to get a basic idea about something technical but from now on I'm going elsewhere.

Wikipedia Bans Scientology From Editing Scientology Entries