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Not All News Is Bad News
Focusing on the hourly media cycle gets mighty depressing for us news junkies. A stagnant economy, wars all around, desperate migrants flooding Europe and the US. But Hans Rosling, a public health professor in Sweden, shows the incredibly great news happening over the longer term. For the few of you who missed Thursday’s episode of Nyheder on the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s DR network, I’ve uploaded a clip that deserves to go viral.
Thank you, Dr. Rosling, for giving me my new personal motto: “The facts are not up for discussion. I am right and you are wrong.”
Published in General
Easy, Kate. Comedy is sometimes hard to digest.
The problem with YDBT is that it takes some facts and bundles them with lies to advance a murderous ideology. That’s just how Lenin rolls. Fact: everything is a little bit of a lot of other things. Lie: entrepreneurs do not take risks sufficient to garner them primary interest in a particular accomplishment.
I do not need to advance the lie in order to recognize the truth. That would be silly.
Smaller pellets, please.
:-)
Got it.
What’s most instructive is how the interviewer reacts: with incredulity, disbelief, and mockery.
“Can you believe this crazy person denying what is reported by the media? How can he deny reality? If it wasn’t true it wouldn’t be reported by the media!”
I’m paraphrasing, of course.
Ultimately, statements of genuine truth by people who know what they are talking about don’t work. They’re a single voice against hordes repeating a single lie.
More power to him, of course, but I ain’t optimistic.
Mmmmmm… Danish…
As usual, what’s pernicious about “You didn’t build that” is the melange of false dichotomy, strawman, and special pleading it manages to pack into one sentence:
You see the rest of this “thinking” in action when government officials reflexively use words like “community” and even “family” in reference to themselves, as Claire rightly noted with morbid horror a few months or so ago. It’s not an accident that the other organizations that are not actually communities or families, but use these terms, are fascist/communist governments and the mafia (but I repeat myself). Because this is fascist thinking.
Although I may not have paid for that infrastructure, people like me did. Not Obama voters!
What name applies to this Obama/Warren fallacy?
I don’t know, but I’m tempted to say “Manichaean Heresy,” if only for continuity’s sake.
Define “things” please.
Things like clogs:
He didn’t say “only.”
I figured he was referring to Obama’s Fast and Furious operation. Don’t you think that is a problem?
I was already a fan of Dr. Rosling. Now I admire him even more.
In the clip of #5′ did I hear correctly that Mao brought health and family planning to China……?
Funny I’ve always thought it was forced labor and mass murder of millions, and that he brought.
Half empty, half full….
Well, there’s your problem, right there. Facts are, in the general scheme of things, not items with which reporters are familiar.
I remember my dad, as an editor, snapping “get the facts. Get the FACTS.” I could never figure out why he was so cranky about this—isn’t the whole point of reporting to “get the facts?”
I miss Dad.
Facts are never this simple. We think we know them – and yet they are quite squirrelly.
Pick something as simply numeric as temperature. Climate Change started “adjusting” those numbers.
Child mortality? Some countries count every baby who draws a breath. Others only count the baby as a child if they survive for a day or a week first. That really skews the “facts.”
Although you’re responding to ctlaw here, I’m afraid I can’t let this one slide.
The problem with “You didn’t build that” isn’t that it’s false. It’s that no one believes it’s entirely false, but it’s framed in such a way that if you acknowledge some truth to it, it’s used to justify limitless government expansion and interference. Frankly, your defense of it is extremely problematic.
There’s all the difference in the world between members of an organization thinking of themselves as family and some bureaucrat calling me family.
Yes, I agree, most good news never makes the headlines. Sorry, this is off topic. Was he speaking Sweedish or Danish? I’m sure they’re very similar. What was remarkable to me while listening was how similar in rhythm, accentuation, and tone their language sounded to that of the Beowulf poem. Here’s a sampling from the poem in the origianl language. Not sure on how to embed, but I’ll try.
He didn’t say “only.” But that was the only problem he noted. Thus, it was the only noteworthy problem.
I doubt he was aware of F&F. He probably believed the underlying lies that were told for years before F&F.
IMHO, F&F was a scam by people who were tired of having their lies about guns be debunked. For years, they lied about the extent of domestic gun sales being diverted to Mexico. For example, some lie would be like “90% of guns used in Mexican murders came from the US”. The reality was that 90% of guns that appeared to the Mexican authorities as coming from US channels (and they thus asked the BATF to trace) actually came from the US. But those only accounted for a smaller number of the total guns recovered. I assume the Mexican government would not ask the US to trace Brazilian guns or US guns that were stolen from Mexican government agencies.
IMHO, Holder/Obama wanted the F&F guns to get into the hands of cartels and be used in crimes in Mexico. They would then use that as the evidence that more domestic gun control was needed. It fell apart when one was used in a US crime.
As far as linguists are concerned, there’s one language, “Scandinavian,” spoken by Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes. This annoys people of all three countries.
Scandinavian has drifted from Anglo-Saxon less than Modern English has, absolutely.
I agree—I’m just saying that the use of the language of family is not, per se, a sure-fire indicator of totalitarian intent.
Yeah. There’s pretty much one Scandinavian people and culture, too, but Swedes and Danes will insist that if you dissect a Dane and a Swede side-by-side, you’ll notice subtle, anatomical differences, generally summarized by the Dane saying of the Swede (or vice versa) “You know, she might as well be German.”
Why does Chris keep pushing the clogs?????
I’ll take a crack at this one.
Almost all libertarians and conservatives agree that there are some things that government must do. First, create and enforce a just system of laws to prevent the use of force and fraud. Second, provide certain public goods (e.g. roads and ports) that are difficult to provide through the free market because of the free-rider problem. Third, have some regulation to deal with problems of natural monopolies (e.g. electrical providers) and externalities (e.g. pollution).
Within this framework, the free market will function to create unprecedented prosperity. Some will become rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Most will enjoy a middle-class lifestyle that would have been the envy of the rich of prior eras. Even the very poor will be much better off than in any other society, and the vast majority of the poor will be in that condition due to their own unfortunate choices (especially crime and drug abuse).
The opportunity to create your own fortune is available to all, so the guy or gal who creates a thriving business really did “build that.” You see, Sen. Warren, you had the same chance to build a Microsoft as Bill Gates. You didn’t. You decided to become a Left-wing demagogue and attack the very foundation of the society that creates the protective bubble and prosperity that makes possible your smug, pampered life.
Thanks GGG.
Well…yeah. Mostly.
I mean, in theory I could have become Bill Gates … in theory. In reality? Not so much.
Far more than his or her own choices prevents a kid from a DownEast trailer park or a drug-infested inner-city from becoming Bill Gates. So I’d amend the above sentence: “to the extent that the opportunity to create your own fortune (in both senses of the word) is available to all, the guy or gal who creates a thriving anything (family, business, spiritual life) really did “build that.”
The primary objection to liberal-sponsored government activity is not that it seeks to provide good things for people who aren’t born with them, but that it does this so very badly. This could be because it is government. It could be because it is government enacting poor policies with bad methods. Or, maybe I just repeated myself?
Disagreed, even in principle.
And now I think we’re very close to the essential difference between the “liberal” and “conservative” American political mindsets, at least in post-20th-century America.