Uninformed Opinions
Duane Smith has an excellent post over on Abnormal Interests called Evidence, Who Needs Any Evidence. I think this relates closely to my earlier post, A Poll Too Far, in which I discussed people providing opinions on topics concerning which they simply cannot be well-informed.
The further question is why does the media buy into this, by asking people’s opinion? I would suggest that the media prints this information for the same reason they print everything else–it gets their viewers to watch or read, in this case by making them feel more important than they are. But the feeling of importance is a false one.
One further note: Ever since I found out about Abnormal Interests, I’ve been watching Duane’s posts, and I have found that almost all of them interest me, whether I have time to comment or not, so if you think your interests coincide with mine at all, go check it out.
I like Duane’s article that you mentioned but the rest is too deep for me.
Duane goes above my head on some of the archeology, though most of the “potblogging” is quite interesting. Some of his anthropology stuff is definitely tough going for me.