Yeah, Intelligent.

Will humans ever be able to create a computerized form of intelligence to meet the level of human thinking? Will those same machines be able to reason at the same level that we do using similar cognitive processes? It sounds like something that only happens in science fiction, such as "I Robot", "2001:A Space Odyssey", or other similar stories in which robots and computers become basically "human", even to the point where they think themselves better than men. This is a scary thought since what separates us from all other forms of life is our ability to think. If something could out think us, we would become basically obsolete. We do not just have programmed responses and instincts to guide us, but also the ability to reason at a higher level that no other living thing has. Computers have the ablility to know facts, and even at times to figure out other facts from those facts, but they do not have the ability to really know things in the way that we do, things that can't be explained with words and are more than just head knowledge. They cannot believe things that seem to defy concrete facts and they cannot gain wisdom that surpasses mere understanding. Even though having robots around who could possibly out think most of us is a scary thought, I do not think that it is something that we will ever really have to worry about. The design behind how we think is something that seems pretty much impossible to match, even though, according to an article I read today, scientists are trying their best to come as close as they can to doing so.

A Sad Reminder

I came across an article about a memorial service at Auschwitz for the millions of people who were killed there and the brutal treatment that all of the prisoners went through. It is a sad reminder of what happens when a person's, or a nation's, beliefs become skewed to the point that human life does not matter anymore. Most of us tend to ignore the murders that go on everyday all over the world carried out by ruthless governments that are not held to a higher standard. It is heart-wrenching to look back at the terrible things that happened during World War II in the Nazi concentration camps, but we need to remember not only what happened then, but also the fact that the killing has not stopped.

Questions out of (and concerning) the Blue

Sometimes when my mind starts to wander, I think of crazy questions just out of the blue. Although I will probably never get most of them answered, it is still fun to ponder the "What if...?"s and the "Why...?"s. Here are a couple of my more resent queries:

When one walks outside during a cold winter day, they can see the cloud that their warm, moist breath makes as it hits the cold, dry air. This is a common phenomenon that most people have born witness to, but what happens when the opposite is true? What would happen if a blast of cold, dry air were to enter a warm, moist room, such as a bathroom after someone has taken a long, hot shower? Would the moisture in the warm air condense when it interacts with the cold air, forming a small cloud? Or would one only be able to feel the cold air without ever seeing anything?

Does everyone see the world in the same way? When I look at a cream-colored wall, am I seeing it in the same way as the person standing next to me staring at the exact same wall? Is the world a darker tint to some people than it is to others? Do some people literally see the world through rose-tinted lenses? Is my definition of blue as I see it the exact same as everyone else's? We know that some people are completely color-blind, while other people are only partially so, but are we all colorblind to some extent? I have been told that people with light-colored eyes are more sensitive to light, so does that mean that my "golden-colored" eyes (I never liked calling them light brown--it seems so plain and drab) see the world as being brighter than someone with dark brown, almost black, eyes?

For the Lexophiles

Beware: there are some real groaners! ; )

• A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.


• What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).


• Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.


• A backward poet writes inverse.


• In democracy, it's your vote that counts; in feudalism, it's your count that votes


• A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.


• With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.


• Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.


• When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.


• The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.


• A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.


• You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.


• Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.


• He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.


• Every calendar's days are numbered.


• A lot of money is tainted. 'Taint yours and 'taint mine.


• A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.


• He had a photographic memory which was never developed.


• A plateau is a high form of flattery.


• The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.


• Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.


• When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.


• Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.


• When an actress saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye.


• Bakers trade bread secrets on a knead to know basis.


• Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.


• Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

[You can't say I didn't warn you!]

Spinning Hurricane Cycles

While browsing through the news today, an article came to my attention concerning the link between global warming and an increase in hurricanes. There was a disagreement in the United Nations' science panel over whether or not global warming is causing more severe hurricanes now than there have been in the past. This disagreement went so far as to cause hurricane scientist Chris Landsea from the United States to withdraw from the panel.

During the 1970's, people started to speculate that the earth and its atmosphere are gradually increasing in temperature and causing the world's climate to change dramatically. This theory has been given the term "Global Warming" and has caused a lot of debate among scientists, politicians, and others over whether or not there is enough information to support it. The problem is that the weather fluctuates and goes through natural cycles, making it difficult to know whether a warm up within the past decade is merely a normal rise before another fall or if it is part of a much bigger change in the world's overall climate. It would be easier to answer that question if there were weather measurements taken throughout the whole of history, but measuring the weather is still a fairly recent development. There are ways to fill in some of the holes in the chart by looking at nature, but it is still not enough to come to a definite conclusion.

Even though the earth's climate is still a great mystery, what we do know as we study history is that hurricanes have tended to follow regular patterns of increases and declines. The following segment on the subject from the USA Today Weather Book seemed to answer some questions:

By the early 1990's, some people were saying that global warming was responsible for an increasing number of hurricanes. But at the same time these ideas were attracting attention, the number of Atlantic Basin hurricanes was in a 30-year decline. Most hurricane researchers and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) don't see any links between global warming and hurricanes.

The argument that global warming could increase the number and strength of hurricanes is based on the idea that the oceans would be warmer. It's true that warm water is an essential ingredient for hurricanes. Also, a hurricane's theoretical strength depends on the contrast in temperature between the warm ocean and the cold stratospheric air at the storm's top. The greater the contrast, the stronger a hurricane can grow. But global warming could change other ingredients, such as the speed and direction of upper-air winds, in ways that could work against hurricanes.

Those of us who study these storms don't buy" warming as the cause of an increase, Gray says. "All we can say now is we can't say much" about how global warming would affect hurricanes. Adds Goldenberg: "The type of slow, gradual, small changes that would be expected from global warming are very different from the kinds of changes we're seeing."

Another article with the same Dr. Gray had more to say about the natural fluctuations that hurricanes seem to follow:

According to hurricane expert Dr. William Gray at Colorado State University, we should see an increase in storm activity over the next 20 years. The storms are expected to cause 5 to 10 times the amount of damage on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts than previously experienced, due to the massive increase in population and development along these coastlines.

The hurricane activity of the next 20 years should resemble the period that began in the late 1920s and lasted through the 1940s. The increase is due to higher salinity content in the Atlantic Ocean, which alters its currents and increases average ocean temperatures, fueling more storms. Gray emphasizes that this is a cyclical trend and has nothing to do with global warming (CNN, April 22, 2000).

I honestly do not know whether or not global warming is an actual danger and something that we need to spend our time and energy worrying about. Whether it is or not, we should still try our best to take good care of the world that God created and do what we can to not destroy it. However, taking care of that world should not consume us to the point that we begin to fear, and thus worship, nature instead of the One who created it.

What Have I Done?!?!

Well, as you can probably tell if you have ever visited my blog before, things look a lot different. I was playing around with the template this afternoon and this new look is what I came up with. It will probably keep on changing and evolving into how I really want it, so do not be too worried if you absolutely detest it. I still, and always will, welcome comments about my blog's appearance and content, and any suggestions you may have of how to make it better. Thank you!

-Becky

When Forecasting Goes Bad

Raleigh, North Carolina was incapcitated by an unpredicted inch of snow this past week. People were stranded on the roads, at schools, and in other buildings because the salt trucks did not get out on the roads before they iced over. People then proceeded to put the blame for all of the havoc that ensued on the meteorologists, none of which had predicted the snowfall. People have come to rely on meteorologists almost too much instead of being prepared for whatever nature throws at them. Meteorology is still a science with a lot of unanswered questions, especially in the area of winter storms, but people expect the forcast to be correct every single time, and do not give any slack when the actual weather does not match up with the forecast. Just a hundred years ago, there was no weatherman on television to tell people what to expect. We have become spoiled without realizing it, and are unforgiving, even though the scientists try to do the best they can with what knowledge that they have. Was it anyone's fault that people were stranded all over Raleigh? I do not know, but we should not be so quick to place all of the blame on the weather forecasters and their still developing science.

A Game for Bibliophiles

There is now a gamefor those who love to read books, collect books, and browse bookstores looking for books. The game is called "Booktastic!",the main goal of which is...to buy books. It probably does not beat the pure enjoyment and relaxation of spending hours in a bookstore looking through all of the shelves at the many books, but it may be worth looking into as a way to curb the appetite for bookbuying when one is low on the funds and the time(which I usually am).

It Is Now Official

George W. Bush is now our official president for the next four years (unless something happens during that time to cause it to be otherwise). He was sworn in this morning in the freezing cold, but beautiful, city of Washington D.C. I only was able to see the inauguration from the time of his speech on, but it made me happy to be living in the country that I am. There were demonstrators there with a large, conspicuous sign condemning the war, but it made me glad, not because of what they were saying, but because they had the ability to say it. The entire inaugral presentation was able speak in many different ways and it was a wonderful, meaningful manner in which to begin another presidential term.

Unfortunately, nobody seemed to think that the presentation could speak for itself. I do not understand why the media seems to think that it needs to "analyze" what just took place. There is no need to report the news on a situation that everyone watching has just seen first hand. It would be one thing if they were on a show where they were supposed to be discussing their opinions of the situation, but they aren't, and it is assumed that they are going to be reporting just the hard facts. The public should be able to draw their own conclusions from what they see and hear without also being fed what to think. It seems to be common practice now that, whenever anything big like the State of the Union Address, an inauguration, or such is being shown on national television, nobody can just show it, they have to editorialize it as well.

Oh, well. The news media may never change, but we have a lot of changes to look forward to in the future of our country. This presidential inauguration will not be the last, and it is facinating to think about all of the future men, and probably women, who will take part in that ceremony, then go on to lead our country, for good or for bad.

The Joys of Elephants

Elephant handlers over in Thailand have taught their elephants to use a toilet whenever they have to do their "business," and even flush it when they are done! I wish that we could teach our bird to at least head back to his cage instead of just going to the bathroom wherever he happens to be at the moment. Of course, it would be more difficult considering the fact that he cannot fly. Maybe we should just trade him in for an elephant.

What Can I Say?

Ray Bradbury's book "Fahrenheit 451" has a lot to say on the subject of censorship. In it, America has turned into a place where political correctness is the only acceptable route, and everyone is mindlessly entertained almost 24 hours non-stop. Reading books is against the law since the things in them might make people uncomfortable or disrupt the happy, mindless society. Instead of being revered for the knowledge that they contain, the books along with the buildings in which they are found, and sometimes even the people found hiding them, are ruthlessly burned to ashes.

Nevertheless, is censorship truly wrong? There is one side that says that having the ability to say whatever one pleases in any form, as long as they are not physically hurting another human being, is an innate right that everyone should have. However, there are also many who lean to the side of filtering "bad" content out of things before they make it into the public square, where it can end up damaging people, their lives, and society as a whole. This point of view is quite compelling, but is it really the answer?

The problem with censorship is that there are no clear cut black-and-white rules that everyone can agree to go by. While keeping people from having to suffer the filth of pornography, the injury of bad language, and the misleading of lies, there is no way to keep the truth and other good and pure things from also suffering under the editing knife. Without an absolute, unchanging standard to go by, censorship is left up to the whims of whoever is in power at the time. This has been seen throughout history when governments are given the power to filter everything that their people see and hear, allowing only the things that help fulfill their agenda to go through, even if it means repressing the truth and, at times, permitting blatant lies. In this way, censorship can do people just as much, if not more, harm than good. There is also the problem with the censorship that has come with the title of "Political Correctness." One of people's worst fears today is offending others by what they say. Only neutral titles can be used to refer to people, and to say that anything that anyone does is inherently wrong is labeled "hate speech" and can end up having a person carted off to jail for being honest. Censorship always comes with the risk of suppressing the truth.

It is important for all points of view to be heard and carefully weighed. This does not mean that everything that everyone says should be accepted as truth, but without hearing what others, even those with home we disagree, have to say, our own point of view will not be allowed to develop. Our understanding of the world around us will remain as that of a child.

However, does this mean that we should just leave our culture alone as it travels down a slippery road to the depths of immorality? Do we have to accept everything that we come across and allow ourselves and our children to be exposed to filth? No, we should not stand idly by while our society deteriorates, but it is not the government's job, especially in today's world of moral relativity, to say what ideas should be allowed or not allowed. It is the people's job to take a stand for what is right and true. If we do that, then, hopefully, we will never have to face a world so severely censored as the one that Ray Bradbury wrote about.

How Will We Make Great Minds Comes Alive?

Why is it that many of the greatest men in history, especially the ones who make great advances in science, are many times school drop-outs? Is it due to the fact that most public schools try to fit every student into the same mold by requiring them to learn the same things at basically the same rate? It is difficult to blame schools for that, since the effort and time that it would take for one teacher to teach each of thirty or so students individually would be almost unthinkable, but is there a better way?

Einstein was one of the greatest minds to live in the twentieth century. He made many discoveries concerning mathematics and physics, and introduced many worthwhile theories to the field. However, he was not the product of a well-run school system, but was instead a school drop-out. Reuter's has an article on him that explains that:

He [Einstein] did so badly at school his teachers told his parents to take him out because he was "too stupid to learn" and it would be a waste of resources to invest time and energy in his education. The school suggested that his parents get him an easy, manual labor job as soon as they could.

This news shocks most of us, since we have always heard of him described as being a great genius, and yet he was basically thrown out of school for being "too stupid to learn." Without being able to focus on a student as an individual with individual strengths and weaknesses, there may be many geniuses out there who are held back because they are not allowed to explore the areas that interest them and in which they are most gifted.

Thomas Edison was another of the great men in history and, when it comes to scientific achievements, there are few like him who have changed our lives as much as he has. As the Arizona Daily Wildcat reports:

Thomas Alva Edison made only one purely scientific discovery: the "Edison effect." It involves the flow of electricity across a vacuum. He patented the effect, but could think of no use for it and went on to other things. The Edison effect, however, turned out to be the basis of the whole electronics industry - radio, television and all.

Edison basically changed the way in which a large amount of the people all over the world live. We can now flip a switch to flood a room with light, turn on the television to be entertained or informed, listen to music, and even blog on the internet because of him. However, he was also as a boy taken out of public schools after only three months because he was not being taught in the way that suited him best. His teacher thought that he was stupid and that his brain was messed up and also became fed up with his incessant questions. Edison was removed from school and taught at home by his mother before going on to change the world with his inventions.

Is there a way to fix the public schools so that children can be trained and taught in such a way that they can reach their full potential? I personally do not believe that monetary funding is the problem. Some of the worst funded schools produce better results than those with large supplies of money. So then, what is the problem and how can it be corrected?

Pathetically Apathetic

Christians have too much apathy and do not care enough about the world around them. They sit in their warm, comfy churches on Sunday, sing nice songs, and talk about how they should live, and yet do not do much to impact the world with the love that they receive from God. People talk about helping others and about being saved, and yet seem to do nothing to put those words into practice and share that good news with others. They are afraid that, by doing so, they will have to interact with people they do not like and have to leave their comfort zones. We do not seem to see the urgent need to tell others about Jesus and how he came down to earth to become one of us, die for us, and reunite us with God, our Creator.

If you lived in a town located right beneath a volcano and had special insider knowledge that that volcano was going to erupt sometime within the next week, destroying the entire town and its population, what would you do? Would you concentrate only on getting yourself out of harms way, and yet tell nobody else of the impending danger? Would you get together a group of friends who also have the special information about the volcano's coming eruption and talk with them about what is going to happen, and how glad you are that you will not be harmed like the other ignorant members of the town who are going to die from a lack of knowledge? Or would you spread to the rest of the townspeople the news that you have about a wonderful transport out of town that will take anyone who wants to escape the volcano to a lovely tropical paradise? Then, once you told those people and they did not believe you and called you a moron for suggesting any such thing about their beautiful mountain, would you stop trying to convince them? Could you really live knowing that you, in a way, were responsible for their deaths? Or would you do all in your power to get them to go with you to safety, even give up the comforts that you currently enjoy to go out and help them where they are? Would you only tell the nice, well-to-do, well-groomed, rich people, or would you also take the time to visit the slums and spread the good news of the transport out of danger to paradise with the people who are dirty and less than desirable? How much do you really care about other people?

A Plea for Your Assistance

I am planning on writing my own template for my blog in the near future and would like to know what you would like to see me put in it. I would gladly welcome your suggestions for colors, graphics, content in the blog (not the content of the posts, but in the sidebar etc.), and anything else you can think of. Not every suggestion will be able to be used, of course, but I gladly welcome any comments that you may give and will consider using them to make my blog better. Thanx much!

...And In Dreams...

One thing that has never ceased to amaze me is the construction of dreams by the human mind while one sleeps. It would not be so amazing if sleep merely caused one's brain to bring up random memories while you were asleep in no particular order, but, instead, an entire story, or series of stories, with plots and everything plays through one's head like a movie or television show in which the sleeper is the main character. There is intrigue, mystery, comedy, horror, parodies, romance, and much more that one's brain strings together from various memories, no matter how obscure, of things that have been seen, heard, or experienced throughout the waking hours. Even things that that one is planning on doing in the future are played out ahead of time, some times quite preposterously and othertimes in a way that is quite believable. The believable dreams are usually the ones that scare a person the most. The ideas that evil men may be robbing the house, a wild cat carrying off younger siblings, the house may be being burned down, or that you are going to be kidnapped by some cruel people can wreck havoc on the brain, especially since one usually wakes up in from those dreams in the middle of the night when the house is dark and no noise is completely explainable. Other times, people one hasn't seen in years show up as characters with which you talk, play, laugh, and have adventures. People, objects, and places in dreams are almost always fuzzy and never quite in focus, and yet they seem very real and can cause strong emotions in a person even though nothing of what is happening is real, or even looks completely real. Every time one falls asleep, they never know what adventure they will encounter or how the story of the dreams will play out.

To Kill A Mockingbird

I finally was able to read the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee the other day. I do not know quite what I was expecting it to be like, but it drew me in so that I could hardly put it down once I picked it up. The main theme of the book was the prejudices that people have against those who are different from themselves. The town in the middle of Alabama during the 1930's was segregated into the "respectable" white part of town and the part in which the "negros" were kept. The whites looked upon the blacks as being far beneath them and hardly worth their time to associate with. They thought of them as being completely immoral, dirty liers, and criminals who could not be trusted with much of anything. This world is the one in which Atticus and his two kids, Scout and Jem, lived and in which they had to face the town's bigotry, and sometimes their own. One part of the book that really stood out to me was when Scout, the little girl, was in school and they were studying current events, including Hitler's treatment of the Jews. Her teacher was saying how awful it was that he would label his fellow human beings, put them into "ghettos," and treat them as being beneath himself. The irony and hypocracy of the situation was that the teacher, and pretty much the whole town, were doing almost exactly the same thing they were condemning. It reminds me of the verse in Matthew 7:3-5 where it says

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (NIV)

This book was not only about prejudice, but also very much about the hypocrisy that often accompanies that prejudice. To complain about another's bigotry and mistreatment, such as Hitler's, and then to go on in one's daily life refusing to acknowledge another race of human beings as equal to oneself is completely wrong. However, I think that many of us do this very same thing without realizing it. It may not be prejudice/bigotry against other racial groups in particular, but there are many other things that we do ourselves, sometimes unconciously, that we complain about others doing. We need to first change ourselves before we can honestly talk to others about their problems. This book has become one of my favorites and I cannot wait to have the chance to read it again. It contains timeless lessons that we could all stand to learn.

Crime and Punishment

Whenever I hear the words "Crime and Punishment", I automatically hear the little mice from the movie "Babe" chiming those words in their squeaky little voices, then giggling their heads off, but the phrase has taken on a whole new meaning for me now that I have actually read the book. One of the big questions that Dostoyevsky brings out in this particular book is whether or not crime is ever justifiable. The story is of a poor, young former student living in Saint Petersburg who has come up with the idea that there is a group of truly great men, of which he seems to think he is a member, whom, many times, must kill a select few people in order that good and progress for the rest of society can result. He carries out his idea, although not seemingly completely in his right mind, by murdering a wealthy old pawnbroker and her sister, Lizaveta. He justifies this by saying that, through the death of that one cynical, rich old lady, many others may be given aid by the money that she would have hoarded for herself. Much of the book describes the agonizing torments that the young student, Raskolnikov Rodion Romanovitch (I love Russian Names!), goes through as a result of his misdeed. Although he does eventually confess to the murders and is sent to a prison in Siberia for a time, his real punishment comes from his own guilty conscience and resulting sickness/insanity. While I still hear the little mice every time I hear or read the words "Crime and Punishment," they now carry a whole new meaning for me with them. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was an awesome writer who could take the reader into the deepest parts of the character's minds, thoughts, and motivations, and made all of his characters, no matter how small, have great depth to them.

The World of Blogs

Whoever came up with the idea of creating blogs was a genius who probably never saw this coming. Now, millions of people read blogs and many also write their own. I myself discovered this medium in just the past year and love it as a source of news, stories, humor, and more and now have my own outlet to the world through my own blog. But, what really surprised me in this article is the fact that only 38 percent of Americans know what a blog is. For many months, I figured that, since they were such a large part of my life, everyone else must have at least briefly heard of them. It wasn't until I started my own blog last month and started telling a few of my friends about it that I found that there are many people out their who have no clue what a blog is. When I would say, "Guess what! I have my own blog now," I received a series of puzzled looks. They would then say, "What is a blog?" This boggled my mind completely, and, after I described it, they still seemed completely oblivious to what it was. Thus, they did not really share my excitement and the topic of the conversation would quickly change. Oh well. There will probably be a further explosion in store for the wide, wide world of the blogosphere and that world as it exists today is probably only a small taste of what is to come.

The Failure of Objectivity

It seems as though the main goal of news corporations is to put out objective coverage of the news, or at least to convince everyone that that is what they are doing. In reality, though, just about no one is truly objective, no matter how much they say they are. Many times the people writing the stories do not even realize that they are putting a slant on them and have the belief that has been drummed into them that the news should be, and is, covered from an objective viewpoint that does not favor one side over another. However, no one in the world can see all sides of a situation from a disconnected point of view. It is also true that, even if they could, there is no way to include all of the information needed to tell the whole story in one article, news clip, or even book. Thus, they have to choose what information to include and pass on to the public and which will end up on the editing floor. Through this cutting and pasting process, a lot of pertinent things get left out, the lack of which gives a paper a slant one way or another, although it is subconscious and unintentional. Peoples opinions about what the readers need to know vary greatly and the way in which the story is presented can make the difference in how the public views the situation. The same situation can be covered by two different individuals and come out sounding like a complete tragedy from one and an unimaginable blessing from the other.

A case in point is the election process that America just endured during the past year or so. To some reporters, John Kerry was going to be the guy who would save the country (and the world) from the "evil" President Bush. They gave glowing reports about all of Kerry's good attributes, covered the positive things that he did and said, and made him seem like an overall great guy. However, the stories that they presented about Bush did not have the same positive outlook that they gave Kerry. Even though both men had their good moments as well as their bad, President Bush's bad moments were played up while Kerry's were toned down and he was made out to be a knight in shining armor. It was not as though the other side was very much better. To them, the President was a saint who could do just about no wrong, and they boldly proclaimed him as such, but when it came to the subject of John Kerry, they presented him as being unable to do any good. They are probably both nice guys, and, as we all are, they are both sinners, but, depending on whom you read or listened to, one was always shone as being the greatest man to have walked on the face of the earth, while the other belonged in the deepest, darkest pits of hell.

The news media world needs to wake up and realize the reality of the situation. They need to see that their attempts to be completely objective will always fail and they will never be able to truly reach the goal. In the meantime, they are only serving to mislead and confuse their readers and viewers by their claims of objectivity. Instead, they need to be honest about who they are and what they believe, since their beliefs are what ultimately come out in their news stories anyway. As long as people know what their bias is, they will find it much easier to find out the real facts of a situation while keeping the writers preconceptions in mind.

"Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices--just recognize them." -- Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)