I was reading statistics to my husband last night from a book published in 1966 that cited studies done in the mid and late 50′s.  The statistics were interesting on several levels but what prompted me to share with him was the fact the researchers were considering both race and religion as factors.

The book said that Jews were like this, Catholics like this, Protestants fell in this range. It also said, Irish were prone to alcoholism, Italians were not but they did tend to be involved in organized crime more than other ethnic groups. It said American children of native born and foreign born parents were diagnosed sociopaths at the same rate and various other things along lines of this ilk.

Also striking to me, the author stated in several places he did not have a large enough sample to draw conclusions based on certain data he reported. I don’t think people cop to limitations like this all that readily today. Everyone seems to know everything about everything and it leaves a mind like mine to go reeling.

“They just make stuff up these days,” my husband said.

“Yes, its all spun,” I agreed. “No matter what exists as fact, it’s all spun into something PC the author can package and get published…’

We went on to discuss how rare it was to come across raw data, never mind the taboo in 2010 in considering race or religion when trying to understand something.  Research now must all point to and prove that we are all the same, even if that is ridiculous.

As for the astrology, Pluto did transit Sagittarius and it has destroyed Sadge-ruled things like publishing and “truth”. We now have WikiLeaks releasing all these documents and the way I see, a person could throw anything into a stack like that and let it be “found” and believed to be the truth.

I never watch TV but I have begun to a little over these last few weeks for some reason. I watched a “documentary” about a killer girl. She was a young girl who got involved with a sociopath online and wound up participating in the murder of her mother.

I’d remark on the story but it was just so stupid, there is no way what I saw was factual. I could readily discern this but I wonder how others view it.

I tend to think they probably absorb things like this as real, failing to see how the story has been constructed to offer 30 minutes of titillation. I wish they would identify these things for what they are – fairy tales. Fairy tales from the dark side maybe but fairy tales just the same.

I wish we had access to more raw, unmodified data. This is because I like to chew my own food. Instead we have data that is overworked if it is reported at all.  This makes it really hard to learn.

Most people don’t do things that are really hard. This means that most people swallow the over-processed (I would say infected and skewed) data and then feel really good about how much they know.

I was also reading, Lionel Dahmer’s book, A Father’s Story: One Man’s Anguish at Confronting the Evil in His Son. Lionel is Jeffrey Dahmer’s  very thoughtful, intelligent father. His book is very interesting. It’s honest, there is no posturing and it is not dumbed down at all.  Mr. Dahmer is a very good writer who makes a number of interesting points as he tells his story.

Mr Dahmer was caught up with the media within minutes of his son’s arrest, it’s not hard to imagine.  Eventually someone reported that he’d has sex with his son for a number of years, from the time he was 8 or so, until 12 or so. This is approximate. I don’t recall the specific claim because there was no reason for me to retain the knowledge that was completely fabricated.

My point here is that who knows how many people read that, internalized it and believe it to this day?  An unscrupulous reporter, out to make a buck has now infected people with misinformation who run around for the rest of their lives preaching idiocy – that all psychopaths are abused kids.

How do you feel about media and publishing, circa 2010 as compared to 15 years ago?