RIP Michael Crichton

Predictable how the media gives him a rather cloudy obit.

(from the obit: 'Mr. Crichton said he had become "a lot more hawkish" on the war in Iraq and other issues involving the use of force after armed robbers entered his home in Santa Monica, Calif., several years ago and tied up him and his daughter.' That's Liberal code for "pay no attention to any of his valid criticisms which may have wounded you. He toughened up and so can be written off." What a disgusting intellectual reservation the pusillanimous liberals inhabit.)

We must cow the "journalists" if there is to be any hope for this nation. And I mean cow, they must realize that they put themselves in professional peril and will suffer as pariahs from the behavior which appals anyone who loves freedom and needs the information to make the decisions which will perpetuate freedom.)

Read his entire mediasaurus speech here.

Read an interview to revisit that 1993 speech here.

They are well worth your time, as is this:

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. "

Silly not to include "Aliens..."

That via SDA