Tuesday, April 21, 2020

What's Wrong With Facebook?


As many of you have heard, Facebook has been censoring content for some time. I'm talking about how they set their "fact checkers" to work on posted stories to see if they are accurate, and censor them if they feel the info is misleading.

This is a patently absurd process in the first place. It is rife with bias, in both the singling out of certain postings and in the judgment of fact checkers on what's true and what's not.

Facebook recently deleted the Epoch Times' posting for its new insightful and deeply researched documentary on the origin of the coronavirus. They called it "misinformation." How would Facebook know? Do they have undercover journalists in China digging up the real story? I doubt it. Fortunately, the video is available on Youtube--for now.

Mark Zuckerberg also defended Facebook's censoring of postings by individuals who were putting together a (peaceful) protest of the coronavirus shutdowns in their state. Again, he labeled those postings "misinformation."

Looking back at 2019, Facebook's valiant fact checkers labeled a documentary by the prolife group Live Action as "false," thereby protecting readers from being led astray. Actually, the video, which dispelled the myth that abortions are sometimes a medical necessity, was completely true.

Facebook is engaging in a shocking degree of censorship. We don't need them to tell us what's true and what is not. We can make up our own minds.

I use Facebook almost never. Given this tyrannical behavior, why would I trust them?Why would I want to rub virtual shoulders with them?

My message to Facebook is: Send the fact checkers home. Unless a user is inciting violence, rioting, etc., or trying to post obsene content, leave your users' postings alone.
 
Until they do, you might reconsider how much we should be using their unbalanced platform.  

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Ignore the Doomsday-ers

I'm not so impressed with Dr. Fauci. I was at first, and no doubt he knows a whole lot about infectious diseases. But just the other day he warned that the country might never get back to where it was before the coronavirus hit because the "threat" of the virus, even if a vaccine is developed, will always be there.

Really? I find it downright irresponsible to tell the public, in a time of pandemic and high anxiety, that the world will never be the same again; meaning, it will never be as good as it was. We'll never be as happy or free or healthy or what-have-you. Dr. Fauci doesn't know that. Neither does anyone else who is forecasting such gloom. Shame on them for this dark forecast--it's the LAST think people need to hear now. 

And it's probably nonsense. America, with its ingenuity and hard work and brilliance, has overcome dire challenges over and over. Not to mention the research and noodling going on around the world at this time. We will beat this virus and be better prepared for the next time some careless (or diabolical) scientist (or evil world power) manages to release a new deadly germ from a biosafety lab somewhere on the globe.

Let's turn off the terrifying talk and instead look forward, with our hard-working countrymen, to what God has ahead for us.
_____
Photo courtesy of CNBC.

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Eye Openers in a Plague Year

What some family advocates have been preaching for years is getting put into practice--although not by choice. In the spring of 2020, as the coronavirus spreads across the U.S. and the world, many parents must stay home by order of their employers and their governors. More important, virtually all American children are staying home as both public and private schools lock their doors and post lessons on line.

So families are forced to spend days together, at home. The insidious stress of "following the program," whether in our fast-paced school institutions or workplaces, is suspended. 

With most amusements and activities closed, from ballet lessons to soccer practice, families are finding new ways to entertain themselves and to play. As restaurants close their dining rooms, parents dust off pots and pans and cookie sheets and make more of their own food.

A few days ago I heard about a recent study (sorry, I failed to write down the source) that found--imagine!--that a vast majority of children surveyed enjoyed being home. This has always been true for children, especially the young ones. But it has gotten buried by parents' need or desire to hold down jobs and enrich their children with sports, music, and a host of other scheduled activities.

Consider the relief of the child who, with his preschool closed and his mother working from home, wakes up in the morning to see the sun up, rather than the predawn darkness of the early hour when he is usually woken up to get started. Now he can get up and eat his breakfast slowly, decide on his clothes for the day, change his mind and redress himself, talk to each of his stuffed monkeys in turn and arrange them by size on his bookshelf. Later on his mother makes lunch and, to his wonderment, she sits down and eats with him.

Consider the relief of the middle school student when she realizes that she can wear the outfit that the mean girls made fun of--they won't see her at home. She can do her lessons in her own time and not rush from class to class, trying to work in a few minutes to slip into the girls' restroom when she can't put it off any longer. And she can ask her father for help with geometry because he is home a lot more now.

Indeed, families are finding that there is time to sleep in a little, time to teach children how to make a bed, and time for them to do it each morning. There is time to all go for a bike ride, learn to set the table, look at old family pictures, and read stories.

With all the damage this vicious virus is wreaking upon our country, upon many families, let us learn what it might teach us from our new circumstances. Let's keep our eyes and our minds open to lessons we can take forward when the virus falls behind.