Mary Lewys -- The Phone's Ringing
Remember playing Telephone as a kid? No, not those stupid tin cans with strings – or the poor man’s version of Styrofoam cups with buttons and yard – but the game often done in a classroom setting. The teacher would get the class to sit in a circle before she explained the rules. She would whisper something to the child next to her so no one else could hear. That child was to tell the kid on the other side what was heard and so on. Down the line, the secret would be passed until the last received it. Then the lucky boy or girl would repeat out loud what they heard.
Remember playing that? I bet gales of laughter happened after the last kid said what they heard because a) it was completely nonsensical, b) it wasn’t what you heard and, c) it wasn’t what the teacher said at all.
Teacher: Farmer Brown sold his cow for fifty beans.
Last Kid: My pen licks ants for knicker seams.
This is one of those fun learning experiences where kids learn without learning. The lesson taken away from the whispering circle was you can’t always trust what you hear.
Sound familiar?
Some adults need a refresher course in this day and age of webblogs, myspace and user comments. This is the information age with gossip and hearsay swirling around our heads in cyberspace. It’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t, as one ridiculous story proves true and another sound tale false. And while the snake oil salesmen have only changed their traveling wagons for a web site to sell their cures, its getting bad when local news reports a misrepresentation two days after it’s been clarified on the web.
Seriously. President Bush may have signed into law the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. In that act, there is buried a clause that references posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. No one will deny that. However, by cutting this malignant passage from the healthy body to hold up as proof that the body needs to be put to death is extreme.
Sure, it’s sensational television. It might help the stations ratings for a day. Licking ants for knicker seams would do the same thing. Doesn’t mean it’s correct or news.
Check it out. Steer off the favored porn site for three clicks to find out if that story is better than it sounds or if someone’s pulling legs. Sure, the online casino will miss your money for the five minutes it takes to scout out a reliable webblog or hoax site to give you the straight poop. Yes, Farmer Brown’s cow was only worth fifty beans. Can you imagine that? And no, the word “annoy” only appears once in the Act and it’s always been there as part of the 1934 telephone-annoyance statute. An update was needed to include new technology, so Internet communications devices now fall under the scope of the law. It’s no more useful in stopping annoying, anonymous posters than it was in stopping telemarketers from calling during dinner.
Remember playing that? I bet gales of laughter happened after the last kid said what they heard because a) it was completely nonsensical, b) it wasn’t what you heard and, c) it wasn’t what the teacher said at all.
Teacher: Farmer Brown sold his cow for fifty beans.
Last Kid: My pen licks ants for knicker seams.
This is one of those fun learning experiences where kids learn without learning. The lesson taken away from the whispering circle was you can’t always trust what you hear.
Sound familiar?
Some adults need a refresher course in this day and age of webblogs, myspace and user comments. This is the information age with gossip and hearsay swirling around our heads in cyberspace. It’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t, as one ridiculous story proves true and another sound tale false. And while the snake oil salesmen have only changed their traveling wagons for a web site to sell their cures, its getting bad when local news reports a misrepresentation two days after it’s been clarified on the web.
Seriously. President Bush may have signed into law the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. In that act, there is buried a clause that references posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. No one will deny that. However, by cutting this malignant passage from the healthy body to hold up as proof that the body needs to be put to death is extreme.
Sure, it’s sensational television. It might help the stations ratings for a day. Licking ants for knicker seams would do the same thing. Doesn’t mean it’s correct or news.
Check it out. Steer off the favored porn site for three clicks to find out if that story is better than it sounds or if someone’s pulling legs. Sure, the online casino will miss your money for the five minutes it takes to scout out a reliable webblog or hoax site to give you the straight poop. Yes, Farmer Brown’s cow was only worth fifty beans. Can you imagine that? And no, the word “annoy” only appears once in the Act and it’s always been there as part of the 1934 telephone-annoyance statute. An update was needed to include new technology, so Internet communications devices now fall under the scope of the law. It’s no more useful in stopping annoying, anonymous posters than it was in stopping telemarketers from calling during dinner.
