Friday, November 09, 2007

Random

The Economist goes to Dollywood (Dolly Parton's theme park in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee) and says you can learn a lot about real America there: "People do not fly to Dollywood; they drive there in big cars full of squabbling children. East-coast accents, let alone foreign ones, are rare. The park is thus an excellent window on what people in this part of the American heartland like". And they are patriotic, feel strongly about God, celebrate their own folk culture and music. But they are tolerant too.

Love the Bad Science section in the Guardian, where Ben Goldacre fights against spin and madness and champions good science and research. "In the media, you get one expert saying one thing, and another saying something else. Who do you believe? The devil is in the detail" and he looks at the details and looks for the truth. An good example is his thoughts about the figures used by anti-abortionists. Go reason!