Wednesday, September 11, 2013

A Rose By Any Other Name

Syrian president Bashar Assad told Charlie Rose there is "no evidence I used chemical weapons against my own people." What a relief. Now we can get back to the important things in life, like playing poker on our smart phones. If only it really were that simple. If only we could make things like global warming go away by denying their existence. I could deny the existence of cell phones in movie theaters. Or chemical weapons.
Maybe we could start with Charlie Rose. Has there ever been anyone who lied to Charlie Rose? Some people believe that Al Gore was stretching the truth when he told Charlie about storage capacity of EEStor Ultracapaitors. There was  a lot of huffing and puffing about President Obama's defense of the NSA spying scandal on Rose's show, and how he might not have been completely forthcoming in his responses. But lying, as in "not telling the truth?"
What is truth? Pontius Pilate asked this question to Jesus Christ. Under some rather difficult circumstances, Jesus didn't have a very good answer. Merriam Webster would have us believe that it is "sincerity in action, character, and utterance." There is a whole web site devoted to Truth, though in the first few lines we are assured that there is no truth in mathematics, science, or logic. There is no mention of PBS or Charlie Rose.
So we're left to take President Assad at his word. It's all some sort of terrible misunderstanding. Those four hundred children who were killed by rebels. Rebels who had access to chemical weapons. Rebels whose mission is to free the people they are accused of murdering from the oppression of President Assad.
I don't know a lot about truth, but I'm pretty sure that it's supposed to make sense. This doesn't fit that bill. Of course, by this measure, there is very little on television that can be considered truth. Even Charlie Rose.
There is no truth in Mathematics
b- There is no truth in Science
c- There is no truth in Logic

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