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FOUR SEASONS SPOTLIGHT ALL GROWN UP - THE WAGES OF THE GOLDEN YEARS The "Blessings" of Technology By Crochet E. Oldman I liked it a lot better when I got my news reliably, twice a day, in the morning and afternoon newspaper. Television's talking heads with $100 haircuts and $1,000 suits did away with my afternoon paper years ago. Now the Internet is menacing the morning with its 24-hour availability of a deluge of unrelated, undigested factoids breathlessly delivered. Good newspapers would separate news from opinion with editorials and articles of analysis clearly labeled. The editors would carefully select what they included so their readers got a balanced look at the world. Not all of them achieved that, but most tried — it was the goal. Now, even the newspapers are following the lead of television and the Internet with stories selected not because they are newsworthy, but because they are bizarre, bawdy, bloody or mention Lindsay Lohan. And fact is inextricably mixed in with opinion. It seems I am told what to think about things I was never told happened. The Internet can be a miraculous boon to scholarship. On it you can access — at the speed of light — the wisdom of the ages and the hype of hustlers. The problem is fi guring out which is which. Judging from the cataract of claptrap that overfl ows my inbox, the hustlers are ahead. I do use the Internet for e-mail and to look stuff up, but I'm always uneasy about what I fi nd. Most of it appears to come from thieves, liars and lunatics. I have recently learned on Internet that: ✔ If I will send a measly $87 to some guy in Nigeria he will send back $3,500,000. With my payment I need to include my name, address, social security number, mother's maiden name and my bank account number — for identifi cation, don't you know. time back, I also learned it would end on Jan.1, 2000 — but why condemn the whole operation over something as trivial as the end of the world). ✔ President Obama is simultaneously a radical Muslim who was born in Kenya and a radical Christian from Chicago whose goal is at least the destruction of the United States and probably Western civilization. ✔ Mitt Romney is a member of secretive, sinister, non-Christian cult called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which would take control of the country if he is elected president. ✔ The earth is fl at. ✔ President Obama's mother was born a man. ✔ If you buy a bathtub with a door on it, your quality of life will improve immeasurably. ✔ Taking baths is bad for your health. ✔ There are pills, potions and appliances for sale that will give you the secondary sexual characteristics of a stud horse and the sex drive and abilities of an 18-year-old triathlete. ✔ A lady on her death bed in England wants me to promise to "do God's work" and she'll will me her entire estate of 1,300,000 pounds sterling (around $2,000,000). "God's work" includes sending her the same information the guy from Nigeria wants. I can just copy and paste it. ✔ By joining Mate1.com you can meet "sexy singles in your area." The ad didn't say if that was your geographical area or your area of sexual preference — hopefully both. ✔ The world will end on Dec. 21. (Some ✔ At Area 51 near Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, extraterrestrials helped humans build a transcontinental underground railroad — a sort of super subway — and taught them about time travel, teleportation and climate control. (Judging from this year's onslaught of preseason tornadoes, record-high temperatures and drought- fed wildfi res, the climate thing needs more work). There are people who believe this stuff, and they're not all ignorant louts — even though there are plenty of those and, if they're old enough, they can vote. Some of this nonsense was sent to me by well- meaning friends who wanted to make sure I was clued in. The above has caused me to derive the Gandhi/Goebbels/Gaga rule: On the Internet the voices of Mohandas Gandhi, thoughtful humanitarian; Joseph Goebbels, hater and Holocaust promoter, and Lady Gaga, professional show-off, all speak with the same authority. Sadly, it seems the Gandhis are vastly outnumbered by the Goebbleses and they are both awash in an ocean of GagaGagaGagaGagaGaga… to infi nity and beyond. Back in the days of my morning and afternoon paper, I knew which voices were to be heeded. There was a history there, a track record of honesty that could be trusted. I was much more likely to believe a Chicago Daily News headline that said, "Man Lands on Moon," than one in the National Enquirer that said, "Space Aliens in White House. " As a society, we need to devise ways to determine the reliability of the voices on the Net and we need to get moving. The alternative is to take the $3,500,000 from Nigeria (a bigger offer than the English Lady's), join Mate1, buy the sex enhancement products, take the super subway to some place where the climate has been controlled for good weather and live it up until the world ends on Dec. 21. FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | SEPTEMBER 2012 7

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