Humble Opinions

Posted today at Mother Jones and it made me laugh. I thought I was just avoiding the horrible inanity of American news, but it turns out I'm being educated too. Update! 18 April: I just took a short version of The Pew News IQ Quiz and scored 100% (albeit with only 9 questions.) I'm in the top 4%. Watch the Daily Show? You're Smart. Read Blogs or Watch FOX? Not So Much It's always a treat when studies come out that link how much individuals know with where they get their news. In the following tables, the percentage next to a media outlet's name represents the number of viewers of that outlet that can answer 15 of 23 questions about political and world affairs correctly. Not a particularly high bar. Daily Show/Colbert Report 54% Major Newspapers' Websites 54% NewsHour w/ Jim Lehrer 53% Bill O'Reilly 51% NPR 51% Rush Limbaugh 50% Those are the folks who did well. Here's the group that did just okay. Newsmagazines 48% Local Newspape...

Last Tuesday I went to the Arlo Guthrie concert. Yes, the guy who sang Alice's Restaurant way back in 1967, the son of legendary singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie. Dennis & Robin had a spare ticket and were kind enough to offer it to me. A wonderful night! On stage were members of Arlo's family: son on keyboard and daughter and son-in-law playing guitars and another playing slide-guitar and mandolin. Mercifully the 4-year-old granddaughter didn't come on until the end. It could have been dreadful. Instead it was a fabulous night of funny/ touching/ homespun-country stories about family, politics in the US, Woody Guthrie's life and, of course, dealing with the police and other government types in the tumultuous 60's and 70's. Alice's Restaurant was played of course, with all the joy and humour of the original, even though Arlo reminded us that he's had to sing the song six times a week 10 months of the year, for the last 40 years. But the best so...