Remember Eggs Over Easy Being Illegal?

[Columbo]

I'll continue to live on the edge, eggs over easy on top of corn beef hash or on top of hash brown potatoes or just by themselves. Never hurt Rocky when he drank raw eggs.

Raw eggs, WIP on the radio, and a run though the Italian Market. Not a bad morning for South Philly in the mid 70s.

If you like your breakfast platters mixed, here's another eggless one that I used to love a couple times a year. It's fattening, so I don't recommend it very often if you want your pants to keep fitting. And my system can't handle it like years ago, so I don't eat it anymore:

Cream chipped beef on toast, with a side of fried potatoes (almost burned) with extra fried onions. Remove all the chipped beef off the toast and mix it into the fried potatoes and onions. Absolutely delicious. Leave the toast for the busboy.

 

[Columbo]

I'm old enough to remember plenty of "healthy" foods and ingredients which now require warning labels or are banned.

I think even air and water have been determined to cause cancer in the State of California.

 

[GR5233]

I'm old enough to remember plenty of "healthy" foods and ingredients which now require warning labels or are banned.

Kind of makes me wonder how much we can “trust the science” about certain recent events if “the science” can’t even figure out whether or not certain foods are “healthy” for us

I think even air and water have been determined to cause cancer in the State of California.

I’m surprised California hasn’t said that being alive causes cancer yet. But it would surprise me if they do that eventually

 

[DogLeg]

Kind of makes me wonder how much we can “trust the science” about certain recent events if “the science” can’t even figure out whether or not certain foods are “healthy” for us

To be fair, it's not really the science part. It's the "news" part, and the "marketing" part.

Health reporters aren't, usually, experts in science, medicine or health. Their job is to find and report on things which will attract eyeballs to the advertisements that pay the bills.

Marketers job is to get people to buy a product. Again, they are experts in marketing, not science, medicine or health.

Much of what people think they know comes from these two questionable sources. Most people will never actually think about the "information" they passively absorb from these sources.

So we end up "knowing" a lot of things that aren't actually so.

 

[Old Hippie]

Health reporters aren't, usually, experts in science, medicine or health.

As a former health reporter, I'll endorse that view but say it doesn't go far enough.

I once remarked at a conference that in my experience most health reporters on TV were simply the female reporter who had most recently been diagnosed with breast cancer or had a baby. That's a management problem, not a personnel problem.

The big point is that they're not supposed to be experts. If you're considering a reporter to be an expert then you're sadly being led astray whether they are reporting on health, politics, sports or underwater basketweaving.

Any reporter is trained to ask questions. Specialist reporters may ask "better" questions because they are more aware of the issues in their area, but there again they're not usually intensively trained in that area as any kind of "expert." They are supposed to have enough information to ask deeper questions, assess the answer critically, and explain that to their audience. (There are exceptions. I've taught several graduate students who already had degrees in the areas in which they wanted to report. That's a whole different level.)

The reality is that doesn't happen everywhere. I taught health reporting as well as other topics. Most of us likely remember the composition of classrooms in which we took instruction -- some highly engaged students, some who were sleeping off last night and mostly a bunch of folks who just wanted to survive the semester. Me? I was usually sleeping off the night before. Got a reality check on that from the Registrar and mended my ways, but I certainly wasn't the last one who had a little motivation problem at that age.

O.H.

 

[DogLeg]

As a former health reporter, I'll endorse that view but say it doesn't go far enough.

I once remarked at a conference that in my experience most health reporters on TV were simply the female reporter who had most recently been diagnosed with breast cancer or had a baby. That's a management problem, not a personnel problem.

The big point is that they're not supposed to be experts. If you're considering a reporter to be an expert then you're sadly being led astray whether they are reporting on health, politics, sports or underwater basketweaving.

Any reporter is trained to ask questions. Specialist reporters may ask "better" questions because they are more aware of the issues in their area, but there again they're not usually intensively trained in that area as any kind of "expert." They are supposed to have enough information to ask deeper questions, assess the answer critically, and explain that to their audience. (There are exceptions. I've taught several graduate students who already had degrees in the areas in which they wanted to report. That's a whole different level.)

The reality is that doesn't happen everywhere. I taught health reporting as well as other topics. Most of us likely remember the composition of classrooms in which we took instruction -- some highly engaged students, some who were sleeping off last night and mostly a bunch of folks who just wanted to survive the semester. Me? I was usually sleeping off the night before. Got a reality check on that from the Registrar and mended my ways, but I certainly wasn't the last one who had a little motivation problem at that age.

O.H.

I have joked that the gossip on the corner is as likely to accurately report what's happening as the news is.

While it is unreasonable to expect reporters to have a deep understanding of all areas that they have to report on, I have come to the conclusion that most are not really interested in knowing much about anything that isn't part of the little piece of the world that they occupy. In other words: They're just people.

The norm is inaccurate descriptions of how things work and what the implications are of a given event. This is especially concerning when you consider that most people assume that reporting is "truth" and take it as gospel. Add political and cultural filtering to this and it gets even more troubling.

During the pandemic I read my state's Executive Orders. When compared to the press releases from the governor's office and the reporting about them it was obvious that there were three distinctly different, contradictory narratives.

That was not because of any conspiracy, it was because the governor's staff writing the press releases did not understand the EOs and the reporting was based on what the reporters thought the press releases were saying. The EOs were actually pretty clear and understandable, but I doubt any reporters ever read them based on the reporting. There are only so many hours in the day, after all.

That's just an example. It's repeated with every law that is passed. If you want to know what is happening you have to actually learn to find the source documents and parse them. Which nobody is going to do who does not have a very good reason.

 

[Columbo]

In the larger course of human, cosmic, and eternal history, we really are technological and spiritual infants. We know virtually nothing at this point when compared against that far bigger span of time.

Barely 150 years ago, we mainly lived at night by the light of candles and gas, the only practical electronics was the telegraph, and "bleeding" with leeches was still a well practiced form of 'medicine' in many places.

One hundred and fifty years. Barely more than a couple human lifetimes.

So when someone ignorantly proclaims barely 150 years later that the "science is settled" on anything, I smile inside. Because there speaks a fool.

Only six hundred years ago, it was 'settled science' that the world was flat. Fools live in every era.

And just because you saw it on the TV or news doesn't mean it's true. Most of it is not.

 

[ShavingPrimate]

When I was a boy the terrier man for the local hunt lived in our village. He’d served in the British army in Burma in WW2, and if he came across a pheasant or moorhens nest he’d crack a couple of eggs and swallow them raw.
He did the same with hens eggs, drank more than his fair share of ale, and smoked and chewed tobacco.
He was well into his 80s when he died.

That is probably due to him not eating overly processed foods and consuming unnecessary chemicals that the government seems to be fine with.

Much of what people think they know comes from these two questionable sources. Most people will never actually think about the "information" they passively absorb from these sources.

People today ask to be lied to. They absolutely avoid the truth at all costs.

And just because you saw it on the TV or news doesn't mean it's true. Most of it is not.

If you see or read about it in the media, it is almost guaranteed that it isn't true.

Today's media exist to move agendas forward

 

[DogLeg]

Today's media exist to move agendas forward

It exists to make a profit. It is used to forward agendas both intentionally and through manipulation by third parties.

This has always been true. The history of the press shows no Golden Age of Objective Reporting. That idea is a product of people replacing history with their desire that things were once closer to the ideal that they aspire to.

What has changed is that it's becoming harder than ever to get away from the constant feed of BS and manipulation.