Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for April 20, 2020

I think there’s a problem with trusting a purveyor of bad news to deliver all  the bad news.

This is why I get all my news from reruns of Gilligan’s Island.

I know a lot of users on GoComics who share that guy to the left’s mentality.

I recently read a book about a serial killer who murdered entire families in the early 20th century midwest USA. It was badly written, but made an interesting point about the rate of technological innovation between the earliest murders believed to have been committed by this killer in about 1900, and the later ones in 1910. No wire service for news meant that people didn’t connect virtually identical crimes in different counties, less than 100 miles apart in the early murders. Newspapers only printed local news prior to wire services.

It started from this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship …

Hamilton Burger asked a witness on the stand if this was his gun. He reached into his suit and pulled out a gun and said this was his gun and that was the office gun he gave to his secretary for her protection.

True, at one time, an insult would lead to a legally permissible duel challenge.

The Spanish Inquisition? Also Slavery, Jim Crow, miscegenation laws, witch hunting, the Trail of Tears and that’s just in this country (and we’re nowhere near as bad as many others have been throughout history). At least we’re aware that all of these things were not our proudest moments.

“The world is more violent than ever.”

Contemporary anthropologists would beg to disagree:

The Violence Paradox

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-violence-paradox/

My favorite saying comes up – it doesn’t matter how you feel about something, but whether it’s true.