I believe in being informed. Ironically, with immediate access to massive communications today, it’s harder than ever! We can be besieged, overwhelmed, and gobsmacked, but accurate information which we can transform into pragmatic knowledge—not so much.

The escutcheon of the media today would beem to be a shield of pomposity on a field of bombast. We’re experiencing enough natural and human-made disasters surely, but the media seem to be eager to hyperventilate on almost anything. Note that we have “storm tracker” weather, but not “the sunshine group.” I saw a video yesterday of a reporter leaning into the wind as if on the bow of a ship while two men calmly passed in the background walking casually. News has become staged as drama. (The warnings about the storms hitting the Carolinas right now are very important, the problem is that when those warnings are too frequent and premature people don’t take them seriously enough. Having lived through hurricanes, my heart goes out to everyone in the path of this one.)

David Muir on the ABC World News Tonight is constantly out of breath, seemingly full of the anxiety of bringing us more warnings of catastrophe often, involving a reporter for 15 seconds who intones, “It’s bad, here, David, back to you.” Is it good anywhere?

Among the issues and experiences, we have been warned about our milk, red meat, air travel, air conditioning, drinking water, unsafe beaches, cereals, snacks, medicines, fresh fruit, auto upholstery, sun exposure, and so forth. In other words, just about everything in my life.

But here I am, at least until this winter, when the local people will warn me that a potentially humungous snow storm may appear at any time, and constantly warn us of this potentially deadly event. Of course, it’s been snowing in these parts for at least 10,000 years.

There’s some story, somewhere, about “crying wolf.'”