<br>Christ Church of Moscow Idaho Cultmaster Douglas Wilson along with his amoral flack, Bobby Horrendous, are the local chief executioner of Facts.<br><br>w.<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 2:22 PM, Ron Force <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rforce2003@yahoo.com">rforce2003@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif"><div><a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,809470.story" target="_blank">www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-talk-huppke-obit-facts-20120419,0,809470.story</a></div>
<h1><a href="http://chicagotribune.com" target="_blank">chicagotribune.com</a></h1>
<h2>Facts, 360 B.C.-A.D. 2012</h2>
<h3>In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died.</h3>
<div>By Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune reporter</div>
<div> April 19, 2012</div>
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A quick review of the long and illustrious career of Facts reveals some
of the world's most cherished absolutes: Gravity makes things fall down;
2 + 2 = 4; the sky is blue.<br> <br> But for many, Facts' most
memorable moments came in simple day-to-day realities, from a child's
certainty of its mother's love to the comforting knowledge that a
favorite television show would start promptly at 8 p.m.<br> <br> Over
the centuries, Facts became such a prevalent part of most people's lives
that Irish philosopher Edmund Burke once said: "Facts are to the mind
what food is to the body."<br> <br> To the shock of most sentient
beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for
relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though
few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the
official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when
Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as
81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are
communists.<br> <br> Facts held on for several days after that assault —
brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring
peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.<br> <br>
"It's very depressing," said Mary Poovey, a professor of English at New
York University and author of "A History of the Modern Fact." "I think
the thing Americans ought to miss most about facts is the lack of
agreement that there are facts. This means we will never reach consensus
about anything. Tax policies, presidential candidates. We'll never
agree on anything."<br> <br> Facts was born in ancient Greece, the
brainchild of famed philosopher Aristotle. Poovey said that in its
youth, Facts was viewed as "universal principles that everybody agrees
on" or "shared assumptions."<br> <br> But in the late 16th century,
English philosopher and scientist Sir Francis Bacon took Facts under his
wing and began to develop a new way of thinking.<br> <br> "There was a shift of the word 'fact' to refer to empirical observations," Poovey said.<br> <br> Facts became concrete observations based on evidence. It was growing up.<br>
<br>
Through the 19th and 20th centuries, Facts reached adulthood as the
world underwent a shift toward proving things true through the
principles of physics and mathematical modeling. There was respect for
scientists as arbiters of the truth, and Facts itself reached the peak
of its power.<br> <br> But those halcyon days would not last.<br> <br>
People unable to understand how science works began to question Facts.
And at the same time there was a rise in political partisanship and a
growth in the number of media outlets that would disseminate
information, rarely relying on feedback from Facts.<br> <br> "There was
an erosion of any kind of collective sense of what's true or how you
would go about verifying any truth claims," Poovey said. "Opinion has
become the new truth. And many people who already have opinions see in
the 'news' an affirmation of the opinion they already had, and that
confirms their opinion as fact."<br> <br> Though weakened, Facts managed
to persevere through the last two decades, despite historic setbacks
that included President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, the
justification forPresidentGeorge W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq and
the debate over President Barack Obama's American citizenship.<br> <br>
Facts was wounded repeatedly throughout the recent GOP primary campaign,
near fatally when Michele Bachmann claimed a vaccine for a sexually
transmitted disease causes mental retardation. In December, Facts was
briefly hospitalized after MSNBC's erroneous report that GOP
presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign was using an expression
once used by the Ku Klux Klan.<br> <br> But friends and relatives of
Facts said Rep. West's claim that dozens of Democratic politicians are
communists was simply too much for the aging concept to overcome.<br> <br> As the world mourned Wednesday, some were unwilling to believe Facts was actually gone.<br> <br>
Gary Alan Fine, the John Evans Professor of Sociology at Northwestern
University, said: "Facts aren't dead. If anything, there are too many of
them out there. There has been a population explosion."<br> <br> Fine pointed to one of Facts' greatest battles, the debate over global warming.<br> <br>
"There are all kinds of studies out there," he said. "There is more
than enough information to make any case you want to make. There may be a
preponderance of evidence and there are communities that decide
something is a fact, but there are enough facts that people who are
opposed to that claim have their own facts to rely on."<br> <br> To
some, Fine's insistence on Facts' survival may seem reminiscent of the
belief that rock stars like Jim Morrison are still alive.<br> <br> "How do I know if Jim Morrison is dead?" Fine asked. "How do I know he's dead except that somebody told me that?"<br> <br> Poovey, however, who knew Facts as well as anyone, said Facts' demise is undoubtedly factual.<br>
<br>
"American society has lost confidence that there's a single
alternative," she said. "Anybody can express an opinion on a blog or any
other outlet and there's no system of verification or double-checking,
you just say whatever you want to and it gets magnified. It's just kind
of a bizarre world in which one person's opinion counts as much as
anybody else's."<br> <br> Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.<br> <br>
Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family
requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC.<br> <br> <i><a href="mailto:rhuppke@tribune.com" target="_blank">rhuppke@tribune.com</a></i>
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=======================================================<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>