Don't Believe Anything
Posted at 6:03 AM on November 18, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(24 Comments)
Radio Heatland has tickets to give away to the Americana Showcase in Rochester at the Civic Theater, this Saturday night, November 21st. The show features local singer/songwriters Adam Levy, Molly Maher, Darren Jackson and Jeremy Messersmith and is hosted by Brandon Sampson of the band Six Mile Grove.
Enter the drawing.
Obey the rules.
Good Luck.
On Monday, Clyde shared a useful bit of wisdom from his son.
My son produces computer games and says two things about current technology: 1) from here on, believe nothing you see or hear. 2) because we can do anything that does not mean we should do everything.Posted by Clyde in Mankato | November 16, 2009 9:29 AM
That is so true. Digital manipulation of sounds and images makes it very difficult to trust your eyes and ears. Not only can we be manipulated by unsavory elements hoping to sway us into alignment with their twisted philosophies, but governments and other heavy handed authorities can hide disturbing news to keep us complacent.
I'm not saying this has happened.
But with all the talk at movie theater concession stands about a worldwide Mayan doomsday in 2012 and with the usual concerns about an inevitable alien invasion, one has to wonder why we haven't already seen photographic evidence of something sinister afoot. Could it be that the secret-keepers are concealing the truth through the unprincipled use of digital media?
Probably. It's not hard to do.
For example, I received a disturbing e-mail with this unsettling image of a wasp-winged, double tailed, two legged alien she-goat queen giving orders to one of her space goat lieutenants immediately after their arrival as part of the first wave of an inter-galactic Earth Invasion Force.
This is a serious cause for concern.
No government would want this news to get around. Goats are a very important economic resource worldwide, and the idea that their ranks have been infiltrated would be disruptive to say the least.
I'm an amateur at Photo Shop, but with just a few (hundred) dozen clicks, I was able to alter this image, just as some bureaucratic functionary might if he were trying to keep the awful truth from the easily panicked masses. I began by removing those weird glowing wings and giving this otherworldly beast two substantial front legs.
Then I digitally removed the time-warp goggles that space-goats use to keep their sensitive eyes from imploding under the stresses of hyper drive, and I was able to normalize the look of those eerie pinwheel orbs that can see into your soul and read your feeble plans for resistance even before you've formulated them.
Using a digital brush, I separated the propellor-like conjoined tails and added a simple collar of the sort any salt-of-the-earth Northern Minnesota goat tender would provide for her beloved animal to make this space-traveling invader seem like any other ordinary Earth-goat.
I even altered the sinister lieutenant's ear to make it seem slightly askew and thus more normal and non-threatening.
Take a look. How could THESE beasts be plotting anything more than a determined rush at the lunch pail? Crisis averted. For now.
Given how easily I hid the evidence of an impending calamity, what can we believe in anymore? I guess it all comes down to trust, and instinct.
Can you tell when someone is lying?
Even if that someone is a goat? (Or so they say!)
Comments (24)
Love waking up to a dancing goat - even it has been "remastered". (Barb - who is this one, by the way?)
Except for ads on tv, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about who is lying to me. However, I'm particularly good at catching my teenager lying to me!
now i'm really scared, Dale!
i'd like an Instant Photoshop installed into my brain so i can edit out some things that i don't want to see, before i see them - much less let anyone share the ickiness. like the rat (!) the crept into a water bucket and drowned. would have photoshopped it into a mouse or a clover blossom..
but aside from my personal brain/photoshop installation, i agree with Clyde - just because we can doesn't mean we should.
well, Sherrilee, it LOOKS like our Alba, but who knows???
Good Morning!
Thanks Dale for making our world appear safer though I will still be keeping my eyes open for the goat invasion. As for detecting lying, it's easier in some cases than others. For example it's easy to tell when either a politician or used car salesman is lying; it happens every time their lips move. Other situations are a little tougher.
Oh, and thanks Barb for not sharing a picture of the rat, who knows what Dale could have done with that (not that he would have...)
Have a great day!
I can tell when someone lies to me because afterward they laugh in my face and say, "Oh Donna. You are SO gullible!"
Then I flip them off and that's the end of it.
I have been using Photoshop for many revisions of the program now so have been distrustful of the images I see for a long time. Now that the tools for moving and 3d images are as slick as PS, we really can forget about believing anything we see.
Isn't that true for the music we hear, too, though? How often do you learn that an artist can't actually sing in tune when you hear him or her live? Their finesse is a result of software and production. :-)
It's pretty easy for me to spot when my children are being less than truthful. Not sure about the general population.
Songs with references to liars... Tom Waits "Heartattack and Vine". The Roches "Pretty and High". Wonder what other songs are out there on the topic.
Greetings! I'm generally trusting of people (whether deserved or not), but generally skeptical of news, media, medical doctors, government and advertisers.
Love your photoshopping, Dale. I'll never look at goats the same way again. I hope Barb and Cynthia are extra careful against invasion by those horrible aliens. Have a great day!
Just last night my exchange student and I were talking about aliens, crop circles but never thought of invading goats...this photoshop thing looks like a bunch of fun!
OT as in "Off topic" -- I didn't get a chance to comment on yesterday's blog...read them all late in the day...what wonderful imaginations you all have so early in the day...I'm lucky to be functioning so early, but the body is on auto-pilot and the brain is in neutral.
Thanks for the pleasure of TB, y'all.
This all-around-wonderful mom is a little embarrassed to have admitted that she occasionally gives people the finger.
Thanks for the lovely dedication and song, Eric!
I don't know what to say. As a small child we are told there is a Santa Claus and now Dale is expecting us to believe his story about alien goats. I guess Clyde's son is right, don't be too sure that any thing is true.
There is a big problem with convincing people that they are being lied to when they have decided some thing is true. Some times there is nothing you can do change a person's mind if they want to believe something that isn't true.
I used to lie for a living. And I wasn't even in politics...I was making minimum wage. While giving tours on my beloved S/S Wm. A. Irvin in Duluth, visitors would ask if I'd sailed before. And I generally told them that I did. The way I figured it, they paid to have someone knowledgeable take them on their tour. And I quickly found that saying that "I hadn't actually sailed but I'd done my homework and knew my stuff," just didn't cut it. So, by just saying that I'd gone out for a summer, I was able to keep my group's attention. Was it bad to lie in order to give the visitors a better tour experience?
I also managed to convince my last ex-girlfriend (before my wife and I started going out) that box turtles were venomous. But don't think that she was less than intelligent or completely gullible. It took me about half an hour of pitching real biological reasons on why it could be possible.
The company I work for sells video games (some perhaps worked on my Clyde's son) - last week there was a release of an especially violent war game. I had to watch trailers for it for content as well as work with stores who were doing events around the release. I can honestly say that some of the realism in that game for me falls into the "just because we can doesn't mean we should." It was appalling - but I am clearly not the target market for this game (not even close).
I'd rather think that the world that is altering images and creating things digitally is confining itself to taming alien goats. Much more pleasant.
my husband says there are lies and then there are the things he tells: "charitable untruths" which are deceiving but kind. i don't count these as lies really; he uses them to avoid confrontation or to agree in a situation where disagreeing would gain nothing. i, on the other hand, am just unable to voice even a charitable untruth. (well, except for weight and eye color on my driver's license :-) i don't know where i got the urge to confess everything - i'm not catholic and i come from a father who was a fisherman (automatic lier status) and a mother whom my brother calls a "pathological lier." (she really just tells things the way she'd like them to be)
so i can't lie, but because of my parents, i think lots of people lie.
i think Donna is lying about flipping people off and i think Cynthia's brain is in high gear when she rises early in the morning. she's just being modest. can't milk goats on auto-pilot, can you Cynthia???
I am trying to decide if I share this with my son, who grew up with Dale and Jim Ed and listened until work a few years ago forced to him to Southern California, where all things deceitful are hatched (dare I say one of my ex-students is a producer on the Next Top Model Show; what a dark past I have, oh, my).
Hmmmmm?
everything i say is a lie
I've worked as a psychologist for about 20 years and I am as easily snowed by clients now as I was when I first started. I believe this is true for most, if not all mental health professionals. I think that people also lie to themselves, which makes their lying even more undetectable by others.. Truth is embedded in behavior, not words.
Guy in the Hat: as a long long time resident of the North Shore I say lying to tourists does not count. You cannot tell the truth to tourists; they want an exerpience, no the truth.
Renee, one critic says the moral of the book Huckleberry Finn is that the only lies that will hurt us are the lies we tell ourselves.
Well, I did share the URL with my son, who is an early riser. I find it a little intimidating to think my son will watch what I post--a truth and lie issue, of course.
Thank you for playing my request, I was away from my desk at the time but I will hear it durring the re-broadcast.....
I just thought of another Tom Waits song that would work today. How about Step Right Up?
We all know how much truth there is in advertising.
Oh and I know there's no such thing as 4 legged goats, photo shop is an evil tool, how do you think those goats got in the tree from the picture posted awhile back? That's right; wings, the legs were photo shopped!
Precisely! Yeah, I was lying but it wasn't malicious.
Now, convincing my ex that box turtles are venomous...that was just to see if I could do it. I actually came up with a fairly convincing argument.
1) Box turtles have colors on their shells. What do colors mean in nature? Danger!
2) Box Turtles have 'fingernails' but they aren't sharp enough to be an effective venom delivery system. Instead, I said that box turtles have very narrow rows of teeth that are sharp and they actually 'chew' the venom into you. This is actually true of gila monsters.
3) Because the venom isn't 'injected,' it's a less effective/efficient delivery system. This means that for the venom to work, it has to be even more potent. Again, this is true of gila monsters.
4) Also because turtles are swamp creatures, surrounded by cold blooded creatures, this means that the venom also has to be particularly potent.
I just kept hammering at all of these points (with deadpan seriousness) until she said, "...really...?"
Wow, this dredges up a memory of a high school essay that was titled "The Difference in Lies". Same idea as Barb in Blackhoof's husband, about some lies being just "charitable untruths". I guess I still use that philosophy today... (Yikes, the stuff we have cluttering up our memories!)
When I saw that the tickets were from Radio Heatland I was puzzled. Is the name change an act of denial in the face of oncoming winter?
Thanks so much for the laughs, Dale. Sure was a morning brightener for me! Please don't ever stop the silliness.
Speaking of Saturday night, just thought people would want to know about regional perennial favorite comic-folk duo Lou and Peter Berryman's concert at First Unitarian Society (900 Mount Curve Ave. in Minneapolis, up the hill behind the Walker) this Sat., Nov. 21 at 8pm. Info at louandpeter.com
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock
