by Dennis Myers
ThiS M Odern WO rld
by tom tomorrow
Notify parents of teen abortions? Asked at the Washoe County Courthouses George Mahaffey Store manager
I think so. I just think teenagers today, they need parental guidance, and I think it would be best for everyone to know about that.
Jana Blair Office worker
Yes, because that’s their potential grandchild, and I think that kids who are young, they don’t know the repercussions. I’ve known many adults that have had abortions when they were younger, and they lived their entire life regretting it and being sad. … Young people, they don’t have the ability to think in their young minds that “this is a life inside of me, and this is my parents’ grandchild.” Tammy Cossey Salesperson
Pack of liars
Yes, because it’s wrong, but it’s up to the parents to help decide if their teen should be having an abortion. They’re the parents, and the parents know more. And the teenagers, you know, they think they know everything, and they don’t.
the past week in Reno, a documentary has been showing Aldous Huxley: “People will come to love their at the Riverside theaters downtown. The widely praised oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their Merchants of Doubt is based on the powerful nonfiction capacities to think.” 2010 book of the same name that describes how industry In Brave New World, Huxley envisioned a future in manipulates us by using renowned rent-a-scientists— which we are oppressed not by political tyranny but by mostly physicists—to create doubt about what science getting what we want, infinite forms of technology that says. Some of the same former scientists—they give us comfort, feed us only satisfying information, and generally haven’t done original research in years—who isolate us from each other and from our heritage, making told us science was wrong about tobacco and cancer us easily controllable—a very different conjectural vision or secondhand smoke later told us science was wrong than other fictional speculations on future repression about acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer, and now published in Huxley’s time. tells us science is wrong about climate The novel is filled with sentences change. like this: “History is bunk. History is It is not just a movie. Think tanks that do little thinking bunk. ... Accompanied by a campaign but lots of propagandizing were created It’s important. against the Past; by the closing of by the rent-a-scientists and corporations museums, the blowing up of historical to do what the pesticide industry once monuments (luckily most of them had did. That industry manufactured doubt about the findings already been destroyed during the Nine Years’ War); by of scientist Rachel Carson of the threat of pesticides. Every the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150. ... independent scientific study has upheld her findings, but And then he spends most of his time by himself—alone.” it doesn’t matter. The point of the techniques employed Huxley envisioned, in other words, a world much like by that industry was not to disprove her findings but to the United States of America in 2015. Bad information fabricate distrust, which it did. has become so omnipresent that some publications have At one Reno showing of Merchants of Doubt last fact-checking features that cannot begin to keep up with weekend, two people attended. No doubt there was heavy the flow of nonsense. Devices reduce the amount of time attendance down the hall at Mall Cop 2. Little wonder we must spend with each other. Media live by the drugMerchants was shown at only one theater. dealer’s defense: We give the public what it wants. Documentaries tend to tear through Reno like cheetahs. One consequence is that we lose sight of what is Not surprisingly, the date that this edition of our newspaper important, unable to distinguish between Stephen Hawking hits the street is the last day Merchants will show in Reno. and Stephen King—a celebrity is a celebrity—or between We urge readers to turn to other ways to see it. It is not folk wisdom and science. just a movie. It’s important, if we still can recognize that “The deepest sin against the human mind is to characteristic in media. Ω believe things without evidence,” Huxley wrote. During OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
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MUSICBEAT
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NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
Angela Schlater Property manager
I would say yes, because you have got to know what’s going on with your kids. It’s a surgical procedure. They need to know.
Kendra Richardson Business owner
Yes. It’s your child. You should know if your child is pregnant or is going to get an abortion. It just makes sense to me. I have two little girls, and I’d want to know.
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THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
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APRIL 23, 2015
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RN&R
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