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Showing posts from November, 2012

The burden of proof

"90% of all quotes on the internet are made up" - Abraham Lincoln.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have had to leave that statement as a comment on Facebook. Consider this Facebook "forward", if you will:  It is attributed to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam because it suits the narrative that my friend wants to believe in. A lot of you will probably doubt if Dr. Kalam ever said that. I suspect (actually, fervently hope) that my friend who posted this also had a flicker of doubt the source. But he went ahead and posted it anyway.  That is what scares me the most. People are willing to "forward" anything that tickles their funny bone. I have grumbled about silly email forwards before. But Facebook takes it to a whole new level. This time, you don't even need to fill out the "To:" field. You can just "share" it on your timeline and people will read it. I am surprised at the incredible gullibility of people, and sometimes just f