Distinguishing the Message from the Delivery Platform.

A good article. What I like most about it though is that I just read "Stranger in a Strange Land" this weekend, and then I see this paragraph:

"Much of what is described in media stories does not bear close examination. American science fiction author Robert Heinlein developed a concept in one of his novels for legal proceedings that he called 'fair witness'. His idea was that evidence is almost never untainted or the interpretation of it unbiased, so there is a need for an independent party who could look at what is and what isn't based only on the actual evidence. In his description of the process, he used the following (paraphrased) example: If you were asked what you see on that hill over there, you might reply that you see a white house. A fair witness would reply that he sees a building that generally resembles a personal dwelling, and that it is white on three sides. The fair witness would be acknowledging that he couldn't be sure of the building's use merely by looking from outside, and he couldn't tell if the house was white on all sides because he can only see, at most, three sides at any one time."