Science Friday on NPR had some interesting discussions today, esp. the first one which was on Communicating Science in a Post-Newspaper Era. You may listen to it, or read the transcript (scroll way down)HERE

One of them was talking about the types of emails he gets now there is the Internet with so much misinformation, etc.:

Prof. SCHNEIDER: If my hundreds of emails..... are any indication, the typical line - and you would not believe the vulgarity and even violence threats. It's amazing. Only in the last two years since the Tea Party-types decided that their, you know, their imagined version of the destruction of America allows them this kind of radical, you know, ugly behavior.

What they generally say is, you communistic dupe of the United Nations who wants world government to take away our religious and our economic freedoms. They live in a mythology. They get it reinforced by people who take out-of-context quotes to convince them, and then they sit there and it's very - I'm sorry to say this - red-state, blue-state specific.

And, you know, if you want to take the world and oversimplify it, you have people in two kind of value systems - faith, trust. Don't give me evidence if it's going to knock me off the pin. And doubt test, which is our value system. You change any opinion when you have new evidence.

Some of it reminded me of this thread.