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Date: Sun, 01 Sep 2002 08:59:44 -0400
From: "John M. McMahon" <mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu>
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Subject: semi-TAN: freedom of the press and the cosmos(!)
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Not specifically Classics ... but an interesting, er,
observation about the way things are cast in the press,
especially wrt to the big issues -- like the cosmos. (Can't
get much bigger trhan that, I guess.)  Anyway, is it about
us humans or about the stars? Seems that the media can put
even an op-ed by a well known pundit into a certain context.

Thus:

George Will's current piece is titled in the *Albany (NY)
Times Union* of 9/1 as:

"The curious curiosity that is us"  

(http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=56631&category=OPINION&newsdate=9/1/2002)

but in the *Washington Post* as:

"Wonderment in the Stars" 

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18547-2002Aug30.html)

In passing, let me say that rarely I am in full accord with
much of what Will writes; but this is one piece of his worth
reading, speaking, as it does, to the place of humans in the
scope of things and how they react to it.

Excerpt:

"'We are curious people,' says Keck Observatory director
Frederic Chaffee matter-of-factly. 'And the universe is an
amazing place.' The most amazing things in it are the
curious creatures. They have evolved literally from
stardust, becoming conscious beings capable of building --
indeed, their glory is that they are, in a sense, incapable
of not building -- mountaintop telescopes, silhouetted
against the edge of the atmosphere, searching for clues as
to how all this started and how it will end."

John McMahon
LMC
.