While I was waiting at the dentist a few days ago, an older lady and a man (probably in his 50s, though I generally can’t estimate ages well; based on their interactions, I think he was her son) came in and sat down across from me. He grabbed a couple of magazines and brought one back to her and sat down.

I wasn’t trying to listen to their conversation (I’m still behind on the Read 100 challenge, so I was trying to get some reading in), but I heard her ask him, “Did you hear the President talking about that torture? The water thing? Had you ever heard of that?” The snippets of conversation I heard after that convinced me that she simply hadn’t heard any of the debate about the appropriateness (and definition) of torture that’s gone on over the last couple of years.

I realize that this is a poor example, as this particular issue has been in the mainstream media quite a bit. Even if it wasn’t a bad example, “the plural of anecdote is not data” — and this is just a singular anecdote. Still, it made me realize that it’s pretty easy for those of us who read political news and debate on a regular basis to think that everyone is aware of the issues that we’re discussing, but much of the public simply isn’t as in tune with these things as we are.

As hard as it is for me to believe, there are people (plural of anecdote may not be data, but I can’t believe that this woman was a truly isolated case, either) who aren’t really aware of the word “waterboarding”, much less the controversy that’s surrounded it in recent years. If that’s true of an issue that’s been discussed in the mainstream media, then I shudder to think how many of the other issues that are ubiquitous on political blogs on both sides of the spectrum are completely under the general public’s radar, simply because the networks haven’t covered them.

(WordPress word count: 337)

I posted two posts last month. At one point, a close friend asked me if I had just abandoned One Stack Mind completely. The answer, as I wrote on Tax Day, is no, but that I just haven’t felt all that motivated to write much.

I want this month to be different, though, so I’m starting a challenge. I am going to try to write at least one post a day for the entire month, and each post must be at least 250 words on WordPress’s word count. (That is, I can post shorter posts, but those don’t count — I have to have at least one post with a total of at least 250 words each day).

The good thing is, I have the next couple of Fridays off, so maybe I can get a few spare posts written then to make things easier on me during the week.

We’ll see how this goes…

(This post, as of the word “goes” above, was 152 words long according to WordPress, so it doesn’t count.)