I find it disturbing these days that people will believe almost anything sent to their inbox from a friend or colleague.  I recently received the famous e-mail about Mars being closer to the Earth than in anytime in history in August and that this will never happen again in anyone’s lifetime who is alive today.  Exciting news to be sure!

The e-mail continued to reveal that Mars would appear almost as big and bright as the moon in the night sky…again, fascinating.  However, the truth just isn’t so.  I guess implied in the hyperlink in the previous sentence is the trust I’m putting in NASA, the source of the information debunking this hoax.  I certainly hope they are telling me the truth, and based on the source, I’m inclined to believe them over an email that arrives from a friend, after being forwarded thousands of times over nearly 6 years since it was originally sent out.  No doubt the original author of this fiction must be impressed with the longevity he or she has achieved.

The more I watch the Jon Stewart show (unfortunately one of my favourite sources of “News” and Entertainment these days), I wonder how the eroding trust I feel in the major “News” organizations that report daily on happenings around the world will impact what I believe in the future.  How can the average person be expected to determine what is fact and what is fiction with so much information passing through our television sets, inboxes, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  I hope that we figure out a way to keep determining mostly what is fact and what isn’t, because with the volume of information we hear on a daily basis, we really do need to watch what we believe…something many of us seem to have forgotten.