DAVID DEAN MENZIES

By David Dean Menzies It seems like there are a lot of people shouting nowadays. Shouting about diseases, societal issues, politics; sometimes directed at one another, other times at nobody in particular. It’s funny to me how conversation seems to have become a lost art, a beneficial element of society that we have for some reason chosen to forfeit. I’m reminded of this both when I engage in it -- resulting in a natural high and craving my next hit -- and when I see people mistake posting on social media for having a conversation.  Yeah, I said it: posting on social media is NOT conversation. Let’s take Facebook for example. It is defined as an online social networking website where people can share opinions and information (like this article) and respond or link to the information posted by others. Similarly, Twitter is defined as a place to exchange ideas and information instantaneously. In both cases, people post info, others absorb it, and in some cases post their viewpoints in...

By David Dean Menzies This past weekend my wife and I were enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon, watching an ABC News 20/20 program. The story was about a young man incarcerated for shooting someone, and by all accounts he certainly seemed railroaded. Toward the end of the program, a few seconds of video showed a high-ranking state official going on the record at a highly visible press conference about the case, doubling-down on the jury’s guilty verdict, claiming that celebrities and other individuals advocating for the young man’s innocence were being fed inaccurate information. Soon after, the program wrapped-up, with the young man still in prison and his case gaining notoriety. For some reason, the press conference shown toward the end of the program – for lack of a better term – bothered me. It just seemed out of place for a high-ranking official to take the extreme measure of holding a press conference and putting forth such a bold statement, in the face of the information I had abso...