I got an paper-mail today from McGill soliciting me for donations. It's tagline is "We're sure you education was worth more than $10." to which I respond "And I'm sure I paid more than $10 for my education."

There's this advertisement group (or something) called "truth" or "the truth" or something along those lines. Basically, they're anti-smoking. They show TV commercials bashing the tobacco industry all the time. I'm not pro-smoking — I don't smoke and I've encouraged my girlfriends who smoke to stop smoking — but I'm anti-lying. And this ironically named "truth" group lies in order to promote it's anti-smoking propaganda.

Of course, they aren't nescessarily outright, bald-face lies, but rather distortion or misrepresentation of the truth. One example is a commercial where they state (I'm going to make up the figures here, as I don't remember them, but it's not important): "This hospital has [three hundred and twenty] beds. Last year [four million] Americans became bedridden sick because of tobacco smoke. We're going to need more beds." It implies that this tobacco sickness is some sort of epidemic causing patients to overflow the hospitals. In actuality, those bedridden people were probably not sick throughout the year, and so as one recovered, a second sick person could come and take that bed. And not all the sick Americans in all of America go to this one single hospital. If you add up all the beds in all the hospitals in all of America, you'll probably end up with a figure which is greater than the cited number of sick people. I've lost all respect for this "truth" group since I saw that commercial.