When reading anything

[Soul Sam]

Do you skim and pick out words, or read the entire thing before talking about the matter in hand?

Myself and a friend are having a debate about a local case. A 2 year old child accidentally ingested methadone which, for unknown reasons, had been left in a child's beaker. When the child was left unattended, they drank the substance and died as a result of it. Now, the ruling almost a year later was manslaughter, as it was proven they (The Parents) did not mean to kill the child.

Following this, my friend went on Facebook, ranting about it, calling the parents child murdering C***s. When I attempted to explain the case was ruled as manslaughter (accidental murder) and that, though I fully agreed that they were completely idotic to do what they did, I was told I was defending the parents, rather then stating the facts. (Which I was. I tend to stay neutral when discussing the news). Have any of you had situations where people cherry pick articles to try and seem intelligent?

[Kestrel]

While obviously everyone misses information every once in a while, some people just really want to be heard. For the hell of it, I once made a theory on this; the less interesting the actual statement/opinion, the more volume they require to be heard. At some point a friend of mine chimed in with the claim there is a relation between a person's reading comprehension and how vocal they were about their concerns about the environment. The louder a person requires to be, the less attention they can give to what others actually have to say. Combined; these theories boiled down to the conclusion of every Greenpeace activist being illiterate.

Boredom can lead to amazing things.