- Here are some words and images used by right-wing political and media figures as signals to the patriot and Tea Party constituencies, signals used to organize the throngs against health care legislation, environmental reforms and all things identified with President Barack Obama.
- For their study, the scientists whittled down surveys filled out by 246 voters, of whom 73 percent believed in a Saddam-9/11 link, to 49 believers who were willing to be interviewed at length in October 2004. Even after the 49 were shown newspaper articles reporting that the 9/11 Commission had not found any evidence linking Saddam and 9/11, and quoting President Bush himself denying it, 48 stuck to their guns: yup, Saddam Hussein, directly or indirectly, brought down the Twin Towers.
- When the scientists asked the participants why they believed in the link, they offered many justifications. Five argued that Saddam supported terrorism generally, or that evidence of a link to 9/11 might yet emerge. These counterarguments are not entirely illogical. But almost everyone else offered some version of “I don’t know; I don’t know anything”—that is, outright confusion over the conflict between what they believed and what the facts showed—or switched subjects to the invasion of Iraq. As one put it, when asked about his Saddam-9/11 belief, “There is no doubt in my mind that if we did not deal with Saddam Hussein when we did, it was just a matter of time when we would have to deal with him.” In other words, holding fast to the Saddam-9/11 belief helped people make sense of the decision to go to war against Iraq.
- Researchers have found that film is an incredibly powerful tool for teaching children about the past which can greatly increase historical knowledge.
- However, it is so powerful that if the facts are wrong, pupils are more likely to believe them even if they are told otherwise by text books or teachers, they say.
- When films get it right then children benefit enormously and remember much more detail when later questioned, said lead researcher Andrew Butler of Washington University in St Louis
- But when they it wrong, so do the children. Even if they have read the correct version in a textbook they remember what was in the film not what was in their book.
- “When information in the film was consistent with information in the text, watching the film clips increased correct recall by about 50 per cent relative to reading the text alone,” he said.
- “In contrast, when information in the film directly contradicted the text, people often falsely recalled the misinformation portrayed in the film, sometimes as much as 50 per cent of the time.”
Two cultural critics and one global economic meltdown add up to a bracing conversation about values and what they’re worth.I highly recommend Douglas Rushkoff’s book “Life Inc.”
and if you haven’t heard of this legendary pop/drunk/punk EP, check out this infamous review.
Thanks! -los feldmans-
This Friday has just officially gotten AWESOME.
The wartime OSS (which later became the CIA) was involved in the creation of forged postage stamps which were delivered into Nazi Germany via leaflet bombs. As one part of Operation Cornflakes over one million stamps were printed showing Hitler’s face as a human skull. To fuhrer, er, further get the point across the lettering beneath these stamps was changed from Deutsches Reich to Futsches Reich, or “Collapsed Empire”.
via: weburbanist
Billboards tell America to cheer up
- Designer Charles Robb said his client wanted people to realise America had suffered recessions before and made it through.
- “One of the lines is, ‘Stop obsessing about economy, you’re scaring the children.’ That’s the overriding concept of the thing,” said Robb, founder of Charchin Creative in Florida…
- What if celebrity news carried its own version of a nutrition label? But instead of calories, or health risks, how about a label that gets at celebrities’ impact on the planet?
- People follow celebrities because “reality is scary and the surreal is not,” says Dr. William Rees, the UBC professor who invented the concept of the ecological footprint. “We have made wealth and glitter and this false world of celebrity into the ideal, and people glom onto it.” But, he adds, “in a sense, doing an eco-footprint of these folks might help ground us back into reality.”
- Last week, Carbon Footprint calculated the impact of U2’s world tour. Ironically, U2 is outspoken about their commitment to the environment, but carbon output of their tour this year is far bigger even than Madonna’s high-maintenance carbon-heavy tour. U2’s carbon emissions will equal that of 90,000 people flying from Dublin to London, and are equivalent of the waste created by 6,500 average British or Irish people in an entire year (equal to leaving a standard 100 watt light bulb on for 159,000 years). “To offset this year’s carbon emissions, U2 would need to plant 20,118 trees.”
- I plugged in the consumption numbers for an imaginary celebrity into this footprint calculator and this one, too. I assumed that the person had a private jet, flew more than 400 hours a year, had at least two large houses, and owned more than one car. Those consumption amounts exceeded the maximum inputs on the survey — there was no category for more than one house, or for private jet, for example. But even given that, the survey found it would take over 60 earths to support that lifestyle for everyone.
