Propaganda
mikethemadbiologist | November 27, 2007I've considering canceling my New York Times subscription. Here are the pros and cons. The reasons to keep my subscription:
The NY Times has a really good science section (John Tierney excepted). It's worth supporting that.
Much of there 'straight' reporting is quite good--or at least it's better than most other papers'.
Paul Krugman is very good.
The Sunday magazine is usually interesting.
The Sunday book reviews are pretty good.
Some of the other columnists, such as Dan Nocera and Gretchen Morgenson are worth reading.
The reasons I'm considering canceling my subscription have to do with…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2007How can a CNN debate be considered news when questions supposedly asked by the audience are actually scripted? Isn't that lying as opposed to news? CNN, at a recent Democratic debate, according to one questioner, screened and scripted every 'audience' question (italics mine):
Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"Every single question asked…
j7uy5 | November 15, 2007This is strange. A person with a Ph.D. in
molecular genetics,
href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=52"
rel="tag">Georgia Purdom, wrote a post in which
she claims to have shown that the development of antibiotic resistance
in bacteria is not an example of evolution.
href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n3/antibiotic-resistance-of-bacteria">Antibiotic
Resistance of Bacteria: An Example of Evolution in Action?
by Georgia Purdom, Ph.D.
July 10, 2007
The extraordinary ability of certain
bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics—which are…
mikethemadbiologist | October 29, 2007Onward Glorious Conservatives! Don't retreat from the librul modelers!!!
By now, you might have heard about the Bush Administration's massive 'editing' of the CDC testimony about the health consequences of global warming. Over at Science Progress, there is a copy of the unedited, original CDC text. At this point, no one in the Coalition of the Sane should be surprised that every single one of the specifics about what global warming would actually do was expunged--we wouldn't want the public to worry their purdy lil' heads about all of that scary stuff. What did interest me was the...…
mikethemadbiologist | October 27, 2007Welcome to the world of Potemkin press conferences. FEMA held a press conference...with itself (italics mine):
Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices.
They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News (see the Fox News video of the news conference carried on the Think Progress Web site), MSNBC and other outlets.
Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he…
j7uy5 | October 20, 2007The FCC is doing something unusual. Instead of
acting like footsoldiers
for
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/19/opinion/main3385282.shtml">corporateAmerica,
they are imposing fines on a broadcaster for pushing State-paid
propaganda.
href="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6492542.html">FCC
Pushes Ahead with ‘No Child Left Behind’ FinesSonshine, Sinclair Broadcast Group Fined for Airing The
Right Side with Armstrong Williams, America's Black Forum, Respectively
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/18/2007 3:10:00 PM
The Federal Communications…
mikethemadbiologist | October 8, 2007Both Kevin Drum and digby argue that Senator Clinton's 'electability' problem is due to Republican sliming and isn't really a factor. Drum:
Hillary, by contrast, is polarizing not because she wants to be, but because the right-wing attack machine made her that way. She's "polarizing" only because a certain deranged slice of conservative nutjobs detest her.
And guess what? By this standard, Jimmy Carter is polarizing. Bill Clinton is polarizing. Al Gore is polarizing. John Kerry is polarizing. Do you see the trend here?
There are plenty of good reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton. But anyone…
mikethemadbiologist | August 27, 2007Glenn Greenwald catches Washington Post political 'reporter' Anne Kornblut impugning the patriotism of millions of Democrats:
The Washington Post's Anne Kornblut, analyzing the differences between Republicans and Democrats on Iraq, explained on Tuesday night's Hardball:
ANNE KORNBLUT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": It remains, especially in Democratic crowds, the number-one issue. There is no applause line that gets a bigger response when you're out with Senator Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, than when they say the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start ending this war in…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2007ScienceBlogling Tara of Aetiology has co-authored a PLoS Biology article about HIV denialism and the internets. Go read it. The HIV denialists are clogging up the internet tubes...
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2007The Boston Public Library at Copley Square has a great exhibit of World War II propaganda posters on display on the third floor of the old wing (right down the hall from the mini-books!).
The exhibit, United We Will Win: World War II Posters of Victory, has some incredible posters. Yes, they're war propaganda, but there's a reason propaganda works: it looks really good. One of the posters is this one:
(from here)
I was fortunate to acquire this poster (an original) a long time ago. Anyway, go see the exhibit. They're closed Sundays during the summer, so check it out today (or sometime…
j7uy5 | August 11, 2007
The headline:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001204.html">Federal
Deficit Sharply Lower.
The text: The lower year-to-date
deficit was the
result of a record of $2.12 trillion in revenues. Spending, however,
was higher -- $2.27 trillion, which also marked an all-time high.
So we spent more than we brought in, but the deficit is lower?
No,
the rate of increase in the deficit is lower.
The deficit is still getting bigger. Last year the
deficit went up $239 billion. This year it is
was projected to be "only" $205 billion. I say was…
mikethemadbiologist | July 19, 2007It's bad enough when the mainstream media engages in ersatz psychology and semiotics. It's even worse when this pseudoanalysis has a bias--it's like Colbert's truthiness, except that it's not funny (italics mine):
Consider, then, the cheesesteak.
While running for president, John Kerry ordered a cheesesteak with Swiss cheese. The sane response to that fact is, of course, "who cares?" The media response was to mock Kerry for ordering the "wrong" cheese. Supposedly, it reinforced his "elitist" image. Kerry's cheesesteak order continues to draw media attention years later.
During that same…
mikethemadbiologist | May 30, 2007I've said before that when you watch ignoramuses and authoritarians trash your country, anger is the appropriate response. driftglass explains why:
The Real Problem is that, in the name of Holy Balance, journalists treat the patently and dangerously delusional adherents of Cult of Dubya as if their opinions were worthy of discussion.
Except what Mr. Ites still dogmatically believes in this Year of Our Lord 2007 -- that we are in Iraq because "What they did on 9/11 is a travesty" -- is not a matter of opinion, any more than a fanatical insistence on the flatness of the Earth, the falseness of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 13, 2007Pundits discuss Democratic candidates
The mainstream media has a double standard for Democratic candidates. INCONCEIVABLE!
Jameson Foser writes (italics mine):
Cavuto suggests it's hypocritical for Edwards, a wealthy man, to want to eradicate poverty. That is essentially what Beck and Cafferty and Tucker said, too. And it's what The Washington Post's Bill Hamilton suggested when he justified front-page treatment for the article about Edwards' house sale by pointing out that it involved a "presidential candidate [who] just happens to be a millionaire who is basing his campaign on a populist…
mikethemadbiologist | May 9, 2007Tristero makes an excellent point about Republican rhetoric, and I think it partially explains why so many scientists are opposed to the Bush Administration. Tristero compares the Niger 'evidence' for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with the rhetoric opposing the HPV vaccination (italics mine):
Why were we positive Bush was lying? Because no one who is telling the truth talks like this about such a serious subject. Notice the first five words. It's not that Saddam recently sought significant quantities yadda yadda, but only that "the Briitish government has learned." If there was any…
mikethemadbiologist | May 8, 2007Or socialist. Or maybe just Swedish. By way of Ezra Klein, I came across these polling data collected by Ruy Teixeira:
If you hold both of these views (and arguably, even just one), you are an economic liberal. Not a moderate, but a liberal. I realize many people don't want to be called liberals, but these positions have historically been identified as liberal. And guess what? Liberals hold liberal positions. If you want to call yourself Martian, that's fine, but you're a liberal Martian.
There seems to be more of us too (liberals, not Martians): the majority--not a plurality, a…
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2007I'm working my through Lewis Lapham's Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration. Here's what he has to say about the culture wars:
So many saviors of the republic were raising the alarm of culture war in the middle eighties that I now can't remember whether it was Bob Bartley writing in the Wall Street Journal or William Bennett speaking from his podium at the National Endowment for the Humanities who said that at Yale University the students were wallowing in the joys of sex, drugs, and Karl Marx, disporting themselves on the New Haven green in the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 28, 2007Blogger Mike Stark recently debated Myron Ebell about global warming. Apparently, Mike Stark did more than just hold his own, which is pretty impressive considering the debate was hosted by the ultraconservative Federalist Society. Stark had this interesting point about credibility, which is similar to a point I made about creationist credibility:
First of all, when arguing with somebody that either has no credibility or is not arguing a credible position, don't donate the credibility they need to be seen as your equal.
You see, by calling his credibility into question immediately - and…
mikethemadbiologist | March 3, 2007Seeing the Forest wonders how the ridiculous post-Oscar smear of Al Gore was pulled off by a no-name organization with assets of $100,000:
...no one should have been surprised when Al Gore was attacked for the positive press he and his movie received last weekend. An Inconvenient Truth was sure to win an Oscar. Gore would then speak to a billion people about the problem of global warming. The well-funded global warming denial industry would respond, and $mearing people is their standard method of attack. They destroy our leaders.
And yet, there was surprise and a lack of preparation to fight…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2007At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers:
They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. ... It's not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they throw their hands up and surrender. ... It's not a political exercise, it's a journalistic exercise. And I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates more than journalistic ones.
In…