john edwards: "we will destroy you"

You're kidding, right? We will destroy you?!? 

O'Reilly Whines: Canadian Kids Hate America

FOXNews.com - The O'Reilly Factor - Talking Points - Hating America

Should I feel bad that FOX "News" isn't permitted to be aired in Canada? Does this mean that I, as a Canadian am not getting the "full picture"? According to Bill O'Reilly it does:

As you may know, the FOX News Channel is not allowed in Canada, but CNN is. Fair and balanced? You decide.

The USA takes a relentless pounding from many Canadian news organizations and from the liberal government. So, what can we expect from the kids? They're not getting a full picture. And neither is most of the world.

I'm not sure of the reasoning behind why FOX "News" isn't allowed in Canada, but I wouldn't whine about it if I were Bill. If it were available, two things would happen. One, a portion of our population would watch and would have their views altered somewhat by the new "fair and balanced" viewpoint presented. They would become "more American" in their views. Bill would be presumeably be happy about this. But a simultaneous effect would most certainly counteract this effect: those of us who are well-informed would see the absurdity of FOX's coverage and would become even more opposed to such right-wing controlled media, and more polarized against the viewpoint they represent.

Like most of his viewers, Bill O'Reilly shows that he really has no clue how they are perceived beyond their borders. It is LAUGHABLE that he would suggest that it is us (i.e. Canadians, French, or even worse, ACK! French-Canadians!!) that are failing to get the "full picture". LAUGHABLE. (Remember, we laugh to prevent ourselves from crying.)

Airing FOX News in Canada would be like showing pro wrestling in the faculty lounge at MIT. Some Canadians might watch it, but a large proportion would find it far too jarring, editorialized, sensational and slanted. FOX relies on a segment of the population that watches very little else, reads narrowly or not at all, and is bored by traditional news media. Canadians are by many measures, far too informed to become part of this demographic. I would hope that Bill O'Reilly would know this, but he's probably too arrogant to figure this out.

It is both tragic and funny that an American pundit can suggest that an entire nation is failing to get the "full picture" because it is deprived of a second-rate news company/propaganda machine. The only solace one can take from such arguments is that perhaps, PERHAPS, if American pundits can complain about propaganda and brainwashing in other places, the thought might enter the mind of the masses that THEY TOO are getting massaged by the media.

Thoughts about blogging:

Could blogging obsolesce the idea of conspiracy theory? If information travels with perfect efficiency, and people are able to deal with an infinite amount of information (through the internet, search engines, databases, and blogs, i.e. virtual experts on every conceivable subject) does the conspiracy theory disappear?

What is a conspiracy theory? A non-proveable, non-falsifiable theory that usually relies on a number of assumptions that are in themselves non-proveable and non-falsifiable. So, the conspiracy theory exists because of things we cannot prove.

But what if these assumptions and theories were to suddenly become things that people could REASONABLY form opinions about? For example, think of how you _know_ that your stomach is empty when you get hungry. Have you ever seen the inside of your stomach? But because you know a bit about human biology, and you make a reasonable assumption that biologists and doctors aren't all getting together to make up an elaborate lie that your stomach empties itself of the food you eat (after it digests it partially), or that you have a thing called a stomach in the first place. You ASSUME that you have a stomach, and that when you're hungry, it's empty.

A conspiracy theory is the same thing, except you assume too many things for anybody else to believe you.

But if you convince enough people, your belief goes from conspiracy theory to speculation, to commonly accepted, to reasonably assumed truth.

Does the internet have the potential to affect society to the point that truthful ideas can travel and dominate at a considerably faster rate than before? Do all ideas germinate as speculation?

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". The result will be that society will spot conspiracies, debunk them wherever possible, relegating a vast number of them to snopes.com or some other clearinghouse of incorrect ideas. Of the remainder, some ideas will be based on truth, some will not. So, the _idea_ of a conspiracy cannot mean that it is false. Conspiracies do happen, as do evil acts.  

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". We will see our leaders under microscopes, with full coverage of their every move, at the touch of a button. We will have little excuse for not knowing who's the good guy, unless of course, you believe that the media controls what we see and know, so you don't believe your eyes. Bush over Kerry? Please?! I'd take Bush over a lot of people, folks, but not over Kerry. That's not to say Kerry is the bees knees, to retrieve a saying from his era, (or was that his Mom's era?), but you cannot be paying attention and not take Kerry over Bush. Seriously, Kerry threw away some medals. Event taken out of context and blew up into...nothing. Nobody cared. I didn't care (not that my cold Canadian opinion counts for anything). You know why?  Because it still didn't compare to what Bush did to Iraq. Bush has so little going for him, and it's taking armies (literally) to keep him in power. But seriously, when even a WAR can't save your Presidency...well, you're probably named Bush.

The message of the internet is "everything, but faster, more, and better". If we can sift the truth from the lies in this vast landscape of information, does a truth of a greater magnitude than ever thought possible emerge? Could we begin to see patterns that were previously hidden under conditions of less-than-electric-speed media? I believe the conspiracy may be on its way out, folks. In terms of the mechanistic effects of various media, the idea of conspiracy is indeed, a conspiracy itself, that is, a conspiracy of effects.

This is to highlight that it is not a group of shady characters meeting in an abandoned warehouse somewhere who are trying to dupe the general public into believe certain things. It is the cumulative _effects_ of our surroundings that conspire against our ability to understand the world. And somewhere along the way, it became the norm that without pure, uncontested proof, any "theory" was not to be believed.

The idea that, by definition, all conspiracies must be false is a huge lie, and one that many people, without even knowing it, implicitly accept.

Atom Wiki

Some reading material for me:

FrontPage - Atom Wiki

the DMC

Tonight's speeches at the DMC: (via CNN)

Ted Kennedy: Pundits said his speech wasn't great. Heard someone say he was too negative, but another say that the democrats on the floor want more of the same. He played his role well. Someone on my side of the TV said, "is that the drunk guy?" Personally, I thought he was effective at voicing what a lot of democrats are thinking but are afraid to say.

Howard Dean: Nice reception by the crowd. Shows they remember that he was the first to re-energize the democrats, and the first to really stand up to the lunacy in Washington.

Barack Obama: Sounded like a home run. CNN: "Rising star". To me he looked like someone with a great future in Washington. At least I hope so. The republicans are probably thinking all sorts of nasty things to take this guy down.

Ron Reagan: One issue wonder. CNN pundits assumed he was a "liberal" which I think is code for gay, isn't it? I watched most of his speech twice, and found him rather plastic. I think he oversold stem cell research as a healthcare panacea.

Teresa Heinz-Kerry: I thought she was amazing. CNN pundits wrote her off as intelligent immigrant who happened to marry Kerry. Someone said she was definitely the "sexiest" potential first lady ever...now that's depth of reporting.

I didn't realize that her husband died in a plane crash too. How strange is that? Damn Bush-sabatoge.

Jeff Greenfield (CNN) showing piece on women in politics. He downplayed Geraldine Ferraro's nomination in '84 as not that much of a watershed moment, and suggested the US has made a great deal of progress in that regard, seeing as there are now 9 (?) women senators. Personally, I think that's still a huge disgrace, but who am I to judge...

Fox news — always right, sometimes correct

Lawrence Lessig has a good post on Bill O'Reilly's disgrace of a show. Watch the video. It frightens me to think that thousands and thousands of people watch this garbage on a daily basis, completely oblivious to the fact that it is perverse, twisted propaganda. The venom in O'Reilly's eyes while he is conducting this interview is shocking to me, but sadly, I know it doesn't shock everyone. It highlights how incredibly divided the country has become since 9/11, where shouting matches are substituted for calm discussion, and valid arguments are dismissed out-of-hand because they are inconsistent with the fear and hatred that has been injected into too many people's veins.

(credit to the comment poster for the title)

WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language

WORDCOUNT is a cool site that tracks 86,800 of the most common words. A few of the rankings:

work: 103
play: 433
sex: 1236
shopping: 2590
buy: 785
give: 188
steal: 7569
born: 1218
kill: 2137
god: 376
devil: 4802
madonna: 9051
shoot: 4800
good: 116
evil: 3274
life: 154
death: 454
america: 992
canada: 3253
bush: 2629
kerry: 14903

The word "condoms" (16309) is only slightly less common than "vagina" (16307). Wow! "Penis" is 10871st.

Download for Democracy

Now this sounds cool:

Mark Federman points out another way that the digital world may enable real democracy, if it survives the legal hurdles that those in power will certainly attempt to erect.

Link

The Blogosphere and Democracy

I've joined the camp that says that the interconnectedness created by the internet, and in particular, the blogosphere is a necessary condition for real democracy.
 
My reasoning is as follows: Democracy assumes an informed public, which all along we knew was a ridiculous assumption. It definitely seems more ridiculous today than it did before. Before the internet most of us probably thought we _were_ well informed. But most of us should be realizing, we're _all_ getting a bit more informed. Except for those living in caves, we all know things today that we could not have possibly learned without the internet. For some, the internet has completely transformed their lives, by soaking them in an endless supply of searchable, sortable information. Sweet, sweet information.
 
And a public that is soaking in a giant tub of information is more informed, I would presume.
 
So, theoretically speaking, if the internet has changed the world in way that has turned a condition of essentially 0 connectivity into a condition of essentially perfect connectivity (i.e. 1) then the effect would be to enable something that was essentially non-existent before. If i, the informed public is a factor in an equation for democracy, 1 turns it on (potentially), 0 turns it off.
 
How the internet does this can be shown by looking at the blogosphere.
 
The blogosphere is the part of the internet that fulfills Marshall McLuhan's prediction that consumers of information reverse into producers of information under conditions of electric connectivity. The blogosphere fills the void for content that was felt in the late 90's when people started to say, "well we've got this network, but what is on it, besides porn?" Where would the content come from? The big media outlets and the big search engines fought it out to see who would rule content. 
 
But none of them can do what these simple weblog programs have done. And as a result, the online content providers died out. People are producing their own content, sharing links, linking to other linkers, and on and on. The blogosphere is a massive, endless network of related information. And all done voluntarily, for free. The network spawned the content. If you build it, they will come.
 
The blogosphere is the essence of "all at onceness". What the blogosphere permits, is for consumers of information to be just as easily, producers of information. So every consumer is also a producer. Everything is said, all at the same time.
 
The obvious risk of all at onceness is potential information overload. Even on the internet, with the best software tools, it is easy to become overwhelmed by all the information. "Information overload leads to pattern recognition", McLuhan said. What every blogger will tell you is that through blogging, they have become significantly more knowledgeable than they ever could have without the internet, at least with regards to the subjects that interest them.
 
What the blogosphere permits is the exchange of ideas with absolute impartiality (other than the power of the big search engines...). If an internet user is able to connect to one other person that shares their opinion, it validates that opinion where otherwise it might never be done.

When an idea gets validated, it becomes stronger. The blogosphere illustrates this beautifully, through various rating systems, raising the profile of popular articles. Popular blogs get more attention than lesser known blogs. The blogosphere is a closer representation of the "marketplace of ideas" often thrown around in political circles than any previous medium. Television and radio barely offered the ability to hear more than a handleful of different perspectives. The internet, through blogs and wikis, has the capability to expose the perspectives of every individual on Earth.

Currently, not everyone participates in the blogosphere, and many people do not even have access. Millions, however,  _are_ actively participating in this new environment. The information now being shared amongst these people is **fundamentally different** than prior to the popularization of the internet. It hasn't just _increased_ the access to information. It has increased the amount, the speed, and the quality of the information, as well as provided the SAME information to ALL people. This is at the crux of why the internet enhances democracy.

 

CNN's New Paula Zahn ad (TV spot)

Anyone see the new Paula Zahn spot on CNN? In it, in fact the closer of the ad shows lovely Paula giving the hardball question to the Secretary of State:
 
Paula: "Was going into Iraq worth it in the end?" -- or something like that --
 
 
 
Powell: "Yes, it was." -- or something to that effect --
 


 
Blatant pro-war propaganda anyone?
 
What just changed folks, CNN was getting pretty liberal for a while there, wasn't it? Or perhaps it's just because it's Monday, and not Leftie Friday anymore.
 
Or perhaps it's because Martha's been sentenced. Or is it because Kerry/Edwards is starting to kick Bush's ass? Or is it just the network trying to console a bitchy public so they will keep watching Martha's commercials 24 hours a day for the next two weeks. (Probably the next year, actually-- they say the sentence could take that long to get through appeal).
 
The CNN spot is most certainly disturbing, though, isn't it? I don't think it is appropriate for the media channels to be taking such obvious sides in such a contentious argument. At least they should fake it a little, don't you think? You know, try to maintain some semblance of impartiality. News judgment, they used to call it. Or editorial judgment. Judgment has seemingly left the building at CNN.
 
What network should be permitted to say such statements under the guise of promoting one of their shows?
 
Should there not be a law somewhere that prevents that from happening? How can we tolerate, as a public (that presumeably does _not_ want to be brainwashed by our media) the blatant broadcasted dissemination of such strong and quite likely _false_ claims. The only reason I say "quite likely" is that while I clearly disagree with Powell's position on the war, I cannot actually prove that his position is wrong. I'm pretty damn sure it is wrong, but I will admit it is currently impossible to prove. Until we have the benefit of hindsight, we're both really just guessing on that one.
 
And that, my friends, is exactly why CNN should _not_ be permitted to air such commercials. If I can't say that I'm damn sure of something, I'm not going to go proclaiming it to be so from the highest mountaintop I can find. CNN in effect, is doing just that. They are abusing their power as a broadcaster in order to influence public opinion.
 
This is not to say that CNN is any worse than anyone else (although they certainly _are_ worse than many), but this was a particularly un-real example of media abuse.
 
Stay tuned for more abuses, from all sorts of seedy types.
 
 

Culture Wars and the Right: Why Conservatives Keep Pushing Ridiculous Causes

I've often wondered why it seems that the conservative elite are so attached to such pointless exercises as the Drug War, when evidence piles up year after year that it is a miserable failure. Another question is why everything is framed as a "war" in the first place. Besides the fact that the US knows war better than anyone else, the answer might be that each of the US' failed "wars" are actually "culture wars" at their core. The Drug War isn't a war on drugs, it's a war against minorities and the poor. The War on Poverty was the same thing, but its name was a little too obvious, which is why you don't hear much about it anymore. It wasn't about eliminating poverty as much as it was about making sure that the poor didn't rise up against the rich. The War on Terrorism is not about terrorist activity so much as it is about broadcasting the superiority of American values which are clearly under attack. Like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, the War on Terrorism cannot possibly be won, but its proponents keeping pushing it anyway.

Culture war as the basis for all these types of activities is more apparent now than ever before, now that we have a few examples of when the right-wing American elite have pushed US policy into losing causes. And the causes are getting more and more bizarre. The truth is that the powerful conservative elite don't need to win these causes, because losing them repeatedly is what keeps them in power. Having perpetual war ensures their profits, and ensures they always have a cause, and allows them to continually demonize the other side for not participating in their war, which can only be good, after all it is a War on DRUGS!/TERROR!/POVERTY! (all of which are clearly bad). Despite the fact that the premise of the war is absurd to begin with, Democrat politicians support the various culture wars for fear of being seen as "soft" on drugs/crime/terror.

It's a sick game they play, these political types. They know the public is ill-informed, and they play with their emotions using fear and raising controversy. But who knew they would waste so much time on such losing causes as fighting against same-sex marriages, when so much else is going on in the world? Here's an opinion piece that suggests why losing causes are the Right's bread and butter in these interesting times.

the laws of media

McLuhan described how media (defined more or less as any extension of man's senses) effect our lives, and developed the laws of media to categorize the effects (the "messsage" of the medium) in 4 dimensions. Every medium ENHANCES something, OBSOLESCES something, RETRIEVES something, and upon reaching the limits of its potential REVERSES into a form opposite of its original form. By seeing this commonality between essentially all things, at least and especially all man-made things, we are made acutely aware of the "messages" of the media that surrounds us.

If several analogous media exhibit similar characteristics or effects, we might predict similar other characteristics or effects. By doing a side-by-side comparison, we probe the two media for their analogous effects, revealing hidden "messages" of the media. By revealing the hidden ground of these messages, we reveal other relationships and effects. This exercise may be revelatory, or it may not.

Newer media are less understood than older media. The "message" of the telephone is quite well known, while the message of the internet is significantly less well known. The message of the telegraph is completely understood, because it has been obsolesced. We have seen the telegraph come and go, and had plenty of time to analyze and understand the effect it had on our lives. We are only now starting to understand some of the first implications of the internet.

The thing that most people don't grasp about understanding media is that the same thinking techniques can be employed with all media just as effectively. We can analyze the four laws of media for a pencil just as easily as we can for the laptop computer. We may not find analyzing the pencil as interesting or revelatory as analyzing the laptop, or, even worse, we might find both exercises boring. The importance of understanding the laws of media become important when understanding the newest media, or those media that have not yet come into existence.

By doing this, we become aware of the emergent effects that new media will have on our lives, as they ENTER our lives.

As technology begins changing at an ever more rapid pace, we must sense these changes faster and faster, or else we will experience a great deal of stress as we make errors, waste money and resources, experience conflict with out groups, and fall into disarray in many areas of society.

Think of what changes have occurred in the last ten years. What about the last 20 or 100 years? You notice that technological changes are happening at an astonishing rate compared to 100 years ago. We, as humans have evolved too, but we are now seeing evidence that we are less and less able to keep up with the change. Today, millions of people suffer from anxiety, depression, other forms of mental illness and health problems related to the stresses of everyday life. Has technology really made the world a better place? Not if you measure the good of the world by human quality of life standards.

Maybe only from a western standard can such claims be made. Only by standards set by the wealthy minority of the world, can ANY such claims be even considered. All other societies were for the most part, better off before massive technological advances took place in the world.

Every major technological innovation is accompanied by significant effects. Some good, some bad. The magnitude of the effects caused are generally associated with the importance of the technology in a historical sense. Many technologies seen as generally "good" today are more likely to have commonly known positive effects and lesser known (or noticed) negative effects, and vice versa. We are more likely to think about what our cell phone does for our sex lives when it actually enhances it. If it only inconveniences you by ringing while you're in the shower or in a movie theatre, you're more likely to curse it. This is fairly obvious once you think about it, but can be revelatory when applied to lesser known media, or simply media that people haven't noticed lately.

What is the message of cigarettes? Well, first we can say that they increase (ENHANCE) relaxation and therefore social situations or other recreation. They also OBSOLESCE cigars, pipes, and perhaps other smokeable drugs. They REVERSE their positive effects through bad breath, sore throat and breathing difficulties. Over many years of smoking the positive effects collection REVERSE into serious health problems, like emphysema and lung cancer. What do cigarettes RETRIEVE? Well, it RETRIEVES the peace pipe, obviously, because it is a smoked tobacco. But by acknowledging this we notice that cigarettes retrieve more than just the fact that people smoke tobacco, but that they smoke it socially, they smoke it to relax and fulfill their spiritual and emotional needs through talking with others, philosophizing etc. Now that cigarettes are less socially acceptable, one might expect a return to other drugs or smokeable items in order to fulfill the need that cannot be fulfilled by cigarettes. And this is precisely what we have seen in the last couple decades. As cigarette use has declined in groups, the use of marijuana has increased. As has the popularity of cigars and pipes increased where it has been nearly wiped out by cigarettes in the years when smoking cigarettes became popular.

A trite example, perhaps, but illuminates the concept of the laws of media. All media follow the same pattern. As McLuhan said, "we shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." The messages of powerful media like television and the internet are important to analyze in this light, for they shape our cultures and societies in powerful ways.

Media are mirrors of society (although some are freaky-funhouse-style mirrors), and offer great insight into who we are as people. When McLuhan said "the medium is the message" it was to remind us to look at the effects our media have on us, rather than focusing on the content of the media. In other words, if one is searching for reasons why the world is the way it is today, one might want to look AT the mirror, rather than IN the mirror.