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Michael Moore, or Michael snore? (I am so funny its almost pointless) Are people judging a film before it is seen? Is our nation so solidified on partisan ideals that our own political idealogies only want to oppose the "other side"?
comment posted at 7:32 AM on Jun-22-04
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comment posted at 12:32 PM on Jun-24-04

On Cognitive Dissonance
"As a behavioral psychologist, I have studied people's reactions to contradiction and inconsistency. We are capable of convincing ourselves of something, and the more evidence that builds up to contradict us the more we believe it.

For more than 40 years, social psychologists have studied the phenomenon of "cognitive dissonance" - what happens when people have pieces of information on the same subject that are inconsistent. The presence of contradictions is psychologically unpleasant, and people do whatever it takes to resolve the inconsistency."

Many in the field posit that tension between contradictory thoughts and feelings are what constitutes consciousness. It doesn't seem to me this qualifies as it appears to be highly dysfunctional and not a natural and normal tension. What say you who are more qualified?
comment posted at 7:19 AM on Jun-21-04

Son of a BIT
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Jun-19-04

Photographic Memories: 1990-2001. Subjects include Tibet, Vietnam, Switzerland from above, Portugal, some portraits, a wedding, a baby, and more.
comment posted at 7:50 AM on Jun-19-04

The Swift Boat Veterans video you didn't hear about. Shown on CSPAN-2, now available on their website (downloadable video in WMV format), but not widely reported by any major news service. The angriest group of Vietnam vets you might ever see--men who served with and around John Kerry, united in their opposition to his becoming President. Part 1 Part 2
comment posted at 11:51 AM on Jun-17-04

Defining Deviancy Down In 1993, one of our greatest statesmen, Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D- N.Y.) published one of the most important pieces of social theory entitled "Defining Deviancy Down." Moynihan started from Emile Durkheim's proposition that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can "afford to recognize" (called the "Durkheim Constant"). As the amount of deviancy increases, the community has to adjust its standards so that conduct once thought deviant is no longer deemed so. Consequently, if we are not vigilant about enforcing them, our standards would be constantly devolving in order to normalize rampant deviancy. Shortly after Moynihan's article, Charles Krauthammer offered his now-famous response to Moynihan's article in which he argued that the corollary is that society can also "define deviancy up."

Moynihan's theory has been applied to movies, courage, dress codes, sexual indiscretions, corporate behavior, and possibly even to webpages. One might feel compelled to ask, "Do standards even mean anything?" Today, the debate still rages about where we ought to be defeatist about the devolution of standards, or whether we can right the boat by establishing base principles and fight to raise standards up.
comment posted at 2:04 PM on Jun-16-04

Bloomsday Virus Inflicts James Joyce on Mobile Phone Users
The first ever computer virus that can infect mobile phones has been discovered, anti-virus software developers said today, rendering many phones virtually useless.

The virus was apparently released in time for the 100th anniversary of the eponymous literary holiday. It infects the Symbian operating system that is used in several makes of mobiles, notably the Nokia brand, and propagates through the new bluetooth wireless technology that is in several new mobile phones.
comment posted at 12:46 PM on Jun-16-04
comment posted at 1:15 PM on Jun-16-04

The Industrial Revolution, past and future:

The entire human race is getting rich, at historically unprecedented rates. The economic miracles of East Asia are, of course, atypical in their magnitudes, but economic growth is not the exception in the world today: It is the rule.

Nobel Prize winner Robert Lucas discusses wealth redistribution and the world economy.
comment posted at 4:42 PM on Jun-13-04

We deliver to Pyongyang in 30 minutes or it's free. Well, not quite. But this is what happens when Kim Jong Il orders a pizza.
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comment posted at 11:41 AM on Jun-16-04

Is U.S. like Germany of the '30s?
comment posted at 6:57 AM on Jun-12-04
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comment posted at 4:59 PM on Jun-13-04

Kerry unsuccessfully courted McCain as his running mate. He deliberately didn't officially offer the position, but apparently it's solid that he unofficially offered it. Very interesting news. (NYTimes link)
comment posted at 7:25 AM on Jun-12-04

U.S. Citizenship test. Can you get 8 out of ten???
comment posted at 7:22 AM on Jun-12-04

Abstrakt: the photography of frank lemire.
comment posted at 8:50 AM on Jun-10-04
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comment posted at 12:49 PM on Jun-15-04

Kao-ani maker.
comment posted at 4:00 PM on Jun-9-04
comment posted at 7:32 AM on Jun-10-04

"No voting rights for YOU......boy!"- Florida's illegal purges of voter rolls to continue for 3rd national election? Election head resigns. While Florida refuses to release the "purge lists" to CNN, "The head of Florida's elections division resigned Monday amid reports he was feeling political heat over a push to purge thousands of suspected felons from the state's voter rolls." (Tallahassee Sun-Sentinel) " there has been little action (and worse, really) on Florida's agreement to reinstate illegally purged voters to Florida voting rolls that resulted from an NAACP lawsuit over the 2000 election ["Many voters said their votes didn't count or they were turned away from polls due to mistakes on voter lists, busy telephone lines at election headquarters, punch-card voting machine foul-ups and other problems...Statewide, the largest numbers of voting problems were found in precincts with high proportions of black and elderly voters." The NYT editorially acknowledged the scandal on February 15, 2004.]

On May 21, 2002, Ashcroft's Justice Department began a suit against Florida counties "for purging Black voters from voter rolls and other violations of civil rights" Now, four years after the 2000 election, illegally "purged" Florida voters will not be notified until it is "too late to have their rights restored for this election - or are turned away on Election Day", reports the Tampa Tribune. "The vast majority of them are black and would be likely to vote Democratic." It's difficult for convicted felons to regain the right to vote in Florida, but many on the "purge" lists were not (in 2000) and still are not felons at all. [ note : Greg Palast - busy of late - must be most credited with blowing this story wide open. See here here, here.....]
comment posted at 9:34 AM on Jun-10-04

Breaking History: Ronald Reagan dead at 93.
Will today be marked as the culmination of his achievements or the "end of the Reagan Era"?
MeFites are advised to please avoid piling onto the subject or the messenger
comment posted at 2:10 PM on Jun-5-04

Why $2 Gas Is Amazing Gasoline is now selling at more than $2 a gallon, which, after inflation, is higher than it's been since 1981. But that's not the amazing part. Actually, there are three amazing parts.
comment posted at 3:04 PM on May-22-04

America's laziest fascist Inside Michael Savage's hatefest. I can't tell if this is offensive or just sadly pathetic. Salon: But if the first half of the event showcased Savage's ability to stir the faithful, the second half was an object lesson in how a performer can take his audience -- and his talent -- for granted. Basically, he bombed. He spent nearly 20 minutes sitting in a stuffed chair in front of a television set, free-associating as he channel surfed. Seeing footage of Jordan's King Abdullah, he screamed, "Kiss my ass! Shut the hell up!" To a soccer match in Spanish, he quipped, "Reminds me of my gardener." It was about as entertaining as watching a middle-aged man yelling at his living room TV. Savage eventually realized things weren't going well. "You don't like this shit," he said. "It's a bad act."
comment posted at 2:29 PM on May-20-04
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comment posted at 7:39 AM on Jun-12-04

Iraq's rebel cleric gains surge in popularity An Iraqi poll to be released next week shows a surge in the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical young Shia cleric fighting coalition forces, and suggests nearly nine out of 10 Iraqis see US troops as occupiers and not liberators or peacekeepers.
comment posted at 5:27 PM on May-19-04

Michael Moore Hates America is a new documentary looking to discredit filmmaker Michael Moore. Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11 is causing quite a stir at the Cannes Film Festival, where it has been met with rave reviews, and standing ovations lasting upwards of 20 minutes. With Moore's recent distribution problems with the film, a new project seeks to challenge Moore to distribute his film for free via the internet to prove that "the message is more important than the money," and to silence his critics, who contend that with the immense profits his controversial film is sure to garner, he is a "war profiteer" just like Halliburton.
comment posted at 1:38 PM on May-19-04

The Moral Case Against the Iraq War
Also on the moral tip, Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings
internal January 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (PDF)
comment posted at 9:01 AM on May-19-04
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comment posted at 9:20 AM on May-19-04

Whether you're for it or against it, it looks like we've got it.

March 17, 2004 brings gay marriage to Massachusetts, adding the USA to a short list of countries who recognize this union. Whether we remain on that list for long depends on whether certain people get their way.
comment posted at 5:03 PM on May-18-04

Peitho's Web: Classic Rhetoric and Persuasion.
comment posted at 7:45 AM on May-13-04

Video Seems to Show Beheading of American in response to the Abu Ghraib torture photos. I wonder if Sen. James Inhofe will continue to be "more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment." [more inside, via kos]
comment posted at 12:38 PM on May-11-04
comment posted at 1:06 PM on May-11-04

Zogby calls the election for Kerry
John Zogby goes out on a limb and predicts John Kerry will be the next POTUS.
comment posted at 10:50 AM on May-11-04