MetaFilter

George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics "Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing? - Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce....He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973" "So if you go on Fox News....and the question is, 'Are you in favor of the President’s tax relief program or are you against it?' -- it doesn't matter what you say. If you say, 'I’m against tax relief,' you're still evoking that framing. you're still in their frame..."

"George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at the University of California Berkeley, is a specialist in the technique of "framing," a communication tool that creates a "frame" for a message that defines the terms of the debate." (Interview with Lakoff )
comment posted at 1:12 PM on Jan-14-04

Nobel Prize Winners Hate School. Not that it takes a genius to figure out that 'school is a lot like prison but worse' (George Bernard Shaw) or that it "smothers every truly scientific impulse" (Einstein)....
comment posted at 6:48 AM on Jan-14-04

The Drug War Clock. Its the 10th day of the new year. The US has spent 1 BILLION dollars on the drug war so far. 43,929 have been arrested, half of which for offenses related to cannibas and 6,587 people have been incarcerated. Happy New Year!
comment posted at 6:27 AM on Jan-10-04
comment posted at 7:47 AM on Jan-10-04
comment posted at 7:13 AM on Jan-11-04

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything. An engineer visits the world of postmodern literary criticism.
comment posted at 11:56 AM on Jan-9-04

To the moon, Alice! (And then, on to Mars) Time will tell whether this declaration will lead to an actual rebirth of NASA and realignment of goals for the agency. But I for one am absolutely thrilled that Bush is planning to give NASA a long-overdue new mission and goal. Avoiding the obvious pro/con debate of doing this (or the cost), I think it's absolutely vital to the national psyche for the United States to have a long-range goal that it can focus positive energy upon. This could be the first real "Challenge to the Union" that I think should become an annual event to replace the State of the Union.
comment posted at 6:56 AM on Jan-9-04

Marginalia and Other Crimes: I’ve always had an intense hatred for people that deface books, and if they're my books, the intensity is doubled. But imagine the atrocities the average librarian faces every day... Witness this display of damaged and defiled books from the Cambridge University library, with attached sarcastic commentary. The horror! Not for the squeamish.
comment posted at 6:27 AM on Jan-9-04
comment posted at 10:04 AM on Jan-9-04
comment posted at 2:04 PM on Jan-9-04

What busking could teach the music industry An intelligent essay on how the music industry should adapt to the new digital realities, drawn from the author's experiences as a street (well, subway) musician. No one who could learn from it will read it, of course.
comment posted at 11:33 AM on Jan-8-04
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Jan-8-04
comment posted at 12:58 PM on Jan-8-04
comment posted at 6:34 AM on Jan-9-04
comment posted at 9:52 AM on Jan-9-04

How To: By You - Ask questions, get answers.
comment posted at 9:35 AM on Jan-8-04

Hillary Inserts Foot In Mouth Bubba supporters like us should say something.
comment posted at 9:58 AM on Jan-7-04

Lunar Photo of the Day started January 1st, 2004 to document human's never ending obsession with the moon. LPOD now joins APOD, MPOD, and ESPOD as quality picture of the day websites.
comment posted at 9:37 AM on Jan-7-04

"You can't copyright anything on the Internet" Retrocrush posted an article written by thier own, to point out the "Worst Sex Scenes Ever" in the movies. Less than 30days later, the british tabloid "The Daily Star" printed an article that seems to have come directly from the site, attributing the source to a (seemingly fictitous) american magazine called "Film". Not only did the Star's news editor make the above quote, but the story was picked up by a wire service, and has seen print in several other online and print publications... Obviously it's not Fair Use. What would happen if reporters came here looking for ideas?
comment posted at 9:52 AM on Jan-6-04

Affirmative Action Texas Style

Typically, anywhere from 1,650 to more than 2,000 A&M applicants a year receive legacy points, so called because they reward the grandchildren, children or siblings of A&M graduates. Such applicants receive 4 points on a 100-point scale that also takes into account such factors as class rank, test scores, extracurricular activities, community service and others. Most A&M applicants admitted with legacy points don't need them to get in. But in 2003, 312 whites were admitted who wouldn't have been without their alumni ties. In 2002, that figure was 321. The legacy program was the difference for six blacks and 27 Hispanics in 2003, and three blacks and 25 Hispanics in 2002.

I expect we will hear from the White House any day now about how wrong this is.
comment posted at 5:55 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 7:34 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 10:53 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 7:51 AM on Jan-7-04

Mark Fiore's hilarious take on the recent Mad Cow mess. (Warning Flash) You can find more or Mark's work here. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, recently chimes in on Mad Cow.
comment posted at 6:09 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 9:58 AM on Jan-6-04
comment posted at 12:05 PM on Jan-6-04

Pictures of UFOs.
comment posted at 8:11 PM on Jan-5-04

What You Can't Say.
comment posted at 1:56 PM on Jan-5-04

David Cross gets political.
comment posted at 7:38 AM on Jan-5-04
comment posted at 8:44 AM on Jan-5-04

The most accurate navigation in history. "We had to know everything from how the iron molten lava in the center of the Earth was churning to how plate tectonic movements were affecting the wobble of the Earth to how the plasma in the atmosphere delayed the radio signals to and from the Deep Space Network stations". ..even the seemingly insignificant solar radiation pressure and thermal radiation forces acting on the spacecraft to a level equal to less than a billionth of the acceleration of gravity one feels on the Earth needed to be taken into account. This mission set a new standard for navigation accuracy for all future interplanetary missions.
comment posted at 7:50 AM on Jan-5-04

Interesting Debka post re: Al-Queda and a scheduled nuking on 2/2/04 of NYC. Supposedly the original web site was removed from the Internet by the FBI.
comment posted at 6:32 AM on Jan-3-04
comment posted at 7:09 AM on Jan-3-04
comment posted at 3:20 PM on Jan-3-04

How I Met And Dated Miss Emily Dickinson: Have you ever wondered what a favourite writer really looked like? Is there any relationship between an artist's face and their art? Hemingway looks like his prose; Ezra Pound like his poetry; Picasso is a dead ringer for his paintings but, say, John Updike doesn't resemble his fiction; T.S.Eliot looks like a bank clerk and Matisse was nothing like his works. How superficial can you get? [Via Arts and Letters Daily.]
comment posted at 11:19 AM on Jan-2-04

Good Bye, Horatio Alger The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago. The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society. And guess what? Our political leaders are doing everything they can to fortify class inequality, while denouncing anyone who complains--or even points out what is happening--as a practitioner of "class warfare." So how do you move on up in the jobless recovery, anyhow?
comment posted at 9:32 AM on Jan-2-04

Interesting article on how science will change our understanding of time. [Via AlDaily]
comment posted at 9:06 AM on Jan-1-04
comment posted at 9:43 AM on Jan-1-04

State arts programs have been one of the biggest casualties of the widespread budget crises of 2003. In total, state spending for FY2004 has decreased 23%, led by Missouri (entire budget - 100% - slashed), California (91%), and Florida (78%.) Meanwhile, Congress, to its credit, has awarded a modest increase to the NEA. Will private funding take over, as the Libertarians hope? Or is state funding an essential propellant of local economies?
comment posted at 9:42 AM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 10:52 AM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 11:05 AM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 11:23 AM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 12:09 PM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 1:11 PM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 1:50 PM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 6:36 PM on Dec-30-03
comment posted at 6:57 PM on Dec-30-03

I love Maddox. When it comes to lambasting the opposite sex, slamming into Christopher Reeves, endorsing the beating of children and criticising the email he receives, he's one of the best. Pretty much anybody who's been on the internet will have visited his site, but just in case you haven't, then here's your chance. Warning... Swearing; Extreme Views; Bad cartoons; Large fonted cyan text on a black background.
comment posted at 9:26 AM on Dec-30-03