Talking Points Memo describes how Fox News seems to go out of its way to make us all frightened and depressed about Christmas. [Read more…]
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
[Correction: For some reason I replaced the actual name Morris with Brown in places. I have made the correction.]
Phillip Morris is a local columnist for the Plain Dealer who usually writes fairly boring boilerplate local interest stories. I usually read just the first paragraph before moving on. But a couple of days ago my attention was grabbed by the headline to his column that said ‘Rachel Maddow and the gay tax’. [Read more…]
I still have no landline after Hurricane Sandy brought down the tree and with it the phone line. So that means I will not have DSL and will have to follow the election results the old-fashioned way, on TV. I suspect that they will use a lot of gee-whiz technology. [Read more…]
Do you remember the time when you were an adolescent? That was the time when you could roughly split people into three groups: the trendsetters, the trend followers, and those who deliberatively chose to go against prevailing trends, irrespective of whether they were good or bad. Most people fell into the second category, people who would usually look around to see what the ‘correct’ thing was to say or do, for fear of being out on a limb and thus open to scorn from their peers. [Read more…]
The rules about what you can legally use of other people’s creative work are not very well defined. ‘Fair use’ guidelines depend on judgments about what fraction of the work is used and whether it is being used for commercial purposes, with educational use getting more leeway, but there are no formulas that can be used and each time must be judged on a case-by-case basis. [Read more…]
… you recognize the names of pop culture celebrities because they appear frequently in news headlines and accompanying photos (names such as Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban, Amanda Bynes, Taylor Hicks) and you not only do not know what they are famous for (Are they singers? reality show stars? actors? people whose naked photos have appeared on the internet?) but you don’t care enough to read the story or click on the link to find out.
Yep, I’m an old geezer and proud of it. Hey, when’s Matlock on?
I rarely read online reviews of things because it seems strange to be swayed by the opinions of anonymous people whom I did not know in the least and who might have their own agendas or even a vested interest in the product. If I do read a review, it is to see if there are some potential problems that I should look into before purchasing the product. [Read more…]
Science journalism plays an extremely important role in translating the almost impenetrable jargon and style of journal articles into languagethat can be digested by the general public. Hence it is important that they convey accurately and in a balanced way the main conclusions of the research. But in order to make their work appealing to the general public, scientists make often make passing claims in their papers that are not as well supported by their data but catch the eye of journalists who then give them undue weight. Seth Mnookin has pointed out recent examples where this practice has caused widespread public misunderstanding of the results of research. [Read more…]