Aspergers and memory – part 2: rote memory vs. reasoning

September 14, 2008 — xanthippa

In yesterday’s post, I explained that while I have not been writing about Aspergers, I have been reading up on it.  While I am interested in this topic (being an Aspie myself – and living with other Aspies), I am not an expert in this field in any way whatsoever.  What I write are personal observations and should not be taken as anything other than that.

So, in Aspergers and memory – part 1: ‘sequencing’, I described that some ‘memory’ studies found that Aspies had difficulty recalling the order in which words were placed on a list they were given to read/memorize, which lead me to wonder if the frequent occurrence of dyslexia and ‘hearing dyslexia’ (APD) might be related to some memory or brain proccessing bit that messes up ‘sequencing’. 

Other studies I looked at would also have a list of words (10, 20, or more) to read/memorize in a short period of time, then the person would be presented with a whole page of words. The goal was to identify the words from the original list – Aspie results were compared to those of their ‘neurotypical’ peers.  The Aspies also did not do as well on this test as others did.  Yet, there was something that more than one researcher found quite intriguing:  for every ‘list’ word the Aspie missed, he or she was very likely to identify another word with similar meaning!  As in, they replaced some ‘list’ words with their synonyms…

Now, that opens a whole new way of looking at things!

I even read one very interesting study (only one, but I am looking for more) which concluded that Aspies of similar IQ as their peers were much, much worse at ‘rote memory’, but much, much better than their peers at remembering things they had reasoned out. 

This study found that ‘rote learning’ was absolute torture for Aspies, and they, frankly, sucked at it.  Not that they were incapable of it – they could improve it with practice.  Yet, it was not one of those things that came easily to Aspies.   Most Aspies had better recall of things which were ‘explained’ to them, rather than simply memorized.  They slightly outscored their peers, while other Aspies were just as dismal at this as they were at rote learning.  Where all Aspies excelled far above their peers was in remembering things they had reasoned out for themselves. 

Consider the implications of this:  some Aspies will be dismal in ‘rote learning’ or even ‘comprehensive learning’ (not proper term, I mean things they were taught through ‘comprehension’), but they are extremely good at remembering things they had figured out on their own!

And I must admit, this makes sooooo much sense to me!!!

The things I remember best from school are the ones where the teacher would introduce the topic, set up what he was going to use to explain it, and – before he would even say the first sentence – I would ‘see’ the pattern and understand exactly what he was about to explain.  As in, if I reasoned it out by myself – I still remember it without any ‘time degradation’, while if I understood the teacher’s explanation, the whole things gets ‘fuzzy’ with time and I have to strain to remember it, even if at one time I understood it and knew it perfectly.

Please, consider what is seen as one ‘typical’ Aspie trait:  they acquire ‘ecyclopedic’ knowledge about some obscure subject which they become absorbed in.  Could this be related?  Perhaps not ‘an explanation’, but could this be another manifestation of the same, or very related, phenomena?  After all, their ‘encyclopedic knowledge’ is to a large degree ‘self-taught’….

What are the implications of this?

First, I think it means we have to approach teaching Aspie kids very differently.  Take spelling, for example.  Instead of teaching Aspie kids simply the sound of the letters, what letters make up the word, and so on….what if we started teaching them from a broader linguistic background?  It is what I did with my kids – and it really worked…but I did it because to me, it seemed ‘the only’ way to approach it….  It would go something like this:

“See this word?  Well, look here – this is the Latin word for …”

“Hey, they have a bunch of similar letters in them!”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Ah, this bit of the meaning is the same!  They just took a Latin word bit and stuck it to …!”

Spelling that word would never be a problem in the future!  (There would still remain the often difficult task to actually motivate and Aspie kid to look at the words in the first place…but that is a whole different topic!)

Mind you, I took this approach to teaching grammar to my older son, too.  Our school system is operating on the ‘whole language’ method, where kids are expected to ‘absorb’ the language from their surroundings.  This simply is torture for Aspies, who like very specific rules they can apply – especially with English, where the linguistic ‘rules’ of a sentence are extremely well masked!

So, I turned to Latin – no we did not memorize the vocabulary, but the words in Latin are ‘flexed’ very specifically based on the role they play in a sentence.  It is therefore easy to see the patterns of how sentences are constructed.  Just showing the rules to my older son and letting him figure out for himself how to then build a sentence with latin words ‘flexed’ properly had an incredibly positive impact on his ability to write in English. 

Perhaps this is only one example, and perhaps this may not work with other Aspies, because there are soooo many individual differences between us.  Yet, I would be curious to know if others’ experiences and observations are similar to mine…so, please, let me know!

Posted in Aspergers, education, language, perceptions, science, society. Tags: , , , . 6 Comments »

Aspergers and memory – part 1: ‘sequencing’

September 13, 2008 — xanthippa

During the past few months, I have not been writing about Aspergers because I have been doing a bit of reading up about it – there is so much ‘food for thought’ in the feedback to my earlier posts on Aspergers (thank you all) that I just had to check some things out.  Of course, not all my curiosity has been satisfied – but I think that I have learned things that have helped me make a little bit of sense of some ‘Aspie patterns’.

The one thing I have read about the most is memory.  And if you Google it, there actually are quite a few studies about Aspergers and Memory out there – so I, an Aspie (and definitely NOT an expert) am not the only one to suspect that one of the ways Aspies differ is in the way our memory works.

The conclusions of the studies were unsurprising:  Aspie memory works slightly differently. 

Yes, there were IQ tests as part of many of these studies to ensure that Aspies and ‘others’ of ‘similar’ intelligence were compared.  Some looked at adults, others at kids or teens.  (Many studies I read looked at Aspies vs. Autistics, but  that is a different story.)  (Frank admission:  while I read some studies completely, others I only read the ‘hypothesis’, the ‘methodology’ and ‘conclusions’ sections.  This was not from slacking or taking shortcuts, but because I really wanted to read many different studies, from different areas, looking at different age groups, run with different goals, so as to get a glimpse of the ‘big picture’ and the patterns within it. )

Here is where I must warn you:  the scientific studies I read made observations and conclusions.  Various studies, various observations and conclusions.  What follows here is my interpretation of the conclusions of several of these studies.  It is NOT any opinion (as far as I know) of a professional in this field.  These are my higly subjective ideas, so, please, treat them as nothing more than such.

Several of the studies had (with variations) presented a list of words which the people had a chance to read several times (or, variously, study for a given time period), and then had to repeat in the same (or reverse) order.  The Aspies usually remembered fewer of the words from the list than their peers.  Now, here is the intereseting bit:  they were absolutely terrible at putting the words into the proper order!

This immediately made me think of the very high incidence of dyslexia and ‘hearing dyslexia’ (Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)) in Aspies.  I may have it backwards, but it sounds to me like this difficulty in ‘putting things into order’ is a pattern:  sounds, letters and words cannot be ‘remembered’ in the ‘right order’….  But with APD, the science tells us it is a problem in ‘perception’. 

So, I reasoned, perhaps this is a general ‘processing’ difference of the brain itself.  Perhaps this is not a simple ‘memory’ function.  Perhaps this is telling us something about the overall processing that the brain does – and how an Aspie brain does it differently.

Or it could be a memory function – but the memory fails very, very early on. 

Let’s consider hearing:  our ears sense vibrations, which are translated into a neural impulse.  This impulse travels into the bit of the brain which makes sense of the sound, and sends the ‘translated’ information to other bits of the brain, as required.  For example, if it determines a sound to be ‘words’, it might send the message to the ‘language’ section of the brain.  But, is all of this instantaneous?

In many people it is.  But I don’t think this is in any way universal.  For example, I know several people who can hear me say something and completely fail to react to it.  When I ask them what I said, they look thoughtful and then repeat word for word what I had said.  Yet, until they were requested to repeat the words, they were completely unaware that they had even heard them.

It’s as if the phrase were held in some sort of a ‘buffer’, completely preserved and perfectly remembered, but not deciphered by the brain.  Only when this ‘buffer’ was consciously accessed did the brain actually get access to the information in it.  This suggests to me that in-between the different ‘processing’ stages, the brain must hold the information in some sort of a memory slot. 

And if the Aspie memory has a predisposition to ‘jumbling up’ the order of sounds (or pictures) it is holding on to, it could explain all of these.  Jumbled up sounds, pictures, order of words.  All of it.

Or, it could be something completely different.  Yet, I have received so many messages from people, asking for more of my observations about Aspergers – as well as offering me their perspectives about what I wrote – that I thought that even though I really am not sure what it all means, putting this observation ‘out there’ might be a good idea.

This way, I hope, many of you will share your own experiences in this and together, perhaps, we can make more sense of this!

Posted in Aspergers, education, language, perceptions, society. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Another person could be jailed for telling jokes!

September 12, 2008 — xanthippa

This time, in Italy:

The Christian world may have been dismayed, even outraged, at the Muslim reaction in 2005 to Danish cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammed, but Italian law enforcement appears to have had its own sense of humour failure. Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, is invoking the 1929 Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, which stipulates that an insult to the Pope carries the same penalty as an insult to the Italian President.

…

Even certain sections of the Church are unimpressed. Father Bartolomeo Sorge, a Jesuit scholar, told La Repubblica the move to prosecute Ms Guzzanzi was incomprehensible. “We Christians put up with many insults, it is part of being a Christian, as is forgiveness. I feel sure the Pope has already forgiven those who insulted him on Piazza Navona.”

So, let’s recap this:

  1. Ms. Guzzani told rude jokes about the Pope
  2. She is charged under a law that limits free speech and dates back to fascist times and could face 5 years in jail
  3. the Church does not think she did anything for which she ought to be charged (as in, no victim)
  4. Secular laws are used to persecute her ANYWAY

Does this sound familiar?

Why are there segments of our society which think that people who are not hurt, are not offended, still need legislation to protect their feelings?  Do they REALLY care about the ‘victim’ who claims NOT to be a victim?

Or is this a pretext to manipulate the populace, to exercise power over us and censor any opinions that do not advance the censor’s power?

How much clearer could this be?

(Thanks to FiveFeetOfFury for the tip)

Posted in freedoms, Humour, opression, politics, religion, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Let’s Roll

September 11, 2008 — xanthippa

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Mfq7z_vHc

 

Despite the horrible things that happened that day, this fills me with hope.  Why?  Because when these people – whom I imagene to be ‘like you and I’ – were in that unthinkably horrible situation, they chose to do the right thing.  It fills me with hope that ‘you and I’ really are like they were.

Posted in freedoms, human nature, opression, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Particularly fun day at CERN

September 10, 2008 — xanthippa
turn-on

xkcd: 'turn-on'

Today, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN was turned on!

How exciting!

Despite the dire predictions of ‘generating black holes which will end our Universe’ – predictions which were accompanied by death threats, something most physicists are not used to and unexplicably find mildly funny – things would appear to have gone relatively well!  I guess science’s search for interactions between  Truth and Beauty continues!  (Well, at least scientists expect to see SUperSYmmetry (SUSY) ).

From today’s xkcd (above) and the ‘Scott Adams Blog’ which gives advice to all the bosons our there on ‘Nerdy pick-up lines’, it seems that events like these would appear to open up the horizons to an increase in puns among certain demographics….

Currieous!

P.S. – special mention to the person who can find all the puns in this post….there may be a few.

Posted in Humour, language, science, society, technology. Tags: , , . 9 Comments »

Email I got about ‘carbon tax’

September 9, 2008 — xanthippa

With the election call up here in Canada, we have been just bombarded with opinion polls, telling us what we think.  Do we really think what the pollsters tell us we think?

I was rather surprised that today, my very ‘I’ll have nothing to do with politics – don’t tell me about it – I cant’ hear you -la-la-la-la’ mom actually sent me a political email!  It is one of them that are circulating about…

Since I don’t know the ultimate source, I do not know if it is correct, I don’t even know if the alleged author is a real person – it seems to me there are at least two authors here:  that is not really my point.  My point is more about the very fact that apolitical Canadians, those ‘sit-back-and-tax-me-I-won’t-complain’ Canadians, are actually passing around this (and similar) emails and believing them.

 As in, this may or may not be ‘right’, but it is what many ‘apolitical Canadians’ are thinking…

 

Carbon Tax  
 
The author of this, John Coates, lives in Nova Scotia. He would be even more disgusted if he lived here in BC where we already have a Carbon Tax .

The Liberals Carbon Tax

Politicians have, in the past, used that old bullshit phrase of ‘cutting taxes’ to get you to vote for them.  
 
Now, Stéphane Dion, has come up with a new wrinkle on that old lie :  

  • Tax your heating oil and anything else you burn to move your food and everything else that you have always had in your life… but, he’ll lower your income taxes.

CONSIDER THIS from one person who has bothered to do the homework:

When a politician’s lips move, I know he’s probably lying. Mr. Dion says his carbon tax will be revenue neutral. So, I went online and found a carbon calculator and keyed in the annual energy consumption for our household and learned we produce 17 tons of greenhouse gas. Fully 60% of this usage is for electricity which we use to heat our home.

I have already improved insulation in my walls and replaced my windows and doors; use the new ‘twirley’ lights and ensured that my appliances are all Energy Star products. In the past 20 years, these measures reduced my electricity usage from 24,000 Kw Hrs per year to 16,000 Kw Hrs per year last year.  
 
What is my reward for this improved efficiency?

  • My power bill is unchanged from what it was 20 years ago.  
  •  But, my power bill would  attract  a carbon tax of $104 in year one of Mr. Dion’s plan  
  •  and $ 416 in year four.  
  • My power bill would rise from $166 per month to $210 per month in year four.

Since I live on a fixed income consisting of CPP and Old Age Security, my income tax bill runs at less than $200 per year. So, for my household, Mr. Dion’s ‘revenue neutral’ carbon tax will cost me $416 per year less income tax reductions of about $10 per year.

Revenue neutral? In a pig’s eye! This is a tax on seniors living on fixed incomes.  
 
Well, Mr. Dion, you haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting my vote. I hope everyone else takes five minutes to run the same calculations I did and vote to send this joker to the political boneyard.

 SIGNED:   Jon C. Coates – 70 Ridgevalley Rd. – Halifax, N.S. – B3P 2J9

Factual data substantiating this:

  • 16.96 tons
  •  60% of this is for electricity or 10.4 tons/year
  •  @ $10/ton in year 1 = $104 or $9/mo
  •  @ $20/ton in year 2 = $208 or $18/mo
  •  @ $30/ton in year 3 = $312 or $27/mo
  •  @ $40/ton in year 4 = $416 or $40/mo
  •  Income tax paid is $110/yr.

DON’T BUY INTO THE CARBON TAX !
DON’T BELIEVE ANY POLITICIAN FROM ANY PARTY!
PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK IN CANADA.


At first I thought this was funny…then I realized the awful truth of it.
Be sure to read all the way to the end
 

The Tax Poem
 
Tax his land,  Tax his bed,
Tax the table,  At which he’s fed.
Tax his tractor,  Tax his mule,
Teach him taxes,  Are the rule.

Tax his work,  Tax his pay,
He works for peanuts,  Anyway!
Tax his cow, Tax his goat,
Tax his pants, Tax his coat.

Tax his ties, Tax his shirt,
Tax his work, Tax his dirt.
Tax his tobacco,  Tax his drink,
Tax him if he  tries to think.

Tax his cigars, Tax his beers,
If he cries, Tax his tears.
Tax his car,  Tax his gas,
Find other ways  to tax his ass.

Tax all he has, Then let him know,
That you won’t be done, Till he has no dough.
When he screams and hollers, then tax him more,
Tax him till he’s good and sore.

Then tax his coffin,  Tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he’s laid.
Put these words, Upon his tomb,
‘Taxes drove me to my doom…’

When he’s gone,  Do not relax,
Its time to apply…..

The Inheritance Tax
Accounts Receivable Tax
Airline Surcharge tax
Airline Fuel Tax
Airport Maintenance Tax
Building Permit Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Death Tax
Dog License Tax
Driving Permit Tax
Employee Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment (UI)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Gasoline Tax ( too much per litre)
Gross Receipts Tax
Health Tax
Hunting License Tax
Hydro Tax
Inheritance Tax
Interest Tax
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Mortgage Tax
Personal Income Tax
Poverty Tax
Prescription Drug Tax
Property Tax
Provincial Income Tax
Real Estate Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Retail Sales Tax
Service Charge Tax
School Tax
Telephone Federal Tax
Telephone Federal, Provincial and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Water Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax …..

 
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

  • Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago,  
  • our nation was one of the most prosperous in the world.
  • We had absolutely no national debt,  
  • had a large middle class,  
  • and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the hell happened????

Can you spell ‘politicians’????

I hope this goes around CANADA at least 100 times!!!!!  
YOU can help it get there!!!!

GO AHEAD – – – be a CANADIAN !!!!!!!!!!  
 
SEND IT AROUND TO EVERYONE AND CHANGE IT !!!!

 

So, have we, Canadians, finally been taxed out of our complacency?
 

Posted in human nature, perceptions, politics, society. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Journalists and elites

September 8, 2008 — xanthippa

Societies change.  That is natural and to be expected.  And as they do, who makes up the ‘elites’ also changes.  While I think that observing the patterns in societal changes may be interesting all on its own, it may also help us predict the future patterns of change.

A while ago, the ruling class was determined by family affiliation:  in order to raise an army to conquer a country with, a person had to belong to a royal or, at least, an aristocratic family.  Same for succession.  Well, usually! 

This has changed.  The patterns of how and why are complex and more suited to a book than a simple blog post.  Let it suffice to say that looking at today’s elites, it appears that most of their members do not have pretentions to royal bloodlines.

So, whom are todays elites made up from?

Aside from the celbrities (why they are ‘famous elite’ is a whole different post), today’s elites can be (very roughly) divided into two general groups:  ‘rich elites’ and ‘intellectual elites’.  (Looking at the infinite nuances of their sub-casts would take another book…so let’s stick with the ‘big’ differentiation.)

The rich elites are often marked by the pretentions of past nobility:  ‘familly money’ individuals often look down on the ‘nuveau-riche’ as ‘upstarts’.  But, especially in the US, where personal achievement is not yet regarded as a bad thing, the rich can all be lumped together under the general label of ‘rich elites’.  Especially by the second generation…

The intellectual elites are a lot more interesting:  these people have no pretentions to being able to actually do something.  Instead, they see themselves as the ‘thinkers’ of society.  It is not sufficient to be highly educated and very intelligent in order to be part of the ‘intellectual elite’ – scientists, for example, would satisfy these criteria, yet they are most certainly not politically influential.  They get patted on their heads, warmly welcome (for a little while) if they can be temporarily useful, but then they get locked back in their labs.  So, what is that quality?

Unsurprisingly enough, to be a member of the ‘intellectual elite’, one has to appear to fit in comfortably with the ‘rich elite’.  This ‘fitting in’ could be an ostentatiously overdone ‘poor look’ (like the ‘bohemians’ that many University Professors used to affect while it was fashionable), but underneath, one must be able to act rich, rich, rich!  

This immediatelly rules out those who are unpretentious – keeping up fake appearances is simply not attractive to unpretentious people.  Now, since our Universities and Colleges have, to a great degree, been staffed by professors who typically hold radically socialist views, it is not surprising that those who wished to be admitted to these ‘intellectual elites’ had to affect similar manners and assimilate these very political views.

So, the group which emerges as being most politically influential (other than the ‘old rich elites’ – as in, old-money  families) is made up of pretentious, radical socialists!  In Canada and the US, we easily recognize them as our ‘Liberals’ and ‘Democrats’…

But, where do the journalists fit in?  They, most certainly, are not even now rich enough to be admitted to either of the ‘elites’ of today!  Yet, in Journalism schools, they were subjected to radical socialist teachings.  And, now, they are sent to cover the lives and actions of the two elites.  Is is surprising, then, that getting to know these people as individuals during the course of their work, the journalists (who, like all of us, wish to be ‘special’ and ‘extraordinary’) have come to identify themselves with one of these two elites?

Unless born or married into a rich family, a journalist cannot hope to fit in with the ‘rich elite’.  That is just a simple economic fact – even the best newspapers do not pay that well.  However, many of them can and do fit in comfortably with the ‘intellectual elites’.  Well, sort of.  At least, they are much closer – close enough that from the point of view of the journalists, they feel like they fit in.

And while there may be some crossover, at least in the USA, the ‘rich elite’ is traditionally associated with the pro-business Republicans while the ‘intellectual elite’ tends to be associated with the socialist Democrats.  The rest of us mortals fall into one or the other camp, based on what we think is a better way to organize a society:  based on individual achievement or on group-rule.  (In Canada, the ‘rich elite’ is almost non-existant, so the ‘Conservative’ party only retains the image of ‘old money’, rather than embodies it – but despite the facts, the image remains.  The ‘intellectual elite’ in Canada is split between the ‘Liberal’ and ‘New Democratic’ parties).

Is it surprising, then, that when covering ‘their own’ elite, the journalists of the MainStream Media find themselves ‘cheering’, and while when covering ‘the other elite’, they are incessantlly booing?

All right, so I don’t have a revelation here, or much of a real point of any kind.  But, watching this particular pattern is interesting, is it not?

Posted in education, human nature, illusions, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

MSMs approval ratings sink lower that Bush’s

September 5, 2008 — xanthippa

We have all heard the cries that the Main-Stream Media (MSM) has a pro-liberal, anti-conservative bias.  Members of the MSM dispute this, righteous indignation inflaming their passions.  I am convinced that they truly are unable to see any bias in their coverage – from daily events to political commentary.  Yet, I am equally convince that the bias exists – and that it is very, very pronounced. 

‘Bias’ is such a difficult thing to prove – yet it is easy to spot.  It might not be ‘what’ is written, but ‘how’.  It may not be the words a newsanchor speaks, but how they tilt their head, square or slump their shoulders, how steadily they hold their gaze. 

I notice these things quite a bit – being an Aspie, I do not understand body-language and facial expressions naturally.  Therefore, I have had to learn the nuances of their meanings – and am accustomed to ‘search and interpret’ them.  Where others might get a ‘feeling’ or simply be swayed, I have to actually go through the conscious process of interpreting the manner, affect and body language.  So, yes, I do see it – and it drives me crazy when people deny it is there! 

NewsBusters had an article recently, which confirmed what I have been thinking:  it is not a ‘conspiracy’ among media members, nor are they bribed, or anything ‘fun’ like that.  The righteous indignation most members of the MSM feel does not ring false.  Something else is going on.  Here is a part of the conversation between two journalists, quoted in that article:

HARWOOD: Well, some of – I get what you’re saying, and look, I think that people who talk about bias in the mainstream press, left of center bias, are not imagining things. 

KERNAN: No. 

HARWOOD: It has to do with the kind of people who go into journalism, okay? So I’m not arguing with that general notion.  I think those of us in journalism have to do our best to try to present the most objective view we can of what we have –

KERNAN: I agree.

HARWOOD: But everybody brings their own filter into it.

This is an honest admission that most of the people who wish to enter the profession of journalism are, for reasons unknown, more likely to hold left-of-centre views than otherwise.  But, surely, once in journalism school, the professors will have taught their young recruits how to recognize their own bias, and how to overcome it?

Well, not in my experience….  I went to a University which was known for excellence in two disciplines:  journalism and physics.  I studied the latter.  Yet, I did have some interactions with the school of journalism…

When one of my Math exams was located in the Journalism buildings, some friends joked I did not have to study for it- it was ‘bound to be cancelled’.  Regardless, I went to the exam – only to find the whole building locked up, metal grills blocking all entrances:  someone had phoned in a bomb threat.  I got upset – a bomb threat?!?  That was not a laughing matter!  Yet, other students tried to comfort me:  “This is the Journalism building – the profs would fail them if they did not phone in one or two bomb threats!”

So, who exactly are these professors of journalism? 

Here, demographics play a very important role…  The journalism departments are (or, at least, while I was in University, they were) run by baby-boomers and ex-hippies:  the same people who fought against the Vietnam war by staging student protests and who learned the wrong lesson about ‘class struggle’:  instead of learning (and teaching) to oppose ‘the establishent’, they learned to fight the political views which defined ‘the establishment’ of their youth.

These people are still trying to fight McCathy!

These professors even go so far as to teach that ‘responsible journalism’ is one which provides the information in such a way as to lead their audience to the ‘correct’ opinion!  In other words, instead of teaching ‘impartial journalism’ which reports the facts and allows the audience to form its own conclusions, they are teaching young journalists that producing propaganda is ‘responsible journalism’!  No wonder most of today’s journalists are unable to discern their own bias, or see manipulative reporting as inappropriate!

This is, by no means, an American phenomenon:  it is worldwide… with the added dimension that people outside of the US add a very unmistakable ‘anti-American’ twist.  Please, indulge me here for just a little bit:  American or not, we are all bombarded by the coverage of the US elections.  So, I could not help but notice…. 

Both Barack Obama’s father, and step-father (who influenced him as he grew up) were employed by oil companies.  I do not think there is anything wrong with the fact itself – I am only asking if you think that most people would be left unaware of this fact had this candidate been a Republican?

Which brings me to Mr. Bush – perhaps one of the least liked politicians today.  His popularity ratings today are – according to the most recent polls – somewhere between 35% and 30%.  So, how do the American people see their media?

Among unaffiliated voters, 49% say reporters are trying to hurt Palin, while 32% say their coverage is unbiased. Only five percent (5%) say reporters are trying to help her.

Only 32% of ‘unaffiliated’ Americans think the media does not have left-wing bias!  This, by coincidence, is about the same percentage as approves of Bush as President.

This ought to make them think…

Posted in human nature, language, opression, politics, society. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

The ‘Island of Sanity’ joins the blogosphere!

September 3, 2008 — xanthippa

This is so exciting!

Canada’s ‘Island of Sanity’, Lowell Green himself, has joined the blogosphere!

Brash, outspoken, and fearless…  Originally, he actually ran for office as a Liberal – but his wisdom increased with years (or his patience ran out with the excesses of the Liberal party).  Either way, he is now a staunch conservative, not afraid to speak up.  (Actually, I doubt he was EVER afraid to speak up!)

With a record for having had the longest-running talk show in North America, this man knows what he speaks of!  Known for exposing the holes in Canada’s education system by asking University students where the St. Lawrence Seaway is – which, mostly, they are unable to answer, he is an outspoken critic of just about everything that is silly, wasteful, or makes little sense. 

And, make no mistake about it, politicians of all stripes listen (or have their minions listen) to Lowell’s morning show on CFRA.  Many have been known to phone in – like us regular folk – and talk to him.

He is also an outspoken champion of our veterans.  Whenever some of our Vets looked like they were going to be left out of some celebrations overseas, Lowell let fly from his pulpit microphone:   within minutes, the funds necessary to send them over were raised and some politician (like, say, the minister in charge of veteran’s affairs) called his show to pledge government support of them.  Whenever a vet has a problem, you can count on Lowell to stand and fight for him!

But not just vets…  Just before Christmas, an elderly couple was robbed, all the presents for their grandkids stolen.  The distraught lady called Lowell, and he comforted her.  Not only did she get offers to drive her visually impaired husband to his medical appointments that day, and – despite her protests – people kept bringing money by the station to help replace the stolen presents. 

That is just the kind of guy Lowell is – genuine, good and looking out for the ‘little guy’. 

A pain in the ‘you-know-where’ – but a genuine, good person.  Our online community will be better, now that he’s joined us!

Posted in human nature, politics, society. Tags: , , . 1 Comment »

Things that make you go: Hmmmm!

September 3, 2008 — xanthippa

Via Five Feet of Fury, I came across an interesting post on Ghost of a Flea:

 

Tigh/Roslin ’08

tighroslin2.jpg

The Russians may want to consider their latest imperial adventure. Dick Cheney is on his way to Georgia and Ukraine and given what comes next they might look back fondly upon the current Vice President. They had better pray for an Obama presidency; they do not want Colonel Tigh or President Roslin with their finger on the trigger. So say we all.

“The parallels continue! McCain is a military man who spent time in a Vietnam prison camp, the character of Col. Tigh is a military man who spent time in a Cylon prison camp. Sarah Palin comes from a family of school teachers, the character of Laura Roslin was school teacher before becoming Secretary of Education (and then later President).”
I don’t usually re-print the whole of another blogger’s post, but, well, this one was just too brilliant!
Posted in illusions, politics. Tags: , . 3 Comments »
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