Rick Kaempfer, a Chicago media critic, a 20-year radio veteran, "thanks" the FCC and media conglomerates for their roles in promoting media consolidation (a development that cost Rick his job). [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8xD_BHzDqg[/youtube] What's the problem with a few huge corporations owning and operating most of our media outlets? Consider this information…
New research reveals even if only one or two members of a group repeats an opinion, it is likely to be seen by others as representative of the whole group. Why does this occur? It boils down to availability and memory. Compare this to the famous social psychology experiments run by Soloman Asch…
Last week, a dear friend asked me if I had an iPod. I told her I did not. She knows that I like to listen to lectures and interviews and so does she. She told me that numerous interviews can be downloaded for free through Apple’s iTunes site. She gave me a tour of the site and convinced me that you can, indeed, download thousands upon thousands of intriguing sounding interviews from NPR and numerous other sources.
She saw that I was intrigued with this possibility. She also knew that I ride a bike to work and I therefore was not able to listen to live radio during my commute. She suggested that if I had an iPod, I could listen to all kinds of interesting things as I pedal to to work. In fact, she went so far as to ask me whether I would promise to use an iPod if she gave me one. I said “sure.” She ducked into the next room and emerged with a small box containing an iPod Shuffle, a device that is about as big as a postage stamp. The shuffle holds 20 hours of music or interviews in its 1 GB memory. The tiny kit comes with a charger/USB port that allows you to drag tunes and interviews into the Shuffle through the use of the iTunes interface. It is all incredibly slick and easy to use. I accepted this tiny though generous gift, only half-expecting it to work when I …
I have a friend who wrote a song to me. (Free mp3 download courtesy of Anderson Productions, Ltd.) “Dear Friend” appeared on Russ Anderson’s 2003 album, “Arsenal Street”. All his CD’s are Available here. I recommend listening to the song before proceeding.
This nice, eerie, and sometimes psychedelic song is a heartfelt plea for me to discard my narrow, science-informed view of the world and just try to accept the ultimate truth of his favorite, ancient, re-translated book.
When my very Christian 11 year old nephew heard the song, he worried that it would anger me. He is fond of both Russ and myself, and the song conveys a basic disconnect. Conversations I’ve had with other Absolute Biblically Literal Truth Christians indicate that these are common misperceptions of atheist ideology.
Let’s examine some of the contentions in the song:
“If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.” Mario Andretti
Like most people I know, I try to keep quite a few balls in the air. Those balls represent things such as prosecuting lawsuits against large unscrupulous businesses.
Today, for instance, the two lawyers who constitute my firm’s consumer class action practice area (I’m one of the two) sued a large corporate dairy that has been distributing “organic milk” to large retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target. The problem is that the milk was not organic. A federal investigation recently determined that the dairy engaged in willful violations of organic dairy farm standards. Our plaintiffs are asking that the customers who paid big premiums for the “organic” milk should be refunded their money, at least the difference in cost between the price of the organic milk and the plain milk. The plaintiffs in our suit are both mothers of small children. They both reached deep to pay the extra money so that their children would not be exposed to the hormones and antibiotics of conventional cow milk. One of the women is a chemist and the other is a biologist. They had detailed reasons for paying the extra money for the organic milk. Another reason is that they didn’t want cows to be mistreated in order to provide milk. These women (and the thousands or millions of other customers in this potential class) were cheated out of substantial sums of money. Just add up the cost of several gallons of …