Unhealthy remembering of 9/11.

I'm all for remembering, but only as long as remembering is emotionally healthy and oriented to an optimistic future. About 15 years ago, I met a young man in a civil war museum in Virginia. Unprovoked, he stated that he was angry at "the North" because the North had defeated the South--and his great great great [great?] grandfather had  "fought bravely for the South. He was visibly angry as he told me these things. It was pathetic to see someone so consumed and defined the American Civil War. His way of remembering had trapped him in an endless cycle of anger. In an article in Harper's Magazine (August 2011) titled "After 9/11: The Limits of Remembrance," David Rieff has expressed concern that many Americans are "remembering" 9/11 in accordance with the official George W. Bush explanation from 2001: We were attacked "because the terrorists hate our freedoms--our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." This form of "remembrance" has no room for any possibility that the attack was provoked, even in part, in response to the constant meddling in the Middle East by the United States, going back at least as far as 1953's "

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How Fox “news” manipulates its viewers

Here is a comprehensive list of the techniques Fox News uses to manipulate its viewers, compliments of Dr. Cynthia Boaz. It seems to me that responsible thinkers would anticipate these techniques, recognize them and turn this drivel off. Here is the list of techniques, but I would highly recommend visiting the main article for clear explanations of each. 1. Panic Mongering. 2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. 3. Projection/Flipping. 4. Rewriting History. 5. Scapegoating/Othering. 6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. 7. Bullying. 8. Confusion. 9. Populism. 10. Invoking the Christian God. 11. Saturation. 12. Disparaging Education. 13. Guilt by Association. 14. Diversion. I freely admit that FOX News is not the only "news" channel that employs these techniques--I've seen most of these used on other networks, though FOX is famous for proudly using these techniques.

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Republican firecrackers

From Huffpo:

Children who attend July 4 celebrations are more likely to identify themselves as Republicans later in life, a new Harvard University study finds. [T]here is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans," they write.

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Music is like sex to the brain

New study on the pleasures of music reported by Discover Magazine:

[M]usic can activate the same reward circuits in the brain as food and sex. Participants listened to their songs of choice in a PET scanner, which detects the release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, and again in an fMRI scanner, which measures brain activity. The scans showed that just before feeling enjoyable chills in response to the music, listeners experienced a dopamine rush near the frontal striatum, a brain region associated with anticipating rewards, followed by a flood of dopamine in the rear striatum, the brain’s pleasure center. “It’s like you’re craving the next note,” Salimpoor says.
Here's the study. I've also noted from my "anthropological" visits to Christian churches (here, for example), that people tend to sense the presence of Jesus during those emotional peaks that occur in the middle of religious music.  You can tell, because people start waving their hands in the air during those emotion-inducing parts of the music.  I've also noticed that Jesus becomes more intense when a song modulates to a new key.  Seems that Jesus likes the same aspects of music as his human worshipers.

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New graphic cigarette warns might discourage smokers

And then again, according to this article in Discover, they might not. Check the comments to see the counter-research, as well as ever-more skirmishes in the ongoing American culture-wars. To the extent that graphic warnings don't discourage smokers, I'll rack this up as one of the many many many counter-intuitive things scientists have discovered about human beings.

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