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.
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.
This is a clever parody of the way Lincoln would have used PowerPoint to deliver the Gettysburg Address. Just click the "Click Here to Start" link, then click your way through. Simple as that.
Thirty years ago, give or take, I read Lucifer's Hammer (by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) for the first time. Published in 1977, it has a few dated elements, but apart from those, it holds its own in my mind. The novel describes a near future after a comet hits the Earth. I enjoyed it, but one very small reference stcuk in my head.
One of the characters has a library (that he preserves from the anarchy) and the one book he takes as currency to the outpost central to the novel is "Volume Two of The Way Things Work." Google "The Way Things Work" now, and you'll likely find mostly hits on David Macaulay's illustrated book. Nice...and informative, but not the one Niven and Pournelle were talking about.
I searched for years, pre-internet, before finding my copy. It's an eighth edition of the one originally published in 1963 by Simon and Schuster; subtitled "An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology." It's a single volume, not two, and although also dated (vacuum tubes), it is still an enormous, condensed wealth of knowledge. I'm not an end-of-the-world type person, but I have several survival books of this nature (Back to Basics, The American Boys' Handybook, etc.) for my children and descendants...just in case. Not in case of the end of the world, but in case they get stranded or what have you.
Driving around to look in on various construction projects today, I listened to a few TED videos and one, very short by TED 18 minute standards, conveyed in four minutes one of the more amazing ideas I've seen at TED, host of hundreds of amazing ideas.
Marcin Jakubowski, a Polish American with a PhD in fusion physics, founded Open Source Ecology, "home of the Global Village Construction Set, developing community-based solutions for re-inventing local production" after starting a farm. I'll let him describe what he's done:
I'm adding this to my various "Way Things Work" works. It's free, brilliant, full of maker ideals, and can deliver affordable technology to the world. Maybe I'll even be able to contribute.
Hello, I invite you to subscribe to Dangerous Intersection by entering your email below. You will have the option to receive emails notifying you of new posts once per week or more often.
