Check out this article from Media Matters: Despite the obvious signs it exists -- and has for nearly 20 months -- the pervasive buyer's remorse that hovers around President Bush's second term, as measured by public opinion polls, remains off limits for the press. The topic is all but banned…
A couple weeks ago, I asked a friend how close he thought we were to a time when Americans would get so frustrated with their corrupt and dysfunctional government that they take to the streets with torches. He replied: that won’t happen as long as they’ve got TV. I think my friend has a good point. TV appears to be electronic Soma.
As long as ordinary Americans are glued to the tube, there is little hope that they will be able to focus the requisite attention and energy necessary to fix their government. It’s not that all heavy TV viewers would become active participants in their government if we took away their TVs. As long as they are glued to their hypnotic televisions, though, they won’t be active participants in their own government. As long as American citizens suckle off their television sets, government will be run unabashedly by big corporations.
American citizens don’t seem to be inclined to give up their TV viewing, despite the fact that giving up most of their viewing would free them up to monitor their government and to advocate for needed changes. According to the Nielsen Media Research Study released in September 2006, the average American household watched television more than 8 hours per day during the 2005-2006 television year. Individuals watched an average amount 4 hours and 35 minutes per day To watch TV for 4 ½ hours per day, every day, is virtually the same amount of time many people dedicate …
I don’t like the magazine Psychology Today. Instead of presenting the latest psychological findings in a layman-friendly format, the monthly instead peddles relationship advice and thinly-veiled book advertisements. So while I wouldn’t recommend a subscription to anyone (you’d better serve yourself by subscribing to a division of the APA), the magazine did feature one article in February 2005 that piqued my interest: Psychology’s Top Ten Misguided Ideas.
Composed by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies Director Dr. Robert Epstein, the ten-part list includes many psychological buzzwords and memes that the pop psych crowd (like most Psychology Today readers) still consider legitimate. I’d like to discuss a portion of Epstein’s list below:
1. Projective Tests
The popular images of psychology and psychiatry have a few iconic mainstays. You know the therapist cliché: a patient laid on a long couch, rambling about childhood trauma to a near-silent facilitator scribbling away. In nearly equal footing, many people associate projective tests, such as word association and Rorschach ink blots, with legitimate psychology.
The logic behind projective tests says that a therapist can quickly dig into a client’s preoccupations and mindset based on their knee-jerk responses to ambiguous things. This assumes that a patient would always see the same thing in the same ink blot; a sex addict would always recall lewd scenes; a veteran with Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder would always recognize carnage.
But projective tests neglect the effect of priming entirely. A wide variety of psychological studies have demonstrated that earlier access …
At this Cape Cod history and genealogy page, you can find a collection of hundreds of quotes regarding superstition and reason. I had not seen many of these quotes before. Here's a sampling: A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. - Winston Churchill You…
According to a National Intelligence Estimate completed in April the U.S. occupation of Iraq is the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. Rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, it concludes that the…