Category: Social Order & Disorder

Social Media, Public Opinion, and Jian Ghomeshi

Critical Thinking / Media Issues / Social media & cyberbullyingOne Comment

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A] I doubt anyone in North America is unaware of the furor surrounding CBC’s recent firing of radio show Q’s host, Jian Ghomeshi last week.* In case you were on the moon when it happened, you can read some of the many stories on the Star and other news sites (just Google it…). It’s a complex story; about the seesaw between workers’ and employers’ rights; about sex and consent; about abuse and violence against women; about privacy and personal rights; about social media and cyber-bullying; about justice and law; about media and declining reporting standards; about the public forum and the nature ……… click below for more ↓

The Ebola Panic

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Ebola has gripped the imagination of North American media and been spun into a terrifying spectre looming like a horseman of the apocalypse over us. So widespread has it become that Jenny McCarthy, one of the top wingnuts of quackery and pseudomedicine, and poster girl for the pro-measles-pro-mumps parents, felt compelled to pipe up with her own “cure,” should it spread to the USA: Lemon juice. Yep. Wonder how the scientists missed that one. A quick trip to the grocery store and you’re immune. Safe easy and natural! Well, okay, she didn’t really say that. It was from a story posted on ……… click below for more ↓

“A” Personalities: A Theory

Behaviour & Psychology / Critical Thinking / Philosophy / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading Now4 Comments

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When someone tells me he is an “A-type” personality, I cannot help but think of the title of Aaron James’ bestselling book: Assholes *A Theory (Anchor Books, New York, 2014). After all, what else would the “A” stand for when someone boasts to the audience he is an alpha male as if the rest of the room was full of less-worthy betas? Self aggrandizement is not limited, of course, to assholes, but they certainly occupy centre stage (at least in their own mind). Not always the best place to be, considering that, medically speaking, A-types are more prone to heart ……… click below for more ↓

No Data Are Better Than Bad Data

Collingwood / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Media IssuesLeave a comment

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The full name of an article I read today is, “The Fallacy of Online Surveys: No Data Are Better Than Bad Data.” It’s from 2010 and very good. You can find it on the Responsive Management website. It makes some key points about the invalidity of online surveys: For a study to be unbiased, every member of the population under study must have an equal chance of participating. When online surveys are accessible to anyone who visits a website, the researcher has no control over sample selection. These self-selected opinion polls result in a sample of people who decide to take ……… click below for more ↓

Is the Internet making us stupid? Or just shallow?

Critical Thinking / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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In my never-ending search for some bit of knowledge one day, during a mix-and-match of search engine terms while looking for classical writers’ views on death and dying, I stumbled onto what might have been an off-kilter New Age site, OM Times, or more likely, a parody of the genre. On the page titled “8 Things You Didn’t Know About Death,” I read, “… light rays have qualities like wisdom, kindness, compassion and intelligence. This light makes visible what is invisible on earth, the Divine nature of all things….” Loud guffaws broke the cool silence of the house and startled ……… click below for more ↓

Abusing quotation marks

Humour & Satire / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / Style & usageOne Comment

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What goes through your mind when you see words in a paragraph or a sentence surrounded by quotation marks? Like that sign in the image on your left? That they are words excerpted from conversations or written content? Or that they are special; peculiar words, or perhaps used ironically, sarcastically or in jest? Take these examples from the “Blog” of Unnecessary Quotation Marks: “Chicken” pot pies $5.99 Please open the door “slowly” “Push” the last channel button. No “Free” refills It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What is in the pie that isn’t “chicken” but we’ll pretend it is? Try reading ……… click below for more ↓

Our gawker culture

Critical Thinking / Culture / Manners & Civility / Media Issues / Memes; Internet & Social / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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Suddenly the Net lit up with headlines news: celebrity nude photos leaked! Videos too! Facebook timelines were replete with media stories. Shock. Horror. Voyeurism. Click, click, click the viewers racked up the view count as they raced to the sites just in case they actually showed something. A little flesh to feed our insatiable desire to gawk. Meanwhile psychopaths in ISIS continue to harvest human lives and slaughter journalists, Syria continues its brutal civil war, drought threatens the American southwest, climate change ravages the planet, Russia sends soldiers to undermine Ukraine and shoot down civilian airliners, pesticides continue to wipe out ……… click below for more ↓

Classical music matters even more today

Culture / Media Issues / Music & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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The official launch of the new Classical FM 102.9 radio station in Collingwood this past weekend reminded me of my own past history with classical music, but also why it matters so much to have classical music in our lives. And why we need to keep that cultural lifeline to our musical past alive and active. Classical music binds us to our past, to our civilization and our culture. Music reflects the styles and tastes of the era in which it was composed, as do art and literature. And while some people may think it stuffy, much of it was actually the pop ……… click below for more ↓

Sex, violence and TV shows

Culture / Media Issues / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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We just finished watching the third season of Game of Thrones on DVD this past weekend. Before that, we watched The White Queen, another DVD series (one season only, although it deserved more). As we watched both, I found myself wondering why directors and producers felt the need to insert gratuitous – but apparently obligatory – explicit scenes of sex and violence that really had little to do with either plot or character development. The same questions arose when I watched Deadwood, The Sopranos, First Blood and Boardwalk Empire. Personally, I found these explicit bits distracting, like commercials, because they ……… click below for more ↓

Social media and social dialogue

Internet & Social Media / Manners & Civility / Media Issues / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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A recent poll done by Pew Research reiterated what I’ve been saying for the past two years: social media (SM) doesn’t necessary facilitate social debate and in fact may be stifling it. Discussion on many SM platforms tends to reinforce existing beliefs because in general only those who feel their beliefs are shared by their circle of “friends” or followers will express them. It’s called the “spiral of silence.” The Pew report noted: …social media did not provide new forums for those who might otherwise remain silent to express their opinions and debate issues. Further, if people thought their friends and ……… click below for more ↓

My Grandfathers’ War

History & Biography / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / War & MilitaryLeave a comment

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One hundred years ago World War I began, a war that started as a clash in a tiny, almost unknown Balkan state and blossomed into a violent, gruesome war that spread across Europe, the Middle East and reached into Africa and Asia. Within a few years, tens of millions would be dead, the political face of the world changed and almost all of the great royal houses of Europe would be deposed and broken. An entire culture, a society of class and place, was overthrown. The timeline of the origins of WWI is complex and, from this century of temporal ……… click below for more ↓

What’s in a (Popular) Name?

Critical Thinking / Psychology & Sociology / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) A recent article in The Atlantic about how our names impact our lives got me to thinking about how and why we name our children – and what they say about us, about our parents, what our names mean to others of their generation. And why are some names popular at certain times in history. Like now. According to babycenter.com, these are the ten most popular baby names for 2013: Girls: Sophia Emma Olivia Isabella Mia Ava ……… click below for more ↓

Neolithic site dig uncovers sophisticated structures

Critical Thinking / Culture / England and Britain / History & Biography / Media Issues / Places & Geography / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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A Neolithic site in the Orkney Islands shows our ancestors had sophisticated building skills more than 5,000 years ago. According to a story in The Scotsman, A groundbreaking excavation of a 5,000-year-old temple complex in Orkney has uncovered evidence to suggest that prehistoric people were a great deal more sophisticated than previously thought. The archaeological dig at the Ness of Brodgar, which is still in its early stages, has already thrown up discoveries that archaeologists say will force us to re-evaluate our understanding of how our ancestors lived. The picture that has emerged so far points to a complex and ……… click below for more ↓

How to Spot a Communist

Language & Grammar / Politics / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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As I just learned from a recent piece on Open Culture, I must be a Communist. Based on my preference for writing (and reading), that is. (This would definitely surprise my left-wing friends who often think I’m right of Stephen Harper… himself being so far right of the iconic Genghis Khan that it defines a memetic categorization). Damn, I’ve been exposed… According to the piece, a 1955 manual prepared during the Second Red Scare for the U.S. First Army Headquarters helped readers identify potential “Communists.” Among these traits, the piece notes, is a preference for multi-syllabic words and long sentences ……… click below for more ↓

The Death of Handwriting?

Books & Reviews / Culture / My Writing / Politics / Social Order & Disorder / Writing & cursive2 Comments

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I almost cried in pleasure when I watched this video; the handwriting is so beautiful. Apparently some viewers have, as Jesus Diaz writes. On Gizmodo he says that it’s: …a video that caused many to discover autonomous sensory meridian response, a perceptual phenomenon that gives a pleasing tingling sensation. Some said they got it watching people writing. Well, put your headphones on, because this is the mother of all calligraphy ASMR videos. Okay, maybe it is for me because I was raised with handwriting and still delight in it. Penmanship was taught in school at least for a few years when ……… click below for more ↓

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