Tag Archives | News

Is Following The News Bad For You?

By on May 3, 2013 in News 0

too much newsAs they say, the medium is the message, and the 24-hour breaking news cycle may be degrading your mind and your life. Via the Guardian, Rolf Dobelli argues thus:

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply.

News misleads. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. The physical structure of the brain changes.

News makes us passive.

… Read the rest

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Tagboard.com: A New Ally In The Information War

By on March 22, 2013 in News 0

A few days ago, I had heard that there were riots going on in Brooklyn.  I had no idea what was going on or why and didn’t feel like waiting for the evening news to tell me what was going on.  I knew that people were taking pictures on Instagram and tweeting under the hashtag #brooklynriot and #brooklynprotest, so I used a new website to get the big picture in one fell swoop.

Tagboard.com  is a hashtag aggregation website that searches all social media for the hashtag that you plug in.  In the case of the Brooklyn riot meme, I was able to see moment to moment what was occurring.

Of course, Tagboard was not created as a site to help protestors organize, but to keep the increasingly media savvy public well organized.  But one has to consider the power that a site like this can wield; across the board, from site to site, you have an eye in the sky.… Read the rest

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A Box For Manipulating The News On Other People’s Computer Screens

By on January 18, 2013 in News 3

The artistic creation of Julian Oliver and Daniil Vasiliev, the Newstweek device allows for “altering reality on a per-network basis” by literally changing the headlines on people’s screens:

Newstweek is a device for manipulating news read by other people on wireless hotspots. Built into a small and innocuous wall plug, the Newstweek device allows writers to remotely edit news read on wireless devices without the awareness of their users.

While news is increasingly read digitally, it still follows a top-down distribution model and thus often falls victim to the same political and corporate interests that have always sought to manipulate public opinion. Newstweek intervenes upon this model, providing opportunity for citizens to have their turn to manipulate the press; generating propaganda or simply ‘fixing facts’ as they pass across a wireless network.

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Help Make A Disinfonaut An Astronaut

By on January 15, 2013 in News 1

Smelly armpit deodorising company, Lynx (or Axe as they are known outside the United Kingdom) recently launched a contest to send 22 people into space, and I want to be one of them (vote for me here).

Via Space.com:

The company today (Jan. 9) kicked off its new AXE Apollo Space Academy, an online contest that promises to send 22 winners to the edge of space and back aboard a private spaceship. The winning space travelers will launch aboard a suborbital Lynx space plane built by the U.S. company XCOR Aerospace and operated by the tourism firm Space Expedition Curacao, AXE officials said.

“Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience,” Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person ever to walk on the moon during NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission in 1969, said in a statement. “I’m thrilled that AXE is giving the young people of today such an extraordinary opportunity to experience some of what I’ve encountered in space.”

The contest is open to men and women in more than 60 countries who sign up on the AXE Apollo Space Academy website (AXEApollo.com) and write about why they should be chosen to fly in space, while others will vote on the entries.

… Read the rest

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How To Read USA Today

By on October 5, 2012 in News 1

More from the just-deceased Neil Smith — a classic dissection of how to properly read and understand the USA Today newspaper:

Each edition of USA Today has four seperate sections aimed at the broadest possible appeal — there’s News, Money, Sports, Life — who could object to that?

 

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Woman Shoots and Beheads Serial Rapist

By on September 5, 2012 in News 91

Picture: Caravaggio (PD)

Via Daily Bhaksar

Yalvac (Turkey): A woman heavily pregnant with the child of her rapist, killed the perpetrator and left his severed head in the local village square, Sun reported.

The woman five-months pregnant with the rapist’s child has been pleading with authorities to let her have an abortion—although the law prohibits any woman beyond ten-weeks pregnant from taking such an action.

Sun reported that when police arrested her in the south-western village of Yalvac she told them that the head was of the one who ‘toyed with her honour.’

Womens’ groups in Turkey have praised the mother of two as a heroine after it emerged she was being blackmailed by her attacker.

Read more at Daily Bhaksar.… Read the rest

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The Blog Of Cops Shooting People

By on August 29, 2012 in News 21

Perhaps designed to satisfy your morbid curiosity or shed light on the workings of our society, Cops Shooting People provides a round up of each day’s local news stories of fatal police shootings (not necessarily faulting the officers) from across the country. It’s staggering how many of these happen. A random sampling:

THEODORE WANN, 23, ALLEGEDLY WIELDING SHOVEL, SHOT AND KILLED BY COPS IN YUCAIPA, CA

“A parent’s request for help in dealing with an agitated son led to the son’s shooting death by a sheriff’s deputy, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies were summoned at 6:25 a.m. Monday, Aug. 13, to the 34000 block of Avenue G in Yucaipa, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release. One of the man’s parents told deputies the son returned home exhibiting symptoms of paranoia and believing that he was being followed, the department said.

The parent also said that the son might have ingested drugs and wouldn’t settle down.

… Read the rest

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Monsanto’s Legacy of Toxicity, Corruption and Scandalous Dealings

By on July 8, 2012 in News 9

MEDIA ROOTS — Seeds are at the very core of the public commons as the first link in an essential food chain.  Throughout the 20th century, the agricultural biotech giant Monsanto perverted intellectual property laws to corner the world’s seed supply.

By allowing the food supply to be attached to the bottom line of a corporation, the world places its future in the hands of a corrupt few. Abby Martin explores the multinational corporation’s sordid past of corruption and toxicity and their current scandalous dealings for RT.

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Most U.S. Terrorist Plots Are Hatched By The FBI

By on June 4, 2012 in News 10

The New York Times points out that two-thirds of the most frightening post-9/11 plans for attacks on American soil were stings orchestrated by government agents. Typically, a bumbling, gullible, down on their luck “potential terrorist” with no history of violence is coaxed into some sort of involvement and then arrested, followed by news media trumpeting the “narrowly foiled plot”:

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training.

… Read the rest

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