Every year the same story. Every year it doesn't happen.
Oh, this is a very common business model for the drug pushers.
When TLM was in preschool, the actual police sent an actual warning to his daycare about the drug pushers giving hits of acid to children. They would stand right outside the fences and call the toddlers over and then give them drugs with pictures of cartoon characters, and BOOM. Lifelong LSD consumers!
When TLM was in preschool, the actual police sent an actual warning to his daycare about the drug pushers giving hits of acid to children. They would stand right outside the fences and call the toddlers over and then give them drugs with pictures of cartoon characters, and BOOM. Lifelong LSD consumers!
Boy did I get cheated. None of the LSD I took had cute little pictures of cartoon characters.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
When TLM was in preschool, the actual police sent an actual warning to his daycare about the drug pushers giving hits of acid to children. They would stand right outside the fences and call the toddlers over and then give them drugs with pictures of cartoon characters, and BOOM. Lifelong LSD consumers!
Boy did I get cheated. None of the LSD I took had cute little pictures of cartoon characters.
Neither did ours. Our exctacy pills did though. Speaking of, another Halloween gone with no free drugs in my candy bag.
That'll teach those dumb scientists to waste everyone's time talking about the overwhelming evidence in favor of anthropogenic climate change and the need to do something about it!
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Just incase you didn't suspect Murdoch is actually Emperor Palpatine,
National Geographic Channel, which lost a lot of respect in the scientific community after going History channel with Alien Invasions and Doomsday Preppers had their fact checkers cut. Just let that sink in for a moment.
Every year the same story. Every year it doesn't happen.
Oh, this is a very common business model for the drug pushers.
When TLM was in preschool, the actual police sent an actual warning to his daycare about the drug pushers giving hits of acid to children. They would stand right outside the fences and call the toddlers over and then give them drugs with pictures of cartoon characters, and BOOM. Lifelong LSD consumers!
Next year for Halloween, I'm going to buy an old white van, spray paint "FREE CANDY" on the side, park it in my driveway and handout candy to the kids from the back. My costume will include a small puppy.
Halloween starts Oct. 1 right?
I live a block away from an elementary school, so it should be fun.
__________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
Every year the same story. Every year it doesn't happen.
Oh, this is a very common business model for the drug pushers.
When TLM was in preschool, the actual police sent an actual warning to his daycare about the drug pushers giving hits of acid to children. They would stand right outside the fences and call the toddlers over and then give them drugs with pictures of cartoon characters, and BOOM. Lifelong LSD consumers!
Next year for Halloween, I'm going to buy an old white van, spray paint "FREE CANDY" on the side, park it in my driveway and handout candy to the kids from the back. My costume will include a small puppy.
Halloween starts Oct. 1 right?
I live a block away from an elementary school, so it should be fun.
Seedy, slightly underexposed Poloroids or it didn't happen.
To continue the absurdity he was arrested on Friday and released before Saturday afternoon. The police refuse to say why he was arrested or to identify the person he was with. There's conflicting reports that the arrest wasn't linked to a shooting.
ABC 7, who seems to be a prime champion of this smear campaign had a large "MISSING WOMAN AND CHILD" banner on their site yesterday, claiming his girlfriend (or ex girlfriend) hadn't been seen for weeks and friends were worried. Apparently a friend spotted it and she walked into a police office to tell them she's fine and stop harassing her. ABC 7's report on her safety after being besides themselves in worry and fear talked about her for less than a paragraph before going into accounts about Petrov's brushes with the law and "alleged beating." While I know it's common to use alleged, it's funny that the only time they use it is about a beating on tape that officers have been put on leave for. But not for their claim he's a suspect in the shooting.
It's Finals Week, and some of the things I'm dealing with right now got me to thinking about one of the reasons why the "Mainstream Media" tend to be so terrible at reporting anything more complicated than "Cat Stuck in Tree; Rescued by Firefighters."
Okay, here's an extreme example, but I've been seeing this sort of thing all week. One of the students in my class had a low 'D' average for the course coming into Finals Week. That fact apparently just dawned on him a few days ago, and so he approached me to ask how he could pass the course (he needed a 'C' average or better).
I told him that if he did well on the final (in the solid 'B' range), he could pull his final average up to a 'C'.
He didn't. In fact, he didn't even come close to passing the Final Exam.
So, he earned a 'D' for the class. And that was a pure gift on my part. This guy missed approximately half the classes; if I had strictly enforced the school's attendance policy, he'd have gotten an 'F' just on the basis of poor attendance.
Anyway, he sent me an e-mail last night insisting that I was mistaken. There is no way he could have failed, because he knew that stuff backwards and forwards. So surely, I must have been mistaken.
I replied that I had the exam right here, and that if he wished to dispute the grade, he was free to come by my office and I'd go over the exam with him.
He reiterated that he knew this stuff backwards and forwards, and he refused to believe that he could possibly have failed the Final. But he didn't come by my office to dispute the grade.
I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that he's being honest when he says that he believes he knows the material "backwards and forwards." But if he believes what he's saying, then he has wildly overestimated his competence.
For example, on a question which asked the student to name the 4 principle types of organic molecules and explain their properties, he replied: "Carbon, Electron, Hydrogen, and Oxygen." And that was one of the responses for which I actually gave him a pity point (not full credit, obviously), because his response was at least somewhat related to the question.
This student wasn't the only one who seemed to think that (s)he had mastered the material when their test answers demonstrated beyond any doubt that this was not remotely true.
In fact, I honestly think that some of the students -- in a weird sort of way -- actually come out of the Introductory-level class knowing less than they did when they came in.
How so?
Well, suppose that you had asked one of them to explain protein synthesis before they had taken the class. My guess is that each of them would have honestly said, "I have no idea how protein synthesis works."
But now, after making it through a course in which protein synthesis was repeatedly discussed and explained, most of them seem to think they know how it works. But most of them don't, as the test results very clearly demonstrate. I read their responses on the question asking them to explain protein synthesis, and their responses are -- all too often -- long, detailed, and confidently stated.
And complete gibberish.
Then, when they get their tests back, they'll complain: "This can't be right; I totally understand protein synthesis."
To which I can only reply: "You wrote a whole paragraph about how protein synthesis is all about animals deciding which traits will be helpful to their offspring, and so deciding to pass on only the proteins that will help their offspring be 'fit'. No. No you DO NOT understand protein synthesis."
As Alexander Pope said:
A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
It's the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's why I think that, in a way, a lot of our students come out of Introductory-level classes knowing less than they did going in, in a way.
If you'd asked the student to explain protein synthesis before taking the class, she'd have said: "I don't know anything about it." Ask her about it now, and she'll confidently give you a detailed -- and utterly wrong -- explanation. So, in a weird sort of way, she has gained "negative knowledge." That's what I mean when I say that many students come out knowing less than they did when they went in.
How does this apply to the Mainstream Media? Well, how many reporters have any actual expertise in the subjects that they're reporting on?
What seems more likely to me is that your average reporter might have taken a semi-relevant course a few years ago, and accordingly, (s)he thinks that (s)he remembers and understands enough to competently report on the subject. In all likelihood though, said reporter is overestimating his or her competence.
I've had at least a little experience in this matter. On a couple of occasions, I've been interviewed by a local newspaper reporter about some Biology-related matter. In each case, I carefully explained what was going on, being sure to tell the reporter that a certain degree of detail is absolutely necessary, because if you oversimplify, you're inevitably going to get things wrong.
In each case, the final article did exactly what I'd warned the reporters not to do. In each case, the reporters tried to "dumb down" my explanations, and in each case they oversimplified to the point of getting important details flat-out wrong. And in each case, the final article demonstrated that the reporter hadn't actually understood my explanation, though they'd insisted at the time that they did.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Proving it's on par with Fox News, CNN just hired disgraced Trump Campaign manager as a political commentator. Because he will bring controversy. CNN is currently leading the 24 hour cable news shit race with under 3 million viewers, up from last year thanks mostly to Trump.
I posted this in another thread, but I think it bears repeating, and it perfectly illustrates why the mainstream media suck:
I saw part of the questioning of [FBI Director] Comey while I was having my car serviced recently. The television station was tuned to FOX "News."
The thing is, since I don't watch television news, I almost-never get to see things like this, and when I do, it's always amazing how blatantly biased FOX is.
First, it was blatantly obvious that the Republicans were desperately trying to get Comey to say what they wanted him to say -- namely, that Hillary was knowingly and gleefully sending classified e-mails on her private server. When Comey kept saying that there was no evidence of this, his Republican inquisitors grew visibly frustrated and upset.
But FOX had nothing to do with that, of course. No, what was amazing was how, afterwards, FOX commenters blatantly lied and flat-out said that Comey had "stated" that Hillary knowingly broke the law -- despite the fact that for the past 30 minutes or so, they had been showing live coverage of him repeatedly stating that there was no evidence to support that conclusion.
I mean, they weren't even subtle about it. They didn't claim that "the evidence suggests" that Hillary lied, or anything of the sort. They flat-out said that Comey had stated that Hillary knowingly broke the law.
And the terrifying thing is, had I not just sat through 30+ minutes of listening to Comey repeatedly refute that claim (despite the Republicans on the committee trying very hard to get him to say what FOX claimed he said) -- I might have believed FOX's false claim.
How would I have known any better?
Let me put it differently: How many of us have the time or patience (or even the opportunity) to listen to the actual testimony? It's boring as all get-out to listen to, and it takes a huge amount of time. And how many of us have the expertise to even understand what's being discussed, if it's some complex or technical subject?
The answer is: almost no one.
So, what we are going to pay attention to is the after-the-fact summaries put out by the media. And FOX didn't just misrepresent the hearing, they blatantly lied about it.
And the only reason I knew they were lying was because -- uncharacteristically -- I had just watched the actual hearings.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
The GOP really looked a gift horse in the mouth with that one.
Comey broke with typical FBI protocol to hold a press conference to state that they weren't recommending charges, but to talk shit about Clinton anyway. Comey is not enough of a party hack to recommend charges if there is no case or blatantly lie, but he's enough of a party hack to take the opportunity to attack Clinton with opinion and speculation, and by omitting relevant details (like the fact that State Dept servers were definitely hacked, while he's only speculating that her email may have been hacked, despite having no evidence of it) in a way that he would not attack any other person investigated but not charged.
But that wasn't good enough for the GOP... they had to bring him in for questioning and force him to clarify some of his misleading statements (exactly how many emails were marked classified? Oh, only two. And they were not clearly marked. And as it turns out, improperly classified. Oops.) and other unmentioned issues (like the fact that Guccifer did not hack her email, he was lying)... and thus undid some of his misleading framing of those issues.
The other scary thing is how many Sanders supporters I see on FB and elsewhere, instead of paying any attention whatever to Bernie's definitive endorsement of Hils, are buying hook line and sinker the GOPs/Fox News BS version of the email saga because, Hilary being a criminal and all, it absolves them of participating in the general election because they "cannot morally bring themselves to vote for her."
Once Mr. Sanders’s defeat became inescapable, some of his most die-hard believers began to insist that a Trump presidency might even be preferable to having Mrs. Clinton in the White House.
“In a way she is more dangerous,” Susan Sarandon insisted in June, warning that under a President Clinton, “We’ll be in Iran in two seconds.”
But other Sanders diehards are quite prepared to “bring the jubilee” and accept a transformative, Trump victory.
“I’d rather see the empire burn under to the ground under Trump, opening up at least the possibility of radical change, than cruise on autopilot under Clinton,” the journalist Christopher Ketcham wrote in The Daily Beast, adding that “the left-contrarian, anti-Hillary, pro-Trump arsonist crowd is larger and wider spread than the cubicled creatures in the Clinton campaign have accounted for.” Mr. Ketcham urged Mr. Sanders to run on the Green Party ticket, and thereby toss the election to Donald Trump. This could, he conceded, “usher in the end of the democracy, the death of the republic, the rise of the hard totalitarian state.” But what the heck? After all, “we are already living in what Princeton political scientist Sheldon Wolin calls a soft or inverted totalitarian system.”
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
What the fuck is wrong with people that not just a “journalist” but an “editor” would think this kind of story was an even remotely good idea? This would be terrible coming from something like the American Spectator or the National Enquirer but the fact that a supposedly “respectable” publication like The Daily Beast would publish this makes me want to get the fuck off this planet.
As long as we’re on the Olympics and “journalism”, this piece from Vox on NBC’s awful coverage is probably worth reading too:
__________________
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Native advertising in formerly "respectable" mainstream news is thus not much different from what's been happening in industry trade papers, such as the IT ones I used to scour through for any glimmer of actual useful information. 90% of their material is provided by vendors because they don't have any real journalists and other than financial news - who bought who - there's not really much actual news. So I feel like I'm pretty used to this.
I am pretty diappointed with this thread. I have yet to see any post that answers the question in the thread's title. Plenty of stuff about the ways in which the mainstream media sucks, but nothing to explain why it sucks. What causes it to suck? What is its motive for sucking? Won't someone please answer the question? Enquiring minds want to know.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.