StrangeSox

I hate the production on Cities of the Underworld. The guy thinks everything is the most amazing thing ever, the music is overly dramatic and some of the camera work is annoying.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Aug 26, 2009 -> 09:06 AM) I actually think History and National Geographic do a great job. I really enjoy those channels Unfortunately I don't get Nat. Geo. QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 26, 2009 -> 09:15 AM) We watch those and Discovery a lot at home. In fact I'd say those three, plus Sox games, make up about 90% of our TV time. I also loved those Planet Earth DVD/BD's. History and Discovery are usually pretty good, but more and more they're throwing on garbage like Ax Men,Ice Road Truckers, Ice road Loggers, Swords, Deadliest Catch, etc. etc. And the production on their new Clash of the God show is crap, though it'd probably be good otherwise. edit: Yeah, and garbage like Monster Quest. Planet Earth was phenomenal. I can still watch it over and over.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 26, 2009 -> 06:23 AM) I heard about this last night. I knew he didn't have much time left but I didn't know it was imminent. RIP. He survived well beyond his initial prognosis.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 09:25 PM) Could I just get my info straight from the Democratic committee instead? They may not talk down to their audience enough. Seriously though, NOVA blows away most anything Discovery or History does and its without commercials chopping it all up.

Then force people to watch PBS and listen to NPR. Lot less commercials (as long as it isn't a pledge drive!)

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 09:11 PM) I tend to think like lostfan here. What, that Cheney is and always has been FOS?

LOL. That's all I can say about White Sox baseball at this point.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 06:18 PM) 5 bucks says kap forgets he made that post and never follows up QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 06:22 PM) I'm pretty sure less access to information didn't exactly make people smarter. more access to inaccurate or disinformation makes them dumber. Also, you run the risk of getting into echo chambers full of confirmation bias where your ideas are only supported and never challenged. The Series of Tubes makes it easier to find like-minded idiots.

QUOTE (NIUSox @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) I know I'm really looking forward to this class. I ordered the books online and they haven't come yet but they all sounded very interesting. I have had the professor before and he is one of my favorites so it should be good. Ill have to listen and look at updates of the game on my phone at the same time though. You might be interested in Ken Miller's "Only a Theory."

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 04:05 PM) (Marxist) hope and change. I kid, I kid. I do think that "soundbyte" dilemmas are a lot more prevalent now then ever before because most Americans don't have a clue how to think critically anymore. I don't have any cites to back this up but this seems like false nostalgia to me. We may be bombarded with more jingoism and polemics these days, but I don't know that we thought better in the past.

A lot of places had incentives on top of the CARS program for as much as $8500 off of sticker price.

Along that line, my mom used to sell Amtrak trips. She had more than a handful of people call in asking for the train to Hawaii.

QUOTE (NIUSox @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 02:33 PM) Your taking a botany class? Haha, for some reason that sounds funny to me. Let me know if you need help in that. I'm taking: Calc 2 Evolution and the Creationist Challenge Ecology Entomology Should be an interesting semester. Sounds interesting. I wonder if they go through blogs and forums for case studies.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 02:48 PM) ok, so then when the study was conducted, just the association of the question itself may lead people to say "9/11 and Iraq" were connected? I have not read the entire study but this part is sort of weird. I mean, I've conducted enough graduate level "surveys" to understand leading questions and trying to not get takers to be lead to an answer but ... ??? I think if you dig into the research methods it'll be clear what they were doing. These were follow-up interviews after initial surveys were returned.

for Kap: This “denial” category provides one clue to the survey findings of high rates of belief in a link between Iraq and 9/11: some respondents may make a mistake on the survey because of a general unfamiliarity with the region, even if they do know the current state of the evidence. By engaging in a dialogue with the respondent, we were able to show that he had a clear sense of the state of evidence, but slipped in his more general knowledge and mental classification of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a finding that is not possible using simple survey methods. Seven interview participants out of 49 (14.3 percent) fell into this “denial” category. This suggests that polls asking about a link between Iraq and 9/11 may overstate the true level of belief in the link.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 02:22 PM) During the election cycle, I'm almost certain that Bush himself was VERY clear in saying "Iraq did not have anything to do with 9/11". And yes, I'm quoting that. From the study's methodology: President Bush himself said, “This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda.” which is the phenomenon they investigated. I was incorrect earlier.

^I believe that's covered in the studies referenced in the paper. Also, along this line, they attempt to examine this issue: "How can we distinguish empirically between the informational explanation [what information is available] and the social psychological explanation ["inferred justification"]? If the information environment explanation is accurate and the belief is explained by incorrect information given or suggested by the administration, then we would expect correct information given by the administration to reduce rates of belief in the link. However, if the belief is maintained through social psychological processes, then we would expect little change in the face of correct information given by the administration. To distinguish empirically between these hypotheses, we need to present respondents who believe in this link with information from the Bush administration itself that casts doubt on the link. If voters show a willingness to change their minds in the face of this information, we can conclude that the belief in the link was a product of incorrect (prior) information given or implied by the administration. However, if they show resistance to the correct information, then social psychological processes are likely to be at work."

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 02:08 PM) Actually, they were. The ONLY thing that was out there was Atta meeting someone in Baghdad, but that was it. And even that was pretty clear that 9/11 attacks and Iraq were not linked (that is to say, Iraq/Saddam perpetrated 9/11). No, they weren't. They weren't explicitly claiming it, but it was implied and wasn't denied until after that time period. The rest of your post is absolutely true and that was the point of the study. There weren't any links but people made them up in their minds with a little help from a useless MSM and conservative pundits. edit: "they" refers to the Bush administration, not the intelligence community.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 25, 2009 -> 02:03 PM) I still cannot believe that a lot of people believe this, especially when it was pretty crystal clear BY THE ADMINISTRATION ITSELF that this was not true. Even the favorite Darth Vader target Cheney has said over and over that there was no link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. The data for the study are from 2003/ 2004. They weren't actively denying links then. edit: they were, see below.

I think its a bit different from that, too. what the study purports to show isn't that people believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11 because of some a priori assumptions or ideas like you'd have with confirmation bias. A bigger form of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" and attributing a self-fabricated cause to an effect because an effect must have a cause. edit: the researchers introduced a new term "inferred justification" for this. edit edit: here's the actual article. http://sociology.buffalo.edu/documents/hof...article_000.pdf "One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of “challenge interviews” on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration’s decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11."

I'll see you your cognitive dissonance and raise you a Dunning-Kruger! This isn't exactly the same, though. It seems to go back to our innate pattern-finding; there must be a reason for things being the way they are.

It's not really honoring or respecting the Illini tribe(s) when its based off of non-Illini tribes, though.

A glitch in accounting White House sharply increases deficit projections

http://www.physorg.com/news170070531.html We do a lot of post hoc rationalization for our actions and beliefs. We want to have a reason for doing an action, even if its completely fabricated.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Aug 24, 2009 -> 04:51 PM) This all comes out right before Congress comes back to vote on health care. Smokescreen, baby. Edit - to say it better, this has been simmering for months - and they're going to pursue this right at the same time. Right. Nice motives. Hey, I was right. Smokescreen! court-ordered release under the FOIA.