You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2008.
“Deceive one and you’re a liar. Deceive thousands and you’re a cable news channel.”
- Xenocrates
I’ve been watching cable news for a long time and I will admit that running a 24 hour cable news network on live national television is no small feat. That’s why occasionally, even with the best intentions, the monotony can get to the producers who have to be constantly coming up with new ideas and ways to tell true stories. That’s why any cable news channel has to have a bevy of staff writers and producers who are constantly innovating. They have to. But no matter how hard they try, human emotion always finds a way into the mix with these gloomy lunatics with their fluffy boom sticks and their cheap verbal tricks. Now some cable news channels make this faux pas only every once in a while. Unfortunately, some like Fox News make that mistake frequently. Now even though CNN and other stations clearly have some liberal bias, at least they have the dignity to not make it appear so blatantly. Fox News on the other hand is clearly conservatively biased and has unapologetically exposed themselves as a Republican propaganda machine. Yet, they have the audacity to classify themselves as being “fair and balanced”. How is this possible? It’s based on a very simple explanation really. Allow me to elaborate:
Read the rest of this entry »
“Politics is the subtle art of convincing other people that they already agree with your opinion.”
- Xenocrates
After a long, protracted and vicious political fight, Barack Obama, a 47 year old senator from Illinois, clinched a very decisive victory over his Republican rival, John McCain – all while still only on his first term as a senator. That’s a huge accomplishment, considering he only became senator in 2004. This is the definition of a meteoric rise. All over the world, the second coming of Chri… err… I mean, Obama’s victory signaled the end of eight years of a political mess of epic proportions under the previous administration. This is HUGE. But I don’t think half of America realises how huge this really is. Most people are clueless of the true combo buster Obama used to decisively win this one. In this post, I expose the true genius of Obama’s campaign. This was no election. This is the beginning of an epic revolution. Barack Obama is much bigger than I originally thought he was.
“Conflict over belief is as worthwhile as conflict over a favourite colour.”
- Xenocrates
There are many systems of belief in the world. Most beliefs are propagated by the innate compulsion of their subscribers to derive purpose from the world around them. As such, religion is effectively a moderate transmutation of mythology, philosophy and science. It attempts to be the silver bullet that is the catch-all solution for all of life’s problems. That’s why religion is the most conspicuous of all systems of belief. It attempts to explicitly fill the gaps science and philosophy do not. However, there are some dark, disturbing characteristics about religious belief that a lot of religious people are either unaware of or seem to ignore altogether. Growing up in an environment that catered to the far Christian right taught me a lot of highly valuable lessons about these characteristics. This post details the top ten most valuable lessons I’ve learned about religious cognition. Most of these I learned after intense debate and oftentimes, vicious confrontation: Read the rest of this entry »
Chatterboxes