Organic food turns people into jerks, and other deceitful headlines

Recently, a news story made the rounds about a study that concluded that organic food turns people into jerks. NBC News' Today show was one of many mainstream media that ran virtually identical headlines on this topic.

This instance of media bias may have been merely sloppy headline writing or some overworked copy editor in search of a good headline, but the effect was to mislead readers. It's a perfect example of how merely consuming the news media, even generally respected sites, can make you LESS informed, not more, if you do so uncritically.

The headline implies that eating organic food turns people into jerks, according to the study. But when you actually read the articles and use those critical thinking skills, you find out that the subjects don't actually EAT any organic food. They are merely SHOWN PICTURES of organic food.

So an intellectually honest headline would read, "Does *seeing pictures* of organic food turn you into a jerk?"

What's worse is that none of these news outlets bothered to raise questions about the credibility of research on the effects of organic food where none of the subjects actually ate organic food as part of the study. How such a flimsy study got such wide and uncritical media play perhaps creates a greater suspicion of media bias.

Godwin's Law, climate corollary

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


I know efforts to slow the stupidification of society may seem a lost cause but it's still worth pursuing...

Last year, I learned about something called Godwin's Law. It's a phenomenon I'd observed for a while but never knew had a name.

It goes: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches."

A generally accepted follow up is that anyone who invokes Hitler or the Nazis automatically loses the debate.

I think a corollary should be added.

Anyone who claims that an unseasonably cold day/week/month/year "proves" that climate change is bogus or otherwise discredits the widely accepted scientific consensus should automatically be disqualified from any discussion related not only to climate change but science in general.

The ban shall remain in place until the violator learns all of the following:

1) The difference between climate and weather;

2) The difference between an outlier and a trend;

3) The rudiments of statistical analysis and the scientific method.

Otherwise, I have the right to say that my recent $7 win in the scratch off lottery (thus increasing my gross income by about 10% as compared to the previous day) proves that the economy is booming.

Does anyone actually believe anything anymore?

Conservatives rooting against Chicago for the Olympics because it might be seen to benefit President Obama, Congressmen criticizing the president while abroad, Congressmen interrupting presidential speeches to call him a liar... all of these things would've been treasonous and unpatriotic five years ago and punishable by a one-way trip to Gitmo.

Similarly, presidential secrecy, the likely prospect of insane escalation in Afghanistan and defense of the worst aspects of the war against civil liberties... these would've provoked liberal fury against the White House five years ago but now we're told ad nauseum that we need to "be patient."

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that virtually no one actually believes anything any more (including smug liberals) and are so vapid that they're only interested in scoring cheap political points against the "other" side.

It's not a coincidence that most political links and rants tend to be more concerned with attacking the other side than defending its own side. Defending your own side requires that you actually care about DOING something. Attacking the other side is a lot more convenient, because it's easier to destroy than to build.

The saddest part is that if you are an American who actually believes in something and who won't give your side an unlimited blank check for things you'd crucify the other side for, then there's a good chance you are a closed-minded ideological fanatic who believe that anyone not your political clone is the spawn of Satan.

Didn't we used to be able to balance having principles with treating others like human beings?

Iran, Honduras, Niger and the knee jerks

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

ZNet has a good piece critiquing leftist knee-jerk reaction to the popular uprising in Iran. Opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi may be no progressive, having been the Ayatollah Khomeni's prime minister for most of the 1980s. The mere fact that the religious elite allowed him to be on the ballot in the first places means that he was never going to be a transformational figure.

And there is some question whether international reporting is overstating the extent of the protests because they seem concentrated in large cities and done by people with access to Twitter and cell phone cameras. By most accounts, the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains popular in the more conservative rural areas.

But it seems clear that the discontent is real, legitimate and home grown. And it also seems clear that the politicians, Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, have become almost incidental to the uprising and that the entire theocratic system is being called into question. The brutal overreaction of the system's forces of disorder seems to back up the wounded bear theory.

If the mostly secular western left can't support group of liberal minded citizens rising up against the oppression of a regressive, hypernationalistic conservative theocracy, then who can it support?

(Who knew that left-wing media whore Hugo Chavez was such a fan of conservative religious states? Then again, the cult of personality Chavez has erected around himself has some distinctly messianic characteristics)

Sadly, this seems to bolster my contention that some of the left are entirely preoccupied with who and what they're against, rather than who and what they are for.

And speaking of bloody power grabs, ZNet also has a good analysis of the illegal military coup in Honduras that exiled left-wing president Manuel Zelaya. Both Chavez and President Obama have denounced the coup. Since the knee jerks don't have independent thoughts of their own, I wonder how they'll react.

Though Ethan over at My Heart's in Accra blog ponders why the protests in Iran and the coup in Honduras got a wildly different international reaction than the coup in Niger. Then again, yellow cake controversies aside, the CIA has historically played little role in Niger so the knee jerks don't have a template, democracy and human rights not being a real factor for them.

"A mind is like a parachute: it only works when it’s open"

Mr brother sent me an article about a school district in Virginia where residents are trying to get Howard Zinn's A People's History of The United States removed from the Advanced Placement (AP) History reading list.

One parent said that kids taking the AP course "don't have the judgment to put this book into proper [perspective]."

Bear in mind that an AP course is by definition not only a college level course (and one presumably taken by the smartest, most intellectually driven 15-18 year olds) but it's voluntarily chosen by those who participate. No one is forced to take AP history.

There is no question that Zinn is politically incorrect.

What you're supposed to intone the half quote ("My country, right or wrong") not the full quote ("My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right").

What you're supposed to mouth is, "America is not perfect, but it's the best damn country in the world."

It's ok to acknowledge that America has been imperfect, but you’re not actually supposed to detail those imperfections.

You're supposed to present a rose-colored picture of history, not one that presents the whole truth. We don't want to learn from our mistakes so that's why we should never talk about them.

This is why so many of the crimes of the "war on terror" that we now regret are repeats of American crimes in previous conflicts. But most Americans aren't made aware of these parts of our history, because it's politically incorrect and, as in the Virginia school district, often consciously censored. As a result, they had no reason to realize that things like imperial occupation and waterboarding and other forms of torture were counterproductive (to say nothing of grotesquely immoral for a place that claims to be a "Christian nation") in the 19th and 20th century and thus they were almost guaranteed to be counterproductive in the 21st.

Discussion of topics like genocide and imperialism should be limited to the Nazis and the Brits, should be limited to "them."

Zinn doesn’t follow that politically correct orthodoxy.

This orthodoxy is why critical thinking is so badly lacking in this country. And if you think it's not important, just remember how many American were so quick to buy the bill of goods being sold about how the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliant ideas... in complete defiance of the common sense offered by historical perspective.

More tellingly, look at the degree to which people who exercised critical thinking by actually asking tough questions were denounced as unpatriotic for doing so.

Zinn argues that America has committed, and continues to commit, genocide and imperialism. Even if you don't think America has ever been guilty of those things, you should be allowed to argue that. But the point is that there ought to be a discussion. This is how healthy democracies operate.

A country that continuously pats itself on the back as the Leader of the Free World ought not to be so childishly insecure as to be afraid of an open dialogue.

One woman called Zinn’s book "a real slander of American history."

Let's leave aside her ignorance of the difference between slander (spoken) and libel (written). But even so, slander and libel unpleasant. They don't disagreeable. They mean untrue (intentional and with malice).

This flap is yet another example of a plague that's affecting America. People are more and more hostile to reading or hearing points of view that might be different.

And contrary to liberal smugness, this closed mindedness not unique to conservatives. The establishment liberal hostility to Ralph Nader was not toward his ideas (which were much closer to what liberals claim they believe in than were Obama's, Kerry's or Gore's), it was against the fact of his candidacies.

They steadfastly refused to engage Naderites on the ideas. They'd say that Nader is an idiot or naïve or a cancer or a Bush-enabler. But they'd never say he was wrong on the issues that they themselves most strongly advocated. They just thought he should shut up and disappear. They weren't afraid he was wrong. They were afraid he was right. And they were afraid that enough liberals might be open-minded enough to realize he was right, although this turned out to be an unfounded fear. And as much as liberals may refuse to admit it, this hostility toward Nader participating in democratic politics and pushing ideas they themselves believed in was just as nasty and closed-minded and virulent and frothing-at-the-mouth as anything you'll hear from Michael Savage.

Liberals watch Olbermann and Rachel Neddo on MSNBC. Conservatives watch O'Reilly and Hannity on Fox. Liberals read the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos. Conservatives read World Net Daily and the NRO.

The real problem isn't that people seek out views that are similar to their own. That's completely normal. The problem occurs when they ONLY seek out views similar to their own and don’t seek out or when they actively push away views that might challenge them to (gasp) think, examine and reflect.

Worse yet is when they seek retribution against opposing points of view. Book banning like I mentioned above is just one example. Another is when Democrats and Republicans conspire to keep smaller party and independent candidates off the ballot; don't beat them, silence them.

I've heard it argued that Obama critics ought to be thrown in jail for slander/libel; I'm sure Bush-Cheney apologists wish this had been true during their reign. It actually was once illegal in the US to criticize the federal government, as anyone who criticized World War I and the liberal saint Woodrow Wilson found out. Just ask Eugene Debs.

In fact, one of the important differences between generally free and generally unfree countries is slander/libel laws. In the US, for example, slander and libel are civil crimes. That means the violator is subject to being sued by the object of his alleged offense. In some countries in Africa and other parts of the world, slander and libel are criminal offenses. That means the violator is subject to being thrown in jail for long prison sentences. This is actually one of the most common ways that tyrants silence any and all political opposition. The human rights' community strongly believes that slander and libel should be civil crimes.

Too many people in this country chose to ONLY seek out agreeing points of view. Whenever they leave their echo chamber, they've been so bombarded with the notion that no humane or patriotic person could possibly disagree with liberal/conservative orthodoxy that they think it's perfectly reasonable to call others bloodthirsty fascists or an America-hating terrorist appeasers. Someone who disagrees with you is not wrong or misguided or ill-informed, they are evil.

When you shield yourself from differing points of view, you don't expose yourself to the possibility that people of good will can honestly disagree on important issues. To hide from (or worse yet to try to silence) differing points of view is, I dare say, the position of cowards.

Disagreement can cause discomfort, so people avoid it. But disagreement can also cause enlightenment. If your mind is open, it can cause your views to evolve or change. Some people reject this as "flip-flopping." I contend that being open to the possibility that you might sometimes be wrong is a sign of maturity. Absolute certainty is the domain of fanatics and sociopaths, of religious fundamentalists and revolutionaries.

Hopefully, you become wiser as you get older, learn more and experience more. If you change, why shouldn't your opinions change? If you evolve, why shouldn't your perspective evolve? If you're exposed to facts or opinions you hadn't previously considered, what's wrong with adjusting your point of view based on that new information?

Think of it this way. I have a canister of flour in my kitchen. As long as it remains in the canister, it will never be anything other than flour. But if I take it out and expose it to yeast and hot water, it will become dough. If I then expose the dough to heat, it will become bread. Bread tastes much better than flour.

If I screw up the yeast/water mixture or if I bake it for too long, then the result will suck. So it's a risk. But if I don't take that risk, if I never expose the flour to outside influences, the powder will never be anything other than flour. There will never be the possibility that it becomes something much better.

Modern technology is great. I love how customization allows me to find lots of news about Africa and about soccer, things that are ignored in the mainstream media here (except for the worst catastrophes). But it also allows people to make sure they're only exposed to points of view that fit their pre-conceived notions and to skip those that don't.

The word 'broadcasting' is a compound word, the first part being broad. You used to consume your broadcast media and be exposed to a BROAD range of things, whether sports, other hobbies or stories or political points of view.

This specialization has transformed things into narrowcasting, where every micro niche has its place. And that's useful for people with out-of-the-ordinary interests like me.

I don't have to suffer through 3 hours of watching random F-list celebrities play Xbox NBA on ESPN followed by 2 hours of faux angry discussion about how the injury to the Rams' third string long snapper might affect the fantasy leagues values just to get my 20 seconds of soccer highlights. I can just go to FSC or GolTV and skip the b.s.

It's also good because broadcasting has never been quite as broad as it should be. The mainstream media only includes points of view within a very narrowly proscribed spectrum, especially in news coverage. On any particular issue, there was the standard establishment liberal point of view and the standard establishment conservative point of view. Those who claim a 'liberal' or 'conservative' bias to the news media or a particular mainstream outlet are really missing the point.

The real bias comes from never hearing from non-establishment points of view. You almost never hear from leaders like Ron Paul or Ralph Nader. You almost never hear about smaller party and independent candidates for political office (much easier to invent non-stories by constantly analyzing polls and discussing strategy). Even though smaller party and independent voters make up a significant portion of the population.

When such people and ideas are mentioned, it's only sporadic tokenism not anything even vaguely resembling consistent.

Very religious people is another significant demographic that the media doesn’t know how to cover.

Rather than figuring out how to properly integrate into their coverage the points of view of smaller party and independent voters and of very religious people (each of whom make up a significant percentage of the population), the media just throws its hands up and doesn't make a serious effort.

Narrowcasting is a way for people like this see their point of view reflected. It's popularity is a testament at how much broader broadcast could be.

But narrowcasters are only useful if they supplement, rather than replaces, more general sources.

Ultimately, society will continue to become more polarized as long as people keep consciously rejecting any seed of dialogue with anyone else who might conceivably with 1 percent of what they to have to say.

People ought not to abandon their principles just to avoid the slightest hint of tension. But solutions need to be sought. The millions of unemployed aren't all conservatives. The tens of millions with no or too little health insurance aren't all liberals or progressives.

Ignoring the tens of millions of Americans who might disagree with you is self-indulgence that isn't going to solve anything. Suck it up, find people who may not share your political perspective and talk with, not yell at, them and see what happens.

The first casualty

I'm reading an intriguing book entitled The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop.

The basic premise of the work is that while America as a whole has become very evenly divided, communities are becoming increasingly homogeneous and that polarization is being aggravated by these millions of little echo chambers.

In the part I'm reading now, the author talks about how more and more positions are being taken not because of any ideological or principled basis but out of a reflexive reaction to 'the other side.'

When I was one of the very few on the American left to condemn the Russian aggression against Georgia, I was struck by the ferocity of the criticism against me.

But the fact of the criticism didn't surprise me. I was taking what was perceived to be 'Bush's side' and that was unacceptable.

My critics trotted some token criticism of an alleged Georgian war crime. But it was just that: token. If they really cared that much about it, they'd still be beating the drum for the alleged perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Their main objection was clearly that Georgia's president was too friendly with Bush so he deserved to have his country get the crap beat out of it by the Russian behemoth.

Never mind that this seems grossly inconsistent with the normally expressed progressive position against imperial wars and militarism.

Why do I think it was just token? Virtually no mention of these alleged Georgian crimes were made before the Russian invasion.

And here's another reason: in recent months, both rebel militias and the national army in the eastern DR Congo are guilty of far more extensive, far more brutal and far more devastating war crimes and crimes against humanity than anything the Georgian military is accused of.

Yet there's nary a mention among those who were so quick to condemn Georgia's alleged shelling of the civilian area of one city. The Congolese combatants are guilty of savagery that dwarfs anything the Georgians did, in a manner that's much longer and on a far greater scale.

The only difference I can see is that none of the combatants in the DRC are seen as pro- or anti-Bush so there's no Pavlovian bell to react to.

I opposed the Russian aggression on grounds that were consistent with my ideologies in favor of human rights and against militarism. And I've written several times about the nightmare in the DRC. Both are wrong. And Bush has nothing to do with either.

Bishop talks about this sort of knee jerk behavior in his book.

He points out that the first town in the US to place limits on DNA research was none other than Cambridge, MA, home of Harvard. One of the most liberal cities in America nearly outlawed genetic research in 1977.

But something changed.

When the religious right came out against embryonic stem cell research, however, it created "this reflexive response to that religious point of view", noted a San Francisco scientist.

Liberals like to think that questioning this kind of science is the unique provenance of uneducated, Bible thumping rubes.

So how do they explain this in the home of the most elite university in the nation? Do they forget that a century ago, the progressivism of the time supported eugenics?

I am pro-science but I'm not fundamentalist. When I was in West Africa, a colleague of mine often said to me, "Science without conscience will be the ruin of mankind."

He was no Einstein. He had no fancy degrees from elite institutions. He was a humble middle school biology and chemistry teacher in a tiny village in the West African jungle. I do not know his politics. He may not have been highly educated but he was very wise.

Of course, such knee-jerk behavior is not unique to the left. When Republican George Bush decided to launch his unprovoked aggression against Iraq, Republicans rallied behind him and intoned the mantra that it was treasonous to criticize a president during war time.

Many of these same Republicans were the most bitter critics of Bill Clinton and his decision to launch a NATO intervention in Kosovo. Bill Clinton was a Democrat.

People today are more concerned about being with 'their side' than about being right than anything else. Professed values just get in the war. That's why values get tossed out the window and rabidly anti-war citizens will eagerly get behind pro-war candidates. It's easier to pick a side than to search for what is often a messy, nuanced truth.

They say truth is the first casualty of war. The saying was directed toward conventional military conflict. But apparently it's also true of the culture wars.