Archive for the 'Perception Management' Category
‘If our mechanical doubles make us paranoid, we may need to think again.’
November 26th, 2013Via: Telegraph: Researchers have tried to find the cause of the uncanny valley. One of the most interesting insights has come from an international team led by Ayse Pinar Saygin of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Saygin and her team conducted an experiment scanning the brains of 20 subjects aged 20 to 36 […]
Bloomberg News Suspends Reporter Whose Article on China Was Not Published
November 18th, 2013Via: New York Times: A reporter for Bloomberg News who worked on an unpublished article about China, which employees for the company said had been killed for political reasons by top Bloomberg editors, was suspended last week by managers. The reporter, Michael Forsythe, was based in Hong Kong and has written award-winning investigative articles on […]
Siri, Have Those People Killed
October 28th, 2013Via: GQ: In 2011, Air Force psychologists completed a mental-health survey of 600 combat drone operators. Forty-two percent of drone crews reported moderate to high stress, and 20 percent reported emotional exhaustion or burnout. The study’s authors attributed their dire results, in part, to “existential conflict.” A later study found that drone operators suffered from […]
China: ‘Unprecedented’ Policy Changes Ahead
October 28th, 2013Via: Bloomberg: Chinese Politburo member Yu Zhengsheng said reforms to be discussed at a Communist Party meeting next month will be unprecedented, adding to signs that leaders are resolved to spur far-reaching policy changes. Yu’s comments, made in a speech at a forum to promote relations with Taiwan, were reported by the official Xinhua News […]
Science Has Lost Its Way, At a Big Cost to Humanity
October 27th, 2013I’ve posted about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Via: Los Angeles Times: In today’s world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you’d think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You’d be wrong. Many billions of dollars’ worth of wrong. A few years ago, […]
Help Wanted in Fukushima: Low Pay, High Risks and Gangsters
October 25th, 2013Via: Reuters: Tetsuya Hayashi went to Fukushima to take a job at ground zero of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. He lasted less than two weeks. Hayashi, 41, says he was recruited for a job monitoring the radiation exposure of workers leaving the plant in the summer of 2012. Instead, when he turned up […]
Modern China Depicted as Colorful, Communist Paradise by North Korean Propaganda Artists
October 23rd, 2013Via: The Verge: China’s propaganda posters used to depict idyllic landscapes and rustic villages, but today’s scenery resembles something far different. To imagine what modern Chinese propaganda would look like, two British artists commissioned a North Korean group that once made propaganda for their own state, creating a series of paintings that are a mix […]
Fructose: The Poison Index
October 21st, 2013Via: Guardian: The battle over the compound fructose now reaches new levels of obfuscation. The food industry is a strong – and loud, and rich – proponent, hard to ignore. The European Food and Safety Agency has just weighed in, in favour of the substitution of sucrose (table sugar: a disaccharide composed of the monosaccharides […]
JPMorgan Agrees to Tentative $13 Billion Settlement with U.S. Over Bad Mortgages
October 19th, 2013Woh. It they are agreeing to a $13 billion settlement, one has to wonder about the true magnitude of the damage caused by JPM’s behavior. These settlements typically represent pennies-on-the-dollar wrist slaps which seem to encourage companies to attempt even greater frauds. Via: Washington Post: JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, has reached a tentative […]
The Science-Is-Self-Correcting Myth
October 17th, 2013The scientific method sounds great on paper. Mix in grant swindling, incompetence and fraud and the “science” you get out the other side can turn into a bunch of bullshit. But don’t worry, science is self correcting! Via: The Economist: Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast […]
