Invisible Children | Kony2012.
If you are not aware of who Joseph Kony is, you should be. He is the embodiment of evil in a part of the world that is too often ignored by the rest of us and the fact that he has been allowed to carry on his reign of terror for well over 20 years is a testament to the power of apathy. Continue reading Apathy is Supremely Bad. For Everyone.
Key Word Filler
It’s a glaring bit of reality that most – AND I DO MEAN MOST – blogs on this InterWeb Highway exist only to direct you to links intended to help their owners profit somehow. I’m not quite sure what makes the technology tick on these things, but when I am researching one topic or another for valid reasons entirely my own, I am disproportionately directed to web sites that make no sense whatsoever. These are “robo-sites” that have been culled by a computer program in order to appear original, or compiled by some worker in a far-off land who may or may not have an actual grasp of the language in which the web page is “written.”
You might even see a random list of keywords inserted for no obvious reason. Here is one such list, carefully designed for potential links. Continue reading Loaded Marketing Blog Posts, Just Plain Dangerous
When a product claims to be “A good source of calcium!” – beware. Chances are that this is a smokescreen to get you to purchase an unhealthy product.
Seriously, suggesting that Product X is a good source of calcium is akin to stating that gin is a good source of water. Certainly, drinking 16 ounces of gin could be one way of getting a “serving” of water toward your daily quota. But is it the best way? Making gin your sole source of water would have disastrous consequences, at least for your liver. Probably also for your relationships and career, but that is another issue altogether.
A list of other candidates for a “good source” of water would necessarily include espresso, which is also a diuretic. This is the same sort of logic that many mega-brand corporate “food” packagers appear to follow Continue reading Nutritional Claims: Don’t Believe the Hype
This article brought up some thoughts about people choosing to either be dumb or promote ignorance in the name of greed:
In Heartland Institute Leak, a Plan to Discredit Climate Teaching – NYTimes.com.
The part that made me angry, actually, isn’t that there are people out there actually foolish enough to believe the message this group is spreading. Nor is it the fact that certain interests might finance their mission, which is at this point something I have sadly accepted as inevitable. What makes me angry is the willful attempt to disrupt the education of our children and fill their heads with what is at best confusing claptrap, at worst outright lies. Taking hundreds of thousands of private dollars and targeting that money toward a misinformation curriculum when our nation’s schools are already struggling so much because of political maneuvering and posturing and kowtowing is an unforgivable transgression against our society and the coming generations.
When I was a senior in high school, I caused a minor uproar with an essay I turned in to one of my writing classes decrying the use of proper grammar. It was intended as something of a personal joke between the teacher and myself, and the essay itself contained impeccable grammar. The truth is, the rules of grammar are very important for proper communication. I truly believe that. However, there are times that grammar gets in the way of creative expression. The rules cannot, however, be properly or effectively broken without having first been mastered. Which was kind of my point. Artistically speaking.
The teacher I wrote this for (Mr. R.) then took it to the teachers’ lounge and shared it with my journalism teacher (Ms P.) who took it quite seriously and literally and waved it like a flag of triumph in a battle for the hearts and minds of a rebellious generation. I’m still a little surprised that no one ended up bruised or bloody from the fallout Continue reading Grammar: Really, really bad.
As an inaugural post, although I think it is pretty obvious, it never hurts to point out that buying into Fear Mongering (as once popularized by the Bush-Cheney Years, but readily in use, well, forever and counting) is bad for you. It’s unhealthy to believe every scary headline on Fox News, and just as bad for you to believe every frightening claim made by homeopathic “medical practitioners” to scare you away from unnecessary medication or surgery… The fact is, people use hyperbole to sell you whatever they want, and lately it has become more aggressive than ever across all media. This is partly because of the blogosphere — truthfully, the level of misinformation out there is growing exponentially every day — AND WILL SOON CAUSE ALL KNOWN INFORMATION SYSTEMS TO COLLAPSE UNDER THE VIRTUAL WEIGHT OF IT ALL. Well, maybe not the part in bold, but there certainly is something there to be concerned with, and probably a little afraid of, until we can all take a breath and reason things out.