Archive for May, 2009
Suspicious Technologies
As someone who is somewhat familiar with computer terms and development processes, while reading the first paragraph in Anna Everett’s article I was taken back by her near assumption that software engineers had settled upon the terms “master” and “slave” because of existing human relationships. For her to think about this every time her computer [...]
Read moreDoes Our Media Support Deception? (VNR’s)
One example I find particularly disappointing is the way the media continues to support deception on the part of our government. In this case, the gov. primes the media outlets by offering so called “video news releases” (VNRs) which are nothing more that gov. produced propaganda. News stations often pick these up as cheap (free) [...]
Read moreProgress: Local Politics or Global Politics?
In Andrew Lakoff’s book there are several contradicting references to politics and progress. As pharmaceutical companies continue to create a market in which they can be profitable, in Argentina they face the obstacle of either standardizing the industry by convincing psychoanalyst that their drugs will allow for better analysis or by cutting them out completely. [...]
Read moreAnalyzing a Mainstream Media Poll
When it comes to public opinion polling I often feel like I can trust a survey conducted by a large corporation such as the New York Times and CBS News as long as its not an obvious marketing scheme. Because of this, I choose a survey that was reported on in the first week of [...]
Read moreDisaster at Chernobyl Documentary
A few years ago I remember watching a documentary on Chernobyl that was focused on the clean up of the site. One of the things that was evident throughout the film was how little help was given to victims and the clean up effort by other countries when Russian and eventually the Ukraine were clearly [...]
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