I know it will shock every reader of this blog to discover this, but this groundbreaking study proves what we've all known: Watching Fox News will make you stupid. Or keep you stupid. Or something. What it won't do is inform you. As Christian Finnegan pointed out to David Shuster on Countdown, Fox News' goal is not to inform, but to "provide light intellectual cover for the gut prejudices you already have."

Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a poll of about 700 New Jersey residents. They adjusted the results for partisanship and came to the following conclusion:

Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.

Wow, who could've guessed? I'll bet if they polled Fox News viewers today, they'd say pepper spray is a vegetable!

I found some of the underlying data more interesting than the conclusion.

Continue reading »

MyDamnChannel: "Avid concert pianist Condoleezza Rice (Judith Owen) muses in her study about her relationship with George W. Bush, and where it all went wrong." Open Thread below....

I know they're making it harder for vets to get disability, but this is outrageous:

The VA rejected an Afghanistan veteran's disability claim for PTSD last month, citing his membership in VoteVets.org as a reason for the denial.

Staff Sergeant Will King retired from the Army in late 2003, after serving in both the first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. As one of the first troops into the Afghan theater after 9/11, Will had been awarded a Bronze Star after participating in fierce fighting in the Shah-e-Kot Valley in March 2002. I know, because I was there with him.

As the months turned to years after his retirement, however, Will started having problems as the Iraq War dragged on. Depressed and unable to sleep, he thought it might be PTSD. Because, as those who study PTSD know, this is perfectly normal: The symptoms of PTSD frequently have a delayed onset that can take months or years to fully materialize. That's why, in April 2007, Will filed a claim with the VA for combat-related PTSD. The VA eventually agreed with Will and diagnosed him with mild PTSD. But Will felt like his condition was worse than that. And to boot, he thought it was getting worse. So Will appealed, and filed another disability claim with the VA in November 2007: He felt his symptoms were serious enough to warrant an increase in his disability rating from "mild" to "moderate."*

Unfortunately for Will, the VA denied his claim six months later, in May 2008. And while I won't challenge the VA's ultimate decision (I'm not a doctor), I find it repulsive that they cited Will's membership in VoteVets.org as a reason to deny his claim.

This is what the VA told Will in his denial letter:

The examiner states your PTSD symptoms are still present but you do not report symptoms at a degree or level which appears to suggest more severity. The examiner concurred with the previous diagnosis and assigned Global Assessment of Functioning Score of 52, stating you have occasional suicidal ideation but are able to cope with these symptoms and continue to function. The treatment reports from Memphis show you are currently involved with VoteVets.org, an advocacy group for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. You indicated involvement with this advocacy group makes you feel coping with your symptoms is worthwhile. The treatment note of March 10, 2008, indicates no homicidal or suicidal ideation and no thought disorder.

The Art of the Possible: Let's look at the question of Vice-Presidentialism on the Democratic side.

Once Upon a Time: Arthur continues to demonstrate why he's considered by many of us to be one the best.

The Moderate Voice: ESPN fires Mark Madden for Kennedy assassination remarks. Apparently sports fans are more discerning than the pea-brained dittoheads who listen to wingmutt radio. Rush Limbaugh got that message in a hurry a few years ago.

skippy the bush kangaroo: Time to stop buying donuts - an action alert

Best wishes to Libby Spencer

HOLY CRAP: Pentagon-connected ministry is electioneering and Obama-bashing...Who profits from "Biblical Capitalism"?...A traditional news outlet finally notices the religious elephant in our political living room...The real impact of the Hagee-McCain divorce...Faith Factor Factbox...The General's Ride...Louisiana dragging science ed. back into the swamp...Beyond Belief...Clinging to the Crucifix...Bible study for atheists

'cause I've been a NASA geek since I was a kid...

Science Daily:

A NASA spacecraft has sent pictures showing itself in good condition after making the first successful landing in a polar region of Mars.

The images from NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander also provided a glimpse of the flat valley floor expected to have water-rich permafrost within reach of the lander's robotic arm. The landing ends a 422-million-mile journey from Earth and begins a three-month mission that will use instruments to taste and sniff the northern polar site's soil and ice.

"We see the lack of rocks that we expected, we see the polygons that we saw from space, we don't see ice on the surface, but we think we will see it beneath the surface. It looks great to me," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for the Phoenix mission.[..]

"Seeing these images after a successful landing reaffirmed the thorough work over the past five years by a great team," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of JPL. A key milestone still ahead is the first use of the lander's 7.7-foot-long robotic arm, not planned before Tuesday.

"Only five of our planet's 11 previous attempts to land on the Red Planet have succeeded. In exploring the universe, we accept some risk in exchange for the potential of great scientific rewards," said Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Phoenix carries science instruments to assess whether ice just below the surface ever thaws and whether some chemical ingredients of life are preserved in the icy soil. These are key questions in evaluating whether the environment has ever been favorable for microbial life. Phoenix will also study other aspects of the soil and atmosphere with instrument capabilities never before used on Mars. Canada supplied the lander's weather station.

For quite a while, the debate over blogs in the Defense Department was over whether U.S. troops should be allowed to have them at all. On the one hand, some officials were concerned about security breaches, with troops inadvertently sharing compromising information online. On the other, some saw blogs as a morale-boosting outlet for the troops.

But as Noah Shachtman explained in an interesting report, a study was written for U.S. Special Operations Command that took an entirely different approach to online communication, which included the suggestion of possibly “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”

“Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering,” write the report’s co-authors, James Kinniburgh and Dororthy Denning.... Denning, a professor at Naval Postgraduate School, adds in an e-mail, “I got some positive feedback from people who read the article, but I don’t know if it led to anything.”

The report introduces the military audience to the “blogging phenomenon,” and lays out a number of ways in which the armed forces — specifically, the military’s public affairs, information operations, and psychological operations units — might use the sites to their advantage.

The Kinniburgh/Denning report was quite provocative, suggesting paying prominent bloggers to address “entrenched inequalities,” presumably in the media. The study did, however, note the downsides of such a plan: “People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.” You don't say.

Now, it’s worth emphasizing that there’s no apparent evidence that the Pentagon actually put any prominent bloggers on the payroll. A spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command told Shachtman that the Kinniburgh/Denning report was merely an academic exercise: “The comments are not ‘actionable’, merely thought provoking.”

As far as I know, prominent bloggers who toe the administration’s line on Iraq policy are doing so for misguided ideological reasons, not unethical financial ones.

Ah your "librul" media at work.

Zappatero at SquareState.net noted this article at the Denver Post.

The Denver Post, while finding an astonishing fact about Big Oil Bob Schaffer, proceeds to muddy up the comparison between Schaffer the extremist and the eminently reasonable Mark Udall.

One analysis of Schaffer's three-term congressional record places him as the 14th most conservative out of more than 3,400 lawmakers to go to Washington since 1937. Udall, though less extreme, falls squarely within his party's liberal wing — and based on his votes is more liberal than Clinton and Obama.

Less extreme? Schaffer was ranked the 14th most conservative out of more than 3,400 lawmakers. Udall was ranked 509th, although that number doesn't show up in the article. 14th (R) = 509th (D). It's fair and balanced! And according to the Post article, both need to work on coming to the middle.

The Post continues to compare Apple Pie to Oranges:

Those voting records present significant problems for the early strategies of both campaigns, which depend on repositioning their candidates to appeal to the moderate and independent voters who most experts say will decide the race.

That would be ok if it was true. Unfortunately, for all of us Denver Post readers, and the candidates and the voters, it's not. Here are some stats on how voters now trust Democrats overwhelmingly on the issues

There's more...the update looks at the data and finds that if you look at the data for the current crop of politicians (the data used for the Post study goes back to 1932), the numbers become even more stark and surprise, surprise! Schaffer is on the far right extreme and Udall is basically right there in the middle as he claimed.

Download | play Download | play (h/t BillW)

I admit to being completely biased to the appeal of Denmark, as my family is Danish and I travel to Denmark as frequently as I am able to see them. But a recent study has borne out what I've experienced myself for years: the people of Denmark are the happiest people on Earth. (study here-U.S. is #26)

But Danish happiness is one that most Americans don't seem to grasp, because most Americans confuse well being with being well off. Danish happiness is derived from lower expectations, rather than having to be #1. The need to be superlative is supplanted with a contentment of where you are and not needing to keep up with the Joneses. It is also a contentment of not worrying about some basic necessities: healthcare, childcare, education, retirement and long term care. Republicans are quick to demonize the socialism as something akin to the scary Red notion of communism, and it's true that in a socialist democracy like Denmark, the average person is taxed at about 50%, which is uncomfortably high to our American ears, but ask yourself how much of your paycheck goes to health insurance, childcare, college savings plans and retirement accounts. Few people in the US can say that less than 50% of their paychecks don't go towards those needs already. In fact, one of my friends discovered that they actually brought home more money by having the wife stay at home with the kids, because her entire paycheck went to childcare and costs relating to her work.

In The Science of Happiness, author Stefan Klein at this phenomena and comes to some conclusions on a meta-level on what creates happiness in a society and the results might surprise you. He finds that there are three critical standards that must be met: a civic sense, social equality and control over our own lives. The more participatory the democracy, the more equal the social and income distribution among the citizens and the more self-determination (meaning not being forced to do a job you dislike because you have to pay the bills), the happier the society is.

That's not so scary, is it?

You can get the full segment and transcripts on CBS.com

The WaPo reported the other day that at least 14 states have “either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting [sex education] funds or are not expected to apply,” because the Bush administration mandates abstinence-only lessons in public schools receiving the funding.

“We’re concerned about this,” said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. “My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It’s the youths in these states who are missing out.”

Actually, that’s backwards. The youths are better off with actual sex-ed.

Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex, according to the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Whaddaya know; giving young people reliable, accurate information about sexual health leads to safer, more responsible behavior. Maybe someone get pass word along to the Bush administration.

Tom Scarritt in today's Birmingham (AL) News:

If you are reading this col­umn, chances are you are more successful than the average person, more involved in your community and less likely to be in prison.

That is not because of anything I have written. It is because you have chosen to read.

A new study by the Na­tional Endowment for the Arts suggests that reading transforms lives. "Regular reading not only boosts the likelihood of an individual's academic and economic success -- facts that are not especially surprising -- but it also seems to awaken a person's social and civic sense," wrote Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA. Read more...

And yes. Blogs count.