Bridgegate scandal coverage puts media 'bias' on 'full display,' Christie says | NJ.com - 0 views
-
Gov. Chris Christie insisted during his latest trip to New Hampshire that the fallout from the George Washington Bridge scandal wouldn't have been as nearly as intense if he were a Democrat.
-
argued to early-primary voters Hillary Clinton escaped scrutiny for clearing the private server housing emails from her tenure as secretary of state because she's a Democrat and he declared "bias is on full display" when that's compared to his own controversy.
-
"Could you imagine if my response the day after
- ...8 more annotations...
Towns Reel As Banks Close Branches In Record Numbers : NPR - 0 views
-
Banks have been permanently shuttering branches for years, but the number of closures hit a record in 2020 as the pandemic accelerated the move by many customers to online banking.
-
Banks closed 3,324 branches last year, according to a tally by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
-
And bank branch closures are especially affecting isolated neighborhoods in big cities or towns like Moorhead — a largely African American community in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.
- ...10 more annotations...
Cognitive Bias - TOK Topics - 0 views
-
“People who are anxious because of the uncertainty that surrounds them are going to be attracted to messages that offer them certainty. The need for closure is the need for certainty. To have clear-cut knowledge. You feel that you need to stop processing too much information, stop listening to a variety of information and zero in on what, to you, appears to be the truth. The need for closure is absolutely essential but it can also be extremely dangerous.”
-
gether, and
Jordan McNair: University of Maryland reaches $3.5 million settlement with football pla... - 0 views
-
The University of Maryland has reached a $3.5 million settlement with the family of Jordan McNair, the offensive lineman who died after suffering heatstroke during a team workout in 2018.
-
"This has been a long and painful fight, but we will attempt to find closure even though this is a wound that will never, ever fully heal,"
-
An independent medical report found several issues with his treatment, including failure to assess his vital signs, not having proper cooling devices and failure to recognize quickly he was having heat illness.
- ...3 more annotations...
'All Hands On Deck': National Mall Is Closed As Agencies Fortify D.C. : NPR - 0 views
-
The National Mall, where millions of people have gathered to mark historic events in Washington, D.C., was closed to the public late Friday morning, as officials announced a string of security measures meant to foil any attempts to derail next week's inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
-
They urged people to enjoy the inauguration from home and to follow it online rather than in person.
-
With the National Mall closure, the public will be barred from entering an area some 2 miles in length from the Capitol complex to the Potomac River;
- ...5 more annotations...
U.S. prepares for coronavirus pandemic, school and business closures: health officials ... - 0 views
-
The United States has yet to see community spread of the virus that emerged in central China in late December. But health authorities are preparing medical personnel for the risk, Nancy Messonnier, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told reporters on a conference call.
-
The World Health Organization has warned that the window of opportunity to contain the international spread of the epidemic that has killed more than 2,200 people was closing, as the virus has spread to some 26 countries with a large cluster in South Korea and recent outbreaks in Iran, Lebanon and Italy
-
“Our goal continues to be to slow the introduction of the virus into the U.S. This buys us more time to prepare communities for more cases and possibly sustained spread.”
- ...3 more annotations...
What Michelle Obama Wore and Why It Mattered - The New York Times - 0 views
-
it had just been revealed that the campaign clothes budget for Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, was $150,000
-
And thus was an eight-year obsession born. Not to mention a new approach to the story of dress and power.
-
it set in motion a strategic rethink about the use of clothes that not only helped define her tenure as first lady, but also started a conversation that went far beyond the label or look that she wore and that is only now, maybe, reaching its end.
- ...11 more annotations...
-
This article takes a close look to Mrs. Obama's wardrobe, which I found to be very interesting. Even clothes can represent what a person is think about. There is a quote in this article that I really like: "Just because something appears trial does not mean it is any less powerful as a means of persuasion and outreach." Especial that it is the era of internet and you can find literally every detail online. People always like to assign meanings to things they see, though sometimes others don't mean it. Also, people are very easily influenced by social medias. For example, when I finish reading this article, the clothes Mrs. Obama chose suddenly become meaningful. Twenty-first century is an era of information. Even the smallest thing such as clothing can be a delivery of information
The Failure of Rational Choice Philosophy - NYTimes.com - 1 views
-
According to Hegel, history is idea-driven.
-
Ideas for him are public, rather than in our heads, and serve to coordinate behavior. They are, in short, pragmatically meaningful words. To say that history is “idea driven” is to say that, like all cooperation, nation building requires a common basic vocabulary.
-
One prominent component of America’s basic vocabulary is ”individualism.”
- ...12 more annotations...
Anti-vaccine activists, 9/11 deniers, and Google's social search. - Slate Magazine - 1 views
-
democratization of information-gathering—when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements—has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories
-
Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them.
-
Initially, the Internet helped them find and recruit like-minded individuals and promote events and petitions favorable to their causes. However, as so much of our public life has shifted online, they have branched out into manipulating search engines, editing Wikipedia entries, harassing scientists who oppose whatever pet theory they happen to believe in, and amassing digitized scraps of "evidence" that they proudly present to potential recruits.
- ...9 more annotations...
How The Internet Enables Lies - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast - 1 views
-
the ease of self-publishing and search afforded by the Internet along with a growing skeptical stance towards scientific expertise—has given the anti-vaccination movement a significant boost
-
She regularly shares her "knowledge" about vaccination with her nearly half-million Twitter followers. This is the kind of online influence that Nobel Prize-winning scientists can only dream of; Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous working scientist, has only 300,000 Twitter followers.
On Political Disagreement - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
On most political matters, then, we have what philosophers call “epistemic peers” — people at least our equals in the intellectual qualities needed to made good judgments about a given matter — who disagree with us. What should we make of this fact?
-
freedom of thought does not imply correctness of thought: my political right to assert my views does not mean that I have good reasons for holding them.
-
when epistemic peers disagree with me, I have a good reason to question my views. Shouldn’t I see their disagreeing as another piece of evidence in the political debate, one that may tip the balance against the case I have for my position.
- ...1 more annotation...
Our Cold Civil War Intensifies, Ctd « The Dish - 0 views
-
Taken alone, it would appear both sides share equal blame for the present political paralysis as each shifts to their ideological poles.
-
while both sides may be guilty of running to their respective corners, one is clearly more liable for putting the kibosh on negotiation deal-making.
-
one gets more liberal, the more he or she wants elected officials who compromise.
- ...7 more annotations...
When Beliefs and Facts Collide - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.
-
more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views.
-
One implication of Mr. Kahan’s study and other research in this field is that we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues – for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican
- ...1 more annotation...
Conservative Delusions About Inflation - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
the stark partisan divide over issues that should be simply factual, like whether the planet is warming or evolution happened.
-
The problem, in other words, isn’t ignorance; it’s wishful thinking. Confronted with a conflict between evidence and what they want to believe for political and/or religious reasons, many people reject the evidence. And knowing more about the issues widens the divide, because the well informed have a clearer view of which evidence they need to reject to sustain their belief system.
-
In fact, hardly any of the people who predicted runaway inflation have acknowledged that they were wrong, and that the error suggests something amiss with their approach. Some have offered lame excuses; some, following in the footsteps of climate-change deniers, have gone down the conspiracy-theory rabbit hole, claiming that we really do have soaring inflation, but the government is lying about the numbers
- ...7 more annotations...
The Virtue of Contradicting Ourselves - The New York Times - 0 views
-
We don’t just loathe inconsistencies in others; we hate them in ourselves, too. But why? What makes contradictions so revolting — and should they be?
-
Leon Festinger, one of the great social psychologists in history, coined the term cognitive dissonance to describe the discomfort you feel if you say or do something that is inconsistent with one of your beliefs
-
there was a catch: Sometimes people weren’t bothered at all by holding inconsistent beliefs
- ...11 more annotations...
New York Launches First COVID-19 Vaccination, Test Result App For Event Attendance : Co... - 0 views
-
Cuomo announced Friday that the state's health status certification, called the Excelsior Pass, will help New Yorkers voluntarily share vaccination and COVID-19 negative statuses with entertainment venues and other businesses to put the state state's economy back on track.
-
New Yorkers can always show alternate proof of vaccination or testing, like another mobile application or paper form, directly at a business or venue.
-
The pass could see New York's Broadway theaters, concert venues and sports arenas fill seats again after closures that started in March of 2020.
- ...4 more annotations...
Teachers, Students Meet For First Time After School Closures : NPR - 1 views
-
"I'd say, 'Wait! Don't tell me!' And try to guess their voices," Jeffords explains. "Some of them had such unique voices [over Zoom] that I could tell, but others never really spoke, so it felt like having new students in front of me."
-
"I'm a really social person," she explains. "Once you get used to waking up and then logging into class, it gets really tiring just sitting all day in your pajamas not doing anything. But waking up, having something to get ready for, seeing old friends – oh my gosh!' "
-
But there was one surprising difference when she actually met them in person.
- ...8 more annotations...
Cognitive Bias and Public Health Policy During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Critical Care Me... - 0 views
-
As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic abates in many countries worldwide, and a new normal phase arrives, critically assessing policy responses to this public health crisis may promote better preparedness for the next wave or the next pandemic
-
A key lesson is revealed by one of the earliest and most sizeable US federal responses to the pandemic: the investment of $3 billion to build more ventilators. These extra ventilators, even had they been needed, would likely have done little to improve population survival because of the high mortality among patients with COVID-19 who require mechanical ventilation and diversion of clinicians away from more health-promoting endeavors.
-
Why are so many people distressed at the possibility that a patient in plain view—such as a person presenting to an emergency department with severe respiratory distress—would be denied an attempt at rescue because of a ventilator shortfall, but do not mount similarly impassioned concerns regarding failures to implement earlier, more aggressive physical distancing, testing, and contact tracing policies that would have saved far more lives?
- ...12 more annotations...
Colleges are eliminating sports teams - and runners and golfers are paying more of a pr... - 0 views
-
Since COVID-19 emerged, dozens of colleges and universities have announced the elimination of different intercollegiate athletics teams.
-
But the majority of closures came at regional and local campuses that participate in the NCAA’s Division II and Division III, or the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Also, around 30 teams were eliminated by community colleges.
-
The 78 schools we examined spend around $87 million a year to keep all those teams going.
- ...7 more annotations...