Tag Archives: media

Overview of Denialism

From Hello Scienceblogs

Denialism is the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts to support one’s viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in distracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but ultimately empty and illogical assertions.

Examples of common topics in which denialists employ their tactics include: Creationism/Intelligent Design, Global Warming denialism, Holocaust denial, HIV/AIDS denialism, 9/11 conspiracies, Tobacco Carcinogenecity denialism (the first organized corporate campaign), anti-vaccination/mercury autism denialism and anti-animal testing/animal rights extremist denialism. Denialism spans the ideological spectrum, and is about tactics rather than politics or partisanship.

From Hello Scienceblogs

Via Denialism: It’s a tactic, not an ideology and Skepchick

The President wrestles with a pig

Fox News relishes Obama administration scorn

…the White House’s stance also gave extra lift to the network at a time when it is on track to record its best ratings year ever. This year, Fox News has averaged nearly 1.2 million viewers across all its programming, a 16% increase over the same period last year, according to Nielsen. In the two weeks since aides to President Obama took after the coverage, the audience has been 8% larger than the previous two weeks.

If anything, the Obama administration has succeeded in reinforcing Fox News’ identity as a thorn in the side of the establishment — a role the network loves to play.

“We may be No. 1, but there is sort of an insurgent quality to Fox News,” said senior political analyst Brit Hume. “And that’s kind of our attitude: ‘Hoist a Jolly Roger, pull out our daggers and look for more throats to slit.’ This is tremendous fodder for us. My lord, we’ve been living on it.”

Via Ann Althouse

Don’t trust the headline!

At USA Today you can see the title: Mystery solved: Dark energy isn’t there.

But in the body of the article it says:

The only problem is that for the equations to work, we must be “literally at the center of the universe, which is, to say the least, unusual,” says physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University in Tempe. “I think this is plausible mathematics, but it doesn’t seem physically relevant.”

So in order to get “mystery solved” you have to assume something that science has been moving away from ever since Copernicus.

Much more at Dark Energy: Still a Puzzle.

Food for the times

Tonight I noticed a pattern in my recent eating.

Dinner Today (Monday):  Spaghetti again with the leftover sauce from Saturday
Snack Yesterday (Sunday):  A couple bites of spicy Italian salami

Dinner Saturday:  Spaghetti with a red sauce including pork sausage
Dinner Friday:  Pork and vegetable pot stickers.

Let’s make this official: I am going to try to eat some pork product (pork, bacon, ham, sausage) every day until this media circus about swine H1N1 flu fades away.