Letters to the Editor
casual_observer
Published Letters: 1249 Editor's Choice: 1
-
Denial, or Blinding Paradigm?
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Some of the 20+% may be in denial. Others may simply not be percieving contrary information/evidence. Text below is from Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. As argued several weeks ago in a similar thread, dead-enders may be literally blinded by their paradigm. Below, the experiment uses playing cards that have been modified so that they don't fit standard expectations. But the same may well be said for the social/political realm. Published news, and the facts, trends and opinions contained therein, may simply be un-perceivable and un-interpretable to dead-enders, because these facts and trends fall outside their rigidly established paradigm of what the world is, and how it works:
"In a psychological experiement that deserves to be far better known outside the trade, Bruner and Postman asked experimental subjects to identify, on short and controlled exposure, a series of playing cards. Many of the cards were normal, but some were made anomalous, e.g. a red six of spades and a black four of hearts. Each experimental run was constituted by the display of a single card to a single subject in a series of gradually increased exposures. After each exposure the subject was asked what he had seen, and the run was terminated by two successive correct identifications.
Even on the shortest exposures, many subject identified most of the cards, and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all. For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal. The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of either spades or hearts. Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience. One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified. With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly. Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some would say: That's the six of spades, but there's something wrong with it--the black has a red border. Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation. Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others. A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of their categories. Even at fourty times the average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what they were, more than 10 per cent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified. And the subjects who then failed often experienced acute personal distress. One of them exclaimed: "I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. I don't know what color it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure now what a spade looks like. My God!"
-
Sysprog--Waas
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Read it this morning. Wish I could say I was surprised. But I'm not. The action Waas describes is absolutely, totally, consistent with what has been learned about the politicization of DOJ.
A couple of thoughts--first, I'm curious about who the senior admin. official is who leaked the documents and comments. You'd think any and all whistleblowers had been taken out long ago, and yet, apparently, here's another one. Or is this not a whistleblower?
Second thought--the 9,000 pound gorilla in the 'politicization' sitting room is the military--politicization of the military would be the ultimate sin. And yet, when we see how pervasive and 'complete' this Rovian process has been in our government, one must seriously consider the unthinkable--has the Admin. taken any steps (similar to what we've seen in DOJ, GSA, Interior, etc.) to politicize the military?
-
WT--Military politicization
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]WT,
Yes, I do remember that, and was thinking about it when posting. But I don't view the religious-right moves as stemming from Rove. I believe that in his view, religious conservatives are tools and/or fodder. Their actions are separate from his, or so it seems to me.
But, if I were a democrat on a military-related committee in house or senate, the issue of politicization would be on my mind.
-
Broken Branch
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not only should there be a response from the journalistic realm, as GG notes, but there should also be a response from any number of members of the house and senate. That is, from statesmen. It is a pity that Wellstone is gone. Because if he was here, he would clean and filet Mansfield from the senate floor, and make us all proud to be americans.
I'm reminded of a recent session at Penn with Norman Orenstein and his co-author [forgotten the name] that made it onto C-Span recently. Excellent discussion, in which they echoed the 'broken branch' themes. Mainly lamenting the lack of true deliberation, true debate, in either the house or senate.
Who on earth should be more motivated against Mansfield's thesis than a sitting member of the house or senate?
-
Meanwhile, at the Washington Post--
[Read the article: The Politico: Exhibit A for our broken political press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Front Page "Democrats Back Down on Iraqi Timetable"
Describing how Pelosi and Reid are caving-in to Bush on the timeline. But Pelosi and Reid are denying it according to TPM, and the story itself doesn't seem to agree with the headline. Very fishy. Is this another of these "Pelosi's Head About To Explode" pieces?