Thursday, October 24, 2013

Concentration of Local Media


Bill Moyers has published a map that shows how media concentration has increased dramatically since 1996. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the graphic to embed well on this site, so you will have to be satisfied by this link.

This is an excellent illustration of the first component of Chomsky and Hermann's Propaganda Model of Media.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Anamorphis

Anamorphis is a distorted image that, when viewed from a particular angle or perspective appears normal. The following video, which I believe is an ad for Ray-Ban sunglasses, gives an impressive example of anamorphis.



This again demonstrates how much our perception of reality is a product of our particular perspective or the angle from which we view the image. Special thanks are due to one of my students at Cuyamaca, who found this example as part of a homework assignment in my Critical Thinking class.

Monday, October 7, 2013

The Power of Barking


Saw this on Facebook and I couldn't resist. This is a great example of a Post hoc fallacy. The dog thinks that because she barks and then the mailman doesn't murder the family that the barking causes the mailman to not murder. The post hoc in a nutshell.