Here are a few suggestions for driving that I think we would all be wise to adopt.
1)If, when driving along a two lane county road, you look into your rear view mirror and the line of traffic behind you stretches out as far as you can see, SPEED UP.
2)If you decide to sit at a stop light or stop sign and watch me approach from a long way off, only to dart out in front of me at the last second, that's ok. Just GO.
3) One would assume that the older a person gets the bigger the hurry they would be in; after all, they may die before they reach their destination. One would be mistaken.
4)The merge lane is, in fact, a merging lane. Do not stop. Do not slow down. For the love of God, speed up and merge!
5)If you have the right-of-way, TAKE IT.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/01/12/atomization.html
When I was in the Army taking training to become a generator mechanic (I never touched a generator after being assingned to a permanent duty station in Furth, Germany,) I learned that the process of 'atomization' refered to fuel being sprayed into the cyclinder by the fuel injector. This process is very important due to the fact that a solid body of fuel, whether gasoline or diesel, will not explode but rather burn slowly. Rosen refers to the 'atomization' of people in respect to how they receive their news.
Atomization of people, in this context, is readily apparent in regards to print and television media. Suppose that you are a resident of a small town in the western United States around the turn of the 20th century. News did not travel fast and when it did it was hard to seperate the rumor from the truth. The only regular news outlet available to you would be the local newspaper and it is not inconceivable to believe that the publisher of a small, local newspaper could use this means to affect, and in varying degrees, shape public opinion on a myriad of issues. With no other media outlet at hand you would have no choice but to accept whatever the paper decided to print.This can be seen to some degree today in the very conservative bias displayed by Fox News and, conversely, the decidedly liberal slant of CNN News. The difference today is that we have a wide variety of sources which give us the ability to see both sides and decide for ourselves. In the far flung, unconnected societies that typically made up America in the past, this was not possible.
Rosen theorizes that there are three distinct spheres of human thought and that the media as a whole has much influence on the things that we, as people, hold as true or false.
The innermost sphere is that of consensus. That is, the collective body of ideals and principles that we hold to be absolute truth and not open to debate. They are right, therefore there is no need to debate issues.
The outermost sphere contains those ideas and thoughts that people generally see as deviant, or outside the norm. This sphere encompasses things such as the gay and lesbian community,radical political models, drug use, etc.
The middle ground, being the sphere of ligitimate debate acts as a transition area where concepts and ideas may move from being considered deviant to being considered truth and vica versa. According to Rosen, this is the millieu of the media. By deciding what issues are appropriate for discussion the media holds considerable control over what is held as truth and what is not. Again, imagine you live in an isolated community with only one source of news. It would be very easy for a man, or small group of men, to gain control of a populace simply by reporting what they want the people to know and ommiting anything to the contrary.
Television, despite being the ruination of American society, can be very instrumental in offering many differing points of view. This allows a person to look at both sides of a particular issue and decide how they personally feel about it. The problem remains that, even in the midst of a great variety of opinions, television media still chooses the topic very carefully so as to further their own agendas.
The internet is the greatest threat to this 'status quo' as it allows anyone to research any issue that they may interested in and be guaranteed that there are a great number of other people interested in the same discussion. As a result of this freedom of speech it is possible to see that the lines between these three spheres may become very blurred.
When I was in the Army taking training to become a generator mechanic (I never touched a generator after being assingned to a permanent duty station in Furth, Germany,) I learned that the process of 'atomization' refered to fuel being sprayed into the cyclinder by the fuel injector. This process is very important due to the fact that a solid body of fuel, whether gasoline or diesel, will not explode but rather burn slowly. Rosen refers to the 'atomization' of people in respect to how they receive their news.
Atomization of people, in this context, is readily apparent in regards to print and television media. Suppose that you are a resident of a small town in the western United States around the turn of the 20th century. News did not travel fast and when it did it was hard to seperate the rumor from the truth. The only regular news outlet available to you would be the local newspaper and it is not inconceivable to believe that the publisher of a small, local newspaper could use this means to affect, and in varying degrees, shape public opinion on a myriad of issues. With no other media outlet at hand you would have no choice but to accept whatever the paper decided to print.This can be seen to some degree today in the very conservative bias displayed by Fox News and, conversely, the decidedly liberal slant of CNN News. The difference today is that we have a wide variety of sources which give us the ability to see both sides and decide for ourselves. In the far flung, unconnected societies that typically made up America in the past, this was not possible.
Rosen theorizes that there are three distinct spheres of human thought and that the media as a whole has much influence on the things that we, as people, hold as true or false.
The innermost sphere is that of consensus. That is, the collective body of ideals and principles that we hold to be absolute truth and not open to debate. They are right, therefore there is no need to debate issues.
The outermost sphere contains those ideas and thoughts that people generally see as deviant, or outside the norm. This sphere encompasses things such as the gay and lesbian community,radical political models, drug use, etc.
The middle ground, being the sphere of ligitimate debate acts as a transition area where concepts and ideas may move from being considered deviant to being considered truth and vica versa. According to Rosen, this is the millieu of the media. By deciding what issues are appropriate for discussion the media holds considerable control over what is held as truth and what is not. Again, imagine you live in an isolated community with only one source of news. It would be very easy for a man, or small group of men, to gain control of a populace simply by reporting what they want the people to know and ommiting anything to the contrary.
Television, despite being the ruination of American society, can be very instrumental in offering many differing points of view. This allows a person to look at both sides of a particular issue and decide how they personally feel about it. The problem remains that, even in the midst of a great variety of opinions, television media still chooses the topic very carefully so as to further their own agendas.
The internet is the greatest threat to this 'status quo' as it allows anyone to research any issue that they may interested in and be guaranteed that there are a great number of other people interested in the same discussion. As a result of this freedom of speech it is possible to see that the lines between these three spheres may become very blurred.
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