Pew Research Center: Social Segregation – A 2007 Pew Research survey found that while a large majority of Americans say they have friends of a different race, pluralities of whites (45%), blacks (35%) and Hispanics (39%) say they have "just a few" friends of a different race. About a third of whites and blacks say they have "some" friends of a different race, and very few say that either "all" or "most" are of a different race.
Atom | Post | Anti-Scientology…Infomercials? – As any insomniac, cokehead, chronic drunk, or really boring vampire could tell you, late night informercials are the best entertainment value for the dollar. Considering that they are not only free, but in most cases actually cost you money, that may not be saying much. So we tend to think of them as scams; beautiful lies just there to bilk us out of our hard-earned money, so that men with expensive teeth can purchase tacky landscaping for their McMansions. But that's not always the truth – not for Vince Offer anyway: A man who, along with Slap Chops and ShamWows, is also hawking freedom from cultish rule, and long-awated justice for those suffering at the hands of religious oppression .
Search Term Stats Show Sad State of the Economy – HotHardware – You don't have to search hard to find signs of the economic downturn. Just look at the newspaper, or your favorite website. But a new report on Americans' search behavior by market research firm comScore emphasizes the FUD of Americans during this recession.
How to Make and Spread Rumors | Dan Zarrella – In 1940, the British military formed an organization as a part of the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, called the “Underground Propaganda Committee” or UPC whose mission was to create and disseminate rumors as defensive weapons against the expected Nazi invasion of the the English mainland. They code-named the rumor weapons “sibs,” short for siblare, latin word “to hiss.” During the war they developed the craft and science of designing rumors and developed international networks of agents to spread the sibs.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Losing the thread – Field mice and volcano monitoring are just never going to work as well as “welfare queens” and “young bucks buying T-bones” did. They’re too complicated. Since Republicans make most of their stories up anyway, why not at least make up stories that are easy for people to follow and might potentially scare voters? My guess is that they think that because pundits eat their convoluted mythology up, voters will too. But voters just don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to make themselves understand these stories in the first place.
