> On Mon, 05 May 2008 10:51:11 -0500, pseudomodo yahoo.com> wrote:
>

>> My friends & I have been talking about media stampedes, especially about
>> the recent hoarding of rice in the USA and Canada. The headlines scream
>> "rationing" and "shortages," but in America all that means is people are
>> being limited to buying two 50-lb bags of rice at Sams or Costco.
>>
>> It's no news that the rate-of-cycle on news stories has increased
>> dramatically in the past twenty years along with a general shelf life
>> decrease in all media. I see this going hand-in-hand with an increased
>> use of anxiety-inducing media techniques, from screaming headlines to a
>> broader negativity in popular arts and culture. The advertising
>> profession is renown for employing anxiety-inducing imagery (status
>> differential, solution-to-problem) to appeal to unconscious motivations,
>> to reify in the mind of the consumer "need for product." These
>> techniques have evolved to a dark art for quite a while (from the almost
>> inobtrusive "Burma Shave" ads to the insidious "Get laid with a
>> quadruple-blade razor" images on TV) and are now firmly planted in
>> attention-grabbing statements in politics and media. Remember the
>> Reagan-era concern about the use of "hot buttons?" It didn't go away, it
>> was simply flushed down the memory hole.
>>
>> Anxiety is the hardest-to-identify of our base instincts, it's integral
>> to the problem-solving and risk-assessment engine of ego - the grand
>> mechanism that defends the elusive specter of Self. Gotama used a
>> didactic style to address this, through long discourse employing
>> empirical disproof (not this, not that). It's a method of bring a mental
>> feature into starker relief against the background noise of the those
>> infernal and distracting aggregates.
>>
>> The implications for a civil culture are clear when societies might rush
>> to a premature solution against a perceived threat, but it's also
>> problematic in the sciences where the regime of falsification is
>> required to decouple evidence from belief and professional ego.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_cascade
>>
>> OK, those are your talking points. Now lemme see watchugot.
>>
>> /leebert

>
> Anxiety is easy to sell. So is anger and hatred.
> 24 hour news has to fill the talking heads mouths
> with something, however bizarre or innane. That's
> why I never watch TV except those times that I do.
> And many of the commercials are the best things on.
>
> What is it with all this entertainment anyway?
> Who needs to look at the boob tube for hours
> every day? Doesn't anybody have anything to
> do? Like the dishes or mowing the lawn or
> posting to usenet? Our ancestors made quilts
> and whittled furniture in their spare time.
> We just eat chips and stare into space.
> And then complain that we haven't the
> time to get anything done.
>
> Why can't we be like it was in my youth?
> We used to stare at the radio.
>
> To bring up a totally new off the wall issue,
> in the controversy over global warming the
> two sides seem to be 'stay the course' or
> 'innovate the future'. Since even without
> the CO2 controversy, many believe that the
> world has already passed peak oil production
> even as worldwide consumption escalates,
> staying the course is not an option.
>
> The recent spike in oil prices spells the doom
> of suburbia which was built in expectation
> of cheap energy. With the increase, all prices
> rise, especially food. The average supermarket
> item has traveled 1500 miles in a truck. Rich
> countries can afford food, but poor ones can't.
> And how long can we expect to get out of
> season fruits and veggies from the other
> side of the world?
>
> Coal is abundant, but is a known degrader of
> environment under present processes. We've
> been hogs at the trough, but the swill is getting
> scarce. Piss in the well long enough and the
> water will start to taste funny.
>
> Next we'll use the sun and the wind until we
> run out of them too.
>
> I predict that future commuting will be by
> helium balloons from our mansions in the sky.
> Powered by good old petroleum residues of course.
> (Unless I can patent my personal natural gas engine.
> It only hurts for a week or two after insertion.)
>
>