Ex Ferens

Conservatives think Colbert only pretends to be joking.

nobody@vox.com(Ex Ferens) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:05:05 -0700

Many say that academia is biased towards liberalism. In some ways I believe this is correct, in that I believe more professors would describe themselves as liberal rather than conservative. I don’t think that this means they are unprofessional and biased against conservative students. As this talk by Jonathan Haidt (see my previous post) demonstrates, one can be honest about your own personal views, while still furthering communication between liberals and conservatives.

But political psychology is a touchy thing. Take this excerpt from the abstract of a recent study as an example:

The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

The International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 14, No. 2, 212-231 (2009)

http://hij.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/212

“… there was no significant differencebetween the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservativeswere more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to bejoking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals weremore likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not seriouswhen offering political statements. Conservatism also significantlypredicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. “

Now, as a liberal, and as someone who has read interviews with Stephen Colbert, I am sure that he is himself liberal and is using irony and satire to poke fun at conservative politics. A liberal, this is funny, it makes me feel like I have one up on conservatives, who obviously don’t get him, and seem to be making an embarrassingly obvious mistake.

Though that interpretation definitely creates a strong entertainment factor for this study, it isn’t useful. The questions I should be asking are: what does this say about political communication? What is the reasoning behind the perceptions of the conservative participants?

Or even more basic questions like: Was this a well run study? Does this abstract actually say what it appears to say, or will it prove to be more complicated than it first appears if I read the whole study?

Political Psychology is fascinating, and potentially useful. It can easily be reduced to a game of one-upmanship if we are not careful, but done well, it can help us get along and unravel important political problems from a position of understanding, rather than ridicule.

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Political Psychology…what is it?

nobody@vox.com(Ex Ferens) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:02:09 -0700

The video that I like to refer people to to give them an idea of what political psychology is about is the TED talk by Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

LibsConserv1

This is a good example of what Political Psychology can do: find common ground between people with different views, and usefully further our understanding of how we think about Political problems and the people involved with them.

If you want to know more, about Political Psychology and yourself, try http://www.yourmorals.org

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The Future is Now - Viruses Engineered to Build Batteries

nobody@vox.com(Ex Ferens) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:38:21 -0700

"Our material is powerful enough to be able to be used in a car battery."

_45623791_virus-battery2

The virus picks up a carbon nanotube after being genetically engineered

This is from BBC news....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7977585.stm

"The virus is a so-called common bacteriophage which infects bacteria and is harmless to humans.

Three years ago the MIT scientists manipulated genes inside a virus that coaxed the particles to grow and self-assemble to form a nanowire anode one-tenth the width of a human hair."

They can essentially "grow" batteries. They can make it any shape too, so it can fit easily within whatever gadget you want.

Can you imagine what might happen if we can genetically engineer bacteriophage even further? Could we have them "repair" machines, (or parts of them)?

I think the fact that we can engineer viruses to build us nanowires is a sure sign we are living in the future.

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