Random Movie Club
tgoddess
more movies than any one person I know and this INCLUDES Joe Bob. The
movies/reviews run the gamut of genres, so there's something there for
just about everybody and I trust his opinion 110%.
It's a way cool site and a nifty concept.
And if you live in the El Lay area, you DEFINITELY need to check it
out.
Hank
Wow...Goddess you were right. That's a good review site. I like his
choice of stuff in the archives.
ThomasBauduret
Feels a bit far-fetched to me. I'm no a US citizens, and I got most right (I
flunked on rappers and TV people. And heather Mills. Still no idea who she
is.) But I concur about the culture of ignorance spreading in our perfect
Western worldŠ
Thomas
> (http://www.smirkingChimp.com)
> The Triumph of Ignorance
> By Jaime O'Neill
> Jun 27 2007
>
> Newspaper readership is off--way off--and fewer people are watching network
> or cable news shows. As an indicator of changes in reading habits, for
> instance, U.S. demand for newsprint is down 26% since 1990, though it's up
> 18% in the rest of the world over that same period of time.
>
> We're sometimes told this is a good thing, that the U.S. is leading a
> transformation in how news and information gets disseminated, a revolution
> in human communication that provides more up-to-the-minute facts and
> insights through blogs and the world-wide plethora of websites and news
> postings.
>
> But if that's true, how does it happen that we're all so damned ignorant? Or
> most of us, anyway.
>
> We live in a democracy, a system of government rather dependent upon the
> existence of a well-informed electorate. So it's serious business when we
> have a culture, a zeitgeist, and an educational system that keep us mired in
> ignorance and trivialities. More than half of us don't bother to vote,
> treating the most hard-won privilege in human history as disposably as
> Kleenex. And it's probably a good thing so many eligible voters forego their
> franchise because most of them don't know Jack, neither Kennedy, nor
> excrement.
>
> Is this assessment too harsh? Before you form an answer, take a look at the
> little current events quiz below.
>
> 1. Karl Rove
>
> 2. Sanjaya Malakar
>
> 3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
>
> 4. Timbaland
>
> 5. Al Sharpton
>
> 6. Valerie Plame
>
> 7. Nancy Pelosi
>
> 8. Alberto Gonzales
>
> 9. Wolf Blitzer
>
> 10. Barack Obama
>
> 11. Don Imus
>
> 12. Cho Seung-hui
>
> 13, John Doolittle
>
> 14. Rudy Guiliani
>
> 15. Nuri Kamal al-Maliki
>
> 16. Heather Mills
>
> 17. James Gandolfini
>
> 18. Tony Blair
>
> 19. Stephen Colbert
>
> 20. Condoleezza Rice
>
> If you know all or most of these names that may be because you're reading
> this in a newspaper, and have, no doubt, the habit of seeking out
> information from print media. But lots of people you see in line at the
> supermarket, or driving in the lane next to you on the streets and highways
> don't have that habit. And it shows, and it matters.
>
> Would you expect college students to know many of the names on that list of
> twenty? How many? Which ones? Would you think high school graduates who have
> attained the age that entitles them to cast ballots might know these names
> that have littered the news over the past months or years?
>
> Well, they don't. When that list was administered as a quiz to 45 students
> in a Sacramento-area community college, answers included the following.
>
> "Karl Rove is a Repablical who does not believe in global worming. He told
> Sheral Crow: 'Do not touch me.'"
>
> "Al Sharpton is a politition."
>
> Tony Blair: "President of France"
>
> "Wolf Politizer is a Journalis prize named after him."
>
> "I don't know anyone except Al Sharpton is a weather guy."
>
> Condoleezza Rice: "actress."
>
> Heather Mills: "Porn star"
>
> Karl Rove: "Some political guy."
>
> Cho Seung Hui: "President of North Korea"
>
> "I do not know any of them, but John Doolittle sounds familiar."
>
> Heather Mills: "News lady"
>
> Alberto Gonzales: "Convicted of murder."
>
> Heather Mills: "Married to a beetle."
>
> Condoleezza Rice: "Running for office in California"
>
> I don't know any one except Sanjaya Malakar, neurosurgon.
>
> Sanjaya Malakar, you may know, was the guy on American Idol who couldn't
> sing very well, but received lots of votes, nonetheless. Predictably, he was
> the most familiar name on that list, known to all but five of the 45
> students who took this quiz. Rapper Timbaland was a close second, known to
> more than half of the students who took the quiz.
>
> But only two students had heard of Valerie Plame, and only two were able to
> identify Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (one student wrote, "I don't
> know, but I don't want to write his name down, anyway"). Another took a
> guess, and said the Iranian leader was "the mastermind of 9/11." The same
> student thought Barack Obama was "the mayor of Illinois"). None of the
> students knew who Nuri al-Maliki was, but one student took a stab at it,
> identifying the U.S.-backed Iraqi leader as a "terrorist Al-Qaeda." In view
> of the fact we've spent well over 3,000 American lives to install al-Maliki
> in power in Iraq, some people might expect that a few college students would
> know who he is.
>
> A mere seven of the forty-five were able to approximately identify Karl
> Rove, with answers like "he's an [sic] Republican," or "political leader"
> that allowed little room for nuanced understanding. The other 38 never heard
> of him, a lapse of attention that seems bewildering in view of the
> ubiquitous multi-media mentions of his name.
>
> Only 12 of the 45 could identify Nancy Pelosi, but of those few who did, one
> student identified Speaker Pelosi as "our extremly retarted speaker of the
> house. AND I must add I cringe at the fact that she is third in line for the
> presdincy [sic]." The next paper in the stack, however, identified Pelosi as
> "the 1st woman Speaker of the House! Woohoo!" which would seem to indicate
> that when students know, they care, and vice versa.
>
> Considering the demographic profile of viewers who watch Comedy Central, it
> was surprising that only 15 out of the 45 had ever heard of Stephen Colbert.
> Of those 15 who did know of Colbert, one wrote "On Comedy centeral [sic]
> news! SO FUNNY!" and another wrote "Comedy central news headcaster [sic] who
> is NOT funny."
>
> Rather pitifully, three of the 45 students dutifully copied all twenty
> names, then left blank spaces next to each name, or even more dutifully
> scribbled "dunno" or "I don't know" beside every name. One student simply
> wrote: "I think the people listed on the board have all done good things or
> fought for something. The names are familiar, but I am not quite sure
> exactly who they are."
>
> You may be tempted to dismiss this kind of ignorance on the basis of the
> fact that these were, after all, community college students. It's generally
> thought that community college students are dimmer to begin with, but any
> random sampling of knowledge is almost certain to produce similar
> results--at four-year colleges or in the general population, from the Rotary
> Club to the Red Hat ladies. In fact, it could be argued that community
> college students are, after all, enrolled in college, putting them somewhat
> ahead of many in the broader population, if the level of educational
> attainment means anything anymore. That is surely an arguable notion,
> however, in a nation where the President of the United States puts his
> ignorance on display on a daily basis, and yet he did manage to attain
> degrees from the nation's two flagship universities, Harvard and Yale.
>
> Not that ignorance is new, whether that ignorance concerns current events,
> our national history, or our system of government. More than twenty years
> ago, I administered a different little quiz to my own community college
> students up in Washington State, and the resulting answers were equally
> dismal, with lots of students not able to say which century the American
> Civil War took place. Students thought Calcutta was in Canada, and that Camp
> David was in Israel. They also thought that Ralph Nader was a baseball
> player, and J. Edgar Hoover invented the vacuum cleaner. A majority could
> not date the year Christ was born within a hundred years, though lots of
> them were vocal in professing their status as born-again Christians. On
> blank maps of the world, foreign nations were sometimes placed within the
> continental boundaries of the United States; ie., Kansas was misidentified
> as Poland. And, among the potpourri of bad answers were these: Darwin
> invented gravity. Andy Warhol wrote War and Peace, Timothy Leary was
> Secretary of Defense in the then-current Reagan administration, Winston
> Churchill was a French comedian, and Nagasaki was in Viet Nam. Student
> estimates of the population of the planet or the United States of America
> were wildly off the mark—both high and low. (Ten billion was not an uncommon
> guess at the population of these United States.) And though Beirut, Lebanon
> had just been bombed by the U.S. at the time the quiz was given, students
> had no idea what country that city was located in, placing it all over the
> globe.
>
> When the results of my little quiz were published in Newsweek and later
> profiled on 60 Minutes, I received hundreds upon hundreds of letters from
> college professors throughout the nation who reported similar findings.
>
> So, the idea that the nation is going to hell in a handbasket woven of
> ignorance is hardly news. The teacher who administered my more recent quiz
> to her students says: "I am trying to think about who I was when I was their
> ages. And truth be told, I am betting I would have made similar mistakes as
> well. Of course, though, if we were in a war, I would like to think I would
> know a few more of the key players than what my students guessed. But who's
> to say? It's so easy to tune out the news."
>
> And she's right about that, of course. It is easy to tune out the news in a
> culture that doesn't value the idea of an informed citizenry, and in a
> nation where no one any longer needs to feel embarrassment about personal
> ignorance.
>
> But perhaps if we placed a higher value on knowing things, and if we did a
> better job of preparing people to prize and practice democracy here at home,
> we might be a bit more prudent about attempting to impose that system of
> government by force on people far from our shores. Ignorance isn't bliss.
> We've paid a high price for ignorance in recent years, and that bill has yet
> to be totaled up, let alone paid in full.
> _______
>
>
>
>
tgoddess
let me know and I'll be happy to facilitate an intro with my buddy.
rich
another fun movie blog from our friend Adam. Fun pics & videos
posted.
> > choice of stuff in the archives.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -