“The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.” PeoplePersonsWaitingEffortAttitudeAwarenessGreatnessHugeListeningDegreesNewsOrdinaryMachinesEntertainmentSensesConsumersAnalysisGoodsWakingVehicleHeroismOddsEarningExceptionalPassivityOrdinary Person Author:Marshall McLuhan
“One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.” MadeEnoughSchoolGroupsDegreesNewsHigh SchoolSoftwareProgrammersNightclubsStock Options Author:Peter Norvig
“In one way, traveling has narrowed my mind. What I have discovered is something very ordinary and unexciting, which is that humans are the same everywhere and that the degree of variation between members of our species is very slight. This is of course an encouraging finding; it helps arm you against news programs back home that show seething or abject masses of either fanatical or torpid people. In another way it is a depressing finding; the sorts of things that make people quarrel and make them stupid are the same everywhere.” PeopleWayMindHumansHelpingShowsHomeCoursesStupidArmsMembersDegreesFindingsNewsMassOrdinaryProgramSpeciesOne WayDepressingQuarrelsAnother WayVariationBack HomeYou AgainSeething Author:Christopher Hitchens
“The war is definitely in the background, only referred to in radio news blips and conversation. I think, ultimately, this film is about the choices these guys are faced with. In that way, I think this is a more personal story about their friendship, about the reaction that they have when they're essentially faced with death, to a certain degree.” ThinkingWayWarStoriesFilmGuyCertainChoicesConversationDegreesNewsRadioBackgroundsReactionsPersonal StoriesRadio News Author:Elijah Wood
“Where the differences came in was the patina of ideology which the news media laid over everything. There's certainly a bias, to some degree, in the way the media portrays the military. I'm not saying that's entirely wrong - the Fourth Estate is there to hold generals and colonels accountable for their actions and decisions - but having reporters on the scene, reporting in real time certainly complicates things for the military mission.” WayRealActionDifferencesDecisionMediaMilitarySceneDegreesNewsMissionsIdeologyFourthBiasReportersEstatesColonelsNews Media Author:Dave Abrams
“For example, because I'm a lapsed geologist, I followed the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 in great detail, amassing a huge number of links to news articles, blog posts, scientific papers, web cams, video and photos. That archive came to the attention of Chatham House, and they then commissioned me to research the way in which the media responded to the ash cloud crisis. I think that's the only time that my degree and my career have fully intersected, and it really was a lovely moment!” ThinkingWayMomentsHouseNumbersAttentionCareersMediaExampleHugeDegreesPaperNewsResearchCrisisCloudsDetailsLovelyVideoPostsLinksArticlesAshesPapersOnly TimeBlogsVolcanoesArchivesEruptionGeologistHuge Numbers Author:Suw Charman-Anderson
“I think one of the real issues that we're faced with is how we consume news, how the media is perceived, how fake news is gaining a degree of currency without criticism that is dangerous, in my judgement.” ThinkingRealIssuesMediaDangerousDegreesNewsCriticismJudgementFakeCurrency Author:Susan Rice
“In Obama's world, it's Fox News and me that are the reason the Republican base doesn't like him. It can't possibly be that those people actually pay attention, are actually intelligent, informed, and they actually disagree with what he's doing. It can't be that because you are not that smart and independently thinkable. You're like the Democrat base. You're bunch of idiots who only know and do and believe what you're told. There may be a degree of exaggeration in there, but that is exactly how the left looks at their voters, and that's how they look at the whole population.” PeopleKnowsWorldBelieveLooksMayReasonWholeLeftPayAttentionRepublicanDegreesNewsSmartIntelligentDemocratPopulationBunchPay AttentionIdiotVotersDisagreeFoxesExaggerationFox NewsThinkable Author:Rush Limbaugh
“The bad news is that the movement toward the partnership side of the social scale (and it is always a matter of degree, as no society is a pure partnership or domination system) has been fiercely resisted and countered by periodic regressions. So domination systems have rebuilt themselves in different forms - be they secular or religious, eastern or western, leftist or rightist.” Has BeensDifferentMatterFormSocialSidesReligiousMovementPureDegreesNewsWesternScalesPartnershipSecularEasternDominationBad NewsLeftistsRegression Author:Riane Eisler
“We'd already lost the possibility of stopping global warming entirely. That hasn't been in the cards for a long time. The triumph of Trump probably means that we're not going to be able to stop it at the two-degree mark that the world had been aiming for. That's very bad news, mostly because the planet seems to be more sensitive than we thought to even small increases in temperature.” WorldMeanLongTwoSeemsAbleLostPossibilityPlanetsTrumpDegreesNewsLong TimeIncreaseMarkCardsTriumphSensitiveGlobal WarmingStoppingTemperatureBad News Author:Bill McKibben