A recent study found that over the past 20 years, scientists have written more than 4,000 academic papers on global warming and a nearly unanimous 97.1% of them agreed that climate change exists and is primarily caused by humans. To quote study leader, John Cooke of the University of Queensland: “Our findings prove that there […]
Read More… from Can we get on with addressing the challenges of global warming?
Persecuting medical marijuana merchants. Sending drones after U.S. citizens. Trying to restrict access to the Plan B birth control pill. Making special investigations of right-wing groups. Fishing through the records of Associated Press reporters. It looks as if the Obama Administration is continuing in the disgraceful tradition of the Bush II Administration when it comes […]
Read More… from The real score in Bush II v. Obama on civil rights: the country loses
Adults read the New York Times. While the Times does not release readership demographics segmented by age, it lets potential advertisers know that the median age of its readers is 52, meaning that exactly half of all readers are older than 52. By the way, that’s about 15 years older than the U.S. median age […]
Read More… from Oreos decides that a “Sesame Street” approach will sell cookies to adults
Ideological imperatives shine through most strongly in the details that marketers or writers select to adorn the basic idea or narrative of a piece of communications. That’s a mighty fancy statement. What it means is that be it a TV show, print ad, news feature or charity solicitation, the creator of a piece for the […]
Read More… from March of Dimes aspirational message has kids striving for celebrity
Behind Coke’s international marketing campaign to insinuate that the beverages it sells are part of a healthy lifestyle lurks the hidden message that Coke doesn’t care what you drink—as long as it’s a Coke product. That’s not how the company puts it. What Coke says, in a full-page ad in many national (and probably international) […]
Read More… from Coke global marketing campaign links its unhealthy beverages with healthy living
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition on fashion, Punk: Chaos to Couture, raises a basic question about the modus operandi under which the MET and other museums operate: is the museum a place to contemplate or to be titillated? For contemplation of the influence of the punk style on high fashion is impossible in […]
Read More… from MET dumbs down exhibit of punk fashion into an amusement park fright night
When taken together, four current news stories depict the massive grift that American education has been running on the American public for the past decade or so. Let’s start with what on the surface appears to be good news for college graduates: they’re the ones getting jobs. College grads are the only employment group to […]
Read More… from College students grab low-paying jobs and stay in debt
It’s the American Way, or perhaps I should write, the American Process: create a new ritual to display a human emotion and then develop a range of products and services to help people express the emotion. But now that we’ve run out of major emotions, like love for mother, father or significant other, we’re moved […]
Read More… from The “prom ask” becomes new ritual for which to buy stuff and use consultants
Over the past 24 hours, the mass media has devoted tons of paper, billions of bytes and miles of videotape to commemorating a very small step in the progress towards emancipation of a minority group representing from 2.5%-10% of the population. The media has trumpeted the opinions of elected officials, political and sports pundits, sports […]
For those still wondering who benefits from the government intervention into the economy, I refer you to the case of Apple. Apple management wants to shore up its recently plunging stock by increasing the dividend and instituting a stock buy-back program. Higher dividends tend to raise stock prices, as do stock buy-backs. Apple has plenty […]