Understanding your political leanings.

Thu, 5 Mar 2009
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I seem to have shifted from being a liberal to being a libertarian. Hmmm… Anyway, educators might be pleased to read about this too, that “increasing numbers of high school and college students are being taught that politics is more than a simplistic Left-Right line”.

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/quiz.php

World’s Smallest Political Quiz via kwout

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

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Language and the media.

Wed, 4 Mar 2009
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The whole comparison to water usage is a deliberate attempt to mislead.

The standard telecom contract for data services has been based on bandwidth provided since the invention of data circuits. Indeed, the ISP’s price their services based on the bandwidth to which one subscribes. If I have subscribed for an 8Mb/sec service, how can I be a “bandwidth hog” for using 8Mb/sec of bandwidth? I paid for it, and I have the right to use it.

— Waleed Hanafi, Singapore – ISP’s to customers – “You are evil”

It’s an old article but I think it’s a very good example about how language and the media have the power to shape public opinion, and the media having a responsibility to report the news in an objective way. But if that doesn’t happen, then readers have to develop media literacy and critical thinking skills in order to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of information and data processing.