WTF FTW (Why absurdity is good for you.)

"The less sense something makes, the more your brain looks for things that do make sense."

Story of our life.

WTF FTW (Why absurdity is good for you.)

Hey, isn't that what we were just talking about?

From Transmogrifant. Hard to spell. Good to read.

White Punks On Dopamine.

...it's not just chocolate cupcakes and lines of cocaine that make our dopamine neurons excited.

Dopaminergic Aesthetics : The Frontal Cortex

A pretty interesting article on how and why we "get" things.


From The Frontal Cortex, via the Daily Dish.

We Should Probably Get Us One Of These.

 "Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends.
There are some things we don't want to know. Important things."
-- Ned Flanders

There are probably plenty of important things in here. We should get one.

Via the har har har. Yes, again.  

Hint: It's Because You Suck.

Well looky here: CNN Drops to Last Place Among Cable News Networks.

"Maybe now they'll listen to my idea for the 24-hour Child Molester Channel."

With all that prescient insight from Lou Dobbs? We are shocked. Shocked.
OK, maybe not. We usually keep the brandspeak over on the Mortarblog, but...this is what happens when you piss all over a brand. CNN used to equal "news." Then they started trying to be Fox-Lite, and now they give us the worst of both worlds: Bad at Opinion. Bad at News. They've become an utter disgrace - right when the viewing public needs them the most. Reap the whirlwind, bitches. (And we've got to leave it there.)

Please Don't Feed The Trolls?

"Fox News can throw punches, but if the White House punches back, it's an outrageous, Nixon-like abuse."


The Washington Monthly


We've always been big proponents of Not Feeding The Trolls - attention is like oxygen to your Limbaughs and Savages - but to be honest, that strategy hasn't been very successful so far. Will the White House win this slappy-fight?

Well, if nothing else, it's an excuse to hear from two of the most astute, effective social commenters on Earth...Matt and Trey:

And Then There's The Onion

"I'm against things," longtime North Carolina resident Pam Beucher said. "I'm for things."
"America!" she added.

Nation's Morons March On Washington State | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Via the har har har.

Jiu-Jitsu Style!

You can get into a pissing match with El Rushbo, or you can do what NPR did and use his prodigious Blowhard Power to publicize what-or-whomever he's complaining about.  Much more effective, we think.

Via the Daily Dish.

This Just In: Democrats Discover Funny Bone.

Maybe there's a breaking story about how ACORN is planning a swine flu vaccine that will indoctrinate children so they will support a world currency that will undermine the dollar that they are covering. But more likely, the disparate treatment here is just further evidence that Fox 'News' is an arm of the Republican Party."



The Washington Monthly

Bill Donohue - A Bomb-Throwing Classic

"Yesterday's radicals wanted to tear down the economic structure of capitalism and replace it with socialism, and eventually communism. Today's radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place. In that regard, these moral anarchists are an even bigger menace than the Marxists who came before them."

Bill Donohue is to Bomb-Throwing what Willie Mays is to baseball - an artiste. We read this column and had to fight the urge to look out the window to see if we could find any of these Amurka-hatin' anarchist radicals peeing on crucifixes or anything. But we didn't. We continued reading the MSM. And all we saw were a bunch of nutjobs like Billdo, waving their placards and begging for attention. (A subject we promise to touch on later.) Anyway, see what you think.

Guest Voices: America's secular saboteurs - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

Grab A Mop!

You know who's a whole lot better at this communications stuff than we are? President Obama.

""Another way of putting it is when, you know, I'm busy and Nancy's busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else's mess, we don't want somebody sitting back saying, 'You're not holding the mop the right way.' Why don't you grab a mop, why don't you help clean up? 'You're not mopping fast enough.' 'That's a socialist mop.' Grab a mop -- let's get to work."

Three little words. Even the GOP should be able to understand them. We wonder if the Democrats will be able to capitalize.

P.S. Note to the GOP - telling Consuela to mop it for you does not count.

The Washington Monthly

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The Playing Field Today.

There are many ways to get your message across. Some effective, some not. This video illustrates a few.



From The Economist.

It's True Because We Say So.

On Tuesday, we talked a little about the practice of Bomb-Throwing, i.e. Say Any Crazy Shit You Feel Like Saying, And Wait For The Non-Crazy People To Respond, Thereby "Legitimizing" Your Nonsense.

Here's a good example: Neil Cavuto claiming that the Dow hit 10,000 today due to...wait for it...wait for it...the "Bush recovery."


Amazing! Aren't these the same people that sent their legions of teabaggers out to rail against the stimulus?
Of course, they're also the same people who claimed there were "hundreds of thousands" of people in attendance. We suppose it's True Because They Say It Is.

So we're getting a peek behind the looking glass, y'all. Bomb Throwing is a crude technique, but still sadly effective. All you need is a bullhorn and an agenda.

New_Business_Email

Click to see some do's and don't in business communication.
(You have to admire the man's persistence, though.)

New_Business_Email

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Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man | Video on TED.com

It's all about perception. Which is why the means for shaping it becomes so important.

Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man | Video on TED.com

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Frustration Is Upon Me.

This is Brandon Jacobs, running back for the New York Football Giants.  What's he doing here? Making first downs. But I digress. There's a really annoying meme going among sportswriters right now. It's called "What's Wrong With Brandon Jacobs?" Long story short, he's not gaining as many yards as he did last season. Now, call me crazy....("You're crazy!")...but is it just possible that opposing defenses have learned to game-plan for him? And his offensive coordinator needs to make a few adjustments? It is. But here's the real reason why he's here: One of my biggest complaints about the media is - reporters are lazier than ever. It's one thing to go to a press conference and write down what the subject says to another reporter. It is another thing entirely to shuffle from your bed to your computer, see what everyone else is writing, and paraphrase it.
New York Daily News Giants Beat Reporter (and friend of the blog) Ralph Vacchiano starts the theme, and while I don't agree with his premise, I give him credit for a fair-and-balanced story.
Now, let's see who parrots it.
Here it is on another Giants blog.
Here again from Long Island Newsday
I could go on.
My point is not to bash on Reporters-Who-Pick-Up-Stories, per se. My point is - once an idea like this gets loose in the press, we see a multi-step process take place that looks like this:

1. Reporter Voices Controversial Opinion: "What's Wrong With Brandon Jacobs?" 
2. Subject Defends Self, Hopefully Dramatically: (Jacobs' reply: "Frustration is upon me right now." )
3. Reporter's Peers Remark On Existence of Story Itself: "The New York Media™ sure is being tough on Brandon Jacobs..."
4. Vóila, the story has a life of its own.

Now. Let's pretend for a moment that you work for, oh, we don't know, say, a political party whose fortunes have not been the greatest recently. If you recognized an opportunity to use this process, wouldn't you use it to your advantage? Especially if you could just make crazy shit up and force your opponent to waste time and energy debunking it?
Yes. Yes you would. Don't lie.

We recognize this. And we will call it out wherever we see it. What should we call it? The Full Brandon Jacobs? Random Bomb-Throwing? Every Day Of Rush Limbaugh's Life?
Let us know.

Fun with network effects | Free exchange | Economist.com

What the kids are talking - and not talking - about now.

Fun with network effects | Free exchange | Economist.com

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How About We Just Give Them Utah, Or Something?

“[E]ver since the beginning of the Clinton administration, if not longer, a large segment of American movement conservatives have been working to convince each other, and their constituency, that any governing institution controlled by those who do not share their ideology is illegitimate and should be disobeyed or overthrown. One might shrug one’s shoulders and figure that, since right-wing extremists haven’t succeeded in destroying the American system of government yet, this is all just your typical PT Barnum grand American spectacle of looneyness. I’m not so sanguine, and I don’t think the appropriate response to this stuff is to ignore it. I also think that the reluctance of institutions of authority, notably major media organs, to call out people like Ms Bachmann, in order to draw the lines of acceptable political rhetoric, represents a dereliction of responsibility."
— Economist.com’s Democracy in America via Har Har Har.

Holla For The Amygdala.

David Brooks applies science-to-crazy and takes on the neuroscience of how we communicate.

This Just In: CNN Sucks.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Don't Make Me Come Back There.

It never fails to amaze me how effectively stupid people manage to control what we see and hear. I figure there must be some trick to this. We'll take a look at it and see what trends emerge. Other than stupidity, I mean. Off we go...