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For two decades, critics have argued that the Texas Board of Education's science standards have allowed creationism to creep into public schools and textbooks. Last week the board changed the language, creating the latest arena in the clash between creationists and the scientific community. Both sides explain why the subtle language change may greatly affect how evolution is taught in Texas and the rest of the country.
Is Google making us stupid? Is it making us smarter? Have we lost our ability to concentrate? Are we more social or more isolated as a result of our constantly interconnected lives? Brooke takes a look at some of the research that attempts to answer the question: how is the internet affecting our brains?
Click here for the uncut interview with Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.
Technology is such an integral part of our lives but will it soon be part of our bodies as well? Computer scientist and inventor Ray Kurzweil thinks so. He predicts that by 2045 we will have merged with our technology and that we'll be smarter, healthier and... well...immortal. Sounds implausible? Kurzweil explains that that's what people often say about his predictions until they come true.
A recent study by Princeton economics Professor Sam Schulhofer-Wohl showed that the 2007 closure of The Cincinnati Post resulted in lower voter participation and less incumbent turnover in municipal government. Schulhofer-Wohl is careful not to extrapolate but says the results don't bode well for democracy in the age of declining newspapers.
Last week, Slate’s press critic Jack Shafer wrote in praise of yellow journalism: “At its best it was terrific, at its worst it wasn’t that bad.” So, does the yellow stuff deserve its tawdry reputation? We asked W. Joseph Campbell, author of Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies.
We all know that Orson Welles drew his inspiration for the film “Citizen Kane” from the life of William Randolph Hearst. But over time, the character called Kane has become so conflated with the man named Hearst that we tend to think of the movie as a biopic. Kenneth Whyte’s The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst separates the myths from the reality.
Highlights from Past Shows
Last time the Obama Administration pitched its plan for economic recovery, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was ridiculed for his lack of details and shaky performance. This week, Geithner was mostly hidden from the cameras and Obama did the selling. Political reporter Peter Nicholas says the Pitchman-in-Chief was pretty much everywhere.
There’s a name for how cruel people can get given a little anonymity on the internet. It’s called “online disinhibition effect” and the resulting venom can ruin your day or worse, destroy your good name. Bob looks at the fraught relationship on the web between reputation, privacy and the law.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
