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Month: July 2016

Context matters – “Allah is the only god”

Context matters – “Allah is the only god”

  TL;DR Summary Conservative social media protested that school children were ordered to write “Allah is the only god” for a school assignment. The incident did happen, but context matters! This is just one tiny part of a multi-part course segment on issues in world history. And specifically, on the role that religion has played in major historical events. On 1 day of a 3 week period, students examined the Five Pillars of Islam to learn the role they played…

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Context matters – "Allah is the only god"

Context matters – "Allah is the only god"

  TL;DR Summary Conservative social media protested that school children were ordered to write “Allah is the only god” for a school assignment. The incident did happen, but context matters! This is just one tiny part of a multi-part course segment on issues in world history. And specifically, on the role that religion has played in major historical events. On 1 day of a 3 week period, students examined the Five Pillars of Islam to learn the role they played…

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Social media is about conformity

Social media is about conformity

This odd study looked at women who wear heels and tracked their heel height as they geographically moved. The researchers found that when women moved to a wealthier area, their own heel height adjusted – up or down – to match that of the area they moved to – in other words, social conformity. That tendency to conform differed depending on the wealth of the places that the women were coming from, and the wealth of the places they were…

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Republican Platform seeks to sell off all Western US Federal lands

Republican Platform seeks to sell off all Western US Federal lands

TL; DR Summary The Seattle Post Intelligencer says the Republican Platform calls to “Sell off public lands in the West, log national forests”. This link was widely distributed on social media. Snopes.com says the erroneous story was based on an incorrect blog post from ThinkProgress claiming the GOP plans to close national parks, monuments, wilderness areas, national forests, BLM lands  and sell them to private interests. Snopes.com notes the assertions about national parks, etc, are not supportable and that the Seattle…

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“In the age of the Internet, the truth does not matter”

“In the age of the Internet, the truth does not matter”

“In the age of the internet, the truth does not matter. The message you want to propagate can be told, and it will spread like wildfire. And spread it did.” Propaganda spreads faster than wildfire on social media, often torching everything in its path. The marriage of social media and propaganda is extraordinarily dangerous if you think about how Internet mobs convict people, groups, ideas – in a matter of hours – in the absence of a full set of…

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