Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Category: politics

  • When We Disagree on Facts

    Here’s a vignette from this morning that highlights  the challenging disconnect in “understanding basic facts” which we face today in our society and culture. I went into the VA clinic this morning for a lab blood draw, for my annual check up. I struck up a conversation with the lab technician, and we talked about…

  • Political Philosophy and Media Literacy Cornerstones

    Propaganda and disinformation can have real, destructive effects in society and government. That is one of many lessons we can draw from the past week in Washington D.C., when we saw large numbers of protesters storm the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in a riot which resulted in deaths, injuries, as well…

  • The Fragility of Democratic Institutions – Memories of Cairo in November 2017

    On November 16, 2017, I had the privilege of dining in my Cairo hotel restaurant with Ahmed Ragheb, a long-time friend of my parents who I first met in 1978 when we lived in Columbus, Mississippi, and my dad was a T-37 squadron commander. Ahmed had an amazing military career in the USAF as a…

  • The Social Dilemma Documentary and YOUR Social Media Privacy Settings

    If you have not yet watched the new Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” stop reading this post now and immediately go watch it. Or at least commit to watching it as soon as you have a spare 94 minutes. There’s a good reason it’s poised to be the first documentary to ever be the “#1…

  • Media Literacy Conversations About Conspiracies and Culture Wars

    The past two months I’ve been working on a media literacy project with fellow educator and colleague Brian Turnbaugh (@wegotwits) which we have titled, “Conspiracies and Culture Wars.” Tuesday Brian and I shared a 60 minute virtual workshop together about this project and its topics at the Summer Institute on Digital Literacy, and last week…

  • “PlanDemic” Disinformation Teachable Moment During COVID-19

    All of us using the Internet today, regardless of age or past education credentials, need additional media literacy skills in our present age of “information pollution” and the neo-coronavirus pandemic. This past week, large numbers of people on social media shared video links to a purported “documentary” titled “Plandemic” which allegedly reveals “the hidden agenda…

  • The Coronavirus Pandemic and Media Literacy

    We are living into a very interesting chapter of earth history this week. As I type this post on Sunday night, March 8, 2020, the confluence of several political decisions as well as the predictable mathematical results of exponential growth are combining to setup a week which will be filled with alarmist voices in both…

  • Hashtag Power of #HongKongProtests, Twitter Bots, PsyOps and Media Literacy

    Yesterday morning I listened to a fantastic World Affairs (@world_affairs) podcast interview with UC Irvine professor, historian, and author Jeff Wasserstrom (@jwassers) by MaryKay Magistad (@MaryKayMagistad). Dr. Wasserstrom is the author of “Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink” from February 2020, which was also the title of the interview from February 5, 2020. Dr. Wasserstrom…

  • Polar Extremes on NOVA – Behold the Reality of Higher Carbon Dioxide Levels

    Thanks to Mike Sharp, one of the members of our Sunday School class this year (“Curiosity and Questions: Jesus and Science”), I learned about the new NOVA PBS Special, “Polar Extremes.” Here’s a 3 minute preview of the full episode I watched tonight, which runs just under 2 hours long. I watched it on AppleTV…

  • Tips for Media Literacy and Avoiding Foreign Political Propaganda Influence

    The United States is not only engaged in a new “Tech Cold War” against China and Russia, we are also under information influence attack from foreign as well as domestic adversaries who are aggressively working to build “followers” on Facebook and other social media platforms they can use to exert unconstitutional influence on our political…