Excuse Me? Check this Box? Are you Six?

Dear Democratic Party whose email list I would like to leave....

So, your Opt-Out page, instead of being just a click, like professionals do it, is asking me why I'm leaving. Fine.

You don't engage me. I dont' know. Maybe its because I'm countering propaganda from these activists against CCSS or the research I do, ... maybe I'm jaded. But I really get the impression that you don't care about what you are doing, or why. I get this mental image of a blue/gray office and half-hearted interests. I get the vision of "screw this.." blasting off the emails. But seriously...I was close to shutting down on this one...


Do you believe that we should give middle-class families a tax break by closing corporate tax loopholes?

And then two buttons? Yes? No?

This is the political version of "Do you like me? Check the box if you do." from grade school.

To the members of the meeting you had, who dedicated all of their skill to produce a  message, designed to make an emotional connection, and be convincing -- I must say, well done. I am deffinity feeling an emotion. And It is convincing.

It convinces me that if you do care about what you are doing, you certainly don't give a damn about what I'm doing. Because, despite the fact that what I'm doing is actually directly affecting the chances of the Democrats doing better in the next election... you have interrupted my work to look at a childish note displaying a brazen declaration of insecurity.


I can't take this message seriously -- especially the question. So there is no way I can take you seriously. If I take that question, as it is presented, seriously, I'll stop what I'm doing and tell you to "F-off you are on your own". If you are so far out of touch with the democratic voters of this nation that you have to ask that question in that manner, then you are not a party I want any where near the house of congress or the white house. This email, and that ad you did about education... my god.

This -- right here, this email, is the reason the Republicans, who had a 9% approval rating, swept with a 94% success in November. Yes, I'm basically democrat, but ... how can I take you seriously?

Now... I'm trying to do a diagnostic on these, rather sophisticated propaganda messages I discovered last week, which from every source are militarized words designed to insure you lose even more in a couple years -- with the public's blessing. I feel it is important for people to be able to think. -- But honestly, judging by the messages I'm getting and the actions I'm seeing  (or actually NOT seeing) whoever is making these is wasting their money. They won't need them.

So, grow a spine, get someone who can create a real message or ask me a real question which demonstrates that you might give a &%( about this country, and maybe I'll join back up.

Glenn Hefley
www.ghefley.com

Moments to Cherish Where is The Line?

It was Oct 30th, 1938, and young Orson Wells came through the doors of his studio with a grin on his face. It wasn't exactly a grin born of humor, or good will. It wasn't the kind of grin you would reciprocate. In fact, anyone could tell just by looking at him he was up to no good. Unfortunately, this was radio, and none of his listeners would be able to see that grin.

The Mercury Theater on The Air began right on time. Yes it did. A time when families would gather around the radio in the evening to enjoy their favorite shows. And they were gathering, They were getting popcorn and drinks. They were getting pillows and hushing each other because the show was starting. And even though they were all aware that the show was beginning, many people (a few hundred thousand), didn't hear, the little tag line at the end of the announcer's introduction. "H.G. Wells, the War Of The Worlds"

Apart from his admittedly imperfect methods of estimating the audience and assessing the authenticity of their response, Pooley and Socolow found, Cantril made another error in typing audience reaction. Respondents had indicated a variety of reactions to the program, among them "excited", "disturbed," and "frightened". Yet he included all of them with "panicked," failing to account for the possibility that despite their reaction they were still aware the broadcast was staged. "Those who did hear it, looked at it as a prank and accepted the performance in that manner," recalled researcher Frank Stanton.

… In order to take advantage of the accepted convention, we had to slide swiftly and imperceptibly out of the 'real' time of a news report into the 'dramatic' time of a fictional broadcast. Once that was achieved — without losing the audience's attention or arousing their skepticism — once they were sufficiently absorbed and bewitched not to notice the transitions any more, there was no extreme of fantasy through which they would not follow us.

Bartholomew grants that hundreds of thousands were frightened but calls evidence of people taking action based on their fear "scant" and "anecdotal". Indeed, contemporary news articles indicate that police were swamped with hundreds of calls in numerous locations, but stories of people doing anything more than calling authorities mostly involve only small groups. Such stories were often reported by people who were panicking themselves.

Later investigations found much of the alleged panicked responses to have been exaggerated or mistaken. Cantril's researchers found that, contrary to what had been claimed, there were no admissions for shock at a Newark hospital during the broadcast; hospitals in New York City similarly reported no spike in admissions that night. A few suicide attempts seem to have been prevented when friends or family intervened, but there was no record of a successful one. A Washington Post claim that a man died of a heart attack brought on by listening to the program could not be verified. One woman filed a lawsuit against CBS, but it was soon dismissed.

What You Know And the Pain It Causes Cognitive dissonance

"Before we try to explain something, we should be sure it actually happened."--Ray Hyman


My son mentioned today that everyone dies of the same thing, a  loss of homeostasis. Which is true. Our bodies rely on many variables to remain within strict parameters, which maintain our homeostasis. Any one of them: body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, breathing capacity and activity -- any of them losing their required value and we are dead. The rest is merely details.

Cognitive dissonance arises when external information contradicts an already held belief.

The way all of us normally deal with this is NOT to rationally compare two competing theses and resolve conflicts using reason and available evidence. Rather, we react in the same way we react to a physical threat. We instinctively fight against information that threatens our beliefs, inventing any means of defense possible.

Aggressive Persuasion Time Distortion. Technique

Name: Time Distortion. / Engage the Future

Type:  Perception Alteration
Medium: In Person or Voice Call - Text is possible but challenging
Chance of Encounter: Med/Low
Typical Target: One-to-One though Mass Media is Possible -- Challenging though
Setup, Conditions, or Environment: Framing highly suggested prior to engagement. 
If campaign requires text, framing requirement becomes even more advised. 
Description of Handling: The handling means an act of influencing public opinion through specific action so manipulated people will have the impression that they are acting according to their own ideas and interests. In fact, they take an idea, or an opinion that does not belong to them, but has been induced by various means. .One of the simplest is the technique of Time Distortion. Researchers today, call this False Memory or Memory Distortion. This technique refers to a decision that the client is trying to take. Speaking (Communicating) to them as if the decision is already made and that it was a pleasant experience and now everything is going to work out, adds to the experience. Also combining the session with pleasing images made with the use of "past tense" makes the new belief seat into memory with less disturbance, and begin to inscribe into the long term memory.  

I've also heard this one referred to as, "It's Just Tense, that's All"
But that was described as more of a Trope than an engagement.

I remember when it happened. I remember when we got the news. The news that 913 people killed themselves in Jonestown. It was so stunning. The anchor man said it deadpan. Nine hundred men, and women, with their children, in a mass suicide during a church service. It really didn't hit. I don't think anyone who heard it that day, got the message. I don't believe we process after a certain degree of atrocity. It's not a shock, really. It's a dumbing. What you hear -- it just doesn't make any sense to you. The words, individually, as each was said, were recognized as words, sure, but they weren't recognizable in that order. I guess, when that sort of limitation is breached, you focus on the banal. So, yeah, this guy who is condemning the jokes about the Kool-aid, this college kid. Sure, I understand the rebuke, but i don't accept it. Even now, it is difficult to grasp - -and there are so many living people who are crushed by tragedy to focus on. I do not accept the reproach of the dead while the living cry out.

Was there something that could have been done about Jonestown?

Mainstream - Hank Green Derision - Propaganda

Robert Earll, who I called Bobby, like everyone else we hung out with, was one of the writers for Ironsides, and then Starsky & Hutch. You know the episode where Starsky's wife dies of cancer? The one that got all those awards? He wrote that -- after his wife died of cancer. That's how writers deal with things like that, we write about them. 

So, anyway, Bobby never felt like he really belonged in Hollywood, making a ton of money and writing for a living. He didn't have a degree. Hell, his only serious schooling was through a correspondence course while he lived in Las Vegas. Nope, not joking at all. It was sort of a strange assemblage of accidents that got one of his assignments into the hands of the producer of Ironsides as well. 

About ten years into a solid career he took a young man to work with him, who wanted to get into to writing TV shows as well. 

Bobby told me that this guy was absolutely insatiable the whole day. 

"He just wouldn't stop! He talked to all the stars, the directors, he even spent more than an hour bugging the stunts guys, asking how they did things. I was so frustrated I could have screamed and whacked him with something blunt!"  Then Bobby looked at me sideways, "You know why I was really mad though?"

"I'll bite, why?" 

"Because that kid had more fun at my job in an afternoon, than I've had there in the last ten years." 

Hank Green, my son tells me, is still getting razed by the mainstream news media about his visit to the Whitehouse. When my son told me about this I thought of that story Bobby told me. I would be willing to bet a royalty check that not one of those CNN reporters has a selfie with the president. 

That and they're scared shitless. 

a Touch of Aristotle - You Tweet - I Tweet

Do I know more than You? Maybe. Probably not. I'm so focused into narrow areas of attention that I might know more about a narrow segment of a topic than you do, but current events? Like, what is happening on my front lawn? Eh... not so much. Perfect example is that I ordered speakers for my laptop two weeks ago. Just this morning I realized that they didn't arrive. So I got on to the website to check it out. They were delivered ten days ago to the address I lived at 15 years ago.

However, there are a few places I probably have more fun. Well. My kind of fun. For example, this is probably close to how you Tweet.

The Twitter of Every Day Use

And this is more my style (see how they are all running around in a circle chasing tweets that upset them?... ah.. the teas are fun).

This image is created using NodeXL
Which is a plugin for Excel which connects to
Twitter, and then allows you to create functionality

The Malleable Variance of What We Call Time

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle acknowledges that it would be better if we could make our case without either browbeating or flattering the audience; nothing should matter except "the bare facts." He laments, "other things affect the result considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers."

Your perception of time does not adhere to "world time." You might have the opinion that I should have said, 'does not always adhere to world time', but that's a lie. Your sense of time is as easily disturbed as a puddle of mud, and just as transparent.

If a man with a bass voice reads a script at exactly the same speed as a man with a tenor voice, the bass voice feels slower, by a notable degree.

When your body temperature is high, your sense of time is also slowed. In one experiment, subjects with fevers were asked to count to 60 at one number per second. Without exception, they counted much faster.

Having a low body temperature  you would count slower, as the sense of time moves much faster.

Under the influence of blue light, time is underestimated -- which is why nightclubs use it, to give you the sense that you really haven't been there that long.

Under the long wavelengths of red light, time is overestimated and every thing feels like it is in slow motion.