Links for Thursday, November 13, 2008

• AlterNet: Forget Red vs. Blue — It’s the Educated vs. People Easily Fooled by Propaganda – “We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and cliches. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection.“
• Put Up Your Dukes: You, Sir, Are Going to Summer School – “The corn be with the trucky niggets.“
• FiveThityEight: Prop 8 Myths – “* The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that — and there’s no polite way to put this — the older voters aren’t going to be around for all that much longer, and they’ll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.*“
• Amazing Nature: U-M Team Recovers Ancient Whale in Egyptian Desert – “The 1989 team discovered that Basilosaurus still retained tiny, useless legs, feet, and toes representing hind legs that were lost at a later stage of whale evolution.“
• Profy: Virtual Economy Grows as Real Economy Shrinks – “In a certain sense I can compare Second Life to alcohol. Frankly, if there is one thing I can expect people will resort to looking for relief from their daily problems, looming unemployment and uncertainty everywhere, it will be alcohol. But what if Second Life could be a similar vent hole for them as well?“