We spent a lot of time on the gloom and doom surrounding the newspaper industry, but we can’t forget that newspapers have brought us some of the funniest moments this side of media. Here are just 39 of them.

Where possible, we have linked to the full article for context. Many of these articles are 8 to 10 years old, so they are not available online.

What is your favorite weird headline?

Above is a scene from Star Crash, Italy’s homage to Star Wars. They dialed the cheese factor up to ten for this entire movie, but it’s especially clear in this scene. At one point, I’m pretty sure the emperor-to-be forgets his line and is looking over to the cue cards for a hint.

Since we are big fans of good storytelling, we couldn’t let something like this go by without looking for other movies that have produced hilarious, overly dramatic or just downright ridiculous lines. Here are just 16 others. We tried to stay clear of B-film schlock territory or the list would have easily broken 100.

Ever After (1998)

THE MOVIE: Ever After (1998)

THE LINE

Danielle: ”A bird may love a fish, signore, but where will they live?”

Note: For such a schlocky line, I have to admit, I still spent some time thinking about it.

X-Men (2000)

THE MOVIE: X-Men (2000)

THE LINE

Storm: ”You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.”

Note: A big part of why this is an amazing line is the stone cold determination on Halle Berry’s face as she delivers it. I wonder how many takes it took to get that look.

A Cry in the Dark (1988)

THE MOVIE: A Cry in the Dark (1988)

THE LINE

Lindy: ”A dingo ate my baby!”

Speed (1994)

THE MOVIE: Speed (1994)

THE LINE

Jack Traven: “Yea, well I’m taller!”

Note: This is Keanu Reeves finest role that doesn’t involve fighting cybernetic demons or talking to Teddy Bears.

The Postman (1997)

THE MOVIE: The Postman (1997)

THE LINE:

Blind Woman: “You’re a godsend, a saviour.”
Postman: “No, I’m a postman.”

Notting Hill (1999)

THE MOVIE: Notting Hill (1999)

THE LINE

Anna Scott to William Thacker: “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.”

Con-Air (1997)

THE MOVIE: Con-Air (1997)

THE LINE

Cameron Poe: “Put the bunny in the box…”

Note: If a Bruckheimer movie with Nicolas Cage playing a band southern accent isn’t enough to make you see this film, then scenes like this should be.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

THE MOVIE: Pearl Harbor (2001)

THE LINE

Rafe: “You’re so beautiful it hurts.”
Evelyn: “It’s your nose that hurts.”
Rafe: “I think it’s my heart.”

Titanic (1997)

THE MOVIE: Titanic (1997)

THE LINE

Jack Dawson to Rose Bukater: “I’m the king of the world!”

Note: Obvious, sure but this line seems to have won the community choice award for modern movie cheese so we included it.

Battlefield Earth (2000)

THE MOVIE: Battlefield Earth (2000)

THE LINE

Chirk: “I am going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of kerbango.”

Note: Battlefield Earth was John Travolta’s homage to L. Ron Hubbard. Without Franchise Pictures and a Scientology bake sale it probably would never have been made and the world would have been a better place.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

THE MOVIE: Dirty Dancing (1987)

THE LINE

Johnny Castle about Fraces “Baby” Houseman: “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

Star Wars – Attack of the Clones (2002)

THE MOVIE: Star Wars – Attack of the Clones (2002)

THE LINE

Anakin to Padme: “From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought of you. And now that I’m with you again… I’m in agony. The closer I get to you, the worse it gets. The thought of not being with you—I can’t breathe. I’m haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that kiss will not become a scar. You are in my very soul, tormenting me… what can I do? I will do anything you ask.”

Batman and Robin (1997)

THE MOVIE: Batman and Robin (1997)

THE LINE

Mr Freeze: “Ice to see you”

Note: I could have closed my eyes and pointed anywhere in this script and found an equally ridiculous line but this one always seems to stand out.

Night of the Lepus (1972)

THE MOVIE: Night of the Lepus (1972)

THE LINE

“Attention! Attention! . . . There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!”

Note: I know I said we stayed away from B-movies but this is just a reminder to go watch the best film of William Claxton’s (Little House on the Prairie) career.

Glen or Glenda

THE MOVIE: Glen or Glenda (1953)

THE LINE

“Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt or even a lounging outfit and he’s the happiest individual in the world. He can work better, play better and he can be more of a credit to his community and his government because he is happy.”

Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997)

THE MOVIE: Mortal Kombat Annihilation (1997)

THE LINE

Kitana: “Mother! You’re alive…”
Sindel: “Too bad…YOU….will die!”

Note: They are starting to shoot a sequel to this movie, Mortal Kombat: Devastation starting this month…

We’ve missed dozens and dozens of great ones, what are your favorite bad movie lines?

Since George Romero brought us Night of the Living Dead in 1968, film makers have been fascinated by Zombies (and so have we). Hundreds of movies since have taken the idea of decomposing, undead parasites intent on taking a bite out of the public and run with it. Some of them are really good, like Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man). Some of them are really bad, Zombi 4 and Mulva fall into that camp. Some Zombie movies, however, are just weird. Really weird.

We’ve compiled a list of 20 of the weirdest Zombie movies we could find. These movies take the Zombie phenomenon and bend it to create something entirely different.

Let’s start with a control.

Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

Hell of the Living Dead is a Italian Zombie flick directed by Bruno Mattei. We included it on this list not because it’s particularly weird, but because it’s really normal for a Zombie movie. Four Commandos are sent into Papua New Guinea to investigate something or another. As it turns out, what they find out is that the dead are walking again. Much of the rest of the film involves them running around, shooting things as slow-moving, gray-faced Zombies try to eat everyone. There is the requisite car escape, kitschy 80s soundtrack and super-science gone wrong. Honestly, there were dozens of movies just like this that might seem odd if you didn’t know that this is how it was supposed to work. Take a look at the trailer above because things just get weirder from here.

Also known as: Virus, Night of the Zombies, Zombie Creeping Flesh.

The Astro Zombies (1968)

The Astro Zombies was directed by Ted Mikels. It starts off innocently enough, a super scientist wants to create a race of super-human monsters (who doesn’t?) How does he do this? Well, he gets a bunch of people who have been murdered, stitches Lucha Libre masks on their faces and sends them out to kill every woman in town to create more fuel for his evil experiments. This attracts attention from the CIA and Varla from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, who apparently has a thing for Mexican wrestlers.

There are machete’s and torture, toy robots and a lot of screaming to round things out.

Battlefield Baseball (Jigoku kôshien, 2003)

Yudai Yamaguchi’s Battlefield Baseball is an insane mish-mash martial arts film, sports flick and horror movie. Mostly though, it’s completely incoherent.

The story revolves around a baseball rivalry between Seido High School and Gedo High School, who happen to be a team of Zombies famous for their unique style of play, “fighting baseball.” They win by maiming, torturing and otherwise killing the opposing team. Lots of the early scenes of the movie involve watching increasingly ludicrous and often hilarious baseball related deaths. The rest of the story involves trips to the afterlife, super-powered pitchers, caged baseball players and just about every cliche you might expect out of a bizarre, Japanese multi-genre epic.

If there is a lesson you can draw from all of this, it goes something like this: Never play Baseball against a team of Zombies.

The Beyond (1981)

Lucio Fulci’s, The Beyond wasn’t even originally a Zombie movie. He wanted to make a haunted house film, but as it turns out Zombies put butts in seats so his distribution company had him rewrite the script to include the shamblers. That’s not why this movie made the list though. The Beyond is fantastically difficult to understand movie, by design. Fulci is on record as saying, “My idea was to make an absolute film, with all the horrors of the world. It’s a plotless film, there’s no logic to it, just a succession of images.”

He’s right. Whether you are killing Warlocks with lime, opening the gates of hell or talking to creepy blind women, The Beyond feels a lot more like a highly polished art film than a testosterone-fueled Zombie epic. It’s a must watch for Fulci fans.

American Zombie (2007)

American Zombie is really not all that weird. It made it onto the list because it tells the story of Zombies from a wildly different angle. You see, in the world of American Zombie, a good percentage of those who are turned into the undead come back as “high-functioning zombies.” Which is to say, they look and sounds like regular people except for a bit of rotting.

It’s a story of two film makers who are are trying to learn more about Zombie society, and the dark secrets they uncover. It’s fun, interesting and a definite must see for the Zombie completest.

Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town (1989)

Alright, enough with the art house flicks, time for some shlock. Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town wins our award for title that best explains the premise of the movie. It’s the story of a all-female motorcycle gang named the “Cycle-Sluts” who come to a town (Zariah) that is being overrun by Zombies. Zombies that have been created by, what else, a mad scientist.

There is dynamite, leather, a dwarf and a young Billy Bob Thorton to round out the explosions and decapitations that fill this Troma epic.

Linnea Quigley Horror Workout

Linnea Quigley is best known as the “scream queen” from movies like Return of the Living Dead and Nightmare on Elm Street 4. She has starred in dozens of B-grade horror flicks and is on of the seminal actresses of the genre. She is a film producer and the author of two books, Chainsaw and I’m Screaming as Fast as I Can.

She also made a workout video.

A workout video with Zombies.

Bio-Zombie (1998)

This is Hong Kong director Wilson Yip’s loving reimagining of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Along with being ridiculously campy, it made the list because the Zombies in this movie are created by, wait for it . . .

Sodas tainted with Iraqi bio-weapons.

The dialogue is great, the dubbing is better and everything is shot like they forgot to remove the blue-filter from the lens.

The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

The Horror of Party Beach holds the distinction of being the second Zombie musical ever created. It tells the story of a couple who go to the beach, only to be attacked by something that looks like Aquaman’s creepy Uncle.

It also has radioactive waste, The Del-Aires, a biker gang love story and did I mention that it was a musical?

Made in 1964 by Del Tenney this movie has just about everything you’d want of you’re a big shot scientist just looking for some kicks.

Flesh Eating Mothers (1988)

This is a movie about a town full of two-timing mothers who all catch a venereal disease that turns them into cannibals. Yes, that is the plot.

Most of the movie is about the mother’s trying to eat their children, and the children trying to cure their them by injecting the antidote into their rear ends.

I really can’t explain the sheer majesty of the movie better than that.

Die You Zombie Bastards! (2005)

We reward movies that revel in their unmitigated cheapness. This is one of those movies. My brain would hurt too much trying to explain the plot, so I’ll rattle off what it has in it:

Serial Killer Superhero, Radioactive Green Zombie Vixens, ninjas, super villains, a zombietron and…You know, just watch the trailer.

A word of warning, it might be a wee bit NSFW.

Hard Rock Zombies (1984)

“I want to hold your hand…”

Hard Rock Zombies is about a group of rockers who end up dying at the hands of Adolf Hilter. They are brought back from the grave as Zombies to take their revenge on the group that kills them.

The supporting cast includes Eva Braun, who is a werewolf, a pair of midgets (one of whom eats himself by the end of the movie), and a really strange girl named Cassie who helps to bring them back from the dead.

It’s shot a little like a music video, except with more Nazi monsters.

Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981)

At first you might be wondering what’s so strange about Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground. The trailer opens like any good Zombie film, with a decomposing corpse eating a bearded guy who seems to have forgotten how to run away. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss the family in the movie that drives the story.

Take a look at their ten year old son.

Take a close look.

As it turns out, that “ten year old” boy was actually Peter Bark, a dwarf who happened to be in his early 30s at the time of filming. If this isn’t enough, a good part of the story revolves around the incestuous relationship between the son and the mother.

To be honest, the Zombies in this movie are the least weird part about it.

The Children (1980)

This is a movie about radioactive Zombie children who dissolve their parents through hugs. I refuse to say anything else about it.

The Dead Undead (2009)

On first blush you might think you’re watching a Vampire movie, but let me assure you that you are not. This is the story of a group of relatively peaceful Vampires, who have been infected (through super science I’m sure) and turned into zombie-vampires who mindlessly feed on… You get the picture.

It’s campy but not overtly so, what really sells the flick is the group of Vampire commandos sent in to clean up the zombie-vampire menace. That and the confusion of trying to figure out what in the world a zombie-vampire is.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)

Remember when I said that Horror of Party Beach was the second Zombie musical ever made. Well, meet the first. TISCWSLBMZ also held the distinction of having the longest title in movie history up until that point.

We’ve entered art film territory again. This is a movie about gypsies and carnivals and zombies that occasionally look like mimes. There is also a ten minute long dream sequence thrown in that is likely give the easily confused aneurysms.

This is one of Ray Steckler’s finest works and it was finished for the low, low price of $38,000. It’s a must see for fans of zero budget film making.

Braindead (1992)

Before Peter Jackson brought us the Lord of the Rings, he made really interesting, low(er)-budget flicks like Braindead. It’s about the Sumatran Rat-Monkey and the love between a man, a shopkeepers daughter and his mother.

If you have ever seen Bad Taste or any of Peter Jackson’s other early work, you’ll have a feeling for where things go from here. Over the top gore, slapstick humor and all around craziness.

The Dead Next Door (1989)

The Dead Next Door is a Sam Raimi film which he made it under the pseudonym, “The Master Cylinder.” We included it for two reasons. The first is that we love Sam Raimi (of Evil Dead fame). He has a way of combining horror with comedy that improves both genres immensely.

The second is that this is the first and only film we reviewed that has a Zombie loving cult bent on helping the undead kill us all.

Night Of The Creeps (1986)

Alien leeches are released and attack college students. Picked for the list because not enough people understand the importance of combining alien super science with Zombies. Until they do, Night of the Creeps will have a special place in my heart.

Planet Terror (2007)

A little more mainstream than everything else we’ve shown this go, but when you have a Grindhouse inspired movie with Rose McGowen killing zombies with a machine gun strapped to her stump — it’s pretty hard not to.

Redneck Zombie (1987)

Redneck Zombies holds the distinction of being one of the first movies to be shot entirely on VHS. That’s right, it’s more or less a home movie picked up by the people at Troma and released to the public. Since then, there have been plenty of other similar films made but none that were quite like Redneck Zombies.

As for the plot, it’s about a drum that held radioactive waste finding its way to a group of rednecks. They then use it as a tub to make moonshine. The rest, as they say, is about 90 minutes.

Your turn. What are your favorite, weirdest Zombie flicks?

Healthcare has become the hot button issue of the day. Both sides of the political spectrum are crying out to be heard. The left is pointing to the 46.7 million Americans that are uninsured and the millions more who are underinsured and the right is expressing fears that the bill still has serious problems, provisions that would allow the government to mandate care, and no clear plan on how it will be paid for.

We believe in the importance of clear, public debate, especially around an issue that so obviously effects the entire population. As it stands, much of the discussion surrounding these issues has been mired in political grandstanding, stunts, simplifications and pandering to all of our basest hopes, fears and misgivings.

If we still believe in a system where people make choices based on understanding both sides of an issue, and policy decisions based on facts, we need to take some time to understand this situation and only then make up our minds about it.

This guide will provide you with some information about Healthcare, HR 3200, public sentiment around the bill and some thoughts on piecing it all together.

Basic Facts About Healthcare in America

No matter what happens with Healthcare Reform, as the Baby Boomers grow older we will be spending more and more to continue to provide them with adequate Healthcare. As it stands, Medicare is not sustainable without serious restructuring.

As it stands, in the next three years Medicare and Medicaid will make up 50% of all national health spending, still 62% of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were due to medical expenses that were not adequately covered. Small businesses are suffering as well, they will be paying out over $2.4 trillion in expenses health care expenses for their employees over the next ten years.

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Despite the fact that it is extraordinarily clear the Healthcare needs reform it’s economically unsustainable, let’s not forget that there are many areas that we have been quite successful at maintaining high standards of care.

For common forms of Cancer, for instance, we have much higher survival rates than in European countries and Canada. We typically have “shorter lines” to see a specialist, we have greater access to high end medical equipment than many other countries in the developed world and a large portion of the innovations in Health care come out of the United States.

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To get a clearer view on how Health Care functions in the United States, Wikipedia offers a clear (albeit not concise) perspective.

HR 3200: Fact and Fiction

Now that we have a slightly better understanding about Health Care itself, let’s look at the reform bill that has found its way into the news most often: HR 3200. Just what does this bill try to accomplish. Well, that depends on who you ask of course but if you are really interested I would suggest brewing yourself a cup of coffee and sitting down with the document.

What you should not do, however, is rely on sources like this one that have been floating around. Your political leanings notwithstanding, it should seem a little fishy to you how convenient a document like this is. Not only does it add a huge amount of fuel to the anti-reform fire but it does so without providing clear citations from the document that it “analyzed.” If you read the comments section on the post we linked to you’ll understand what we’re pointing out.

Since we don’t have the space or the hundreds of hours it would take to properly analyze every line of this document, instead we’ll touch on some key points.

Is this plan paid for?

Probably not. The party line is that the program will be paid for by removing inefficiencies from the current system. Much of the conversation has been, at best, theoretical. It is still unclear whether the bill can be paid for without significantly increasing the deficit. Though keep in mind that the increase would be a small fraction of the economic impact Health Care will have without reform.

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Will Private Insurance Be Outlawed?

No. This is an instance of selective quoting by Investor Business Daily. The bill will in no way outlaw private insurance. If you have insurance and you like it and your insurance provider continues to offer it you will be allowed to keep it.

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Will Families Save $2500 Because of This Bill?

Probably not. Obama promises mostly involve cutting the rate of growth of spending. As we saw in the statistics earlier, that is necessary in order for Health Care to remain solvent at all. If the growth of Health Care costs isn’t cut, the economy will not be able to sustain it in the long run. Achieving these kinds of savings would require a fundamental and politically unpopular shift in the way the Health Care is run in this country. The likelihood of that happening is slim to none.

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Do Democrats Want To Cut $500 Billion From Medicare?

No. From a 30,000 view that would be political suicide even if Medicare were running itself into the ground (which it is). Politicans don’t often commit Hari-Kari. More to the point, the bill proposes a series of savings and cuts but none of them are going to come from current or future medicare benefits. According to the AARP, “None of the health care reform proposals being considered by Congress would cut Medicare benefits or increase your out-of-pocket costs for Medicare services.”

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Will Health Care Reform Cover Illegal Immigrants?

No. This one comes straight from the bill itself,

H.R. 3200: Sec 246 — NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

Certainly an argument can be made for what “lawfully present” means, but an argument can be made for just about anything if you choose to split hairs. This does not deny the fact that the bill states that undocumented aliens would not receive federal funds.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel Wants To Sacrifice the Weak For the Strong

One of the biggest tangential arguments is that health adviser to President Obama, Dr. Ezekiel Emanual thinks that, “the elderly with dementia and the young who have neurological disorders should be sacrificed for the common good.”

This is another case of selective quoting by Betsy McCaughey (who also believes strongly in Death Panels). The truth is that Dr. Emanual wrote a paper 15 years ago discussing a philosophical and academic trend in how people think about organ transplants in a world where there is a limited supply. It had nothing to do with prescribing policy. Dr. Emanual has also gone on record as stating he in no way endorses anything remotely close to selective euthanasia.

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Death Panels

We honestly had a hard time with this one because there is so much proof that Death Panels simply will not exist, and there doesn’t even seem to be a reason (based on fact and not politics) why this has spent so much time in the public consciousness.

This entire mess was started by Sarah Palin who coined the term on her Facebook page. She was afraid that government Health Care reform would mean rationed care for the elderly and her disabled child. She didn’t want the government deciding who was fit to live or die. All legitimate concerns based on her misinterpretation of the bill. This sentiment was wrapped in the term “death panels” and it took off from there,

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Enter Betsy McCaughey, former Lt. Governor of New York and until recently member of the board of directors of the Cantel Medical Corporation. She claimed that the bill contained provisions for euthanasia of the elderly. In any reading of the sections cited (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200), what you will find is that it compensates people if they choose to have end-of-life counseling. If they then decide its a great idea to be maintained on life support for the next 100 years, they would still receive identical compensation.

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The bill will neither requires nor endorse end-of-life counseling, all it does is modify Section 1861(s)2 of the Social Security Act to cover it. That is to say, nothing changes except that you can get reimbursed if you decide to go for counseling.

Public Reaction

The public reaction to Health Care reform has been a mixed bag. Here are a few videos to give you some differing opinions on how we are reacting to reform.

Con: San Fransisco Protest of “Obamacare”

Pro: Does Obama Want To Kill Sarah Palin’s Baby?

Con: Is This the Right Kind of Change?

Pro: Guns At Townhall Meetings

Con: Obama On Health Care and Death Panels

Pro: A Touch of Satire

Summary

We’ve gone through a lot in this piece, so here is a brief summary of some of what we’ve learned.

• Healthcare with or without reform is becoming too expensive for the economy to mange.
• 46.7 million Americans are uninsured.
• Our Healthcare system has advantages of speed of care that come from it not being government run.
• There has not been an adequate discussion on how HR 3200 will be paid for.
• HR 3200 will not take away your right to private insurance coverage.
• No one is trying to cut or reduce the benefits of Medicare.
• Families will not be getting checks for $2500 because of HR 3200.
• Illegal Immigrants will not be covered by this plan.
• Death Panels do not exist, never have existed and are in fact quite ludicrous.

Whether or not you will support or rebuke HR 3200 has a lot to do with your political leanings. That’s OK, to deny the fact that opinion is colored by politics would be a gross simplification for the human condition. What we wanted to present you with is information to help make your decision in a more informed, rational manner.

Understand that the job of media is as much to polarize as it is to inform. The reason that you typically agree with your news station of choice is because they “know you” and craft the news to fit neatly into your biases. The next time you hear something that seems a little off-the-wall, that doesn’t make sense, look into it. Trust that everyone has an agenda and that until you fully understand that agenda you can’t hope to make the sort of decisions that we pride ourselves on as a society.

Social Media wants to answer two questions:

1. “What half-way productive thing can we do with 1,000,000 people sitting in a room talking to each other all day long?”

and

2. “How can people who sell things exploit these millions to sell more things?”

Social Media is about the most effective, efficient and psychologically painless way to use large groups of people to accomplish goals. It’s codified social engineering with a technological and often messianic slant. It is the “technology” that will save our souls by giving us access to the corporate powers that be and influence over the highest levels of society, all from the comfort of our living rooms.

It abstracts knowledge and influence. It doesn’t matter what you look like, how old you are or what size shoe you wear, if you make sense people will listen. If you make enough sense, people will talk about you. If enough people talk about you, things will start happening. That’s the the secret sauce that Social Media consultants try to sell and the “point” of most discussions on the topic.

It exists as a movement because until recently, it was really difficult for an individual to reach outside of their small, geographically limited circle of influence. Now that you can, it has allowed anyone with the right mix of charm, knowledge and gumption to play guru.

Social Media has been described as everything from a easier way for shills to shill, to the most important cultural change since the Industrial Revolution.

It’s both at the same time.

Ideally it leads to projects like Wikipedia, Blogging, group action like this, fund raising, and scads of entertaining, irreverent and often unavailable media that now has a home on the web.

Just as often it leads to 1,000,000 sitting around on the web talking about sitting around on the web talking about sittin…All lead by gurus explaining to them that they are on the cusp of a technological revolution the likes of which the world has never seen.

Don’t get me wrong, I love gurus. I think we need more gurus.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that people want “thought leaders.” It’s why FOX News, Self-Help and Politics works. It’s also why immediately after forming groups we start ranking each other by whatever is available: page views, followers, post count, it doesn’t really matter. Even when we don’t use numbers as the proxy, other more esoteric forms of rankings crop up (cliques, “gangs,” interest groups). If you look at any group of people that has been around for more than a few months, you will see systems of class and stratification of influence.

We want gurus, leaders, people to look up to, people to emulate. We also want power, influence and pretige whether it’s meaningful or not. We need a society where we can strive towards becoming something better than we are. Where we can go from peasant to King. Think about it, having a level 70 character in WoW isn’t going to make your 401k look any better but it sure makes you feel good.

Even the most self-less, well meaning and good members of society need to feel like they are accomplishing something in the eyes of the people who matter to them. Social Media gives them an outlet.

Companies want gurus and “thought leaders” because let’s face it, advertising doesn’t work so well anymore, the economy is bleeding money and businesses are hungry for a new way to get us excited about consuming increasingly esoteric products. Social Media holds the promise of creating a system where people will, for the first time since WWII, do work and spend money for the sheer principle of it.

If someone told you that they could give you access to your customers thoughts, and make them like you for selling things to them — it’s really hard to argue with that. If they make the entire process feel noble and self-less and pure on top of that, it should be packaged up and sold alongside the Flintstones Chewable Morphine.

It’s everything that everyone has always wanted, consumption without guilt and sales with sliminess.

We would all be better off if we were a little bit more honest about all of this.

We get bad gurus selling snake oil and bandages because the people who can really help, the people you should trust and listen to, don’t want to come off looking like “some kind of marketer.”

We end up being fed a constant diet of rehashed, recycled junk media because it’s not OK for “good people” to want to make money off of what they do so they avoid doing anything to push their content.

We all want to be a thought leader on our little patches of sand so we write, “how to use Social Media,” blocks of content which are little more than aggregates of aggregates of aggregates. This leads to an endless cycle of Social Media 101 played out across every network in the world, when what people really need is a Masters Class. They need something evolutionary.

We ignore the role that geography, social power, and class play in our networks. The fact is that what we think of as a Meritocracy, where everyone is on equal footing eating lollipops and singing hymns, is really a loosely structured Republic, where rotating groups of influencers elected for their charisma decide what is good for us and spoon feed the results to their circles of influence. The content we think is “important,” the media we consume and the trends we follow are rarely the will of the masses as we’d like to believe, they are will of that 1% of people who have worked to get the power to make the trends.

Like it has always been.

Social Media is a world ruled for better or worse by those with the skills to market themselves and push their opinions as facts. Sometimes they’re right and we’d do well to listen, sometimes they’re wrong and should be ignored, but the precentages are no better or worse than anywhere else in society. All we’ve done is switch out old world sociological signals like wealth, class and appearance for their psychological equivalents and further obfuscated the entire thing by putting everyone behind a semi-anonymous wall of technology.

Social Media has allowed good people to do good things and bad people to do bad things on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented rate. It might be time for us to stop looking at it like some kind of Utopian dogma or evil, marketing fad and see it for what it is, a startlingly accurate look at how societies as a whole function — for better or for worse.

I’ve gone on for long enough.

I am right? Wrong?

Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland have discovered that “deceptive” behavior can emerge from relatively simple rulesets. They programmed a team of robots to find food. These robots were equipped with artificial neural networks that allowed them to learn over time.

“Over the first few generations, robots quickly evolved to successfully locate the food, while emitting light randomly. This resulted in a high intensity of light near food, which provided social information allowing other robots to more rapidly find the food,”

Later generations of robots discovered this fact and evolved to not shine their lights when they were approaching the food supply. They “lied” to other members of the team so that they could more quickly acquire food.

Interestingly enough, according to Augustine of Hippo, this type of behavior would make the robots pretty bad liars. His taxonomy ranks lies in order decreasing severity. Our robot friends rank third.

• Lies in religious teaching.
• Lies that harm others and help no one.
• Lies that harm others and help someone.
• Lies told for the pleasure of lying.
• Lies told to “please others in smooth discourse.”
• Lies that harm no one and that help someone.
• Lies that harm no one and that save someone’s life.
• Lies that harm no one and that save someone’s “purity.”

Learn More About Deception

The Most Common Types of Lies [site]

AOL Health: What kinds of lies do we most commonly tell?

Feldman: When we lie to other people, we’re usually trying to make them feel good about themselves — ‘I agree with you’ or ‘That’s a wonderful new tie.’ We also lie to make the conversation go more smoothly. So when someone mentions a restaurant or a book, you say, ‘Yes, I’ve been there’ or ‘I’ve read that.’ Or you say you liked a movie when you really didn’t. Then there are the self-oriented lies. To make ourselves look better and to puff ourselves up, we claim ‘I’ve traveled to Europe’ or ‘I was in the National Honor Society in high school.’ Most of us think that we’re above average, and we lie to reinforce our belief that we really are smarter, more capable, a better driver, you name it. This inflated view of ourselves is basically what allows us to get through the day. It’s a mechanism we use to enhance and protect our self-image.

Lying, Magic and Sleight-of-Hand with Ricky Jay [site]

You could wonder whether I’m lying to you now, about those two things and how they differ, because you don’t know. Because I know that you can’t follow the sleight of hand I’m doing to absolutely know for certain. And I’m not going to expose the method to show you that, but as your friend, I’m going to tell you that nothing about this was a lie. Everything I said in the transmission of these two effects was true. But in magic, there is magician to magician lying and obfuscation. To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect – when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic.

Cognitive Load and Detecting Lies [site]

…deception researchers led by psychologist Aldert Vrij of the University of Portsmouth in England asked one group to lie convincingly and another group to tell the truth about a staged theft scenario that only the truth-tellers had experienced. A second pair of groups had to do the same but with a crucial twist: both the liars and the truth-tellers had to maintain eye contact while telling their stories.

Later, as researchers watched videotapes of the suspects’ accounts, they tallied verbal signs of cognitive load (such as fewer spatial details in the suspects’ stories) and nonverbal ones (such as fewer eyeblinks). The eyeblinks are particularly interesting because whereas rapid blinking suggests nervousness, fewer blinks are a sign of cognitive load, Vrij explains—and contrary to what police are taught, liars tend to blink less. Although the effect was subtle, the instruction to maintain eye contact did magnify the differences between the truth-tellers and the liars.

Lying, Ethics and the Art of Selling [site]

If you’re a manager, remember that your words and behaviors — as well as what you don’t say and don’t do — send a clear message to us in sales about how we should sell and how truthful we should be. If you take your top-line responsibilities seriously and encourage ethical selling, we’ll be honest with customers and trust them to make the best choices for themselves — and to trust that those choices will benefit the company. Ethics needs to be the highest priority in selling, to protect the company’s reputation; attracting and keeping customers comes second; and profit comes third.

Body Language and Detecting Lies [site]

So can the direction a person’s eyes reveal whether or not they are making a truthful statement? Short answer: sort of. But, it isn’t as simple as some recent television shows or movies make it seem. In these shows a detective will deduce a person is being untruthful simply because they looked to the left or right while making a statement.

In reality, it would be foolish to make such a snap judgment without further investigation… but the technique does have some merit.

According to the Journal of Neuroscience, tone deafness could be caused by a very particular brain defect.

“This region, a neural ‘highway’ called the arcuate fasciculus, is known to be involved in linking music and language perception with vocal production.The arcuate fasciculus was smaller in volume and had a lower fiber count in the tone-deaf individuals. More notably, the superior branch of the arcuate fasciculus in the right hemisphere could not be detected in the tone-deaf individuals. The researchers speculated that this could mean the branch is missing entirely, or is so abnormally deformed that it appears invisible to even the most advanced neuroimaging methods.”

Tone deafness, also known as amusia, dysmelodia and dysmusia is a disorder where a listener finds it impossible to hear relative differences between notes.

Learn More About Tone Deafness

Test For Tone Deafness [site]

In our research, we were looking for neuro-anatomical correlates of tonedeafness (called ‘congenital amusia’ in the scientific literature. We gave several dozen subjects a high-resolution MRI scan and used a statistical package to analyze the images. This technique, called VBM (voxel-based morphometry), has been used to study the changes in the brain caused by Alzheimer disease and many other neurological conditions. The test you are about to take was used as a screening test to roughly characterize patient’s pitch discrimination and musical memory abilities. Even though musical memory is strongly tested here, we have found that people who are tonedeaf tend to have normal musical memories.

Amusia and Music Appreciation [site]

Though most amusia sufferers find listening to music pointless, some even find it annoying and unpleasant.

Anne Vere, an amusic from Newcastle, describes music as an ‘irritant’. When she heard the theme tune to Brief Encounter, voted the UK’s favourite piece of classic music for the past five years, she described it as ‘banging that would be best avoided’.

About 4% of the Planet is Truly Tone Deaf [site]

Amusia (commonly referred to as tone-deafness) is a difficulty in discriminating pitch changes in melodies that affects around 4% of the human population. Amusia cannot be explained as a simple sensory impairment. Here we show that amusia is strongly related to a deficit in spatial processing in adults.

Amusia and it’s Effect on Language [site]

‘Music is probably the only domain in which fine-grained pitch discrimination is required for its appreciation,’ report Julie Ayotte, Isabelle Peretz, and Krista Hyde in a tone-deaf study. Accordingly, a ‘degraded pitch perception system’ may compromise music perception but leave speech intonation relatively unaffected. ‘Yet, the same pitch-tracking mechanism may subserve both domains,’ they conclude.

We often think of ‘tone deafness’ in its lay meaning — ‘unable to carry a tune or sing a song.’ That’s different from the medical meaning of “inability to distinguish successive tones.” Almost all people (except the medically tone deaf) can learn to sing with training.

Amusia’s Effect on Daily Life [site]

…congenital amusia is related to severe deficiencies in processing pitch variations. The deficit extends to impairments in music memory and recognition as well as in singing and the ability to tap in time to music. Interestingly, the disorder appears specific to the musical domain. Congenital amusical individuals process and recognize speech, including speech prosody, common environmental sounds and human voices, as well as control subjects. Thus, the present study convincingly demonstrates the existence of congenital amusia as a new class of learning disabilities that affect musical abilities.

Now it’s your turn. Think you know the Studio? Every week we’ll send you out in search of fame, glory and interesting new facts.