Reading the tea leaves
Politics, work, family stressing you out?  Time for a tea break!  This U.K. Tea Council site has some fun stuff on it.  Click on the Astro Tea icon on the bottom of the home page (or click here) and click Enter to have this nice British lady teach you how to read your tea leaves (or, presumably, the tea leaves for Washington - suit yourself). The pop-up window includes a dictionary of tea symbols.
(found this thanks to a post by ashbury on the Metafilter site)

3:25:07 PM      trackback [] 

"Baghdad Urban Legends"
Why do so many Americans think that WMD have been found in Iraq, or that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11?  This American Journalism Review article looks at the responsibility of the media.  Some conclusions: Americans are inattentive; they make assumptions based on their biases rather than on the facts; those who watched Fox News were more likely to have misperceptions about Iraq; and if the media repeat something often enough, and give people enough information, people do change their attitudes.

Can PR change Muslim attitudes?
Do the AMR's conclusions hold true for Muslims and Arabs?  "Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," says a report (according to the NY Times) just released by a panel chosen by the Bush administration. "The report added that 'spin' and manipulative public relations 'are not the answer,' but that neither is avoiding the debate."  I thought this point was interesting:

The advisory panel said that it recognized that American policies might well be the root of the problem, but that Washington could do far more to present its side of the issues and rebut widespread misinformation among Muslims overseas.

Interesting because I just read this article in salon.com yesterday, featuring an interview with authors of the book "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq."  (They too identify Fox News as a culprit.)  But there’s this point again about people going with their own biases, their own personal experiences, first:

"There's a feeling in Arab nations and Muslim nations that the United States is supporting autocratic regimes ranging from Saudi Arabia to Morocco and giving nothing but lip service to democracy. And of course, then there's huge resentment over Israel...  If you want to move the dial of public opinion away from that resentment, it's only through a policy that's consistently true to the principles that we say we stand for: democracy and respect for human rights. And that has not, thus far, been the policy of our government."

2:41:01 PM      trackback []