conspiracy theories

There are a lot of them about - and most of them are rubbish:
The Ultimate Conspiracy Debunker - YouTube

Including:
alex jones conspiracy - YouTube

And there is no 'hidden pattern' most of the time: - according to the Ramsey Theory:
The origin of countless conspiracy theories - PatrickJMT - YouTube

But it depends what you mean by 'conspiracy':
George Carlin - Conspiracy Theorists and Powerful People - YouTube
George Carlin on Conspiracies - YouTube

For example:
Jay Doubleyou: conspiracy!

Planned obsolescence:
Jay Doubleyou: the men who made us spend

Russia's invasion of the Ukraine:
Jay Doubleyou: english language media as propaganda in the ukraine
Jay Doubleyou: information wars

The liberal media:
Jay Doubleyou: fake news

Shakespeare's identity:
Jay Doubleyou: there are several questions around Shakespeare

Gun control:
Jay Doubleyou: gun and violence issues

How America went to war:
Jay Doubleyou: propaganda, public relations and manufacturing consent

Sport:
Jay Doubleyou: bread and circuses today
Jay Doubleyou: sport and politics
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foucault's discipline and punish made easier

What's this?

Panopticon - Wikipedia

The French philosopher Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Michel Foucault - Wikipedia

... looked at the idea:



An Introduction to Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish - A Macat Sociology Analysis - YouTube

This book looks at power:
Discipline and Punish - Wikipedia
Foucault: power is everywhere | Understanding power for social change | powercube.net | IDS at Sussex University

Foucault, panopticism and digital power

While power is often thought of as something someone important (like a king) “holds”, Foucault saw it very differently. He revealed power to be highly distributed, diffuse and relational. In the modern world, the pressure we feel to behave in certain ways is often disconnected from any particular person or organization. Instead it’s embedded in social norms, social structures, institutionalized rules, networks and even physical spaces.

In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault famously refers to utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham’s invention the “panopticon” as a metaphor for decentralized power through surveillance and self-surveillance.

The panopticon is a prison design in which individual cells surround a tower at the centre from which a guard could, at any point in time, be looking. The prisoners never know when the guard is looking (like with a one-way mirror), but because it’s always possible, they behave as if watched, thus, disciplining themselves.

Bentham saw his invention as stupendously excellent design for its economical efficiency, and he imagined it should be applied to schools, hospitals and other institutions as well. For Foucault, this panopticon is a metaphor demonstrating how power, at one time associated with a sovereign, became embedded into the very institutions, and architectures of the spaces we live in.

Foucault, panopticism and digital power – The Dead Philosophers' Guide to New Technology

This includes all sorts of related issues:
Panopticism - Wikipedia
Surveillance capitalism - Wikipedia
Normalization (sociology) - Wikipedia

And has thrown up all sorts of responses - and all very recent responses:

Unlike the Panopticon, citizens don’t know they are being watched

Internet of things: morals reformed? Health preserved? Industry invigorated?

What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance? | Technology | The Guardian

On BBC Radio 4:

Who is watching you?

Start the Week

Society is at a turning point, warns Professor Shoshana Zuboff. Democracy and liberty are under threat as capitalism and the digital revolution combine forces. She tells Andrew Marr how new technologies are not only mining our minds for data, but radically changing them in the process. As Facebook celebrates its 15th birthday she examines what happens when a few companies have unprecedented power and little democratic oversight.

Although behavioural data is constantly being abstracted by tech companies, John Thornhill, Innovations Editor at the Financial Times, questions whether they have yet worked out how to use it effectively to manipulate people. And he argues that the technological revolution has brought many innovations which have benefitted society.

Start the Week - Who is watching you? - BBC Sounds
Futures Forum: Surveillance capitalism

Welcome to China:
Nosedive (Black Mirror) - Wikipedia
No, China isn’t Black Mirror – social credit scores are more complex and sinister than that
China’s ‘social credit’ system is a real-life ‘Black Mirror’ nightmare - NYPost
Credit as a Social Technology: Black Mirror, China, and the Case for Social Credit

Welcome to Black Mirror:



Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube
Black Mirror | Nosedive Featurette [HD] | Netflix - YouTube
Black Mirror's 'Nosedive' episode may have predicted the future in China | Buzz.ie
'Black Mirror' Recap: 'Nosedive' Is a Sharp Satire About Social Media - The Atlantic

There are other such episodes:
The Entire History of You | Black Mirror - YouTube
Black Mirror and Control Society | Narrative and Technology, Spring 2015
Black Mirror: subjectivity and technology in “The Entire History of You”
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schools as 'total institutions'

The philosopher and critic Ivan Illich was interested in key features of modern life:
Jay Doubleyou: ivan illich on education and health

Especially the feature of the 'institution':
Ivan Illich - Deschooling Society - Institutional Spectrum

Here's a course on 'critical pedagogy':

The origins of critical pedagogy are outside the classroom, indeed, outside the common imagination of a school. Many critical pedagogues today continue to see the school itself, and not just the classroom, as an institution to be challenged, subverted, undermined, or ultimately, completely dismantled. Schools as a model for organizing learning are fundamentally oppressive: they force learning into a narrow schedule and space and simultaneously reinforce the notion that learning does not happen in important ways anywhere else.

Ivan Illich writes that "a … major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives."

As a place of confinement, both physically and psychologically, schools become a place where students learn to look to authority figures and experts for answers and come to recognize only a certain set of knowledges as legitimate.

Learning Our Way Away From Institutions — Hybrid Pedagogy

And here's some recent comment from an education blog:

Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society in 1970. The concept of deschooling has moved on from Illich’s initial definition. However, many of the ideas in his book are worth revisiting.

No amount of reformation, according to Illich — adjustments to the ways schools are constructed and run, changes in teachers’ attitudes to students, the use of technology in the classroom, and even a change in how students are engaged — will alter the outcomes of schooling. Schools can only school. And they can only school, and not educate, because they are total institutions that are designed to control every participant and process within them towards a stated end: egalitarianism and unquestioning submission to the state or some other dominating institution, i.e. an organized religion. This is not an education, it is indoctrination. It breeds narrow-mindedness, and an incapacity to think independently. Schools are not to be reformed, they are to be abandoned altogether, and the vast resources that are taken from families and businesses (through taxation) to fund the schooling industry should remain with the families and the businesses to fund home-based education and more financially viable private enterprise.

(PDF) Ivan Illich: Yet Again Revisited | Lance A Box - Academia.edu

Certainly today's universities can be considered to be 'total institutions':

Billion dollar institutions now police students' Halloween costumes, their private text messages, their social media posts, and even their external voluntary associations. Faculty and staff, too, are finding their words—written, spoken, and even sung—subject to formal, and more often secret, investigation. Almost every aspect of life on many campuses is now subject to unprecedented surveillance and potential sanction.

Total institution - Wikipedia
The University as a Total Institution - Quillette

As could primary schools:
ERIC - ED109817 - The Elementary School as a Total Institution., 1975-Apr

So, what is the 'total institution'?

A total institution is a closed social system in which life is organized by strict norms, rules, and schedules, and what happens within it is determined by a single authority whose will is carried out by staff who enforce the rules. Total institutions are separated from wider society by distance, laws, and/or protections around their property and those who live within them are generally similar to each other in some way. In general, they are designed to provide care to a population that is unable to care for themselves, and/or protect society from the potential harm that this population could do to its members. The most typical examples include prisons, military compounds, private boarding schools, and locked mental health facilities.

What Is a Total Institution?
Total Institution | Encyclopedia.com

And how can a school be described as a 'total institution'?

The following thinks this is a good idea:

First: teachers supervise all aspects of daily life; going to school means being separated from family and becoming a part of a new environment. Students are no longer under the supervision of a parent, rather under that of a teacher whose rules differed from those at home.

Second: the school is a rigid system which provides students with a standardized and organized way of life; At home, schedules are not as stringent or fixed as it is at school where events are scheduled for certain times.

Third: formal rules and daily schedules dictate when, where, and how students perform virtually every part of their daily routines; as previously mentioned, the rules in the classroom differ from those at home. Rules at school are in place to control what students do, how they do it and when they did it, as well as, with whom; whereas at home, routines are a little less structured.

Finally: a single rational plan exists to fulfill the particular goal of the institution.

‘De-socialization’ is the idea that individuals can ‘un-learn’ ideas and values, which most often takes place within the educational environment. This occurs when children, who share different traditions, beliefs and cultures, begin to unlearn what they have learned in the home. Students are eventually able to recognize “bad” values, such as racism and sexism, and unlearn them. School helps students do this by exposing them to these topics and issues and re-teaching them.

We see this process in our schools but what happens to students who immigrate and have not been exposed to western culture? Would this work when students have reached an older age or would the process of de-socialization and re-socialization still apply?

Schools as Total Institutions - Teaching Rocks!

On the other hand, if 'socialisation' is what schools are all about, the educationalist John Taylor Gatto had something to say about what this particular institution is responsible for:

Gatto asserts the following regarding what school does to children in 'Dumbing Us Down':

> It confuses the students. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
> It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
> It makes them indifferent.
> It makes them emotionally dependent.
> It makes them intellectually dependent.
> It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
> It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.[12]

Jay Doubleyou: dumbing us down
Jay Doubleyou: john taylor gatto: on video

To finish with another philosopher:

While power is often thought of as something someone important (like a king) “holds”, Foucault saw it very differently. He revealed power to be highly distributed, diffuse and relational. In the modern world, the pressure we feel to behave in certain ways is often disconnected from any particular person or organization. Instead it’s embedded in social norms, social structures, institutionalized rules, networks and even physical spaces.

In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault famously refers to utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham’s invention the “panopticon” as a metaphor for decentralized power through surveillance and self-surveillance.

The panopticon is a prison design in which individual cells surround a tower at the centre from which a guard could, at any point in time, be looking. The prisoners never know when the guard is looking (like with a one-way mirror), but because it’s always possible, they behave as if watched, thus, disciplining themselves.

Bentham saw his invention as stupendously excellent design for its economical efficiency, and he imagined it should be applied to schools, hospitals and other institutions as well. For Foucault, this panopticon is a metaphor demonstrating how power, at one time associated with a sovereign, became embedded into the very institutions, and architectures of the spaces we live in.

Foucault, panopticism and digital power – The Dead Philosophers' Guide to New Technology

See:
Jay Doubleyou: foucault's discipline and punish made easier
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complexity theory in language learning and teaching

Things are lot more complex than we think:

What is complexity theory?

For Newton, the universe was rationalistic, deterministic and of clockwork order; effects were functions of causes, small causes (minimal initial conditions) produced small effects (minimal and predictable) and large causes (multiple initial conditions) produced large (multiple) effects.

Predictability, causality, patterning, universality and ‘grand’ overarching theories, linearity, continuity, stability, objectivity, all contributed to the view of the universe as an ordered and internally harmonistic mechanism in an albeit complex equilibrium, a rational, closed and deterministic system susceptible to comparatively straightforward scientific discovery and laws.

From the 1960s this view has been increasingly challenged with the rise of theories of chaos and complexity. Central to chaos theory are several principles ...

Research Methods in Education

And these ideas are being applied more and more to education:
Complexity theory and school improvement: some possible connections

"Language is not a static rule-governed system":

Complexity Theory: A New Way to Think

Diane Larsen-Freeman
University of Michigan

It was pure good fortune that I encountered Complexity Theory (CT) some years ago. It originates in the physical sciences, and I am a mere dilettante in them. However, from the beginning of my acquaintance with CT, I quickly realized that it had much to offer applied linguists. It challenged my concept of language as a static rule-governed system, maintaining instead that “the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules”

(PDF) Complexity theory: a new way to think

The leading light in the field is Diane Larsen-Freeman:

She is renowned for her work on the complex/dynamic systems approach to second language development.

Diane Larsen-Freeman - Wikipedia
Larsen-Freeman, Diane | University of Michigan School of Education

With some nice videos to explain things a little:

Diane Larsen-Freeman at The New School - YouTube
Diane Larsen-Freeman: Including all Students: A Complex Systems Perspective (JALT2018) - YouTube

And she's written lots - with a review here for some professional development for teachers:
Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching by Diane Larsen-Freeman: Book Review - YouTube

And more:
Complexity Theory and Language Development: In celebration of Diane Larsen-Freeman | Edited by Lourdes Ortega and ZhaoHong Han

To finish, here's a definition of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory as applied to language learning:

In 1997, Larsen-Freeman published an article in which she claimed that second language acquisition should be viewed as a developmental process which includes language attrition as well as language acquisition.[8]

Second language development is mainly studied by applying dynamical systems theory. Language is considered to be a system which includes many subsystems such as linguistic system, phonetic system. Dynamic systems are interconnected, nonlinear, adaptive, open, sensitive to initial conditions. Variability is seen as an inherent property of development and it is not viewed as measurement error, therefore from a dynamic systems perspective variability in the data is analysed and considered valuable information.

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory - Wikipedia
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film noir

It's a difficult thing to define but Simple Wikipedia is helpful:

Film noir movies were mostly made from the early 1940s to the late 1950s in the United States, and they were usually filmed in black-and-white. The term "film noir" comes from the French term for "black film" or "dark film". Film noir movies include many different genres of movies, such as gangster movies, police movies, and detectivemovies.

Film noir movies were often filmed so that there were many dark shadows in the movie, even on characters' faces. The Hollywood film noir movies were influenced by German film directors such as Fritz Lang, who used dramatic lighting techniques. Another influence on film noir movies was 1930s French books or movies about heroes who would die at the end of the story or stories with sad endings. 

Film noir - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's Fritz Lang:



M - How Fritz Lang Shaped the Modern Movie - YouTube

Yes, it's very creepy:
"M" Fritz Lang movie trailer - YouTube

But back to Hollywood:



Top 10 Film Noirs - YouTube

It is a difficult thing to define:
Defining Film Noir - YouTube

Here's a list which takes us beyond the 1940s and 50s:

Then and now, the best examples of this genre continue to evoke humanity’s eternal fear of social disruption

The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time - Slant Magazine

And this is where it gets interesting:

In the 1960s and 1970s, there were movies like The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Chinatown(1974), which were influenced by the film noir movies from the 1950s.

In the 1980s and 1990s there were movies that were a bit like film noir movies, like Fargo (1996). In the 2000s, there are also movies that are like film noir movies in some ways. For example, there are films such as Memento (2000) and Sin City (2005).

There are also science fiction movies that look a bit like film noir movies because they look dark and they have a lead character who does some bad things, such as Soylent Green (1973); Blade Runner (1982), which starred Harrison Ford...

Film noir - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Space Age Film Noir Known as Bladerunner - YouTube

Or, a trailer:



Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Trailer - YouTube

And, so, we can call this a 'film noir':

Film noir movies are often shot in cities at night, and the stories often take place in bars, nightclubs, gambling clubs, casinos, and cheap hotels. This makes film noir movies look very dark, because the scenes are shot at night, or inside dark places like a bar or hotel.

Film noir movie scenes often have a lot of shadows, such as the shadows of window frames, blinds, or stair banisters. There are also often dark shadows on the movie scenes, even on the faces of the actors. All of the shadows and darkness make the film noir movies feel mysterious and stressful.

The characters in film noir movies are often motivated by greed, jealousy, or revenge. The characters in film noir movies are often private detectives or police officers who are investigating crimes committed by bad criminals and gang members such as murder, gambling or prostitution. In film noir movies, there are often stories about robberies, heists, extortion of money (which is called "blackmail"), or murder.

In film noir movies, even the heroes or lead characters are often bad or partly bad in some way. For example, the hero of a film noir movie may help an innocent man or woman who is being threatened by a criminal, or rescue a woman from a criminal gang. Yet the hero or lead character may also do bad things, such as commit crimes, hurt or threaten people, or tell lies.

Often, the hero or lead character of a film noir film will be bitter, sad, lonely, or depressed, because of bad things that happened to them. The person watching the movie has to decide if they think that a hero who does both good and bad things is a good person or not. The stories from film noir movies can make the audience think about how people should act, or how people should make choices in their life. This is one of the things that people like about watching film noir movies.

Film noir movies are not happy movies. In happy movies, like romance movies, people fall in love, get married, and live happy lives. In film noir movies, sad things happen. A good man with a wife might need money for their rent, and borrow the money from a criminal gang leader, because the good man has no other way of getting the money. Then the bad gang leader might force the good man to do bad things to pay back the money. Maybe the bad gang leader will threaten to hurt the good man's wife. Then the good man has to decide between protecting his wife or doing a bad crime.

People who watch film noir movies like to see stories about people who have to make hard choices, or people whose lives have sad things happen in them. Real life is not a romantic comedy; people often have to make hard choices or have sad things happen.

Film noir - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To finish:

Director David Fincher followed the immensely successful neo-noir Seven(1995) with a film that developed into a cult favorite after its original, disappointing release: Fight Club (1999) is a sui generis mix of noir aesthetic, perverse comedy, speculative content, and satiric intent.^[113]

Film noir - Wikipedia



Se7en (1995) - Trailer HD Remastered - YouTube
Seven (1995 film) - Wikipedia



Fight Club Film Noir - YouTube
Fight Club Trailer - HD - YouTube
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how a conference call really works

It's very difficult to make a conference call - and the problems are not always English problems:




A Conference Call in Real Life - YouTube
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are journalists being too aggressive towards interviewees?

There have been demonstrations in London:
Extinction Rebellion protests: youth activists break down in tears at Heathrow as demonstrations over climate change continue in London | London Evening Standard

One of the demonstrators has been interviewed:
Guy News Interview With Robin Boardman Pattison - YouTube

And one interview didn't last too long:
Extinction Rebellion activist 'stomps' out of Sky News after clash with Adam Boulton - Mirror Online
Posh eco-warrior who stormed off Sky News in strop after being called 'incompetent & middle class' is globe-trotting 'poet' from £17,500-a-year boys' school

Another young person has been interviewed:
Sky News Jayne Secker interviews Kirsty Archer - Google Search

With the interviewee providing her own comment:
Why I went viral on Twitter after talking about being evicted on Sky News | Kirsty Archer | Opinion | The Guardian

The question being asked today:

Are journalists being too aggressive towards interviewees – particularly young ones – on live TV?

Part of the problem, it seems, is that young people in particular are often used to discussing points online

Robin Boardman-Pattison on Sky News (Photo: Screen still)

Robyn Vinter

Friday April 19th 2019

A change in the law is putting an end to “revenge evictions” – an ordeal experienced by nearly half of renters who make a formal complaint about their landlord, according to Citizens Advice. Being celebrated as a victory for housing campaigners, the end of section 21 was a big discussion point this week and attracted even more attention after a live TV interview with one tenant went awry.

Kirsty Archer, a young activist who was issued an eviction notice after complaining to her landlord about problems with the property, was invited on to Sky News to talk about her experience. The resulting interview, which circulated online, amassing thousands of comments and shares, showed a visibly uncomfortable Archer being grilled by Sky News presenter Jayne Secker – who also happens to be a private landlord.

Asked what she would do after being evicted, Archer began to respond: “On average, it costs about £2,000 to-”

“That’s not the landlord’s fault, though, is it?” interrupted Secker, who then complained that tenants do not know how to change a lightbulb or turn on the boiler and asked Archer whether she “is equipped with all the skills necessary to rent”.

Though clearly flummoxed by the direction the interview was taking, Archer responded calmly: “That’s a bit patronising, really.”

‘Aggressive’ and ‘unprofessional’

A lot of people on social media agreed, and the next day Secker issued an apology for getting the “tone and content” of the interview wrong.

On Wednesday, Sky News editor-at-large Adam Boulton was lambasted as “aggressive”, “unprofessional” and “bullying” for his interview of a climate-change protester. Boulton told Robin Boardman-Pattison, of climate-change group Extinction Rebellion, that he sounded “like a right-wing fascist” and that protesters are “a bunch of incompetent, middle-class, self-indulgent people who want to tell us how to live our lives”.

The clip, which again attracted thousands of comments and shares, ended with Boardman-Pattison getting out of his seat and walking off set. Yet this time reactions were divided, with some viewers praising Boulton for his frankness and suggesting that Boardman-Pattison wasn’t clear in the message he was trying to get across.

“It’s one thing to ask tricky questions or challenge a spokesperson, but it’s another to attack, patronise or insult them, which definitely occurred in both of these instances,” says Jess Gross, media trainer and director of PR agency Hotwire. “We are definitely seeing more of this, as fewer and fewer interviews are mapped out days in advance, with spokespeople given appropriate direction on a particular segment,” she adds.

Sky News Jayne Secker interviews Kirsty Archer (Photo: Screen still)

‘Debate is changing’

However, Peter Barrett, media trainer for PR agency Infinite Global, says the onus is on the interviewee to prepare for anything. “The nature of public debate is changing. We are seeing grass-roots organisations gaining national broadcast prominence on a variety of issues: Brexit, diversity issues, climate change, housing. Such individuals and groups are invariably ill prepared for the harsh reality of broadcast interviews,” he says.

Part of the problem, it seems, is that young people in particular are often used to discussing points online and rarely have face-to-face discussions with people on the opposite side of a debate. “Under bright studio lights and against the finger-jabbing of experienced broadcasters, it is extremely difficult to remain calm and master your arguments,” points out Barrett.

Media training, normally carried out by former journalists, can help in understanding the formula of live interviews. Virtually every chief executive, politician and spokesperson has had some form of such training, enabling them to get their message across.

Marverine Duffy, a former Sky News anchor and director of journalism courses at Birmingham City University, says it is important that anyone invited on live TV “does their research on the news organisation they are going to be questioned by, and the programme on which they are going to appear.”

‘Ignore the question’

Mike Best, broadcast journalism lecturer at Leeds Trinity University and a former director of broadcasting at ITV Yorkshire, agrees, adding: “One of the simplest ways of achieving [your aim] is to ignore the question you are asked and answer with your key message.”

It is not only inexperienced interviewees who suffer from presenters overstepping the mark. Journalist Nichi Hodgson was subjected to derision and aggressive questioning by TalkRadio’s James Whale last year while recalling being sexual assaulted. Even with a decade’s experience and countless live interviews about sex and relationships, she was “completely unprepared” for the tone of the interview, and left “angry and upset”. She says it wasn’t until the next day, when Whale was roundly criticised on social media, that the radio station appeared to notice that something had gone wrong.

Hodgson suggests that broadcast journalists need to learn to switch between grilling professional politicians and spokespeople, and speaking to people who are not as well trained or who are sharing their personal experience. “Your skill as a presenter is to take the conversation somewhere else or end the interview,” she explains.

Most people would agree that it is preferable for broadcasters to give interviewees too tough an interrogation than an easy ride but, with many young people now having social media followings bigger than news channels’ viewerships, it might not be long before producers are unable to find anyone willing to put themselves through a grilling.

Are journalists being too aggressive towards interviewees – particularly young ones – on live TV? - inews.co.uk
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