Homeless in America

I remember taking a writing class two years ago and we had to do a group project on whatever topic we desired. A classmate of mine that I sat next to asked me and a friend if we wanted to be in her group and do a presentation on the homeless and how to stop the ongoing problem. The homeless situation is real and it is a problem, but the exact circumstances of this problem have always been in question. As stated in Chapter 6 The Great Crow Fallacy there is no definitive way to come up with these exact numbers and they are sometimes extremely exaggerated. The girl in my class that I mentioned previously was a real advocate for helping the homeless and was giving us the details although we had kindly told her we weren't as into it as she was and would probably be better off looking into another topic. She continued to go into the "statistics" that she had which I don't remember exactly, but they were pretty outrageous compared to the actual estimates given in the book of somewhere between 444,000-800,000. I was just reminded of this situation while reading the chapter because it shows you that these situations are real and that "meaningless" numbers sometimes do stick to people as facts. So, just remember next time you hear about those 3 million homeless people on the streets and the ensuing collapse of the housing in America, please take the time and think about it and double check those numbers because you'll probably find that us Americans in general are doing ok and the housing situation we have is a little shaky, but I predict well all be able to live in our warm and comfortable house for some time still.

The Real Facts of War

War has always been a touchy subject, but one that people support none the less. The reason we as Americans are so ready to wear the red, white, and blue on our sleeve is because when it comes to war our freedom is in danger. The truth behind the matter is in most of these cases our freedom is not in danger and their is no real terror out there. In Chapter 5 Facts Can Save Your Life, Jackson and Jamieson delve into these issues very deeply by explaining the happens of such wars as The Spanish-American War of 1898, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and even the current "war" in Iraq. The authors explain how all of these wars began as a result of false pretenses and even propaganda used by the government to basically force the American people to support the decisions of its government. The pretenses I speak of are such things as a girl named Nayirah, a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, who in 1991 disguised as a 15 year old Kuwaiti that worked in a hospital where Iraqui militants were killing babies and paid for by, gave a testimony in front of a body of U.S. Representatives. The story sent chills down the spines of many Americans and the rest is history. This story was not backed up by actual workers in the hospital and Nayirah turned out to be the daughter opf Kuwaits ambassador to Washington who was just the creative genius of a PR firm who was paid for by Kuwait to do exactly what they had done, cause tension within America against the Iraquis The truth of course wasn't revealed until almost a year after the war had ended and the damage had already been done. Don't worry though there was of course an actual reason why the American government was so ready to support the fight against "the baby killers" and that was to keep Iraq's hands of Kuwaits rich oil mines. So yes the country may have went to war anyway, but without the support of its people it would have been much harder to do such a thing. The point of this whole story is why are we as Americans so ready to buy little American flags or supportive bumper stickers for our cars? The reason is that propaganda is all around us and especially in time of war. Government are smart and know how to push our buttons and grab our attention, so what can we do in defense you may ask. The same thin Brooks and Jamieson tell us to do try and avoid the spin and check the facts and try not to be so ready to support war next time so that we can try and avoid something we may regret later on (sound familiar?)

Belief vs. Disbelief

Chapter 4 simply restates what we commonly see everyday. The last thing that people especially Americans like to hear is that their wrong. This is even the case when there is clear cut proof sitting right in front of your face. If we take the time to back an idea and put our support and belief in that idea it won't be easy for us to make a complete 180 turn on that belief even after we find the disprroving evidence. The subject on the UFO cult is a clear example and there are common cases like this all the time. There are probably groups of people who get together on certain dates each year with the belief that the world is coming to an end , but when the world keeps rotating as it has for millions of years the proof is their that thir wrong. The thing is if you put so much time into anything you dont like to see your time being wasted on failure which is why its hard for us to turn back on our belief. You will see examples everyday of people backing the wrong side because we dont want to be told were wrong and I am an example of that myself. Admitting to being wrong and turning away from beliefs with lack of evidence is just another step we have to take in becoming "unspun."

Looks Can Be Deceiving

After reading the first three chapters of UnSpun I have found Chapter 3 to be the most appealing. There is a quote which really made this chapter stand out to me and that is, " A picture can indeed be worh a thousand words-but those words are't neceessarily true." I found this quote to be very true in todays society especially through various media outlets. Everythingwe see or hear on tv, the radio, in newspapers, on the internet, and wherever else we look is sugarcoated. As this chapter showed different products that were sugarcoated and tricked people into seeing and belevingsomething that wasn't there. This happens all the time everywhere we look as I said before and the reason this was so important to me is because people don't feel the need to take time and do some simpler esearch. When you see a product being advertised and think it may be for you look into it and see what is really there. When a politician makes a proposed plan look into it to see what is really happening. If we start to look beyond the pretty pictures we want to see and start to see the dark truth which is usually behind it then we can start to become "unspun".