The Language of Politics

From NYRB:

By Michael Tomasky The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina by Frank Rich

Penguin, 341 pp., $25.95 Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear by Dr. Frank Luntz

Hyperion, 324 pp., $15.00 (paper) The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen

PublicAffairs, 384 pp., $26.95 (to be published June 25)

Washington liberals and Democrats have made many arguments about what they need to do as they try to recover from the low point of their support among the public during the Bush years in 2002 and 2003 and climb toward renewed dominance. Most of these arguments have centered on the big questions of ideology and vision— whether the times demand a calibrated centrism or a bolder liberalism of big plans and ideas. But other arguments, put forward in many a blog post, have ignored ideology and focused more on the question of tactics.

NSF Press Conference on Endangered Languages

Ethnologue World Map

Jesus Film Project World Map

Here's a program that should be useful in completing your projects.

FreeMind

Here's a sample:

Let me know what you think of it. I'll also keep looking for more tools.

Class will be starting at 6:00 pm today due to the Academic Fair.

I found this episode of To The Point very interesting. I especially found the information from the doctor to be pertinent to the naming issue. Listen to it here.

Read this post from Meteor Blades at dKos:

Many people hate the term "framing." I understand at least one of their fears: framing can turn into an excuse to substitute marketing for principles. In other words, instead of a technique to get a right-on message across, framing can dilute the message, contaminate and weaken the principle. In order to be more persuasive, what we're trying to be more persuasive about gets partially junked. It's a reasonable worry.

Other people, of course, argue that framing is merely a euphemism for marketing, which is a euphemism for manipulation, and no way in hell should progressive politics be marketed because to do so means selling out to the perniciously unprogressive idea that people should be manipulated into accepting any point of view.