Chunk #3

The final chunk of Barry's The Culture of Fear continues to about the media and its abuse of untruthful figures, numbers, and statistics. He points out that the media is abusing its information, using it to put fear Americans' heads and worse, the Americans falling for these fake lies. Glassner believes that the media should stop putting their effort into reporting unimportant matters and striking fear into the heads of Americans and report on topics similar to today's illness, education, and poverty. As the media reports on these unimportant topics, we lose sight of what is important. And we continue to fall prey to these topics, letting the fear rip of us from the sight of the things that really matter, and not about "monster moms" or "crack babies". The media is simply crooked and influencing, but that does not mean we have to give into the fear that they continue to report.

Apply Question: Do you ever find yourself wondering if what the news is reporting really important?

Why would society misuse information? Is it really just to put fear into our hearts?

Precis #3

Adi Narayan's "A Spoonful of Medicine: Too Often the Wrong Dose" opens the article, talking about how many people pour themselves the wrong quantity of medicine, just like everyone else. He claims that that many Americans don't know the difference between the right amount of medicine to pour or the wrong. In fact, many Americans don't seem to care or take the fact that the amount of medicine wrong seriously. He supports this idea with statistics when a study was published. The study involved university students were asked to pour a certain quantity and poured 8% too little and 12% too much. It may not seem like a big deal, but like Brian Wansink states, these inconsistencies of overdosing just slightly add and build up over time. And this still is dangerous. This is so because some medicine has something inside of it that may cause damage to some part of your body, and should over dose slightly, and continue to do so, it will build up over time, as previously said, and could critically damage your body. Worse, some people don't bother to measure and, if the the cap is missing and they can't use that for measurements, they may drink just from the medicine bottle.

Clarification Question:
Have you ever thought that the amount you put might be wrong? Or ever thought that the consequences could be serious?

Application Question:
Have you ever poured yourself some medicine and not bothered to make sure it was the right amount? Or not cared that it didn't look like the right amount?

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1952370,00.html

Chunk #2

In the second chunk of The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner continues to go on about how the media repetitively are still using facts -- but sometimes, they facts, numbers, and statistics they use are false, wrong, and incorrect. For example, in the chapter called "Youth at Risk", as the title obviously screams, it focus on media and media's take on children. He talks about these "crack babies" and how society decides to refute them. The media also talks about how the youth produce these children and that these young moms and dads are only a menace to today's society. Again, the media is only exaggerating again. But this time, they're not only exaggerating, but they are lying as well. Making out the youth to be something they're not. In this chapter, Glassner again exploits these "fear mongers" he had previously talked about and how they use fear to real in people and get them to buy their lies.

Application Question:
Why is it that the media goes as far to tell a story and not even get their facts straight?

Classification Question:
Do you think that children are purposely having children because they want to?