A CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL ELLSBERG

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25 AT 5:00PM | GENERAL ADMISSION: $10 • LOFT MEMBERS: $8 • WITH POST-SCREENING RECEPTION, INCLUDING LIGHT HORS D’OEUVRES: $25

If you want to go, you can buy tickets at The Loft Cinema or online.

Before Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, there was Daniel Ellsberg. As a central figure in toppling the myths that perpetuated the war in Vietnam, Ellsberg exposed government secrets and lies, and consequently was both vilified and lionized. In the 47 years since the publication of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg has appeared in films dozens of times – either as a character in fictionalized versions of the story (most recently in Steven Spielberg’s The Post), or as himself in documentary films.

At this very special event, Daniel Ellsberg and The Loft Cinema’s Executive Director Peggy Johnson, a political journalist with Arizona Public Media for 25 years, will discuss the Pentagon Papers and how that event, and Ellsberg himself, have been portrayed in films and how those films inform public knowledge and opinion.

About Daniel Ellsberg

In 1959, Daniel Ellsberg, who earned his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making. In 1961 he drafted the guidance from Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war. He was a member of two working groups reporting to the executive committee of the National Security Council (EXCOM) during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, 1945-68, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000 page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers. On January 3, 1973, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. His trial was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him.

His recent book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, a book with his recollections and analysis of a second cache of secret documents related to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The book stated that US governments documents revealed that President Eisenhower empowered a few top military officers to be able to use nuclear weapons without presidential authorization in case there was incapacitation or no way to contact the president. Ellsberg believes that similar procedures remain in place today – in sharp contrast to what the American public is told about who holds the keys to launch a nuclear attack.

Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era. He is a senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Here is how to get tickets.    It will likely sell out.

Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg

On Tuesday, April 24, from 7:00 - 8:30pm. “The Haury Conversation: Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky Discuss Nuclear War”

Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime conversation between UA Professor Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg, best known as the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, has authored a new book titled The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. The discussion will be moderated by Betsy Reed, the editor-in-chief of The Intercept.

First Look Media, the parent company of The Intercept, will broadcast a free livestream so viewers from around the world can watch. https://chomsky.arizona.edu/livestream.  Click here to be notified on your calendar.

Sinclair's Propoganda

This is example of biased media coverage affecting local news. Trump said all news was fake news, except The Sinclair Group. Why?  They own close to 72% of the local news market and publish fake news that supports Trump.  John Oliver covered this last year, but here is brief update:

 

Have you heard of The Sinclair Group?  

Here is an even better video.  Published first on CNN money (and linked in this article),  Timothy Burke reported this article on Deadspin on 3/31/18.  John Oliver reported his video on 4/1.  How America's Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers In Trump's War On The Media.  The video is priceless, but the links embedded in the article provide more detail on how local news media are upset about the required scripts.

Comments welcome.

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

We now know that 87 million Facebook accounts (including yours) given over to Cambridge Analytica, and that Cambridge Analytica was funded the the Mercer Foundation, a millionaire Trump supporter.  We also know that  Zuckerberg is testifying before skeptical lawmakers wary of Facebook’s power (what took you so long??).  So, a discussion ensued about whether you would know if news was true or fake?

Here is the article I mentioned in class of the "Largest-Ever Study of Fake News", published in Science, but the full details are disclosed in more detail in The Atlantic (with a link to the Science article).   It's really fascinating.   The opening quote motivated me to continue.  I hope you read it, too.

It was hyperbole three centuries ago. But it is a factual description of social media, according to an ambitious and first-of-its-kind study published Thursday in Science. 

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories. 

“It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information,” said Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at MIT who has studied fake news since 2013 and who led this study. “And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.”

This new paper looks at nearly the entire lifespan of Twitter: every piece of controversial news that propagated on the service from September 2006 to December 2016. But to do that, Vosoughi and his colleagues had to answer a more preliminary question first: What is truth? And how do we know?

Read on to find out what the study reveals.  Then comment below.

Work and the Loneliness Epidemic

In Section 1, there was a talk about social media. One of the topics was the association of social media and depression. An article in the Depression and Anxiety Journal, published in April, 2016, the authors surveyed 1,787 adults ages 19 to 32 about social media (SM) use and depression and found that SM use was significantly associated with increased depression. The social media platforms analyzed in the questionnaires included Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and LinkedIn. This self-reported data only reveals a strong correlation and the article suggests possible reasons why this is the case.

In the HBR article on Work and Loneliness Epidemic, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy says, 

There is good reason to be concerned about social connection in our current world. Loneliness is a growing health epidemic. We live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s. Today, over 40% of adults in America report feeling lonely, and research suggests that the real number may well be higher. Additionally, the number of people who report having a close confidante in their lives has been declining over the past few decades. In the workplace, many employees — and half of CEOs — report feeling lonely in their roles.

Chances are, you or someone you know has been struggling with loneliness. According to Dr. Murthy, "loneliness and weak social connections are associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than that associated with obesity."

But we haven’t focused nearly as much effort on strengthening connections between people as we have on curbing tobacco use or obesity. Loneliness is also associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. At work, loneliness reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making. For our health and our work, it is imperative that we address the loneliness epidemic quickly.

What to do? If we are to prioritize our health and the health of our companies, the workplace is one of the most important places to cultivate social connections. Here are some ways mentioned in the article:

• Evaluate the current state of connections in your workplace. Strong social connections are not simply about the number of friends and family members one has; it’s the quality of those connections that matters more. (You can be surrounded by many people and have thousands of connections on LinkedIn or Facebook and still be lonely.)

• Build understanding of high-quality relationships. Strong social connections are characterized by meaningful shared experiences and mutually beneficial two-way relationships, where both individuals give and receive.

• Make strengthening social connections a strategic priority in your organization. Designing and modeling a culture that supports connection is more important than any single program.

• Encourage coworkers to reach out and help others — and accept help when it is offered. Although it may seem counterintuitive to assist others when you are feeling lonely, extending help to others and allowing yourself to receive help builds a connection that is mutually affirming. 

• Create opportunities to learn about your colleagues’ personal lives. The likelihood that authentic social connections will develop is greater when people feel understood and appreciated as individuals with full lives.

                                       
Even with an active college life, the more time you spend on social media, the less time you spend creating social connections. Some questions:

• Do you listen to friends when they talk about their lives, or are you on your phone as you "listen"? 

• When you have a meal with a friend (or friends), do you feel socially connected to them?  Why or why not?  Any examples come to mind?

• How do you build high-quality relationships with friends and family? What do you do together? (Texting is not doing that, no matter what you think.) 

• Consider this: If you go out on a date (or meet a person you don't know well), are you both on your phones because you are bored and don't know what to say to each other, or do you find out about the person to see if this will lead to more dates/a new friendship?

Thoughts? Other examples of making social connections, frustrations about how others behave, or do you prefer to text and find it hard to actually talk to people face-to-face?

Noam Chomsky, "American Exceptionalism: Reconsidered"

Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited scholars in modern history,
to give free lecture at Joel D. Valdez Main Library

He’s considered the founder of modern linguistics, been called one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world and America’s most useful citizen, and authored more than 100 books on topics as wide-ranging as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media.

Now Noam Chomsky will speak at Joel D. Valdez Main Library on Friday, April 13 at 7 pm.

Chomsky will deliver “American Exceptionalism: Reconsidered,” a lecture which is free and open to the public. The lecture will offer a timely and important discussion of some of the ways in which American society has departed from the world, sometimes in extreme and hazardous ways. Included will be a look at gun culture, a topic that has dominated headlines in recent years.  You can find the event link on FB @ https://www.facebook.com/events/180378775932615

Example of State Machine Diagram

As with the Sequence Diagram, the same author provides a partial example of a state diagram.  I hope this video helps to explain the process without having to go into great detail on all parts.

Example of System Sequence Diagram

Here is a video from Udacity explaining the System Sequence Diagram in a way that may make more sense for how it works.   Feel free to ask any questions.