Great interview with Jon Stewart

Look at this fairly long, but terrific Jon Stewart On The Rachel Maddow Show Uncut, it is a great summary of what Jon Stewart and his team do, but also much wider ideas about TV. Don't miss it.

On an unrelated note, me and my friend started a website to design personal business cards at vizitka.cz. "Vizitky" means business cards in English, but we sell also personal cards, allowing you to design them on-line, very easily. Wish us luck :-)

Milgram experiment and Asch's experiment

One of the most famous psychological experiments with, for me, very disturbing results and implications. In Milgram experiment, participants were instructed to ask other participants series of questions. If "student" reply was wrong, they were instructed to administer an electric shock. This experiment was to test how many people are willing to knowingly push a switch causing someone a pain or even endanger their life - simply because an authority told them to.

I really recommend to read the full Wikipedia article about this experiment, this is just a brief description.

Of course, no real danger is present, but participants do not know that. We must assume that the behaviour they show is similar to how they would react in real life. And the thought is quite scary.

When Milgram asked his coleagues, experienced psychologists, how many percent of participants will administer the lethal shock (450 V), they estimated noone would ever do that. In reality, more than 60 % of participant did. Two thirds of people were knowingly causing a threat of death just because an unknown authority told them so.

Many variants of this experiment in 1961 and following years showed that this was not a random behavior, but rather significant phenomenon - people are tought since their childhood to follow authorities' orders, even if they seem strange. They don't feel like decision-making people then, but rather they think of themselves as mere tools.

Sources:

• Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
• Would we still obey - Cognitive Daily
• About Milgram experiment

Similar topics are discussed in Asch's conformity experiments :

Bhutto believed islam is being hijacked

Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan politicion and activist, was killed this Christmas (December 27 2007). On The Daily Show, Jon talks to Mark Siegel, who wrote a book about Democracy in Islam. The book was finished a week before the murder occured. This interview is quite serious, and I am glad it got this prime time.



This is Jon's interview with Musharraf, president of Pakistan, who refused to give her propper support and protection after the first attempt to assassinate her. She watched the interview and allegedly thought of it positively, as Siegel recounts.






To lighten it up, here is John Hodgeman with his perception of nuclear weaponry.

Not Always Fun - The Daily Show After 9/11

The Daily Show is not always about fun. Once the archive of all the videos were out, one of the first episodes I looked up was the one right after the attacks in 2001. Here it is:



It is another reason why I like the show and why I admire Jon Stewart - he was able to continue the fun while taking it very seriously. You could see his heart was in it. I respect his wit and intelligence, and after seeing this clip after September 2001, I can respect him for his tact and sincerity. And perhaps this was another thing that helped me, a European, realize how terrible a day it was for Americans.