Everett Tucker

Final Grades:

I got four A+’s this semester! :)

Internet Sales Tax Bill Passes

Washington Post: U.S. Senate passes traditional-retailer-lobbied Internet sales tax bill with vote of 69 to 27

Final MKTG 203 Grade

Final grade for Mktg 203, Introduction to Marketing = 101.8% :)

Extra Credit FTW

Final grade for Govt 150, American Political Issues = 102.6%

Spring 2013 Political Science Classes = Check!

Boom. Final took about 40 minutes. Done with Govt 100, American National Government and Govt 150, American Political Issues. :)

Nice……

Alright, finished off my American National Government class with the final exam today. Hope the professor takes the time to add “+” to my A. :)

Scientific American: Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

Sander van der Linden, in a Scientific American post, reviews the environment of conspiracism and psychology detailing the correlates with adhering to the conspiracist world-view as: believing in other contradictory conspiracies; “higher-order beliefs” (such as general distrust of authority); rejection of mainstream science; and disengagement from society and politics, which they attribute (to some degree) to “fundamental attribution error,” where people are biased towards seeing most events as intentional. Sander makes an interesting point about conspiracy memes and culture, softening the negative correlates in the article:

“Yet, such pathological explanations have proven to be widely insufficient because conspiracy theories are not just the implausible visions of a paranoid minority. For example, a national poll released just this month reports that 37 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a hoax, 21 percent think that the US government is covering up evidence of alien existence and 28 percent believe a secret elite power with a globalist agenda is conspiring to rule the world.”

This ties in with my recent paper on psychological religious disorders [http://mys.tc/2m4], where I found that clinicians could only diagnose belief as delusion if it wasn’t one “…ordinarily accepted by other members of the individual’s culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith).” Interesting read. Check it out: http://mys.tc/2m7