Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts
Friday, April 26, 2013
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
A Note About My Absence
As some friends, acquaintances and readers may have noticed, I haven't been doing a whole lot so far this year at this blog. I haven't been doing too much commenting on the PolitiFact Facebook page, either, or surveying my nemesis' work as is my usual custom. After the election I had grown a little weary of politics in general and decided to take a brief sabbatical. At the same time, PolitiFact was pretty much doing the same, particularly at National level, where they did very few rulings. But January came and went, and I was having trouble getting my butt back in gear.
In February at the encouragement of a YouTube acquaintance, I decided to give a try at making a "non-personal" video--that is, instead of another video about my cats or my travels, as I had already uploaded to YouTube, I made one about an even more controversial subject than politics. I first revved up my Windows 7 Movie Maker skills by doing an "amusing and double-entendred" religous sign video, followed by a lengthier video responding to another YouTuber. That video concerned Biblical slavery.
Many videos on YouTube are what can best be described as "Vlogs"--the video blog, the next step up from the blog, where the YouTuber videotapes herself or himself speaking at various lengths on certain subjects. That's also the easiest way to do it: a camera, webcam or smartphone can easily record and upload a video in just a few easy steps. (Although I consider it difficult in respect to keeping on topic and communicating well.) My "YouTube Style" is a bit more sophisticated. I generally splice other videos together as a response to another video: I research for other videos which may answer the "question" or "opinion" of the video I've targeted for response, especially if it comes from experts who are known in that field. I try to match one expression to its opposing expression for some congruity. So I have to use the Movie Maker to clip each video, as well as adding an intro and a closing, where I have to list any credits in case I use music or a some other copyrighted material in making my point. Occasionally I may add some audio I've recorded where I provide any needed explanation(s).
The Biblical slavery video was noticed by a "hub" YouTube site which "mirrored" it and it's received almost 1,000 views. While that's not 1.4 billion like Psy of "Gangnam Style" it's given me some confidence in my ability to produce an interesting, quality video. I've done a few more using Corel Video Studio, an "upgrade" to Windows 7 Movie Maker. More learning pains and time lost to this blog.
So that's become a sort of hobby of mine, and of course, it's apparent I can do that with PolitiFact's rulings as well. So I've finally gotten back to compiling the rulings for the first quarter of 2013, and when I am finished I really want to attempt to do a "PolitiFact Rulings and Truth Index" video for YouTube to be shared with this blog.
In the course of my foray into video editing (which is really what I do) I've also learned from some YouTube Christian apologists and counter-apologists (YouTube has a large loud atheist community) much more about logical fallacies, where they are often employed, and are probably used to some excess by my conservative counterpart. So, I may be renewing PolitiFact Bias and Zebra Factcheck criticisms from this perspective, although this will be more occasional as I want to concentrate on my efforts on the database of PolitiFact rulings, now approaching 7,000 in count.
So, I'm not done here, and I will be back in a different, hopefully more interesting way. Thanks for your support!
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Monday, November 21, 2011
Another [Wacko] PolitiFact Detractor on YouTube
Someone named “TheDrRJP” recently published this detailed youtube video about a “conspiracy” involving the fact-checkers (PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, Snopes, etc.) who are deceiving the public that Obama’s birth certificate is real. I’ve always maintained that there’s a very fine line between intelligence and insanity; and here’s but one more great example of what really smart crazy people are capable of.
“TheDrRJP” starts with a self-congratulatory spin describing his youtube creation, not quite "clear concise and clever," but more like "crazy, cracked and cuckoo" or what someone might call self-stultification with downright arrogant aplomb:
Clear, concise, and clever, "It's the conspiracy, Stupid!" takes you behind the scenes of the greatest birth certificate fraud in history and exposes the four groups who collaborated in hiding Obama's real birth certificate passing off a fake one instead to deceive and defraud the American public. The whole point of calling it a "wacky conspiracy theory" is to prevent people from finding out what's really going on. It is no different than the guilty saying they are innocent. For the first time anywhere, here are the facts and evidence gathered during my two year investigation that clearly explains the rationale for doing it, the propaganda they used to pull it off, and the campaign they have mounted to discredit conservatives.
He doesn’t really come out and say he’s a “can’t stop disbelieving” birther, I think because he knows it might turn some people off. You don’t know until you get about half way through that he believes that Obama is a “Kenyan born Muslim” etc., etc. He tries to use something he calls the “Liars Paradox” to prove that PolitiFact (mostly) is covering up Obama’s true identity, that is, they combine a provably false statement with a true statement that they want to be perceived as false by connecting it with the false statement by the conjunctive “and.” In one of the cases, however, he showed two separate rulings and claimed they were connected by an “and.” In another case it appears he took a PolitiFact side article and claimed it was an “unsourced” ruling.
He has other videos with “evidence” that Obama’s birth certificate (short or long-form) is a “fraud.” All I can say is, I bet he makes Orly Taitz proud.