updated 7-15-09
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Quiz: Problem with Audiences
Before doing this quiz, you may be better prepared if you do the tutorial for "What Happens Behind the Scenes" first.
Copy the questions below (highlight the text, then press the CTRL key plus "c", or use the Edit menu at top and choose "Copy") In your email program start composing an email and paste the questions to your email (use CTRL-V to paste or use Edit menu and choose "Paste"). Email your quiz answers to the instructor at
chm151@chemistryland.com. Note: If you are far off-base on your answers, I will give some feedback to help you tackle the question again.
Question 1: The below image is of US soldiers with friends and family watching a small nuclear test in 1962. What is wrong with this audience as far safety is concerned?
atomic test
soccer violience
Question 2: The soccer fans around the world often attack players, referees, or fans of the opposing team. What do you think is wrong with their thinking that makes them do that?
Informercial audience
Question 3: Many infomercials use an audience of "everyday people like you and me." The camera often shows the reactions of the audience and even gets comments from them. What's often wrong with this audience?

A good portion of the brain is dedicated to analyzing faces. As a result we try to see faces in anything that even remotely looks like a face. That's why we hear claims about seeing faces in so many things.

Question 4: One of these coffee beans has a face on it. Find it and tell me where it is. The task is difficult because we think we might see a face in every bean. Just one bean is a face.

   
Kettle with reflections

Question 5: These chrome kettles look like they have faces on them. What is forming the eyes, nose, and mouth?

 

Problem with Audiences: Many movie actors will talk about how their fans will honor the characters they played more than themselves. For example, when Sylvester Stalone returned to Philadelphia to direct his recent Rocky movie, the fans would call him Rocky rather than his real name. Question 6: Why would fans do that?

Question 7: Someone has released a huge amount of a black pollutant into the river and no one noticed where it came from. How do you think the polluter was able to hide his or her crime?

Question 8: China has been quite lax about pollution. Here we see some buildings releasing pollutants. The red stuff is obviously some kind of pollutant but the residents don't seem to pay much attention. Where do you guess these pollutants go?
Question 9: An old colleague of mine from the Phoenix Crime Lab worked on a case where two eyewitnesses standing near each other were both looking down a street. One says he saw a muzzle flash and the other said he didn't. Assuming both are telling the truth and nothing blocked their view, how might it be that one person saw a large muzzle flash and the other person didn't?

On the show, "B.S," with magicians Penn & Teller, they show how blood is attracted to a magnet. Every time Teller moved the big black magnet to one side or the other of the glass tray, the blood would be pulled towards it.

Question 10: Actually, blood is not attracted to a magnet despite the little bit of iron in blood and what you saw with Magneto in X-men, so how did they make it look like the blood was attracted to the magnet?

Question 11: This yogurt is called Peaches & Creme. (a) What do the images on the container imply regarding peaches in the yogurt?

(b) Which do you think it has in it, whole peaches, peach slices, peach pieces, peach juice, or none of these? (notice the words at the very bottom of the container)

 

doublespeak book

William Lutz, a professor of English at Rutgers University, wrote several books on doublespeak, which has these attributes:

  • misleads
  • distorts reality
  • pretends to communicate
  • makes the bad seem good
  • avoids or shifts responsibility
  • makes the negative appear positive
  • creates a false verbal map of the world
  • limits, conceals, corrupts, and prevents thought
  • makes the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable
  • creates incongruity between reality and what is said or not said

Question 12: Give me three examples of doublespeak and explain why is it doublespeak (Don't use ones I mentioned in the tutorial.)

When I receive your answer via email, I will record it's been received on the progress sheet. (That's updated about once a day) After grading it, I will email your answers back with my comments. If there are any missed, I will ask for you to redo them; that way you can get 100% on every quiz.

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