Latinos: ‘We Need a National Leader’

An overwhelming 75 percent of Hispanics in the U.S. want someone to lead their community, but can’t put their finger on a candidate; two doctors are “astounded” as they look inside a chicken nugget; meanwhile, Fox News reportedly used counterintelligence tactics and fake online personas to change readers’ minds. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

Three-Fourths of Hispanics Say Their Community Needs a Leader Three-quarters of Latinos living in the United States say that their community needs a national leader, but about the same share either cannot name one or don’t believe one exists, according to a new national survey of Hispanic adults by the Pew Research Center.

‘Flipping’ Classrooms May Not Make Much Difference In preliminary research, professors at Harvey Mudd College haven’t found that students learn more or more easily in so-called flipped courses than in traditional classes, USA Today reports.

Eminent Domain and More: Green Party Mayor and Nonprofits Create Prototype Earlier this year, declaring 2013 “the year of the mayoral races,” a pro-nonprofit political advocacy group called for support for mayoral candidates whose platforms grasped the needs and potentials of nonprofits and proposed policies that would strengthen the nonprofit sector in their communities.

How Superstition Works Good-luck socks, numbers, and stars: Magical thinking remains popular across cultures and professions.

Look Inside a Chicken Nugget Doctors at the University of Mississippi dissected two chicken nuggets, looked at them under a microscope, and were “astounded.”

Delusions of Creativity: The Insufferable Spectacle of the Met’s TEDx Conference When Thomas P. Campbell was tapped to lead the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009, he came across as a quieter, more self-effacing sort of museum director. Campbell—or “Tapestry Tom,” as his colleagues called him, as he is a specialist in textile arts—was not a wheeler-dealer with proven fundraising skills.

Fox News Reportedly Used Spy Tactics To Sway Public Opinion There’s a strange subterranean world where Fox News and military intelligence meets, and that’s in the comments section.

The Coming Grand Bargain: “We’re All Neoliberals Now” After the U.S. government shutdown you’d expect Republicans and Democrats to remain at each other’s throats, so different was their vision for the country, or so it appeared.

Streaming Video Magic with Chromecast Some new devices do something so beautifully and seamlessly that they seem like magic.

Israel Cranks Up The PR Machine In the post-Oslo era, as the strategy that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle refers to as “peace without peace” captured the Israeli consensus, human rights activists ratcheted up grassroots efforts to challenge the occupation of Palestine and Israel’s prevailing structure of ethno-religious discrimination.

The Affordable Care Act–A System That Doesn’t Make A Lot Of Sense Helen Redmond was in a packed waiting room in the rheumatology clinic along with 40 other people.

November 5th: One Million Masks, Expect Us – Anonymous November 5th a million human beings from all walks of life, and possibly even billions around the world, will stand up, don their ever classy Guy Fawkes masks and descend on Washington DC and other locations around the planet in an event being called the Million Mask March.