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Talk:Obstetrics and gynaecology

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Deletion discussion
''This article has been listed on Votes for deletion in the past. See Articles for deletion/Obstetrics and gynecology for the discussion archive.''

No "M.O." here.. . terminiation of pregnancy is not actually the most common gynaecological operation:

 * 1) http://www.google.com/search?q=%22most+common+gynecological+operation%22&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
 * 2) http://health.bcbstx.com/archive/199810-healthy_options.htm
 * 3) http://www.premierhealthcare.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?article_id=24
 * 4) http://wind.caspercollege.edu/~dbennatt/2020/Lect/ExamVIII/chpt28.htm

-[User:Reboot Reboot]

 * Except they're wrong, and searching for "most common gynecological operation" on GOOGLE is a bad verification technique. In any case you need to clarify WHERE, but for any given place, compare annual rates of hysterectomies (the answer your citation gives, which in the US, is 600,000) vs termination of pregnancy (in the US, more than 1 million)... -- Someone else 23:17, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I want to know, are there gynecologists who do -not- perform said procedure? Are they difficult to find?

Most Ob/Gyns in the US do not perform pregnancy terminations. All of them are trained on how to perform the procedure as it is the same procedure done to treat an incomplete miscarriage, but most don't perform terminations. D.c.camero (talk) 05:23, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Isn't this article big enough to be split in two, one about obstetrics and one about gynaecology? - Kimiko 19:24 Apr 19, 2003 (UTC)

Okay, just did that. -- Kimiko 22:59, 12 Aug 2003 (UTC)

If the article has been split into 2 longer ones, is there any need for this very short one? Joyous 23:04, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

 * This article seems like it might need to be deleted, but I went ahead and cleaned it up anyways. --Pagrashtak 7 July 2005 20:17 (UTC)

This page could be kept if it were cleaned up a bit, also there is no definition of O&G anywhere on the page... I am in no way medically inclined, but if someone could do the honours, that would make my day. haz (user talk) 19:51, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was no consensus; however, the first move ("americanize spelling") was uncalled for and not in GF, IMO. Therefore, I've reverted it. — Nightstallion (?) 10:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * Talk:Obstetrics and gynecology – Obstetrics and gynecology → Obstetrics and gynaecology – The individual article is Gynaecology but for some reason in the article about the combined practice, the "a" is dropped. Move simply to correct spelling quirk. (That, or move Gynaecology to Gynecology.)

Voting

 * Support (nominator) - if the individual article uses the British English spelling then this article should too, for continuation. I have actually never seen "gynaecology" spelt without the a. haz (user talk) 19:54, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Variations in British/American spelling should follow the style of the initial author or major contributor. — Knowledge Seeker দ 23:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose: agree with Dr. KS. Jonathunder 00:48, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 *  Tentatively support the move in either direction as per haz - we shouldn't change from BE <> AE on a whim, but standardising the spelling across a pair of closely-related articles is quite a good idea. — sjorford (talk)  11:41, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Whoa, I just noticed something - the article used to be at the 'ae' spelling, as can be seen from the deletion discussion linked above. It was only moved here on 25 November 2005 with the explanation "Americanized title"! . So strongly support the move back. — sjorford (talk)  23:34, 22 January 2006 (UTC) — sjorford

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Pubmed, Google and I vote the spelling Gynecology
PubMed has 3.6 times more hits for gynecolog* than for gynaecolog*. For Google, the gynecology:gynaecology ratio is closer to 10:1. I think there's a pretty good case for gynecology being the preferred spelling.

 * If you use Google.co.uk-There is still 3x more hits for gynEcology than gynAEcology. I don't know if this is still open for debate.

I added a link to HPV vaccine in the "See also" section. Since cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide - and since it's nearly always caused by HPV, the HPV vaccine is arguably the biggest news in gynecology this past year. The topic might merit a quick mention in the body of the article. Retroid 22:04, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

 * But the fact that Americans dominate Google doesn't mean they have the right to dominate Wikipedia. That said, the result of the vote to move it to gynaecology was no consensus, so it goes without saying that it belongs at gynecology. Darkildor 03:48, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

 * True, but the article was moved to the American spelling without consensus in the first place. My oppose vote was based on the inappropriateness of switching spellings; had I read Sjorford's comment in time, I would have switched my vote to support (I can't now, since the debate's been "finalized"). — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:59, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I spent too long trying to fix all the double re-directs after this page move. There's a few more that still need to be fixed.  Also, I think putting in a line in the text specifically stating the preferred British spelling would go a long way towards future Wikipedians voting for yet another move (and having to fix all the redirects AGAIN).--Will.i.am
 * Oops, I guess this is already stated on the Gynaecology page already, but it should be said here too (especially when this AmEn spelling article references the BrEn spelling in the more detailed article).--Will.i.am 09:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Bushism
This really didn't belong on this article: Stevage 22:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

 * President George W. Bush made a confusing statement about OB/GYNs in a Campaign speech at Poplar Bluff, Misory on September 6, 2004 when he said: "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's "aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country", it is understood that he was higlighting the shortage of OB/GYN's in the United States. This mistake and many others are referred to as Bushisms.

 * President Obama repeatedly mispronounced OB-GYN in speeches. It is not necessary to include that in the article, nor the so-called Bushisms. I think they have all been removed.--FeralOink (talk) 16:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

2nd the Vote for a Move
I vote that it be renamed in accordance to the british spelling, As it is the most commonly used. I back this move 100%. augrunt 06:37, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

History
Could someone with access to the knowledge write something on the history of this specialism? When specific doctors first called themselves gynaecologists or the like? OED 1872 T. G. THOMAS Dis. Women 41 Gynæcologists ranged themselves into two parties. 1867 New Syd. Soc. Retrosp. 368 Gynæcology, embracing the Physiology and Pathology of the non-pregnant state. 1876 (title) Transactions of the [American] Gynecological Society. 131.111.161.131 (talk) 09:30, 14 April 2009 (UTC)>>>>> re rj'') boys like girls jsfksdjfi sfiwfmnfio —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.100.88.209 (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

"Midwifery" and "Obstetrics (midwifery)"
The usage of and the naming of Obstetrics (Midwifery) is under discussion, see talk:Obstetrics (Midwifery) -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 05:20, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Why the push to validate midwifery as a medical specialty? Midwives do not attend medical school, do not have medical doctorates and therefore are irrelevant Quityourbs (talk) 03:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

OB-GYN
What's the history of this weird abbreviation? Why is it usually written in all-caps? And when did people become too lazy to use the individual words - was this a 20th-century thing, or older? 86.191.247.118 (talk) 22:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

 * You don't expect to to remain the same. Things ought to change Favourdennis (talk) 13:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

 * It isn't a "weird abbreviation"! All medical specialties use abbreviations to be concise. In the UK, O&G is most common. In the U.S. and Canada, we use OB-GYN. No one has time or wants to write out obstetrics and gynecology every time. It is the same with fields like pediatric oncology (peeds onco), cardiology (cards), nephrology (neph), etc.--FeralOink (talk) 15:51, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Section Reorganization: "Education and training(residency)"
Hi! I'm planning on adding more information to the OBGYN certification processes for both the U.S. and U.K., and other countries if I can find them.

However, my largest edit would be the actual reorganization of the page sections. I would like to retitle the current "Education and Training (residency)" section--which includes information on OB/GYN certification in the U.S. and U.K.--to "Certification process by country". I would then like to begin a new section, "Education and training in residency", which would focus more on the actual content of residency programs (rather than the OB/GYN certification process) and would include new developments in OB/GYN curriculums, like LGBTQ+ specific healthcare training.

I am doing Wikipedia edits through at class at the university level, so I am new to Wikipedia. If you have any thoughts or feedback I would love to hear it! Please let me know.--Maralogan (talk) 00:47, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

 * Hi! I just added a new section entitled "Inclusive Approaches to Care." Please let me know what you think, I'm open to feedback and I'm sure more edits need to be made. My intent with this section was to shed light on how critical OB-GYNs are in relation to LGBTQ+ health, which I didn't see mentioned elsewhere on the page. --Maralogan (talk) 04:55, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

== Not a Wikipedia Expert by any means, but the fact that the majority of this article on a medical profession is attempting to discuss and push an agenda on LGBT patient care seems absolutely bizarre to me. ==

Like obviously the topic has importance and I don't deny that. However, the vast majority of this article seems like it would be far better placed in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_and_the_LGBT_community

Right now "inclusivity" takes up more or less 2/3 of this article. I feel like its relevance is minimal at best and this massive, bloated, multiple section long rambling should be condensed into a much smaller section on the main article page to keep the focus of the article on the actual topic at hand, rather than an offshoot topic like inclusivity problems for LGBT patients. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benfjamison (talk • contribs) 15:46, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

 * I agree. At least two-thirds (66%) of this article about obstetrics and gynecology is focused on transgender and non-binary care. I just edited the massive inclusive care section, and found that a lot of the mention of lesbian and bisexual women was not included in the sources. The sources actually say that lesbian and bisexual women have mostly the same gynecological and obstetric care needs as heterosexual women. That means that even more of the article is ONLY about transgender people. That is WP:UNDUE.--FeralOink (talk) 15:57, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * "The sources actually say that lesbian and bisexual women have mostly the same gynecological and obstetric care needs as heterosexual women." Big surprise there, as their sexuality has no effect on their physiology. Dimadick (talk) 14:22, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Obstetrics and gynaecology


text:
Talk:Poetry analysis

[Untitled]

 * I think Poetry appreciation would be a better title. --Deb

 * It could be pasted in the article Poetry which is hmm... a little weak ?

 * Thanks for the links. I'll come back some more and work on this.  I don't care for the Poetry appreciation name.  I am planning to add more about scansion, etc. which will make this fit well under the given title.

 * What's all this about "valid articles"? The Literature basic topics page, the only link to this new article, has not been changed since 21 Oct 2002, and no one has objected since to a potential article entitled "How to read a poem". Let us be patient and watch this article grow in length and depth. --KF 21:38 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

 * That's not about the content.
 * Ericd

 * Well, as I just tried to point out, there could be / may be / will be more content in the future. I consider it rather hostile towards newcomers to start picking on them the moment they have started to edit something. KF 21:54 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

 * At the very least, there needs to be a link from Poetry - otherwise potential readers will never find the article. Deb

 * I do not think poetry appreciation would be a better title, so I've created a page with that title that redirects to this article. A "valid article"??  Why in Hell not?  Michael Hardy 19:30 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

_________________________________________________________________________________

What a fantastic idea for an article!

It will probably become the most beautiful how to's in the wikipedia.
 * How could it not?
 * I'm watch this kernal grow.

It's already a top three hit in the search engine. :-)
 * If it said 'poetry' it might rank high titts.

What a wonderful birthday present.

 * Truth is the enemy of power,
 * power is the enemy of Truth,
 * Writers and Artists can vanquish lies.
 * Against lies, Art has always won.

[User:[Two16]] : childern should eat poems. so too should dictators.

* * *
 * Who can translate the above for a simple soul such as myself? I don't seem to be particularly good at interpreting poetry, for I would read: My name is Two16. I'm better than the rest of you, and this is how I've acquired the right to be cynical. -- Am I mistaken? Can anyone help me out here? --KF 17:34 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

 * Maybe rename this "poetry reading", and discuss the practice of reading poetry in public as well as how to do it. more encyclopedic :-) -- Tarquin 17:51 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Poetry reading is usually a noun. There are going to be plenty of how to's in the pedia. There are many books which have been written with that title.

KF I have put a post on your page just before coming here. It reflects poorly on the demenour of wikipedians that new users feel that there is no gentle spirit here. You were right on the feeling of superiority; but, that is reserved for tyrants. The tyrants themselves are too dull to notice: they have no idea. The could not see the error of their ways but soon they shall.

All bracketed material is editor's commentary. _________________________________________________________________________________

What a fantastic idea for an article! (Unqualified approval)

It will probably become the most beautiful how to's in the wikipedia.(defends against those who might trample it.)
 * How could it not? (The best writers will all have interest)
 * I'm watch this kernal grow. (Like 'all your base are mine' . Kernal is comp sci. The allusion in Nature is seed.)

It's already a top three hit in the search engine. :-)(Its true! And there were writers who said no one would find it)
 * If it said 'poetry' it might rank high there too.(Practical advice)

What a wonderful birthday present.-  ( 2nd Wikipedian B.D. Jan 15)

(The next bit is a Revolutionary call to keyboards. It echos the ride of Paul Reveere and allude to your text. It shows the power of Language to the doubters. It is meant to give hope to any wikipedian who has had their view suppressed. It echos the reality of the wikipedia where refactoring of the talk pages insures that NPOV). It is instructive that all those people who hated what I posted were left stunned and silent for much comment. They couln't even find a npov fault in it. Any tyrant in the wikipedia is a Maroon

 * Truth is the enemy of power,
 * power is the enemy of Truth,

(echos the ride of Paul Reevere in Longfellow's poem)
 * Writers and Artists can vanquish lies.
 * Against lies, Art has always won.

(Lockdown Sv Rule)

User:Two16 : childern should eat poems. so too should dictators.

(There is a very famous childern's poem How to eat a poem. The final sentence simply means that whenever possible dictators should have to eat their words like the poem which follow does. The effect together was magnificeint. A very harsh  poem was placed here afterwards. I removed it after several hours cause its purpose had been served. Writer and Artist can vanquish lies. Find it in the histories. I hope that this make up for any hurt you  may have felt.)

First: do not harm the innocents. I am respectfully sorry.

I would just cut and paste the entire text of How to read a poem into the poetry article. --Uncle Ed _________________________________________________________________________________

What's the relevance of including an external link to the biography of Edward Hirsch?

I think "how-tos", especially of this sort, are by their nature too POV to be considered encyclopedic. There are certainly no widely agreed upon facts about how to read a poem. It doesn't hurt to give a historical treatment of how various well-known authors and scholars in the field have suggested reading poems, of how schools have taught it, and perhaps of prime examples. However, every statement should be qualified somehow, not delivered as fact, and the article title must be a noun. This is essential; a noun title, such as "Interpretation of poetry", says that this is an article about interpretation of poetry, while "How to read a poem" suggests that this is a how-to delivering subjective impressions of how a poem should be read, instead of objective impressions of the topic. Derrick Coetzee 10:19, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia seems to be loosening its restrictions on non-noun titles with its series of "How-to"s. But, I think the subject of reading poetry is a little simple. That is, to me, anyone who can read can read poetry. I think the article should be on analyzing (or appreciating) poetry, which is a much more complex and deep activity. Even an article on analyzing poetry, though, should be found in Wikibooks and not here. LockeShocke 22:25, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)

Article name
Is Reading poetry less contentious? --Theo (Talk) 19:40, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes. Good work with the improvements, by the way. Filiocht 08:46, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

 * A title Art of poetry might cover the subject and has a familiar ring for some. --Wetman 09:00, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I think either would be preferable to the current title, but Reading poetry conveys more straightforwardly what the topic is about. — Matt Crypto 09:04, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Art of poetry is much wider; maybe the real problem is that this article really does not know what it wants to be about? A plan might be:
 * Intro: what makes a poem (sound patterning, compression, etc)
 * Overview of simile, metaphor, imagery and symbolism
 * Overview of rhythm, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, eye rhyme, etc
 * Different 'schools' of poetry:oral, classical, romantic, modernist, etc and how they vary in their use of the above elements
 * Poetry in different cultures
 * Sample 'readings' of, say, a sonnet and a haiku (to keep it short)

 * What does anyone think of this idea? Filiocht 09:14, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Your proposal makes a lot of sense to me. I will await other views before being bold, however. --Theo  (Talk) 11:43, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * And upon relection, I realise that we have to be very careful not to cover the same ground as Poetry. I am sure that there is an independent article here but I cannot define it clearly. It is about interpreting poetry by analysis and declamation but it is not (and possibly should not be) a tutorial (a How to … article).
 * Agreed, but the Poetry article doesn't really explain these terms, it links to them. Nominating for Literature collaboration of the fortnight Filiocht 12:30, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * Also, Filiocht, do you remember that Poetic diction page that you dropped into our laps, Geogre's and mine, a ways back, and went gallivanting off while we did a braindump on it? It's notably incomplete and unbalanced, and the usual bad things (meaning Eurocentric), but it covers some of the same ground as what you outline above. Altogether, it makes my brain hurt to think about how to organize information over a set of poetry articles. However painful, maybe that needs to be our starting-point? Bishonen | Talk 15:44, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite
I may have taken "be bold" too literally (I'm new). I rewrote the page completely, in response to comments on "Pages needing attention". I had planned to cover specific aspects of poetry analysis as suggested above by Filiocht, but after writing a description of the process, and then wikifying that, I found that most of this material (overview of symbolism, overview of meter, etc.) are already well covered in other articles (Poetry is a featured article). So, instead I described the process of analyzing poetry, through specific examples, that I hope will show the reader what poetry analysis is and how to use the information in these other articles. In short, I thought that, yes, the page did need major work, and, no, I shouldn't re-invent a bunch of wheels. I am very open to making what I put up into an Overview section, and following it with separate sections on more specific topics, but my sense is that we may find that these separate sections already well covered in some cases (metrics and scanscion, for example) or in others should be given their own articles (such as schools of poetry). BradGad 09:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is such merit in the material that BradGad proposed that I have 'rescued' it to /Draft so that it can be reworked and merged into the main article. The subpage can be deleted once the redrafting is complete. --Theo (Talk) 12:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * —and then I merged it all myself. --Theo (Talk) 19:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Page organization
There is good material on this page, but its current organization strikes me as haphazard. What would folks think of the following organization, with "Overview" being mostly what is now in "Close reading"? The idea would be that the Overview gives readers an idea of what poetry analysis is, why it might be worthwhile to undertake, and how to go about it, and the subsequent sections would provide critical tools and concepts that readers would need to undertake poetry analysis on their own.

 * Poetry analysis
 * Overview
 * Tools for poetry analysis
 * Poetic forms
 * Closed forms
 * Open forms
 * Imagery and symbolism
 * Meter and rhyme
 * Approaches to poetry analysis
 * Reading poetry aloud
 * Poetry in different cultures
 * References
 * External links

Obviously this is not exhaustive, but it does seem to me to be an extensible and maintainable structure. BradGad (Talk) 21:48, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Excellent structure ... much more coherent and fluid than my reworking of Filiocht's suggestion. Go for it! --Theo (Talk) 22:06, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the See Also section because all those articles are already wiki-linked into the body of the article. --Theo (Talk) 08:57, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Article size
Although we have exceeded the 32KB guideline, I think that we should keep working at the current level until the article stabilises. We may then see enhancing ways to reduce the article size by moving some material into other articles. We risk losing coherence if we chop up the article now. This is a complex subject and may not be suited to a 32KB limit. --Theo (Talk) 09:10, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * No chopping! I'll just paste in my recent message on the subject on BradGad's page:

 * ''Hey, BradGad, this is just to chime in with Theo, on whose page I happened to notice your posts about article length: ignore the 32 k guideline! It doesn't have the support of the community any more. Nobody invokes in on WP:FAC, for instance, the way they did a few months ago, that battle has been won. If anybody tells you different, please come to me for ammunition, I have some very telling FAC discussions I could point them to. Great work on the Poetry analysis! --Bishonen | Talk 12:47, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for the positive feedback! :) On the speedy deletion draft thing... Does that just take care of itself? Do you admins do the deleting? BradGad (Talk) 17:56, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * We what? Nobody here but us chickens, Brad. :-) But yes, I believe adding the deletebecause tag is all you need to do. It's supposed to catch the attention of a speedyhunting admin, who will proceed to make a judgement call to either delete the page or remove the tag. If I've understood it. Bishonen | Talk 19:16, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I expect that that nice Mr. Filiocht will do it when he arrives in the morning! [Hint to Filiocht] --Theo (Talk) 22:22, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The big picture
I feel that what we are missing here is a section on analysing the big picture: What is the 'story' that is being told? Not the literal story but the heart of the poem. For example: Another tells of a buried child; The Destruction of Sennacherib tells of the last days of the Assyrian king; The silken tent compares a woman to a tent. In a sense, this about the 'theme' of a poem. It also embraces the voice of the poem (who is speaking), and the rest of the of Kipling's 'honest serving men': the events in the poem; when these occur; where is the 'speaker' and where do the events occur; why does the speaker speak? William Harmon has suggested that starting an analysis with: "This poem dramatizes the conflict between …" is a key technique and it fits into this big picture approach. [And now I find that Harmon is a red link, so I should explain that he is Professor of English at University of North Carolina, author of five books of poetry and editor of A Handbook to Literature.] My problem is that I cannot see how this fits in the existing article structure. Harmon's dramatic conflict approach feels like a school of criticism (does anyone know its name?) but the overall concept feels like a subsection of the Overview (which feels like a form of bloat).--Theo (Talk) 15:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have now moved this into the Imagery and symbolism section and expanded that. --Theo (Talk) 13:25, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Excellent article!
Someone should nominate this for featured article. Revolución 02:52, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
 * We are the only someones here, Revolución. There is nothing to stop you nominating the article; indeed, I encourage you to do so. I already have an FAC in train, which is why I am not being bold myself. --Theo  (Talk) 11:23, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Enneameter & Decameter
This article links to monometer through octameter, and then says that those with more than 8 are quite rare. How common, to be exact, are those with 9 or 10?? Georgia guy 00:53, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Without surveying the entire canon of poetry it is impossible to be exact. I am unaware of any poems using anything more than eight feet but I do not read much experimental poetry and scansion is not always on my mind. --Theo  (Talk) 06:52, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Schools of poetry
Filiocht has suggested that ==Schools of poetry== and ==Schools of criticism== should be our next area of focus. The more I thought about the former, the more convinced I became that it should be a separate article linked from here and Poetry, at a minimum. So I synthesised List of schools of poetry. It needs expanding, tidying, and, more pertinently, a summary should be written in the section here. Precis is not my strength so would someone else like to have a crack at that? --Theo (Talk) 23:31, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds more like a textbook than an encyclopedia
This article has a lot of great content, but the form and tone are of a textbook. The reader is carefully led through many examples. I would suggest lots of work to tighten up the article and remove the "teacher's voice", as outlined by the item "Page organization" above. NuclearWinner 21:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * In addition, there are way too many dashes in the article. Wikipediarul e s 2221 07:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticism section needed
(No comment required) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.241.232.122 (talk) 06:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Plagiarism?
The introduction to this article is eerily similar to this site http://languageisavirus.com/poetry-guide/poetry_analysis.html 58.174.96.47 (talk) 11:10, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That site uses material from WP ... if you scroll down to the bottom you'll see the disclaimer. Eniagrom (talk) 22:26, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Poetry analysis


text:
Sprite comic

Sprite comics are webcomics that consist primarily of computer sprites from video games. Art assets are ripped from various classic games such as Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog, are edited and combined by amateur cartoonists, and are posted on the internet. Popularized by Bob and George in the early 2000s, the style is considered relatively easy for beginning cartoonists to get involved in, but sprite comics are generally looked down upon for being of low quality. The format has not seen mainstream attention since 8-bit Theater concluded in 2010.

History
The 1998 webcomic Neglected Mario Characters was the first sprite comic to appear on the internet, though Bob and George was the first sprite comic to gain widespread popularity. Starting its run in 2000, Bob and George utilizes sprites from the Mega Man series of games, with most of the characters being taken directly from the games. Bob and George played a significant role in the popularity of sprite comics, as well as webcomics in general.

Art assets were ripped from Super NES, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy Advance games and were collected in online databases such as The Spriters Resource. A platform game such as Sonic Advance may contain hundreds of sprites of its protagonist running, jumping, and falling, though cartoonists frequently recolored characters or edited them to convey a broader range of emotion. Over time, sprite comic creators collaborated with projects such as the World Spriters Tournament, in which cartoonists let their sprite comic characters fight one another.

Few sprite comics have gained mainstream attention since 8-Bit Theater ended in 2010. Though sprite comics are still popular among amateur cartoonists, Larry Cruz from Comic Book Resources noted that the aesthetic is played out.

Style
Sprite comics mainly use graphics from 1980s video games, such as Mega Man and Final Fantasy. Lore Sjöberg from Wired stated that sprite comics "re-create the feel of [such games] with a minimum of artistic effort." Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik pointed out that sprite comics are a good way for people who can't draw well to create comics. Cruz pointed out that the aesthetic has "evolved and flourished in a variety of media" since. However, the style is also commonly criticized. Cruz described sprite comics as "the favorite style for the laziest webcomic creators," while Sjöberg pointed out that sprite comics are often seen as substandard by comic fans. Both Chris Dlugosz and Michael Zole (Death to the Extremist) have criticized the style, Zole stating that creators of sprite comics "seem to think that they're scoring humor points just by reusing old pixelated characters," and Dlugosz devoting his webcomic Pixel explicitly to making fun of the practice.

In a review of the webcomic Kid Radd, Dani Atkinson of Sequential Tart noted that people without a gamer background may find that "much of the irony and humour in [sprite comics] goes swooshing over [their] head." However, she also praised Kid Radd specifically for using original sprites, unique to the webcomic, allowing for a broader audience. She described this as a "fake" sprite comic.

Legal situation
Sprite comics are threatened by legal action, as the graphical sprites used in them are generally protected by copyright. Many sprite comics present themselves as parodies of the works they are based on, and as such they might be protected under fair use. However, seeing as many sprite comics have developed substantial plot-driven stories featuring the copyrighted characters and environments, it is quite possible that a sprite comic creator would lose a lawsuit if a game developer decided to sue. Thus far, no sprite comic has been subject to legal action. Capcom has stated that they will never "officially endorse" sprite comics, but no take-down request has ever taken place.

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Lani Guinier

Carol Lani Guinier (April 19, 1950 – January 7, 2022) was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.

Early life and career
Carol Lani Guinier was born on April 19, 1950, in New York City, to Eugenia "Genii" Paprin and Ewart Guinier. Ewart, who was born in Panama to Jamaican parents and raised in Panama and Boston, was one of two black students admitted to Harvard College in 1929. He was forced to drop out in 1931, unable to afford school after he was excluded from financial aid and campus housing, but he ultimately returned to Harvard as a professor and the first chair of the Afro-American Studies Department in 1969. Paprin, an Ashkenazi-Jewish civil-rights activist, graduated from Hunter College in 1939. Guinier's parents met in Hawaii Territory, where each was a member of the Communist Party of Hawaii and of the Hawaii Civil Rights Congress. Guinier's father was also a national officer for the United Public Workers of America, a Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union. Her uncle was real estate developer and social activist Maurice Paprin. Guinier moved with her family to Hollis, Queens, in 1956.

Guinier said that she wanted to be a civil rights lawyer since she was twelve years old, after she watched on television as Constance Baker Motley helped escort James Meredith, the first black American to enroll in the University of Mississippi. After graduating third in her class from Andrew Jackson High School, Guinier earned her B.A. from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1971 and her J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1974. She clerked for Judge Damon Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, then served as special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days in the Civil Rights Division during the Carter Administration. She was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar in 1981, and after Ronald Reagan took office, she joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) as an assistant counsel, eventually becoming head of its Voting Rights project. She was a highly successful litigator for LDF, winning 31 of the 32 cases she argued. She also worked on the successful extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.

Nomination for Assistant Attorney General
Guinier was President Bill Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in April 1993. Conservative journalists and Republican senators mounted a campaign against Guinier's nomination. Guinier was dubbed a "quota queen," a phrase first used in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Clint Bolick, a Reagan-era U.S. Justice Department official. The term was perceived by some to be racially loaded, combining the "welfare queen" stereotype with "quota," a buzzword used to challenge affirmative action. In fact, Guinier opposed racial quotas, as she attempted to make clear, responding to the misrepresentation of her views by invoking her father's experience at Harvard: "He was a victim of a racial quota, a quota of one. I have never been in favor of quotas. I could not be, knowing my father's experience." As one reviewer of her work wrote: "The remedies Guinier advocates for diluted minority voting rights do not include laws that guarantee election outcomes for disadvantaged groups."

Some journalists also alleged that Guinier's writings indicated that she supported the shaping of electoral districts to ensure a black majority, a process known as "race-conscious districting." Political science and law professor Carol M. Swain argued that Guinier was in favor of "segregating black voters in black-majority districts." Guinier was portrayed as a racial polarizer who believed—in the words of George Will—that "only blacks can properly represent blacks."

In the face of the negative media attention, many Democratic senators, including David Pryor of Arkansas, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois (the only African American serving in the Senate at that time), informed Clinton that Guinier's interviews with senators were going poorly and urged him to withdraw Guinier's nomination.

Clinton withdrew Guinier's nomination on June 4, 1993. He stated that Guinier's writings "clearly lend themselves to interpretations that do not represent the views I expressed on civil rights during the [presidential] campaign." Guinier, for her part, acknowledged that her writings were often "unclear and subject to vastly different interpretations," but believed that the political attacks had distorted and caricatured her academic philosophies. William T. Coleman Jr., who had served as Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford, wrote that the withdrawal was "a grave [loss], both for President Clinton and the country. The President's yanking of the nomination, caving in to shrill, unsubstantiated attacks, was not only unfair, but some would say political cowardice."

Alternative voting systems
In her publications, Guinier suggested various strategies for strengthening minority groups' voting power, and rectifying what she characterized as an unfair voting system, not just for racial minorities, but for all numerical minority groups, including fundamentalist Christians, the Amish, or, in states such as Alabama, Democrats. Guinier also stated that she did not advocate for any single procedural rule, but rather that all alternatives should be considered in the context of litigation "after the court finds a legal violation."

Some of the ideas she considered are:
 * cumulative voting, a system in which each voter has "the same number of votes as there are seats or options to vote for, and they can then distribute their votes in any combination to reflect their preferences"—a system often used on corporate boards in 30 states, as well as by school boards and county commissions
 * multi-member "superdistricts," a strategy that "modifies winner-take-all majority rule to require that something more than a bare majority of voters must approve or concur before action is taken."

Guinier's idea of cumulative voting was taken up by Roslyn Fuller as a potential way of protecting minority rights without compromising One Man, One Vote principles.

Revising affirmative action
From 2001 until her death, Guinier was active in civil rights in higher education, coining the term "confirmative action" to reconceptualize issues of diversity, fairness, and affirmative action. The process of confirmative action, she said, "ties diversity to the admissions criteria for all students, whatever their race, gender, or ethnic background—including people of color, working-class whites, and even children of privilege."

Because public and private institutions of higher learning are almost all to some extent publicly funded (i.e., federal student loans and research grants), Guinier argued that the nation has a vested interest in seeing that all students have access to higher education and that these graduates "contribute as leaders in our democratic polity." By linking diversity to merit, Guinier argued that preferential treatment of minority students "confirms the public character and democratic missions of higher-education institutions. Diversity becomes relevant not only to the college's admissions process but also to its students' educational experiences and to what its graduates actually contribute to American society."

"Political race"
Developing a concept of "political race," Guinier argued that if viewed as a resource from which to develop social critique, attention to exclusions based on race had the potential to produce broad and democratizing effects. In The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2002), Guinier and co-author Gerald Torres used the analogy of racial minorities as the canary in the coal mine, alerting others to risks in the environment. As one New York Times review put it, they argue for "reforms based on initiatives that are begun by minority groups but move beyond racial issues because they address the needs of other disadvantaged groups." One examplar Torres and Guinier cite is the way that Hopwood v. Texas, an anti-affirmative action lawsuit, ultimately inspired reform that enlarged college access for all Texas students following minority activists' research on admissions. They found that the majority of admissions to the state's top colleges came from a handful of the state's high schools, prompting a reform that required the colleges to admit the top 10 percent of all high schools. The Times review concluded, "The goal of reaching such truly evenhanded solutions is what this book generously holds out."

Teaching
Guinier began her career in academics in 1989 as a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It was there that she took her experience with the Voting Rights Project of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and began theorizing on reforming the voting system. She spent 10 years at University of Pennsylvania Law School before joining Harvard Law School in 1998 as the school's first woman of color to be granted tenure. She regularly lectured at various other law schools and universities including Yale, Stanford, New York University (NYU), UT Austin, Berkeley, UCLA, Rice, and University of Chicago. In 2007 she was a visiting professor at Columbia Law School, and in 2009 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Guinier took emerita status at Harvard in 2017.

Publications
Guinier authored over two dozen law review articles, as well as five books:

Personal life and death
Guinier married Nolan Bowie in 1986. They had one son, Nikolas Bowie, who is also a Harvard law professor.

Guinier died from complications of Alzheimer's disease at a care facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 7, 2022, at the age of 71.

Honors
During her lifetime, Guinier was honored with the Champion of Democracy Award from the National Women's Political Caucus; the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award from the American Bar Association (ABA) Commission on Women in the Profession (1995); and the Rosa Parks Award from the American Association of Affirmative Action. She was also awarded the 1994 Harvey Levin Teaching Award at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the 2002 Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence from Harvard Law School. In 2015 she was awarded the "Deborah W. Meier Hero in Education Award" from Fairtest. In 2017, she was awarded a Champion of Democracy Award from Fair Vote. In 2021, she received Yale Law School’s highest honor, the Award of Merit.

She received eleven honorary degrees, from schools including Hunter College, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Smith College, Spelman College, Swarthmore College, and Bard College. In 2007 she delivered the Yale Law School Fowler Harper Lecture, entitled "The Political Representative as Powerful Stranger: Challenges for Democracy."

title: Lani Guinier


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User:CG

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Thank you for your time. CG (talk) 08:44, 31 January 2008 (UTC)) See User_talk:CG

title: User:CG


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User talk:CG

CG is an a more palatable version of 2 usernames (this & that) which several Wikipedians considered obscene. --Uncle Ed

Problem : This may lead to confusion with GC. - Arno.

 * No problem -- the user has made no contributions at all, since the name change. Presumably, it was a test to determine whether we would enforce the "no obscene usernams" policy. Having found the answer to their question, the user has apparently moved on (or changed their name). --Uncle Ed 22:48 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

 * To be clear, the policy violated by CG was "no offensive usernames." Obscene, a term with a much stronger negative (and legal) connotation than "offensive," is not an accurate description of this type of violation.  It's like calling a parking citation a violent felony. -- NetEsq 23:35 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

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Cold reading

Cold reading is a set of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, and mediums. Without prior knowledge, a practiced cold-reader can quickly obtain a great deal of information by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. during a line of questioning. Cold readings commonly employ high-probability guesses, quickly picking up on signals as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, then emphasizing and reinforcing chance connections and quickly moving on from missed guesses. Psychologists believe that this appears to work because of the Barnum effect and due to confirmation biases within people.

Basic procedure
Before starting the actual reading, the reader will typically try to elicit cooperation from the subject, saying something such as, "I often see images that are a bit unclear and which may sometimes mean more to you than to me; if you help, we can together uncover new things about you." One of the most crucial elements of a convincing cold reading is a subject eager to make connections or reinterpret vague statements in any way that will help the reader appear to make specific predictions or intuitions. While the reader will do most of the talking, it is the subject who provides the meaning.

After determining that the subject is cooperative, the reader will make a number of probing statements or questions, typically using variations of the methods noted below. The subject will then reveal further information with their replies (whether verbal or non-verbal) and the cold reader can continue from there, pursuing promising lines of inquiry and quickly abandoning or avoiding unproductive ones. In general, while revelations seem to come from the reader, most of the facts and statements come from the subject, which are then refined and restated by the reader so as to reinforce the idea that the reader got something correct.

Subtle cues such as changes in facial expression or body language can indicate whether a particular line of questioning is effective or not. Combining the techniques of cold reading with information obtained covertly (also called "hot reading") can leave a strong impression that the reader knows or has access to a great deal of information about the subject. Because the majority of time during a reading is spent dwelling on the "hits" the reader obtains, while the time spent recognizing "misses" is minimized, the effect gives an impression that the cold reader knows far more about the subject than an ordinary stranger could.

James Underdown from Center for Inquiry and Independent Investigations Group said, "In the context of a studio audience full of people, cold reading is not very impressive." Underdown explains cold reading from a mathematical viewpoint. A typical studio audience consists of approximately 200 people, divided up into three sections. A conservative estimate assumes each person knows 150 people. Underdown says:

"This means that when John Edward or James Van Praagh asks the question 'Who's Margaret?' he is hoping there is a Margaret in the 10,000 people in the database of that section. If there is no answer, they open the question up to the whole audience's database of over 30,000 people! Would it be surprising for there to be a dozen Margarets in such a large sample?"

Mentalist Mark Edward relates from personal experience as a "psychic performer" how powerful a hit can be when someone in a large audience "claims" a phrase such as a "clown in a graveyard" statement. Edward describes a mental image of a clown placing flowers on graves and adds, "Does that mean anything to someone?" whereupon a woman stands up and claims that he is speaking directly to her. She remembers it as Edward specifically stating that she knew a man who dressed as a clown and placed flowers on graves in her hometown. Edward reports that it took some convincing to get her to understand that he was not directly talking to her, but had thrown the statement out to the entire audience of 300 people. She made the connection, and because it seemed so personal and the situation so odd she felt that he was talking to her directly.

Shotgunning
"Shotgunning" is a commonly used cold reading technique. This technique is named after the manner in which a shotgun fires a cluster of small projectiles in the hope that one or more of them will strike the target.

The cold reader slowly offers a huge quantity of very general information, often to an entire audience (some of which is very likely to be correct, near correct or at the very least, provocative or evocative to someone present), observes their subjects' reactions (especially their body language), and then narrows the scope, acknowledging particular people or concepts and refining the original statements according to those reactions to promote an emotional response. A majority of people in a room will, at some point for example, have lost an older relative or known at least one person with a common name like "Mike" or "John".

Shotgunning might include a series of vague statements such as:
 * "I see a heart problem with a father-figure in your family."
 * A vast variety of medical problems have chest pain as a symptom, and heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. "Father-figure" can refer to somebody's father, grandfather, uncle, cousin, or any male relative who is also a parent or has served in a parental role to the person.

 * "I see a woman with blackness in the chest, lung cancer, heart disease, breast cancer..."
 * Most people will know a woman who was diagnosed with one of these problems, which are among the leading causes of illness and death.

 * "I sense an older male figure in your life, who wants you to know while you may have had disagreements in your life, he still loved you."
 * Nearly all people will have had such a person in their lives, and nearly all of them will have had a disagreement.

The Forer effect (Barnum statements)
The Forer effect relies in part on the eagerness of people to fill in details and make connections between what is said and some aspect of their own lives, often searching their entire life's history to find some connection, or reinterpreting statements in a number of different possible ways so as to make it apply to themselves.

"Barnum statements", named after P. T. Barnum, the American showman, are statements that seem personal, yet apply to many people. And while seemingly specific, such statements are often open-ended or give the reader the maximum amount of "wiggle room" in a reading. They are designed to elicit identifying responses from people. The statements can then be developed into longer and more sophisticated paragraphs and seem to reveal great amounts of detail about a person. A talented and charismatic reader can sometimes even bully a subject into admitting a connection, demanding over and over that they acknowledge a particular statement as having some relevance and maintaining that they are just not thinking hard enough, or are repressing some important memory.

Statements of this type might include:
 * "I sense that you are sometimes insecure, especially with people you don't know very well."
 * "You have a box of old unsorted photographs in your house."
 * "You had an accident when you were a child involving water."
 * "You're having problems with a friend or relative."
 * "Your father passed on due to problems in his chest or abdomen."

Regarding the last statement, if the subject is old enough, their father is quite likely to have died, and this statement would easily apply to a large number of medical conditions including heart disease, pneumonia, diabetes, emphysema, cirrhosis of the liver, kidney failure, most types of cancer, as well as any cause of death in which cardiac arrest precedes death, or damage to the brainstem responsible for cardiopulmonary function.

Warm reading
Warm reading is a performance tool used by professional mentalists and psychic scam artists. While hot reading is the use of foreknowledge and cold reading works on reacting to the subject's responses, warm reading refers to the judicious use of Barnum effect statements.

When these psychological tricks are used properly, the statements give the impression that the mentalist, or psychic scam artist, is intuitively perceptive and psychically gifted. In reality, the statements fit nearly all of humanity, regardless of gender, personal opinions, age, epoch, culture, or nationality.

Michael Shermer gives the example of jewelry worn by those in mourning. Most people in this situation will be wearing or carrying an item of jewelry with some connection to the person they have lost, but if asked directly in the context of a psychic reading whether they have such an item, the client may be shocked and assume that the reader learned the information directly from the deceased loved one. Robert Todd Carroll notes in The Skeptic's Dictionary that some would consider this to be cold reading.

The rainbow ruse
The rainbow ruse is a crafted statement which simultaneously awards the subject a specific personality trait, as well as the opposite of that trait. With such a phrase, a cold reader can "cover all possibilities" and appear to have made an accurate deduction in the mind of the subject, despite the fact that a rainbow ruse statement is vague and contradictory. This technique is used since personality traits are not quantifiable, and also because nearly everybody has experienced both sides of a particular emotion at some time in their lives.

Statements of this type include:
 * "Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there has been a time in the past when you were very upset."
 * "You are a very kind and considerate person, but when somebody does something to break your trust, you feel deep-seated anger."
 * "I would say that you are mostly shy and quiet, but when the mood strikes you, you can easily become the center of attention."

A cold reader can choose from a variety of personality traits, think of its opposite, and then bind the two together in a phrase, vaguely linked by factors such as mood, time, or potential.

Contrasting claims of performers
The mentalist branch of the stage-magician community approves of "reading" as long as it is presented strictly as an artistic entertainment and one is not pretending to be psychic.

Some performers who use cold reading are honest about their use of the technique. Lynne Kelly, Kari Coleman, Ian Rowland, and Derren Brown have used these techniques at either private fortune-telling sessions or open forum "talking with the dead" sessions in the manner of those who claim to be genuine mediums. Only after receiving acclaim and applause from their audience do they reveal that they needed no psychic power for the performance, only a sound knowledge of psychology and cold reading.

In an episode of his Trick of the Mind series broadcast in March 2006, Derren Brown showed how easily people can be influenced through cold reading techniques by repeating Bertram Forer's famous demonstration of the personal validation fallacy, or Forer effect.

Sitter misremembering
In a detailed review of four sittings conducted by medium Tyler Henry, Edward and Susan Gerbic reviewed all statements made by him on the TV show Hollywood Medium. In their opinion not one statement made by Henry was accurate, yet each sitter felt that their reading was highly successful. In interviews with each sitter after their sitting, all four claimed specific statements made by Henry, but, after reviewing the show, it was shown that he had not made those statements. Each sitter had misremembered what Henry said. One of many examples of this was when Henry, during a session with celebrity Ross Mathews, stated "Bambi, why am I connecting to Bambi?" Mathews stated that his father, who was a hunter, would not shoot deer because of the movie Bambi. In the post-interview, Mathews stated that "It was weird that Henry knew that my father would not shoot deer because of Bambi", demonstrating that Mathews did not remember that he, not Henry, had supplied the connection to his father.

Gerbic has pointed out the broader issue of the human brain attempting to make connections that then make it appear that the psychic was correct. She lists this among a number of techniques or situations that psychics take advantage of.

Subconscious cold reading
Former New Age practitioner Karla McLaren has spoken of the importance of reducing the appearance of unusual expertise that might create a power differential; posing observations as questions rather than facts. This attempt to be polite, she realized, actually invited the other person, as McLaren has said, to "lean into the reading" and give her more pertinent information.

After some people have performed hundreds of readings, their skills may improve to the point where they may start believing they can read minds. They may ask themselves if their success is because of psychology, intuition or a psychic ability. This point of thought is known by some skeptics of the paranormal as the "transcendental temptation". Magic historian and occult investigator Milbourne Christopher has warned that the transcendental choice may lead one unknowingly into a belief in the occult and a deterioration of reason.

In media

 * The Wizard of Oz (1939). Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan) utilizes both cold reading and hot reading techniques on Dorothy (Judy Garland) in an effort to urge her to return home.
 * Nightmare Alley (1947). Depicted ex-carny and aspiring cult leader Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) using cold reading and other mentalist techniques to convince people he can communicate with the dead. The film was based on the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The novel was again adapted into a movie in 2021 and depicts many aspects of cold reading delineated in the above article.
 * In Fletch Lives (1989), Irwin Fletcher uses a very heavy-handed version of cold reading to pass himself off as a faith healer during a televangelist praise meeting.
 * Leap of Faith (1992). Early in the film, revival tent evangelist and phony faith healer Jonas Nightengale (Steve Martin) uses cold reading on a police officer who has pulled over his tour bus, to dissuade him from writing a ticket.
 * "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" (South Park episode, 2002). Stan Marsh, one of the main characters in the animated comedy series, has an encounter with self-proclaimed psychic John Edward after attending a taping of Edward's TV show Crossing Over. Stan then uses cold reading on some passers-by in an attempt to convince his friend Kyle Broflovski that Edward is a fake, only to be mistaken for a child psychic and given his own competing TV show. This leads to a "psychic showdown" between Stan and Edward. Eventually, aliens arrive and declare Edward "The Biggest Douche in the Universe" for exploiting people's grief to gain TV ratings.
 * High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman (2005). BBC TV show in which character comedian Marc Wootton portrays a spoof psychic who parodies the typical cold reading techniques used on an unsuspecting audience.
 * Psych (2006). Shawn Spencer, the main character in the show, uses cold reading to convince detectives that he has psychic abilities while actually using logic, reason, keen observation skills, and an eidetic memory to solve cases.
 * The Mentalist (2008). The main character is someone who formerly used cold readings to pretend to be psychic, and now uses cold reading to assist him in solving criminal cases, especially when interviewing witnesses and possible suspects. His interactions with past clients are sometimes the subjects of episodes and he often tutors his colleagues and other individuals in the tools of his trade to teach them that "there's no such thing as psychics."
 * Leverage (2010). In Series 2 Episode 13 "The Future Job", Dalton Rand (Luke Perry) is a con artist who uses both hot reading (information gathering) and cold reading to convince an audience that he can communicate with the dead. The cold reading methods he uses are exposed by the team.
 * Now You See Me (2013). One of the Four Horsemen, Merritt McKinley (Woody Harrelson), is a mentalist who uses cold reading (along with hypnotism) to assist in extortion and his illusion act.
 * Comedian John Oliver addressed the topic during an episode of his talk show Last Week Tonight on February 24, 2019. In the segment, Oliver criticized the media for enabling psychics who prey on grieving families, and explained the techniques of cold reading and hot reading. On cold reading, he said: "It's like asking a room full of praying mantises: Has anybody here lost a loved one because you ate them after having sex?. You know that all those little green hands are going up. (...) The broader the generality, the higher the chance it resonates with someone – basically, it's a magic trick, and yet prominent, smart people are willing to cosign on psychics' abilities."

title: Cold reading