Social Sciences
drorzel | March 27, 2010Spending less time reading blogs means that I have more time to spend reading fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction I've been reading has been letting me down. In particular, I'm very disappointed in the last two books I've (mostly) read.
For one of the books, N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (sample chapter),mit's not entirely the author's fault. Had I not gone on a big urban fantasy binge a little while back (as mentioned earlier), I probably would've liked this better. Having become fed up with the "My Awesome Werewolf Boyfriend" stuff in Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson books,…
cwilcox | March 27, 2010We all get sick. Young or old, male or female, everyone gets sick at some point in their lives. But only some are susceptible to a specialized disease known as the "Man Flu," which somehow causes men to think they have the flu when, in fact, they have only a little cold.
Where did the idea of a Man Flu come from? It's origins are uncertain. In general, a lot of people tend to think they're worse off than they really are when they're sick - a poll by Panadol Cold and Flu, for example, found that 61% of people who went to pharmacists claiming to have the flu didn't. Somewhere along the line,…
terrasig | March 25, 2010Have you ever taken one of the now-over-the-counter heartburn relief remedies like Tagamet, Zantac, or Pepcid?
How about the beta-blocker atenolol (Tenormin) or metoprolol (Lopressor) for antihypertensive therapy, or the original less-selective beta-blocker propranolol (Inderal) for migraines, presentation anxiety or stage fright?
If you answered yes to either question, you owe a debt of gratitude to Sir James Black, the Scottish physician who left us earlier this week at age 85. The best obituary I have seen memorializing Sir James comes from the UK Telegraph.
Black was called the father…
emjohnson | March 25, 2010Culture defines who we are but few can explain where it comes from or why we adopt one tradition over another. In the classic musical The Fiddler on the Roof the main character, Tevye, muses on this basic fact of human existence:
Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything... how to eat, how to sleep, even, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered and always wear a little prayer shawl... This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you - I don't know.
The origin of particular cultural traits in human…
cpikas | March 24, 2010I'm on a sub-sub committee to evaluate evaluation of consideration of adding a new recommender system to our discovery tools across my parent institution's libraries. The system costs money and programmer time (which we're very short on), but more importantly, there's a real estate issue, we already offer some similar tools, and even if the recommendations are perfect we don't know if or where we could/should surface them, they'd be noticed and used. I'm trying to get my arms around at least the questions we should ask or things we should consider. I'm using this post to work through some…
razib | March 24, 2010That's all I have to say to Eric Michael Johnson's post, Ann Coulter, Hate Speech, and Free Societies. OK, seriously, from what I recall Eric is an American, though resident in the forgotten north. American absolutist stances on free speech are not shared by most Western societies, so demanding total free speech is quixotic and culturally tone deaf. Granted, Europe or Canada are not barbaric like China or Muslim societies when it comes to speech, so that communication about this issue is possible. But here are the exceptions to free speech enumerated in the European Convention on Human Rights…
emjohnson | March 23, 2010Harvard Medical School physician and researcher J. Wes Ulm has a fascinating paper in the new edition of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, the quarterly academic periodical put out by Johns Hopkins University. His paper "The Cachet of the Cutthroat" investigates the legacy of ideas that formed the basis of laissez-faire social Darwinism:
Ultimately, Social Darwinism fails in practice because it never succeeded as a theory. It's not even Darwinist-Herbert Spencer, after all, had sketched out its contours even before Darwin published his own work. And when the great naturalist outlined a…
emjohnson | March 20, 2010RaceWire is reporting that Thomas Hagan, one of three men convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X (and the only to plead guilty), was released after his 17th attempt at parole yesterday. Hagan, at the time of the murder, was known as Talmadge X and was a militant member of the Nation of Islam.
According to The New York Times:
Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices . . . decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a "hypocrite" who had "gone against the leader of the Nation of Islam," Elijah Muhammad. Mr. Hagan said that after one man shot Malcolm X in the chest…
tlambert | March 18, 2010Maurice Newman, the chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has come out as a global warming denier in a speech to the ABC.
Michael Ashley replies here:
Scientists are fairly measured in their public statements. Years of training instils a care with words, and avoidance of value judgements. Well, sod that, I'm angry.
What has me fuming is your speech last week to ABC staff in which you accuse your senior journalists of "group-think" in favouring the scientific consensus on climate change. You refer to "a growing number of distinguished scientists [that are] challenging the…
razib | March 17, 2010A few weeks ago I commented on the paper about the origin of the small dog phenotype in the Middle East. Now The New York Times has an article on a newer paper, New Finding Puts Origins Of Dogs in Middle East. Here's the conclusion:
Dog domestication and human settlement occurred at the same time, some 15,000 years ago, raising the possibility that dogs may have had a complex impact on the structure of human society. Dogs could have been the sentries that let hunter gatherers settle without fear of surprise attack. They may also have been the first major item of inherited wealth, preceding…
pharyngula | March 15, 2010Gosh. I have been informed that yesterday's posting of my crazy email was too, too harsh, and that I'm such a meanie. Well, I resolved to be much nicer as I worked my way through my neglected in-box, so here are a couple more letters I've gotten in the last day or two.
Dear PZ,
I find the blatant hostility shown towards God and Jesus Christ defies belief when all either of them (God and Jesus) want is for mankind to have peace on Earth. And peace IS possible if only the emotionally handicapped intelligensia were to open their hearts to the love God has for each one of us - including them…
oracknows | March 15, 2010Perhaps you've heard of the case of Poul Thorsen. Perhaps not. Either way, that anti-vaccine movement was making a huge deal over this Danish psychiatrist and researcher for two reasons. First, he has become embroiled in some sort of scandal involving research funds at his former place of employment, Aarhus University, leading the ever-hyperbolic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to post a characteristic bit of conspiracy mongering nonsense to that font of anti-vaccine nonsense, The Huffington Post, in an article entitled Central figure in CDC Vaccine Cover-Up Absconds with $2M. The second reason is…
emjohnson | March 10, 2010It is a common argument by those who are opposed to evolution's implication for religious belief to label Darwin as a social Darwinist and a racist. Adrian Desmond and James Moore's book Darwin's Sacred Cause has gone a long way towards dispelling any claims that Darwin sought to justify black inferiority (in fact, as they show, countering such arguments was an important part of Darwin's work). However, the claim that Darwin inspired social Darwinism is a persistent argument and those that proffer it will stoop to any level in order to discredit him. As I pointed out in my series…
drorzel | March 10, 2010On this morning's walk, a woman stopped me and Emmy to say that she recognized us from a picture. Emmy was adopted from the Mohawk and Hudson River Humane Society shelter back in 2003, and when they heard about How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, they contacted me about writing Emmy up as a distinguished alumna. And, in fact, there's a piece in their print newsletter, including a picture of the two of us sitting by the couch (page 8 of the PDF newsletter for February 2010).
Emmy, of course, regards this as no more than her due. She's hoping to be invited to give a commencement address at some…
edyong | March 9, 2010Even extinction and the passing of millennia are no barriers to clever geneticists. In the past few years, scientists have managed to sequence the complete genome of a prehistoric human and produced "first drafts" of the mammoth and Neanderthal genomes. More controversially, some groups have even recovered DNA from dinosaurs. Now, a variety of extinct birds join the ancient DNA club including the largest that ever lived - Aepyornis, the elephant bird.
In a first for palaeontology, Charlotte Oskam from Murdoch University, Perth, extracted DNA from 18 fossil eggshells, either directly…
cortex | March 9, 2010In recent years, it's become clear that much of our individual behavior depends on the dynamics of our social network. It doesn't matter if we're talking about obesity or happiness: they all flow through other people, like a virus or a meme. Last year, I profiled James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis in Wired, who have conducted several fascinating studies that demonstrate the power of social networks:
There's something strange about watching life unfold as a social network. It's easy to forget that every link is a human relationship and every circle a waistline. The messy melodrama of life--…
tlambert | March 7, 2010Randy Olson (maker of Sizzle) has an interview with Mark Morano.
RO: Are you an anti-evolutionist?
MM: Haha, not at all. In fact, you know it's not an issue. The implication of your question is that somehow the skeptics are aligned with creationists. In all my years of dealing with Senator Inhofe the subject of creationism and evolution never even came up. Someone even did an analysis of it in our scientists report, and I think they may have only found one or two creationists out of 700-some names.
Wait, that was my analysis. I looked at the people who were on the Discovery Institute's…
kcollins | March 5, 2010
"Wake up, wake up!" My father shook me gently and indicated to follow him into the living room early in the morning July 1969. There in a remote town in central Africa, a group of people were gathered around a radio avidly listening. "Listen, remember this moment the rest of your life," Dad said, "Man is landing on the moon right now."
Well, I certainly did remember that moment for the rest of my life. I confess I do not remember the actual radio broadcast, but I do remember my father's exhortation. He was a science teacher and Africa was our playground. I remember expeditions along remote…
emjohnson | March 5, 2010In light of the Oscars this Sunday I thought those of you who missed it would enjoy my review of District 9 (which is up for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay).
Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above the terrified citizens, a government mission to board the craft is executed only to find the strange beings living in disease and desperation. A decision is made to save their lives and relocate the aliens to the city's outskirts. In that moment, what seemed to be a compassionate action develops…
grrlscientist | March 4, 2010tags: humane society of the united states, HSUS, H$U$, Yellow Tail wine, Casella Wines Pty Ltd, animal rights, animal welfare, animal shelters, Wayne Pacellestreaming video
Yellow Tail wines are produced by Casella Wines Pty Ltd., based in Yenda, Australia. The Casella family produced wine in their native Italy since the 1820s, but moved to Australia to pursue a better life. But Yellow Tail has failed in their goal to pursue the better life in at least one way: they donated $100,000 to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). This was a huge mistake, Yellow Tail. If you'd done your…