Culture
razib | April 26, 2009The episode is titled "your brains & your genes." There's more emphasis on economics than you think.
razib | April 26, 2009One of the arguments of some younger social conservatives (e.g., Ross Douthat) is that while the abortion wars are in stasis, the Right is losing ground when it comes to opposition to gay marriage. Is this true? Below are charts from the GSS with each column representing a year, from the mid-1970s to the 2000s (not necessarily every year, but every few years).
Looks like Ross is right.
razib | April 26, 2009Fortune has a massive profile of Bernie Madoff's life, career and scam. Some new material too.
razib | April 25, 2009One of the major problems in most societies, subject to "great sorts" of various kinds, is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations. For example, if one of the first things that someone finds out about me is that I am an atheist, there is a general presupposition that I am a Left-Liberal. It is true that there is a robust relationship between atheism and liberalism in the United States, the problem I have, as an admittedly illiberal atheist, are those who believe that atheism entails liberalism. In a specific instance I…
razib | April 23, 2009Bora points to this report about mega shakeups at Scientific American. The editor for nearly a generation, John Rennie, is out. Nature Publishing Group is now calling the shots. In non-science news Ezra Klein, king of all journolism, is moving to The Washington Post. We live in the age of creative destruction when it comes to media. I'm a dabbler in in writing about science, but as the years go by it seems that the media itself is converging upon my own bloggish means of production. I know that Ross Douthat is going to produce print-worthy column prose for The New York Times, but I have to…
amillikan | April 23, 2009
Hundreds of research supporters rallied on UCLA's campus Wednesday to protest acts of terrorism directed at scientists by animal rights activists. The event, organized by the UCLA chapter of Pro-Test, a group founded in Oxford, England to support animal testing for the pursuit of science, drew an estimated 800 people to the rally. A simultaneous anti-research rally only drew about 30 people. For continued discussion on the rally, ScienceBlogger DrugMonkey has an open discussion thread on his blog.
Related ScienceBlogs Posts:
Scientists and Supporters Rally Against Animal Rights Extremism at…
razib | April 22, 2009See the data that The Audacious Epigone reports. Hope other bloggers will start using the World Values Survey!
razib | April 21, 2009The World Values Survey has a question about immigration policy with four options:
- Let anyone come
- As long as jobs available
- Strict limits
- Prohibit people from coming
I used WVS 2005-2008 from 57 countries first. Then I filled out the countries with the
Four-wave Aggregate of the Values Studies, the combined file of the four waves carried out by both the EVS and WVS. I bring this up because there are discrepancies between the two where there are duplications.
Again Vietnam is at the top of the list. Perhaps Will Wilkson should have picked another country to trade in his American…
razib | April 20, 2009Since none of the physics bloggers on SB have pointed to it yet, Stephen Hawking has been hospitalized with a respiratory ailment. He's 67.
razib | April 20, 2009There is a question on the World Values Survey which allows people to give a number corresponding to their position on a spectrum where 0 = "Ethnic diversity erodes a country´s unity" and 10 = "Ethnic diversity enriches my life." Below the fold I've placed the countries where this was asked as well as the mean values. In other words, the proportions in each class were used as weights. The results frankly surprised me. Below is an ordered list:
Ethnic Diversity Enriches
Jordan
2.9
Ghana
4.8
Egypt
5
Thailand
5.3
Georgia
5.4
Bulgaria
5.5
Moldova
5.7
Cyprus
5.7…
razib | April 18, 2009Update: Readers pointed out that these results are from the cumulative data set from 1972-2002. So the % who favored laws against interracial marriage were ~40% in 1972, and ~10% in 2002, averaging out to ~25% across the years. The relative differences though seem to remain the same across categories. The nature of party identification in the 1970s also likely explains the peculiar results there.End Update
The GSS has a question of the form:
Do you think there should be laws against marriages between (Negroes/Blacks/African-Americans) and whites?
The sample sizes are huge for this question,…
razib | April 16, 2009There are some really weird comments about Albania below. Part of these confusions have to do with ambiguities as to the religious identity of Albania, traditionally majority Muslim, but after decades of Communism very secular. What exactly are the religious breakdowns? How religious are Albanians? Additionally some of the same questions are thrown toward the Bosnian Muslims. Are Balkan Muslims true religious moderates, or, are they simply secular Europeans whose ancestors practiced the Muslim religion?
The World Values Survey can help answer these questions, or least put some numbers on…
razib | April 15, 2009When Did Your County's Jobs Disappear? An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country Well done.
razib | April 15, 2009Male Circumcision Reduces HIV Risk: No Further Evidence Needed, According To Review:
The clinical trials included in the review took place in South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya between 2002 and 2006, and included a total of 11,054 men. The results show that circumcision in heterosexual men significantly reduces their risk of acquiring HIV by 54% over a two year period, compared with uncircumcised men. This reduced risk is the best estimate of the average effect and the researchers report that the true risk will be reduced by between 38 to 66%. Further research, however, is required to establish…
razib | April 15, 2009A year ago I mentioned that the Religious Landscape Survey showed that a majority of American Buddhists believe in God. Some people wondered as to its generality as a finding. Does this apply in Asia? It seems likely. The World Values Survey has data on Buddhists in Singapore, Taiwan and Japan in terms of God belief. Here are the data:
Buddhist who believe in God, Yes/No
Yes
No
Taiwan
83.9
16.1
Japan
56.7
43.3
Singapore
86.3
13.7
The Japanese data are the most important. The Japanese are a secular people, so if Japanese Buddhists generally believe in God it is a…
razib | April 15, 2009Joel Grus, who was a blogger at Gene Expression in 2002, and who is responsible for the banner graphic, has a weblog up promoting his book Your religion is false! (But so is everyone elses.).
razib | April 14, 2009Teacher who survived polar bear mauling at zoo 'was depressed over job':
Rifles had already been issued to marksmen and Heiner Kloes, a zoo spokesman, said: "This woman's behaviour not only put her life in danger but also that of the staff who had to rescue her.
"However, we do have guns and we would have been prepared to use them without hesitation if it was felt it was the only way to save the woman."
...
On Monday it emerged that she is a teacher who had been driven to despair by her failure to find a job.
Related: Woman attacked by polar bear (live footage).
razib | April 14, 2009Chaplain's E-mail Sparks Controversy:
In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was "great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand."
...
"I believe he doesn't belong as the official chaplain," said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities. "If the Christian ministers said that people who…
razib | April 14, 2009I've suggested before that the idea of Turkey entering the EU is a farce. One could make the economic case that it is far too large and poor to be absorbed easily (unlike the Eastern European nations Turkey is nearly as populous as Germany). But there is a strong cultural case too. Turkey is a very religious nation in a European context. It is more Creationist than the United States. Though Turkey is secular for a Muslim nation, it is not secularfor a European nation. But many people seem to be intent on accusing Europeans of racism or discrimination based on their evident disinclination to…