Culture
cortex | June 14, 2006One of my best friends just had his first kid. I'm almost 25, and there's something strange about seeing a person you usually associate with beer and baseball cradling his infant. It sets of all sorts of hormonal switches. Instead of thinking about Deadwood, Proust and the Red Sox (my usual stream of consciousness), I've been inundated with thoughts of babies. I think I've suddenly realized that, biologically speaking at least, I'm capable of becoming a parent. Weird.
That said, this post isn't about my twentysomething angst. It's about abortion, because my friend had a baby, Hillary Clinton…
cortex | June 10, 2006Sharon Begley of The Wall Street Journal is one of the finest science reporters around. Her Friday column was typically interesting. It's about how global warming might lead to increased tectonic and volcanic activity:
One cubic meter of ice weighs just over a ton, and glaciers can be hundreds of meters thick. When they melt and the water runs off, it is literally a weight off Earth's crust. The crust and mantle therefore bounce back, immediately as well as over thousands of years. That "isostatic rebound," according to studies of prehistoric and recent earthquakes and volcanoes, can make the…
razib | June 9, 2006The famous pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby, Shiloh, below the fold....
Sike!!!!! Sucker!!!!!
cortex | June 8, 2006Apparently, homosexuality is a sensitive subject. Ever since Seed posted my article on Joan Roughgarden earlier this week, I've gotten numerous emails informing of all the reasons why I'm "scientifically wrong" and "morally repugnant." I've even been accused of furthering the interests of Sodom.
But one email piqued my interest. Mr. X informed me that he raises sheep, and that his male sheep never, ever engage in genital licking or anal sex. (They sometimes hump each other, Mr. X confesses, but that's just an expression of "dominance".) Although I probably disagree with his politics, Mr. X…
razib | May 25, 2006I don't know what to think about this year's idol winner, but hey, perhaps he won't be a closeted gay man always in image control mode because of his "secret" (not that there's anything wrong with that!). As for the runner up, best of luck to her, I know how it feels....
razib | May 25, 2006My friend Manish Vij just started a new brown themed weblog, aptly titled UltraBrown. Anyway, this entry is hilarious. Talk about seeing the world only through your own lens! When I was in San Francisco once someone came up to me in a shop at Ghirardelli Square and asked "where I was from." You see, I had bleached my hair blonde at that point, so she was wondering where the land of brown-skined blondes was! (there are dark-skinned blondes among the Aboriginals of Australia)
razib | May 22, 2006Conservative Christian Pollster George Barna has an interesting report out on those who have read the book, The Da Vinci Code. Some results:
* Catholics more likely to have read it than Protestants
* "Upscale" individuals are four times as likely to have read it than "downscale" ones (household income greater than $60 K & college degree vs. vs. less than $30 K & no college degree)
* The novel shifted the religious thinking of Hispanics, liberals, women (vs. men) and the upscale to a greater extent than other groups
I haven't read the book and to a great extent have checked out of "…
razib | May 18, 2006Check out this post from Ed Brayton on a definition for "cultural racism" from the Seattle Public Schools:
Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.
As someone who isn't "flesh colored" (see picture to your left, you know you got to love the hot chocolate!) and has lived in the Pacific northwest of the United States for over 15 years, I will weigh in…
razib | May 2, 2006 Study: Geography Greek to young Americans:
...33 percent could not point out Louisiana on a U.S. map....
...showed that 88 percent of those questioned could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia....
..."half or fewer of young men and women 18-24 can identify the states of New York or Ohio on a map [50 percent and 43 percent, respectively],"....
But I'm sure many could pinpoint Britney Spears' butt crack.
The reality is that most humans are not interested in "world affairs" (aside from The World Cup). Not only is their interest lacking, they don't possess that much native intelligence. We…
razib | April 2, 2006Ed Brayton says there is a double standard in how people judge Islam and Christianity. That is, criticism of Christianity is tolerated, while criticism of Islam frowned upon (or at least generalization). I put in two reasons why this is so on this comment boards, first, Islam is treated as a quasi-ethnic group, an identity you are born with (and Islamophobia occupies much the same mental slot as racism for many people). Second, Muslims are perceived by many on the Left to be part of the non-elite which may become part of their broad coalition against right-wing interests.
But there is…
razib | March 27, 2006This whole conversion story in Afghanistan has been in the news recently. The Christian Science Monitor attempts to put the issue of conversion from Islam to another religion in an international perspective. I am cautious about making large generalizations without qualifications, but I will offer that as a civilization, "Dar-al-Islam," has particular issues with conversion when set against "Hindu" or "Christian" civilization. Though the difference is quantitative, not qualitative, some facts are so naked that caveats can not truly cover up the shame.
There are "Muslim" nations where…
razib | March 25, 2006John Lynch comments on an impending list of Ph.D. scientists who dissent from Darwin. He doesn't care, and neither do I, ho hum. As I've noted in the past (and plenty of others have) these lists are usually stacked with physical scientists, and within the life sciences they are slim on individuals from integrative fields where evolution plays a large role. Rosters of scholars who dissent from Darwin is part of a public relations ploy meant to leverage the fact that most humans don't have a great grasp on the specificity and the specialization which a course of scientific work entails.…
razib | March 23, 2006Did you know that Angelina Jolie is an atheist? I didn't...
Another materialist young female celebrity below the fold....
Quote:
Of her religion, Portman says, "I'm much more like the product of a doctor than I am a Jew." She is uncomfortable about the concept of the afterlife. "I don't believe in that. I believe this is it, and I believe it's the best way to live."
razib | March 23, 2006I've received several emails about this study, Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority. This shouldn't surprise too many people, but I think some perspective is in order. I think the results are probably accurate, but, I also think that the belief is wide but shallow.
I went to high school in an area that was about 75% Republican and half Mormon. One time during our American Government class the teacher, Mr. Nelson, was giving a talk about the First Amendment, and he stated that in the United States you could believe in any God you wanted to, or no God at all. This last…
razib | March 22, 2006Some of the Science Bloggers are coming up with taxonomies of biologists, physicists and anthropologists and chemists. This is great, and I don't have anything to add except that it is always important to remember that science the method is irrelevant without the science the culture. It itself is embedded within the broader culture, and as books like The Lunar Men show science's growth and efflorescence are tied together with currents that sweep through the broad expanse of a society. Attempts at "modernization" of a "traditional" culture via science as in the 19th century Egypt of…
razib | March 22, 2006Data from The American Religious Identification Survey is floating around the blogosphere right now. One of the points noted is that the number of Americans who avow "No Religon" has gone from 8.2% to 14.1% of the American population between 1990 and 2001. Now, one meme floating around is conflating this increase with an increase in the number of atheists. But, one has to be careful, just because someone rejects organized religion does not imply that they reject theism ( belief in a personal God). In fact, just because someone rejects theism does not imply they reject organized religion (…
razib | March 20, 2006You can watch the whole South Park episode that was never aired on Comedy Central online.
razib | March 20, 2006Just so you know, Brad and Angelina did not get married. What sort of animal signal is this?
razib | March 8, 2006In a comment a post below Oran Kelly states:
The findings are interesting, but I don't think the populace at large is going to have to rethink their assumptions about life.
Sometimes you need to be explicit, so here I will make clear what I believe is implicit in many of my posts because it is important in framing how I view people, and how I believe they think. For example, consider evolution. To some extent Science Blogs might be called Evolution Blogs, not only is there is a strong bias toward biology, but there is a strong bias toward discussing evolution and the Intelligent Design…
razib | March 5, 2006Check this hilarious site, Indians are Asian. I think you can appreciate it even if you are demelanized and round-eyed!
via Sepia Mutiny.