society
drorzel | October 14, 2008Via Physics and Physicists, a breathtaking blog at the Washington Post proudly proclaiming the author's ignorance of algebra:
I am told that algebra is everywhere - it's in my iPod, beneath the spreadsheet that calculates my car payments, in every corner of my building. This idea freaks me out because I just can't see it. I sent out a query on my blog last week asking, Who among us in the real world uses algebra? Can you explain how it works?
This is exactly the sort of intellectual innumeracy I have ranted about countless times. The whole concept of the blog (subtitled "A year reliving high…
drorzel | October 13, 2008Throughout the unfolding financial meltdown, I keep finding myself thinking that there might be one small, positive effect to come out of this: namely, a much-needed dose of realism and humility for market advocates. Because, really, after reading this Steven Teles post:
All through the financial crisis, governments have failed to act in a powerful, concerted way when markets were susceptible to a signal of a major shift in direction. The nature of market panics is that they don't necessarily find their bottom when they reach some measures of the "fundamentals"--they reach their bottom when…
clock | October 3, 2008From Sigma Xi:
Greetings everyone. We meet again at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 15 in RTP to hear NCSU associate professor James Bonner discuss "Emerging Nanotechnology: A New Risk Factor for Lung Diseases?" As you know, the commercial use of nanomaterials has outpaced scientific assessments of any potential health or environmental risks. Jamie Bonner is one of the scientists working to catch up.
Sigma Xi's Pizza Lunch speaker series is free and open to science journalists and science communicators of all stripes (free to forward this message to anyone you would like to be included). RSVPs are…
drorzel | October 3, 2008Over at Nature Networks, Timo Hannay has posted a conference talk in which he questions the future of science blogging:
"Science blogging is growing" I confidently wrote in an essay a few months ago. Then, like any good scientist, I went in search of evidence to support my prejudice. But I couldn't find any beyond the anecdotal. For a year or more, estimates of the number of blogs by scientists about science seem to have been stuck at about 1,500 (give or take). Services such as Alexa and Compete.com (if they can be believed) show traffic to sites like ScienceBlogs.com to have been flat for…
clock | October 2, 2008Great article in Carrboro Commons today - I know because I'm in it! The concepts of 'work' and 'office' are changing and those in the information economy are starting to adapt to the new world:
Creative Coworking offers a new dynamic:
"People left the office and cubicle and they say, 'OK, I'm going to break out.' ... So you start doing that. You work at home. You want to get something better than the couch, so you get a table. ... You start creating an office in a spare bedroom. That works great for a while," Russell said.
"Then you get a little bored, and your spouse is like, 'Why haven't…
clock | September 29, 2008Amanda is in the middle of reading Michael Kimmel's Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men and has posted the first, preliminary review, with some very interesting explorations by the commenters as well (I guess the MRAs did not get there yet to ruin the discussion). The review is focusing on the societal gender roles as the cause of the hook-up culture as well as the perception of it as being negative.
Much younger, sarahmeyers looks at the setting for the hook-up culture and identifies her own - highly urban, career-oriented, highly-connected (online and offline).
Possibly…
drorzel | September 29, 2008In the comments to last week's science majors follow-up post, commenter Jim G calls me out:
OK, I agree with that 100%, and I'm sure everyone who reads this post has observed the phenomena you mention dozens of times or more. But I wonder whether you have a proposal, or if you're just pointing out the problem. With no snarkiness intended, to change this we need something a bit more concrete than "it's the fault of the kids/parents/media/poverty," or "someone needs to spend more money" to fix it.
Really, I'm curious. I don't want to clutter up your blog with my own theories; but this is your…
drorzel | September 28, 2008There's an interesting exchange over at the Reality-Based Community around the topic of "earmarks" for science, like the grizzly bear DNA study McCain keeps mocking. Michael O'Hare argues that science should not be funded by earmarks:
Almost any piece of scientific research, especially in biology, that isn't called "Cure cancer!" is liable to the kind of ignorant ridicule lobbed at these. Sure, some research is deeply silly and some is not worth doing. But that non-specialists can make fun of something from its title means nothing, and these japes indicate only the smug ignorance of the…
clock | September 22, 2008This provocative stream-of-consciousness post was first posted on April 17, 2005.
In my persistent inquiry into femiphobia (fear of being perceived as feminine) as an explanation for Regressive behavior (including voting behavior) I have encountered blog comments that can be summarized in these two ways: first, that femiphobia cannot explain racism, and second, that femiphobia does not explain why African Americans tend to vote Democratic. Let me try to address these two common complaints. I apologize in advance for my usual blunt language.
As I have already discussed (hypothesis about…
clock | September 19, 2008 You probably know that I am quite interested in the history, current state, evolution and future of the institution of marriage, mainly because it is an important indicator of societal attitudes towards sex and towards gender-relations, which is the key to understanding political ideology. Between May 29, 2005 and February 23, 2006 I frequently mentioned Stephanie Coontz and particularly her latest book - Marriage, A History, e.g., in New History Of Marriage, Stephanie Coontz On Marriage, Op-Ed on the 'End of Marriage', Don't Know Much About History.... and What 'traditional' marriage?.…
drorzel | September 17, 2008I have never been a huge proponent of the Open Access and Open Data movements in science publishing, because they've always struck me as wasted effort. I've never really seen what value is supposed to be added by either project.
When I think about the experiments that I've been involved with (see, for example, the Metastable Xenon Project blogging), and what the data for those experiments looked like, I doubt that anybody not directly associated with the experiments could do anything useful with the data. It's not just that many of the analysis steps required tacit knowledge of the set-up,…
clock | September 17, 2008When I posted this originally (here and here) I quoted a much longer excerpt from the cited Chronicle article than what is deemed appropriate, so this time I urge you to actually go and read it first and then come back to read my response.
From Dr.Munger's blog, an interesting article: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual By MARK BAUERLEIN, The Chronicle Review Volume 51, Issue 12, Page B6 (that link is now dead, but you can find a copy here):
Hmmmm, why was the poll conducted only in social science departments (e.g., sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, anthropology, perhaps…
drorzel | September 15, 2008If you listen to people talking about (or read people blogging about) new ways of doing things, you'll frequently hear references to Science or Academia as if they were vast but monolithic entities existing in their own right. Statements like "The culture of Science does not reward open access..." or "Modern Academia does not reward high-risk research..." are quite common. They also are often paired with a call for external relief, usually through some government mandate-- "We need funding agencies to make this a condition of grant funding."
I always find these statements faintly annoying,…
clock | September 14, 2008This post was first written on October 28, 2004 on Science And Politics, then it was republished on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. The Village vs. The University - all in your mind.
Eric at Total Information Awareness wrote two excellent posts on something that touches me personally, yet has much broader consequences on the country as a whole: the well-organized and well-funded assault of the Right on the University (check some links in the comments section, too): Freedom Fighters and Academic Freedom Fighters.
There were a couple of other articles on the same topic, e.g.,The…
clock | September 14, 2008...to revisit this discussion. Keep the current election in mind as you read all the posts.
clock | September 14, 2008 This was an early post of mine building upon George Lakoff analysis of the psychology underlying political ideology. It was first published on September 04, 2004 (mildly edited):
I keep going back to George Lakoff's "Moral Politics", as I did "here"
and "here", because I believe this book provides very important insights into the psychological sources of ideology, or worldview, from which all political stances logically follow. As I stated "before", it is not a perfect book. First, it is written in a pretty dry academic style. Long lists, in my opinion, should be taken out of the main body…
clock | September 13, 2008
This was first posted on http://www.jregrassroots.org/ forums on July 10, 2004, then republished on Science And Politics on August 18, 2004. That was to be just the first, and most raw, post on this topic on my blog. It was followed by about a 100 more posts building on this idea, modifying it, and changing my mind in the process. You can see some of the better follow-ups here. Also, I have since then read Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz, which is a much better and more scholarly work than E.J.Graff's book. Below the…
drorzel | September 9, 2008I've seen a lot of neat stuff discussed at the Science in the 21st Century meeting, some of which I'll talk about in more detail later, when I have more time to think. One of the most interesting experiences of the meeting, though, has been using FriendFeed to sort of collaboratively live-blog the talks, along with a bunch of other people.
You can get some of the flavor from looking at the comments on Timo Hannay's talk (PIRSA video link, which is worth a look). Not only are there several people making notes as the talk goes along, there are links to things mentioned in the talk, for easy…
drorzel | September 8, 2008I gave my talk this morning at the Science in the 21st Century conference. Video will eventually be available at the Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive site, but if you'd like to get a sense of the talk, a few people were live-blogging it in the FriendFeed room for the meeting. You get a pretty accurate impression of the talk from the comments there.
I think it went well. People laughed in the right places, and there was some really good discussion in the question period. I look forward to seeing what it looks like on video. They have a really nice AV set-up here, with two cameras…
drorzel | September 5, 2008Dave Munger does Friday polls calling them "Casual Fridays," but then, the usual run of posts at Cognitive Daily is a lot more serious than my usual standard. So I'll call this a "semi-formal Friday" poll, sort of the khaki pants and blue blazer of the online research world.
I'm also too lazy to set up poll software for this, so I'd like to ask you to leave your answers to the following questions in comments:
1) When driving between two places you regularly visit, do you:
a) Always take main roads (highways or major surface streets), even if there is traffic.
b) Usually take main roads, but…