soclinks: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Be who you are and say how you feel because those who mind, don't matter and those who don't mind, matter. Dr.S

Be who you are and say how you feel because those who mind, don't matter and
those who don't mind, matter. Dr.S

Sunday, August 29, 2010

He Says, She Says: Flirting Moves That Work (and Ones That Never, Ever Will) - MSN Relationships - Slideshow

Erin says: The wink can be friendly or cutesy, but if you really want to stop him in his tracks, modify it. Try the slow wink. You close your eyelid and then open it slowly, and at the same time roll your shoulder forward and lift your chin, like you're laughing in slow-motion. But just know that this move is lethal, and it sends a message loud and clear. You might as well give him your room key. I've never used it on a stranger.

Ryan says: The wink is good in theory but difficult in practice. I'm not very good at winking, so I've never pulled this move — and if I saw a girl do it, I'd assume she had a twitch.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign - NYTimes.com

No such estimates exist for the size of the new Net right. However, the largest group appears to be the cumbersomely named Citizens Group That Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan, known here by its Japanese abbreviation, the Zaitokukai, which has some 9,000 members.

The Zaitokukai gained notoriety last year when it staged noisy protests at the home and junior high school of a 14-year-old Philippine girl, demanding her deportation after her parents were sent home for overstaying their visas. More recently, the Zaitokukai picketed theaters showing “The Cove,” an American documentary about dolphin hunting here that rightists branded as anti-Japanese.

In interviews, members of the Zaitokukai and other groups blamed foreigners, particularly Koreans and Chinese, for Japan’s growing crime and unemployment, and also for what they called their nation’s lack of respect on the world stage. Many seemed to embrace conspiracy theories taken from the Internet that China or the United States were plotting to undermine Japan.

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign - NYTimes.com

“These are men who feel disenfranchised in their own society,” said Kensuke Suzuki, a sociology professor at Kwansei Gakuin University. “They are looking for someone to blame, and foreigners are the most obvious target.”

News: Legal Loss for Anti-Gay Student - Inside Higher Ed

In his ruling, Judge Hall tried hard to keep the case from becoming a culture wars flash point. "[T]his is not a case pitting Christianity against homosexuality," he wrote. What the case was about, he wrote, was the right of a public university to enforce reasonable academic standards. He wrote that "matters of educational policy should be left to educators and it is not the proper role of federal judges to second guess an educator's professional judgment."

Christian Counselors Claim Discrimination over Gays, Religion Today Persecution News

Julea Ward, a conservative Christian student at Eastern Michigan University, was a few credits away from finishing her master's degree in counseling in 2009 when she was assigned a student who had previously been counseled about a homosexual relationship.

"She went to her supervisor and said, `I may not be the best person for this particular client," said Jeremy Tedesco, Ward's attorney, who has advised his client not to speak publicly about the case.

Ward was later brought up on disciplinary charges, and eventually dismissed from Eastern Michigan for violating the American Counseling Association's Code of Ethics and demonstrating an unwillingness to change her behavior.

Pat Condell on Ground Zero mosque: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?" - Jihad Watch

Friday, August 27, 2010

This Relationship Just Won't Work: Leo DiCaprio Kicks "Wife" to the Curb - E! Online

"[Bistriceanu] maintains a delusional belief that she is my wife and carrying my child, Jesus...and has threatened that we will live together forever..in His Kingdom," says DiCaprio. "I am frightened of Ms. Bistriceanu and feel that my personal safety, and the personal safety of those around me, is in jeopardy."

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Report: Most College Males Admit To Regularly Getting Stoked | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Onion News Network

In The Know: Are Tests Biased Against Students Who Don't Give A Shit? | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Onion News Network

The Associated Press: Beck rally on anniversary of King's 'Dream' speech

The event's website says the "Restoring Honor" rally is to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." It urges citizens to attend and "help us restore the values that founded this great nation."

Beck has called Obama "a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture."
"I'm not saying he doesn't like white people. I'm saying he has a problem," Beck said. "This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

With Many Still Starving, India Rethinks Its Safety Net - NYTimes.com

India vanquished food shortages during the 1960s with the Green Revolution, which introduced high-yield grains and fertilizers and expanded irrigation, and the country has had one of the world’s fastest-growing economies during the past decade. But its poverty and hunger indexes remain dismal, with roughly 42 percent of all Indian children under the age of 5 being underweight.

Burqa Bans, Halal Debate: Is French Secularism Anti-Islam? - TIME

"The 1905 law establishing secularism describes it as a measure to protect individual citizens' freedom of religion and faith by rendering the state totally neutral to — and disconnected from — religious matters," says Jean Baubérot, a professor emeritus of sociology and expert on secularism at Paris University's École Pratique des Hautes Études. Baubérot notes that secularity was initially meant to reduce the Catholic Church's influence on society by tasking the state with removing religious instruction from public schools as part of a general effort to relegate questions of faith to the private sphere. "Now we frequently see secularists urging the state to intervene in the private religious affairs or practices of people or organizations," Baubérot says. "Increasingly, secularity resembles what Jean-Jacques Rousseau called a 'civil religion': the values and dogma of a state that individual citizens must submit to — or be made to respect."

Monday, August 23, 2010

UCSF study finds racial gaps in child obesity - SFGate

For the first time in more than three decades, obesity rates for white and Asian children are falling in California, and they seem to have leveled off for Hispanic kids - all good signs that public health campaigns aimed at keeping young people away from unhealthful sweets and fatty foods are starting to work, according to a UCSF study.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Report: Men Unfaithful to Women Who Earn More - TIME

The study, which was presented by Christin Munsch, a sociology Ph.D. candidate at Cornell University, at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, examined 18 to 28 year olds who were living together or married more than a year. (The cohort, it turns out, most likely to be outearning men.) It found that men who were completely dependent on their wives' incomes were five times likelier to cheat than those who contributed the same amount to the household finances.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Facebook Firings: Employees' Online Vents, Twitter Postings Can Cost Them Their Jobs - ABC News

Gloria Gadsden, a sociology professor at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, says she was suspended last week after updating her Facebook status with complaints about work that alluded to violence.

In January, she wrote: "Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it's been that kind of day…" Then in February: "had a good day today. DIDN'T want to kill even one student. :-). Now Friday was a different story."

Gadsden says she posted the comments in jest, on a profile she thought could only be seen by friends and family. She says officials were notified of the posts by a student -- even though she says she had no students in her "friend" list.

Facebook Firing: Teacher Loses Job After Commenting About Students, Parents on Facebook - ABC News

Massachusetts high school teacher June Talvitie-Siple learned the hard way that a Facebook wall is probably not the best place to spout off about the students and parents in her community.

Talvitie-Siple, a supervisor of the high school math and science program in Cohasset, Mass., was forced to resign this week after parents spotted Facebook comments she wrote describing students as "germ bags" and parents as "snobby" and "arrogant."

Two parents in the community alerted the school superintendent after noticing the posts on her Facebook wall, Talvitie-Siple said. The superintendent, who was on vacation overseas, sent an e-mailing asking her to resign.

"She did what was probably the most appropriate thing to do," Talvitie-Siple told ABCNews.com. "I embarrassed her, I embarrassed the school district and, you know, if I were her, I probably would have done the same thing. It was not a surprise."

The 54-year-old teacher said she thought her posts would only be visible to her friends and didn't realize that her Facebook settings made the comments visible to others on the Internet.

Franklin Graham Says President Obama was 'Born a Muslim.' As Pew Poll Shows, More Americans Confused About President's Religion. - ABC News

"I think the reality is that false beliefs spread like gossip more than actual information," said Andrew Perrin, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Perrin's research has shown that a false perception can spread quickly if people's friends and neighbors also have heard or believe a similar idea.

"False beliefs propagate when people think others believe them, and when they have a supportive source that wants them to hold it," Perrin said.

Perrin has found that even direct denials of the false information do not always solve the problem.

"In my own research, when [people] get reliable information that discounts these beliefs, they tend to cling to those beliefs more," Perrin said.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Beloit College Mindset List

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the
Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a
handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in
the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones
to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry
(who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they
have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits;
Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China
has always posed an economic threat.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Seoul Reforms Marriage-Agency Rules After Bride - Flash Player Installation

Asia's private international-marriage agencies typically take men to meet their prospective brides on a seven- to 10-day trip in the bride's country of origin, according to a report by Danièle Bélanger, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario in the Population & Societies journal. Some marriage agencies, however, advertise three-day itineraries that have men finding their wife on the day they arrive. The women are presented to the men, and the process of choosing a wife often takes less than an hour. In many cases, the woman can decline a proposal, but Bruce says it's normal for these women to be held captive until they consent, giving them little real choice but to accept. The whole trip, which includes a full wedding, costs the groom between $5,000 and $10,000, while the local Vietnamese brokers that recruit the brides have started charging women between $1,000 and $3,000 to be matched with a prospective husband.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord - washingtonpost.com

Men are more likely to be devoted and loyal husbands when they lack a particular variant of a gene that influences brain activity, researchers announced yesterday -- the first time that science has shown a direct link between a man's genes and his aptitude for monogamy.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Dispelling “Anchor Baby” Myths - Swampland - TIME.com

The next question is more political. Is kicking up dust about the 14th Amendment really about stemming the tide of illegal immigrants, as Lindsay Graham and Rep. John Boehner suggest? Or does it have more to do with what's reflected in a CNN poll out today showing that 49% of Americans support revoking the automatic citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment?

With Many Still Starving, India Rethinks Its Safety Net - NYTimes.com

India vanquished food shortages during the 1960s with the Green Revolution, which introduced high-yield grains and fertilizers and expanded irrigation, and the country has had one of the world’s fastest-growing economies during the past decade. But its poverty and hunger indexes remain dismal, with roughly 42 percent of all Indian children under the age of 5 being underweight.

Op-Ed Contributor - Congregations Gone Wild - NYTimes.com

The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood, according to a Gallup poll. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found. Americans now sample, dabble and move on when a religious leader fails to satisfy for any reason.

In this transformation, clergy have seen their job descriptions rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.

How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks - Bucks Blog - NYTimes.com

That’s especially important now because there are an increasing number of ways to save on books if you buy or rent them online. This Times article from last year provides a lot of helpful information. But we also spoke with Nicole Allen, textbook advocate at the Student Public Interest Research Groups, for some more tips:

Study Looks at Babies Born to Illegal Immigrants - NYTimes.com

A nationwide survey in June by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a group affiliated with the Hispanic Center, found that 56 percent of those polled opposed changing the 14th Amendment, while 41 percent supported it.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

FOXNews.com - Anne Rice Quits Christianity -- 10 Thoughts On Jesus and the Church

In a posting on her Facebook page, she said, “I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or being a part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.”

Friday, August 6, 2010

Decoupling corporate profits from jobs - SFGate

Bottom line: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We're witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs.

The next supply-side economist who tells you companies need more incentive (i.e., lower taxes) before they'll hire is living on another planet.

Violent Crime Is Down in Arizona, Up in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s County « The Washington Independent

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s claims about illegal immigrants and violent crime have been pretty thoroughly debunked, but pro-reform non-profit America’s Voice takes it one step further, circulating a graph today indicating that Arizona’s SB 1070 could actually increase crime in the state. The graph shows rates of violent crime in Arizona jurisdictions from 2002 to 2009. Violent crime rates are all down — statewide numbers included — except for in Maricopa County, the jurisdiction of pro-enforcement Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Crime in Arpaio’s county has gone up 58 percent since 2002, according to America’s Voice data.

Arizona Immigration Law Author: Failure to Enforce Law Impeachable Offense

“During the debate over 1070, a good friend of mine was murdered — right after [Janet] Napolitano, your Homeland Security director, said the border is more secure than ever. Simply not true.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Perry v. Schwarzenegger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kristin M. Perry v. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a federal lawsuit decided by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that challenged the federal constitutional validity of California's Proposition 8. The court found that Proposition 8 violated the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, respectively, effectively rendering it unconstitutional on August 4, 2010.

YouTube - After Calif. Same-Sex Marriage Ruling, What's Ahead Legally for Both Sides?

Monday, August 2, 2010

How Technology Has Changed the Way We Break Up - Newsweek

Around the time that movie was being made, Ilana Gershon, an assistant professor of communication and culture at Indiana University, began to notice a curious phenomenon among her students. She was teaching a class on linguistic anthropology—the study of how language influences culture—and she tried a new exercise to get her students to think about their shared expectations for behavior. “I asked them what makes a bad breakup,” Gershon says. “I was expecting people to have really dramatic stories, ‘I caught them in bed together,’ something like that.” Instead, they all responded with tales of outrage about the medium rather than the message, complaining that they got the bad news by text or by Facebook rather than in person.