Thursday, September 30, 2010

Clues to the Genetic Roots of ADHD – TIME Healthland

Clues to the Genetic Roots of ADHD – TIME Healthland
Experts at Cardiff University analyzed stretches of DNA from 366 children who had been diagnosed with the disorder. The scientists then compared the genetic samples from the ADHD children with DNA from 1,047 children without the condition. (More on Time.com: ADHD: A Global Epidemic or Just a Bunch of Fidgety Kids?)

That's So Gay - Wanda Sykes



That's So Gay - Wanda Sykes

Monday, September 27, 2010

FOXNews.com - Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed

FOXNews.com - Lawsuit Claims College Ordered Student to Alter Religious Views on Homosexuality, Or Be Dismissed
"[Augusta State University] faculty have promised to expel Miss Keeton from the graduate Counselor Education Program not because of poor academic showing or demonstrated deficiencies in clinical performance, but simply because she has communicated both inside and outside the classroom that she holds to Christian ethical convictions on matters of human sexuality and gender identity," the 43-page lawsuit reads.

News: The New Clash of Rights - Inside Higher Ed

News: The New Clash of Rights - Inside Higher Ed
Now a new issue is emerging that involves a similar set of players and issues: public universities, anti-bias rules, and the rights of gay people and Christian students. On Tuesday, a federal judge upheld the right of a counseling program at Eastern Michigan University to kick out a master's student who declined to counsel gay clients in an affirming way -- as required by the university program and counseling associations. The judge found that the university was enforcing a legitimate curricular requirement -- namely that counseling students learn to work with all kinds of clients in ways that did not judge their values or orientations.

freedomhouse.org: Freedom in the World 2010 Survey Release

freedomhouse.org: Freedom in the World 2010 Survey Release
On January 12, Freedom House released its findings from the latest edition of Freedom in the World, the annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties. According to the survey’s findings, 2009 marked the fourth consecutive year in which global freedom suffered a decline—the longest consecutive period of setbacks for freedom in the nearly 40-year history of the report. These declines were most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa, although they also occurred in most other regions of the world. Furthermore, the erosion in freedom took place during a year marked by intensified repression against human rights defenders and democracy activists by many of the world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes, including Russia and China.

Robert D. Kaplan. “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” Atlantic Monthly, December 1997

Kaplan - 97.12
And that brings us to a sober realization. If democracy, the crowning political achievement of the West, is gradually being transfigured, in part because of technology, then the West will suffer the same fate as earlier civilizations. Just as Rome believed it was giving final expression to the republican ideal of the Greeks, and just as medieval Kings believed they were giving final expression to the Roman ideal, we believe, as the early Christians did, that we are bringing freedom and a better life to the rest of humankind.

Three waves of democracy -- Huntington

The third wave: democratization in ... - Google Books

Chronology of Modern Democracy 2: Huntingdon

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The Price of Prejudice

http://www.innovative-analytics.com/docs/ThePriceofPrejudice.pdf

In a second study the team asked another group, this time of students who were about to graduate,
to consider hypothetical job opportunities at consulting firms. The positions varied in starting salary,
location, holiday time and the sex of the potential boss.

When it came to salary, location and holiday, the students’ decisions matched their stated
preferences. However, the boss’s sex turned out to be far more important than they said it was (this
was true whether a student was male or female). In effect, they were willing to pay a 22% tax on
their starting salary to have a male boss.

THE SECOND SHIFT

THE SECOND SHIFT Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. By Arlie
Hochschild with Anne Machung. 309 pp. New York: Viking. $18.95.

She Minds the Child, He Minds the Dog - NYTimes.com

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009 - U.S Census Bureau

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009 - U.S Census Bureau
Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2009

3. The Importance of Contempt : Blink

3. The Importance of Contempt : Blink
Gottman has found, in fact, that the presence of contempt in a marriage can even predict such things as how many colds a husband or a wife gets; in other words, having someone you love express contempt toward you is so stressful that it begins to affect the functioning of your immune system.

Gapminder: Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view. - Gapminder.org

Friday, September 17, 2010

Graphic: How Class Works - New York Times

OES Wages, California LaborMarketInfo

OES Wages, California LaborMarketInfo

Here is the state of California Excel file.

Wage data for all geographical areas have been updated to the
first quarter of 2010 by applying the U. S. Department
of Labor's Employment Cost Index to the 2009 SOC wage database.
The wage data has not been validated by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) and are not official BLS data series, but LMID feels
that the additional information is useful to users of our wage data.
The occupational employment estimates are for May
2009
.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

BBC News - Q&A: France Roma expulsions

BBC News - Q&A: France Roma expulsions
Who are the Roma, and how many Roma are there in France?

The Roma are a nomadic people whose ancestors are thought to have left north-west India at the beginning of the 11th Century and scattered across Europe.

CGS 2009 Enrollment & Degrees report released

CGS 2009 Enrollment & Degrees report released
The enrollment of new students at U.S. graduate schools increased 5.5% in 2009, according to the annual CGS/GRE Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees.

Growth in both first-time and total enrollment was higher for men than for women, reversing long-term trends. Additionally, for the first time ever, women earned the majority of doctorates in 2008-09.

Women Earn More Doctorates Than Men - Newsweek

Women Earn More Doctorates Than Men - Newsweek
In 1970–71, for example, only 9 percent of business majors were women; by 1984–85, their proportion was 45 percent. Recent data indicate that women now represent about 58 percent of all undergraduates.

Between 1970 and 2000, the number of women in graduate and professional schools was also rapidly expanding. By the '90s, women were earning the majority of master's degrees, and over the last 10 years, became the majority in both medical and law schools.

Women Earn More Doctorates Than Men - Newsweek

Women Earn More Doctorates Than Men - Newsweek
Things have changed since then. This week a new enrollment study by the Council of Graduate Schools confirmed that American women are now earning more doctoral degrees than men. Based on the most recent graduation data, 28,962 women earned Ph.D.s during the 2008–09 academic year, compared with 28,469 men. The report notes that men continue to dominate in engineering, mathematics, and the physical and computer sciences.

Monday, September 13, 2010

State and national level crime trend estimates

Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime and Justice Data Online
State and national level crime trend estimates
Source: FBI's Uniform Crime Reports
(UCR)

Database: FBI Crime Statistics, 2005-09 | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Violent crime falls for third straight year: FBI | Reuters

Violent crime falls for third straight year: FBI | Reuters
Violent crime also dropped in states like Arizona, nearly 14 percent, where local officials have complained that illegal immigrants coming across the porous U.S. border with Mexico were contributing to increases in criminal activity.

However, in the Arizona city of Nogales, which is located on the U.S.-Mexican border, the violent crime rate remained unchanged from 2008 though property crime dropped almost 14 percent. In nearby Tucson, violent crime fell 16 percent, but property crime statistics were incomplete.

US crime rate is down: six key reasons - CSMonitor.com

US crime rate is down: six key reasons - CSMonitor.com
US crime rate is down: six key reasons

The crime rate fell last year across America, across all categories. Here, criminologists cite the key factors, which include better policing.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Record number in government anti-poverty programs - USATODAY.com

Record number in government anti-poverty programs - USATODAY.com

 

 

As caseloads for all the programs have soared, so have costs. The federal price tag for Medicaid has jumped 36% in two years, to $273 billion. Jobless benefits have soared from $43 billion to $160 billion. The food stamps program has risen 80%, to $70 billion. Welfare is up 24%, to $22 billion.

 

Report: Men Unfaithful to Women Who Earn More - TIME

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. (See a story on cheating 2.0: apps that are making adultery easier.)

Munsch believes this is not actually about money, but about men's feelings of sexual identity. "Any identity that's important to you, if you feel it's threatened, you're going to engage in behavior that will reinstate your place in that group," she says. "Being a man is strongly identified with being a breadwinner." Men might engage in "hypermasculine activities" — displaying their sexual virility or sexual competence — as a form of compensatory behavior.

 

Should Turkey's Erdogan Worry the West? - Newsweek

Should Turkey's Erdogan Worry the West? - Newsweek

He has been alarming people ever since the 1990s, when as mayor of Istanbul he denounced Western-style New Year’s celebrations and swimwear, proposed a ban on alcohol, and called himself “a servant of the Sharia.”

Friday, September 10, 2010

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com
But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”

Learning Styles — Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Learning Styles — Psychological Science in the Public Interest
Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information. However, we found virtually no evidence for the interaction pattern mentioned above, which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational applications of learning styles. Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.

Learning Styles — Psychological Science in the Public Interest

Learning Styles — Psychological Science in the Public Interest
Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information. However, we found virtually no evidence for the interaction pattern mentioned above, which was judged to be a precondition for validating the educational applications of learning styles. Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.

Mexico wary as Calif. votes on legalizing marijuana

Mexico wary as Calif. votes on legalizing marijuana
Marijuana smuggling and sales represent a roughly $10 billion business for Mexico's drug mafias, which earn up to 60 percent of their profits from pot, according to U.S. estimates.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Paula Rodriguez Rust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paula Rodriguez Rust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paula Claire Rodriguez Rust (born 1959) is an American sociologist who studies sexual orientation, especially bisexuality.[1] Rust is author of Bisexuality in the United States and Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution.[2]

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Risk society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Risk society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Risk society" is a term that emerged during the 1990s to describe the manner in which modern society organises in response to risk. The term is closely associated with several key writers on modernity, in particular Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. The term's popularity during the 1990s was both as a consequence of its links to trends in thinking about wider modernity, and also to its links to popular discourse, in particular the growing environmental concerns during the period.[1]

Giddens -- individualization and globalization

http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/Publications/1ReithLecturesGlobalisation.pdf

Globalizing processes invades local culture. Forces us to live in a more open, reflexive, and individualized way.
tradition and custom are declining
we create identities (liberating and frightening)
women now choose (e.g., birth rate 1.2)



Salmonella egg recall spurs look into big farms | courierpostonline.com | Courier-Post

Salmonella egg recall spurs look into big farms | courierpostonline.com | Courier-Post
Only by returning to small-scale, local farms (according to the organic and local supporters) or by ending or drastically limiting the use of animals as a food source (several animal rights groups), or both, can Americans protect themselves against such large, food-borne outbreaks.

"There's significantly lower risk for cage-free and free range" than eggs from caged hens, says Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States, which opposes industrial animal agriculture and encourages Americans to move toward a more vegetarian diet.

Anti-Americanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anti-Americanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Europe in 2002, vandalism of American companies was reported in Athens, Zürich, Tbilisi, and Moscow. In Venice an anti-globalist attacked a Mc Donald's restaurant owned by Italians[75]

How McDonald's conquered France. - By Mike Steinberger - Slate Magazine

How McDonald's conquered France. - By Mike Steinberger - Slate Magazine
As Gravier artfully put it, "The French population uses McDonald's in a very French way; it is fast food, but not that fast." The data the company collected bore this out. Americans visited McDonald's more often than the French, at all hours of the day, frequently alone, and opted for takeout 70 percent of the time. The French spent more money per visit, came in groups more often than Americans, and did 70 percent of their eating during regular lunch and dinner hours. "We have a food culture in France; eating is not a feeding moment, it is a social moment," Gravier said.

Anti-Americanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anti-Americanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Qutb, the leading intellectual of the Muslim Brotherhood, studied in Greeley, Colorado, from 1948–50, and wrote a book, The America I Have Seen
based on his impressions. In it he decried everything in American from
individual freedom and taste in music to Church socials and haircuts.[50]
"They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was
replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists,
lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was
full of desire..."[51]



Qutb's writings influenced generations of militants and radicals in the
Middle East who viewed America as a cultural temptress bent on
overturning traditional customs and morals, especially with respect to
the relations between the sexes. As Paul Hollander has written: "The
most obvious and clear link between anti-Americanism and modernization
is encountered in Islamic countries and other traditional societies
where modernization clashes head on with entrenched traditional beliefs,
institutions, and patterns of behavior, and where it challenges the
very meaning of life, social relations, and religious verities. What
becomes of the world when women can go to work and show large surfaces
of skin to men they are not related to? In a recent case, the indignant
male members of a Kurdish family in Sweden were 'provoked' by the
transgressing female of their family who had the temerity to have a job
and a boyfriend and dress in Western ways. She was finally killed by her
father."[4]

Scottish independence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scottish independence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scottish independence is a political ambition of political parties, advocacy groups and individuals for Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom and become a sovereign state, separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Balkanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Balkanization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Balkanization, or Balkanisation, is a pejorative[1] geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other.

The Big Sort - Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing - Book Review - New York Times

The Big Sort - Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing - Book Review - New York Times
“We have built a country,” Bishop writes, “where everyone can choose the neighbors (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don’t know, can’t understand, and can barely conceive of ‘those people’ who live just a few miles away.”

Over the last decade, as 100 million Americans have moved from one place to another, they’ve clustered in increasingly homogeneous communities.

Bishop and Cushing swam around in different sets of data — voting records; I.R.S. income figures; patent filings; poll numbers from advertising firms — to figure out how thoroughly, and in what ways, Americans had sorted themselves.

Their conclusion: “By the turn of the 21st century, it seemed as though the country was separating in every way conceivable.”

YouTube - We Are the World - Lionel Richie, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson

Globalization By David Held and Anthony McGrew

The Hyperglobalists

single global economy
weakening of nations (territorially bound, states must accommodate global market forces, private financial institutions are 'authoritative actors' weakening state power and economic sovereignty, e.g., East Asian crisis of 1998)
growing strength of corporations and capital (global markets can escape effective political regulation)
growing influence of multilateral institutions of global economic surveillance (G7,IMF, World Bank and WTO)
end of the welfare state and social democracy

The Sceptics

the intensity of global interdependence is exaggerated
globalization is primarily a phenomenon largely confined to the major OECD states
the world is breaking up into several major economic and political blocs
most powerful states and social forces have consolidated their global dominance

Transformationalist Analysis

the outcome of processes of globalization is not determined (no trajectory)
multidimensional process which is not reducible to an economic logic
existing multilateral institutions of global economic governance have
limited authority because states refuse to cede these institutions substantial
power (global markets may effectively escape political regulation)
developing countries are being re-ordered into clear winners and losers (East Asian tiger economies)
reordering within countries (e.g., London)
multilayered global and regional governance
roles and functions of states are re-articulated, reconstituted and re-embedded (political power is no longer coterminous with a delimited national territory)

Globalization | The Global Transformations Website

Globalization | The Global Transformations Website
Three broad accounts of the nature and meaning of globalization can be identified, referred to here as the hyperglobalist, the sceptical, and the transformationalist views. These define the conceptual space of the current intensive debate about globalization.

KeyText: Three Perspectives on Globalization

KeyText: Three Perspectives on Globalization
Scholars David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton provide an overview of different perspectives on globalization dominant in the 1990s. They describe the general conceptual contours of each perspective and note the limitations of each. The authors identify identify the perspective as:

*
The Hyperglobalist perspective,
*
The Skeptical perspective,
*
The Transformationalist perspective.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Students for Labor Justice

Students for Labor Justice
Sweatfree Clothing

The Worker Rights Consortium

Latvia Weekend Box Office Index for 2010

Weekend Box Office Results for September 3-5, 2010 - Box Office Mojo

tophit.ru: Недельный чарт russia tophit 100

Top 100 Music Hits, Top 100 Music Charts, Top 100 Songs & The Hot 100 | Billboard.com

Radio SWH Plus Latvia

YouTube - [M/V] BIGBANG 2NE1 - Lollipop MV [HQ]

K-Pop Online: Korean Stars Go Global with Social Media - TIME

K-Pop Online: Korean Stars Go Global with Social Media - TIME
Taeyang, who is better known in South Korea as the voice of the Korean boy band Big Bang, released his first solo album, Solar, online last month. It hit No. 2 on iTunes' R&B sales charts in the U.S. and No. 1 in Canada — a first for an Asian artist. "In the beginning, it was hard to believe I had fans buying my album so far away," says Taeyang, whose name means "sun" in Korean. He says he didn't do any promotion in North America for the album, which was recorded in Korean and targeted fans in South Korea and Japan. "The world is smaller now."

Charts All Over the World

Monday, September 6, 2010

Kindergarten dilemma: Hold back to get ahead? - Health - Kids and parenting - msnbc.com

Kindergarten dilemma: Hold back to get ahead? - Health - Kids and parenting - msnbc.com
As with research on the early benefits of redshirting, research on long-term benefits is mixed. One 2006 study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics looked at age at kindergarten entrance in an international sample of children and found the youngest kids in each grade lagged behind in test scores through eighth grade, though the gap shrank over time. The researchers also found that the oldest kids in each grade were about 10-percent more likely to go to a four-year college than younger peers.

Another study, this one published in 2010 in the journal Economics of Education Review, found very different results. In this study of American students, age at kindergarten entry had no effect on wages, employment, homeownership, household income, or marital status as an adult. The researchers also found no evidence for an effect of age on college enrollment.


Study: Money Does Buy Happiness - To a Point - CBS News

Study: Money Does Buy Happiness - To a Point - CBS News
Happiness got better as income rose but the effect leveled out at $75,000, Deaton said. On the other hand, their overall sense of success or well-being continued to rise as their earnings grew beyond that point.

Study: Money Does Buy Happiness - To a Point - CBS News

Study: Money Does Buy Happiness - To a Point - CBS News

Comparing their life-satisfaction results with those of other countries, the researchers said the United States ranked ninth after the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and New Zealand.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

The War's End | The American Prospect

The War's End | The American Prospect
And it's important to recall the scope of that failure. The war was initially framed primarily in terms of the need to halt an Iraqi nuclear-weapons program that didn't exist. Given that there are no benefits to halting a nonexistent program, any price would be too high. So, naturally, justifications began to shift in a more humanitarian direction -- the invasion was needed to spread freedom.

Orange County Is No Longer Nixon Country - NYTimes.com

Orange County Is No Longer Nixon Country - NYTimes.com
At the end of 2009, nearly 45 percent of the county’s residents spoke a language other than English at home, according to county officials. Whites now make up only 45 percent of the population; this county is teeming with Hispanics, as well as Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese families. Its percentage of foreign-born residents jumped to 30 percent in 2008 from 6 percent in 1970, and visits to some of its corners can feel like a trip to a foreign land.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Blog U.: Mashing not Viewing - Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed

Blog U.: Mashing not Viewing - Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed
A video mashup project is one in which the student uses video editing software (like iMovie) to create a new piece of work by combing (or mashing up), existing video, new video, images, text and voice-over. In some student video projects a portion of the existing video that is utilized in the mashup is the same video that is assigned as part of the curriculum. The idea is to get students to work with the video, to create with the video, as opposed to acting as passive viewers. A video mashup project is an extension of a more traditional writing assignment, where students incorporate the curricular video into their term papers. You can see examples of student mashup projects for a sociology course I co-taught this past summer on the class YouTube channel.