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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

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.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Study finds childhood obesity may be declining | Philadelphia Inquirer | 06/28/2010

Several recent studies reported that rates of overweight and obese children plateaued after rising rapidly since 1980. But this is the first major study to detect a decline - of 4 percent - and it was in a national sample dominated by low-income blacks and Hispanics, the groups at highest risk.

Social Networking Affects Brains Like Falling in Love

Doctor Love | Page 3 | Fast Company

Yet six weeks later, when Zak shares the results with me, my blood tells a more dramatic story. In those 10 minutes between blood batches one and two, my oxytocin levels spiked 13.2%. That's equivalent to the hormonal spike experienced by the groom at the wedding Zak attended. Meanwhile, stress hormones cortisol and ACTH went down 10.8% and 14.9%, respectively. Zak explains that the results are linked, that the release of oxytocin I experienced while tweeting reduced my stress hormones. If that's the case, says Zak, social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support. But there's even more to our findings. "Your brain interpreted tweeting as if you were directly interacting with people you cared about or had empathy for," Zak says. "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."

Errors in census interviews misinterpret racial, ethnic identity - CNN.com

According to a recent report by the U.S. Commerce Department Office of the Inspector General, 71 out of 480 observed census workers failed to follow procedures when conducting face-to-face census gathering. The Census Bureau hired more than 600,000 temporary employees to visit homes and conduct in-person interviews of individuals who did not mail their census forms.

High court strikes down Chicago handgun ban - CNN.com

In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois', 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons.

The Associated Press: Court: Christian group can't bar gays, get funding

The court on a 5-4 judgment upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's nondiscrimination policy.

"In requiring CLS — in common with all other student organizations — to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion for the court's liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. "CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy."

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent for the court's conservatives, saying the opinion was "a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country."

"Our proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express 'the thought that we hate,'" Alito said, quoting a previous court decision. "Today's decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country's institutions of higher learning."

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Bros Like This Site

Bro Culture: Icing on the Social-Marketing Cake? - TIME

The bro is nothing new, of course — just a term to describe raunchy young men. Bros, by any other name, have been around for decades. They predate Animal House and continue to show up in pop culture in MTV series like Jackass and Bromance and in movies like I Love You, Man and The Hangover. The probable etymology of bro: inner-city guys called each other "brother," which was appropriated by Hawaiian dudes as "brah." Some frat boy picked it up in the islands and brought it home as "bro." The term really took off, however, in 2007 when a University of Florida student begged a stun-gun-wielding campus cop, "Don't tase me, bro."