soclinks

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

"A Torch With No Flame"

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.