Friday, September 10, 2010

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.