Evo Morales: 'Chicken causes baldness and homosexuality' | La Plaza | Los Angeles TimesIf you don't want to end up bald or gay, don't eat chicken, says Bolivian President Evo Morales. Speaking at an environmental conference this week in Cochabamba, Bolivia, (officially titled the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth) Morales told attendees in an inaugural address that chicken producers inject female hormones into the fowl, "and because of that, men who consume them have problems being men."
FOXNews.com - Fox News Poll: 58% Think the Federal Government Is BrokenA new Fox News poll finds 58 percent of American voters think the federal government is 'broken,' while 30 percent feel it’s working “just okay” and 9 percent say it’s working 'pretty well.' Voters are equally frustrated with Democrats in Congress as they are with Republicans in Congress.
Sociological Images » Seeing is BelievingA recent CBS/New York Times poll reveals how words matter. They asked 500 respondents how they felt about permitting “homosexuals” to serve in the military; then they asked a different 500 how they felt about “gays/lesbians” serving in the military. It turns out, people like gays and lesbians more than they like homosexuals:
In the tech world, porn quietly leads the way - CNN.comThe announcement illustrates a widely acknowledged but seldom-spoken truth of the technology world: Whenever there's a new content platform, the adult-entertainment industry is one of the first to adopt it -- if they didn't help create it in the first place.
Technology Review: Brain Waves Predict Suicide RiskWhen Hunter examined the results, she found a striking effect: Those patients on antidepressants who indicated any increase in suicidal thoughts also showed a drastic decrease in activity in their MRF region just 48 hours after starting their meds--six times the decrease shown in subjects with no change in suicidal thoughts. But after one week, the two groups were nearly identical again.
Breastfeed At Your Own Risk » ContextsScientific research on infant health is incredibly important. However, as these findings are reported to the public, shaped into recommendations, and developed into public policy, it’s important to view them with a critical eye. We need to consider the unintended consequences of breastfeeding promotion and other recommended parenting practices. These recommendations and policy based upon this science may inspire stress and guilt in mothers, especially poor and non-white mothers, when they don’t measure up.
Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Men's and Women's Employment in Dual-Earner Households -- Cha 75 (2): 303 -- American Sociological ReviewThis study examines whether long work hours exacerbate gender inequality. As working long hours becomes increasingly common, a normative conception of gender that prioritizes men’s careers over women’s careers in dual-earner households may pressure women to quit their jobs. I apply multilevel models to longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to show that having a husband who works long hours significantly increases a woman’s likelihood of quitting, whereas having a wife who works long hours does not appear to increase a man’s likelihood of quitting. This gendered pattern is more prominent among workers in professional and managerial occupations, where the norm of overwork and the culture of intensive parenting are strong. Furthermore, the effect is stronger among workers who have children. Findings suggest that overwork can reintroduce the separate spheres arrangement, consisting of breadwinning men and homemaking women, to many formerly dual-earner households.
Who Benefits Most from College?: Evidence for Negative Selection in Heterogeneous Economic Returns to Higher Education -- Brand and Xie 75 (2): 273 -- American Sociological ReviewIn this article, we consider how the economic return to a college education varies across members of the U.S. population. Based on principles of comparative advantage, scholars commonly presume that positive selection is at work, that is, individuals who are most likely to select into college also benefit most from college. Net of observed economic and noneconomic factors influencing college attendance, we conjecture that individuals who are least likely to obtain a college education benefit the most from college. We call this theory the negative selection hypothesis. To adjudicate between the two hypotheses, we study the effects of completing college on earnings by propensity score strata using an innovative hierarchical linear model with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. For both cohorts, for both men and women, and for every observed stage of the life course, we find evidence suggesting negative selection. Results from auxiliary analyses lend further support to the negative selection hypothesis.
BBC News - Stay-at-home fathers 'up 10-fold'The number of stay-at-home fathers in the UK has risen 10-fold in the last decade, a survey suggests.
The results of the survey of 1,000 parents suggest around 6% of fathers, or 600,000 men, are now their child's primary carer, up from 60,000 in 2000.
BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - Thinking Allowed, 07/04/2010The idea that modernity leads to a lessening religious belief is being abandoned by theorists in America and Europe. Figures like Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling argue that increasingly religion seeks to impinge on science, and now the first systematic study of European cultural groups predicts that fundamentalists of all religions are out-breeding moderates and atheists, and will eclipse them quite soon. In Israel the Ultra Orthodox will form the majority as soon as 2050. Since the birth rate of secular people in the West is way below replacement level (2.1), and the birth rate of religious fundamentalists of practically any stripe is far above (roughly between 5 and 7.7 children per mother), through the sheer force of demography, academic Eric Kaufmann claims they will become a much bigger force in the Western World. Is that inevitable? Should people be worried?
Laurie Taylor discusses the anxieties of atheists and the predictions of demography with three theorists of different perspectives.: The Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, Tariq Ramadan; Eric Kaufmann, Reader in Politics at Birkbeck College and author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? and Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher and author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God; A Work of Fiction.
Obama's 'tea party' complex / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.comThe comment – which brought him rousing applause at a fundraising speech in Miami Thursday night – is, on its face, accurate. A New York Times/CBS News poll says only two percent of tea party protesters realize that their taxes have likely gone down this year (compared to 22 percent of the general population who understand that). Given college tax credits, making work pay, college loan relief, and home buyer credits, 90 percent of Americans got a tax break this year. The average tax refund is 10 percent larger than last year.
BBC News - Glee triumphs at gay media awardsUS musical TV series Glee has been named best comedy series at the Glaad media awards in the US for its positive portrayal of gay characters.
Creator Ryan Murphy revealed that Kurt, played by actor Chris Colfer, would have a boyfriend in the next series and the pair would be school prom kings.
Jennifer Knapp Comes Out | Music | Christianity TodaySeven years ago, while at the top of her game, Jennifer Knapp announced what seemed to many a sudden decision: She was stepping away from Christian music, taking an indefinite hiatus. Rumors began to swirl—she was burned out, she needed a rest, she was upset about something, she was gay. Turns out that all the rumors were true, as Knapp reveals in this rambling, exclusive interview with Christianity Today.
On the Outs | The American ProspectBut it's worth stepping away from the cable-news chyrons and juvenile jokes to ask: Who are we really shaming when we mock politicians who are outed as gay? Are we training a spotlight on how America is still so homophobic that politicians in many areas of the country must keep their gay identities under wraps? Or are we doing the opposite and actively fueling a broader, more pernicious narrative that being gay is something to be ashamed of?
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comIn Paik's study, published last month in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, he found that 17 percent of men and 5 percent of women had at some point had more than one sexual partner at a time. Seventeen percent of women and 8 percent of men said they'd been exclusive but their partner had not.
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comPeggy Giordano, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University, studies the sexual behavior of young people, and she's also concerned about the phenomenon of having sex in nonromantic ways.
"It seems more acceptable now to have nonromantic sexual encounters," said Giordano, who's studied the sex lives of 1,300 teens and young adults in Lucas County, Ohio. "When there's no romance, there's no basis for demanding fidelity from the other person."
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comShe says it's not just the number of partners at one time; it's that people's behavior seems to be different when they're having "friendly" sex in contrast to romantic sex.
When people have sex with a friend, they tend to be more trusting that the person doesn't have a sexually transmitted disease and therefore fail to use a condom, she says.
"If you've known a person for a while, you don't have that vigilance. You're probably not going to ask them to go and get tested for STDs," Giordano said.
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comThis lack of vigilance about STDs is especially true when the sexual partner is a former boyfriend or girlfriend, she adds.
"We're finding that 'sex with the ex' is a very common experience," said Giordano, who's been studying the group of Ohio youth since 2001.
"It's seemingly safe, since they used to be your girlfriend or boyfriend. But of course you don't know what they've done since you broke up. You don't know their full portfolio of partners," she said.
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comHerpes
Nearly one in five Americans has herpes simplex virus, according to a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The rates for women were higher than for men: 23 percent, compared with 11 percent. Rates were especially high among African-Americans.
The downside of 'friends with benefits' - CNN.comHuman papillomavirus
HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About one in four U.S. females age 14 to 59 has HPV, according to a 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The HPV rate was highest -- 44 percent -- for women ages 20 to 24.
HPV is not as common in men, according to a 2006 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, but is still "highly prevalent." The study, which looked at 40 studies on HPV and men, found that 56 percent of the reports found that at least one in five men had HPV.
Sample Chapter for Babcock, L. and Laschever, S.: Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide.To explore this question, Linda conducted a study that looked at the starting salaries of students graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with their master's degrees.1 When Linda looked exclusively at gender, the difference was fairly large: The starting salaries of the men were 7.6 percent or almost $4,000 higher on average than those of the women. Trying to explain this difference, Linda looked next at who had negotiated his or her salary (who had asked for more money) and who had simply accepted the initial offer he or she had received. It turned out that only 7 percent of the female students had negotiated but 57 percent (eight times as many) of the men had asked for more money. Linda was particularly surprised to find such a dramatic difference between men and women at Carnegie Mellon because graduating students are strongly advised by the school's Career Services department to negotiate their job offers. Nonetheless, hardly any of the women had done so. The most striking finding, however, was that the students who had negotiated (most of them men) were able to increase their starting salaries by 7.4 percent on average, or $4,053--almost exactly the difference between men's and women's average starting pay. This suggests that the salary differences between the men and the women might have been eliminated if the women had negotiated their offers.
Hispanic and Latino Americans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaAs employed by the Census Bureau, Hispanic or Latino does not include Brazilian Americans,[3][4][24] and specifically refers to "Spanish culture or origin";[3][4] Brazilian Americans appear as a separate ancestry group.[25] The twenty-eight Hispanic or Latino American groups in the Census Bureau's reports are the following:[4][26][27] Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican Republic; Central American: Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Other Central American; South American: Argentinian, Bolivian, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Uruguayan, Venezuelan, Other South American; Other Hispanic or Latino: Spaniard, Spanish, Spanish American, All other Hispanic.
Hispanic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe U.S. Office of Management and Budget currently defines "Hispanic or Latino" as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race".[12] This definition excludes people of Portuguese origins, such as Portuguese Americans or Brazilian Americans. However, they are included in some government agencies' definitions. For example, the U.S. Department of Transportation defines Hispanic to include, "persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Central or South American, or others Spanish or Portuguese culture or origin, regardless of race."[13] This definition has been adopted by the Small Business Administration as well as many federal, state, and municipal agencies for the purposes of awarding government contracts to minority owned businesses. Still, other government agencies adopt definitions that exclude people from Spain, since there is a distinct ethnic difference (indigenous American or European American). Some others include people from Brazil, but not Spain or Portugal. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission encourages any individual who believes that he or she is Hispanic according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget definition (any Spanish culture or origin) to self-identify as Hispanic.[14] The United States Department of Labor - Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs encourages the same self-identification.[15] As a result, any individual who traces his or her origins to part of the Spanish Empire may self-identify as Hispanic, because an employer may not override an individual's self-identification.[16]
Who’s Hispanic? - Pew Hispanic CenterQ. What about Brazilians, Portuguese, and Filipinos? Are they Hispanic?
A. They are in the eyes of the Census if they say they are, even though these countries do not fit the official OMB definition of "Hispanic" because they are not Spanish speaking. For the most part, people who trace their ancestry to these countries do not self-identify as Hispanic when they fill out their Census forms. Only about 4% of immigrants from Brazil do so, as do just 1% of immigrants from Portugal or the Philippines.3 These patterns reflect a growing recognition and acceptance of the official definition of Hispanics. In the 1980 Census, about one in six Brazilian immigrants and one in eight Portuguese and Filipino immigrants identified as Hispanic. Similar shares did so in the 1990 Census, but by 2000, the shares identifying as Hispanic dropped to levels close to those seen today.
Who’s Hispanic? - Pew Hispanic CenterQ. But the Census also asks people about their race and their ancestry. How do these responses come into play when determining if someone is Hispanic?
A. They don't. In the eyes of the Census Bureau, Hispanics can be of any race, any ancestry, any country of origin. The result is that there are varying patterns relating to where people come from and how they choose to identify themselves on the Census. For example, some 99% of all immigrants from Mexico call themselves Hispanic. But just 87% of immigrants from Venezuela adopt this label, as do 86% of immigrants from Argentina, 70% of immigrants from Spain, and only 67% from Panama. As for race, 54% of all Hispanics in the U.S. self-identify as white, 1.5% self-identify as black, 40% do not identify with any race and 3.8% identify as being two or more races.
News: The Human Element - Inside Higher EdThat is why Hersh convinced Santa Barbara in 2008 to abandon Blackboard, the LMS industry leader, in favor of Moodle’s open-source platform, which he used to build the straightforwardly named “Human Presence Learning Environment.” The interface is designed so that professors can deliver lessons and messages using videos recorded with a Webcam. It also shows students who among their instructors or classmates are logged into Skype, the video-chat service, in case they want to have a live, face-to-face conversation. As an alternative to text, students using computers that have built-in recording equipment can post audio responses to discussion threads.
Rage on the Right | Southern Poverty Law CenterThe number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African American president.
According to the latest annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), these groups rose again slightly in 2009 — from 926 in 2008 to 932 last year — despite the demise of a key neo-Nazi group. The American National Socialist Workers Party, which had 35 chapters in 28 states, imploded shortly after the October 2008 arrest of founder Bill White for making threats against his enemies.
At the same time, the number of what the SPLC designates as "nativist extremist" groups — organizations that go beyond mere advocacy of restrictive immigration policy to actually confront or harass suspected immigrants — jumped from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 last year. Virtually all of these vigilante groups have appeared since the spring of 2005.
But the most dramatic story by far has been with the antigovernment Patriots.
The militias and the larger Patriot movement first came to Americans’ attention in the mid-1990s, when they appeared as an angry reaction to what was seen as a tyrannical government bent on crushing all dissent. Sparked most dramatically by the death of 76 Branch Davidians during a 1993 law enforcement siege in Waco, Texas, those who joined the militias also railed against the Democratic Clinton Administration and initiatives like gun control and environmental regulation. Although the Patriot movement included people formerly associated with racially based hate groups, it was above all animated by a view of the federal government as the primary enemy, along with a fondness for antigovernment conspiracy theories. By early this decade, the groups had largely disappeared from public view.
But last year, as noted in the SPLC’s August report, "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias," a dramatic resurgence in the Patriot movement and its paramilitary wing, the militias, began. Now, the latest SPLC count finds that an astonishing 363 new Patriot groups appeared in 2009, with the totals going from 149 groups (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) — a 244% jump.
Divorce Rate Down, But What Does It Mean? - CBS NewsOne of the researchers whose studies detected the "divorce divide" is University of Maryland sociologist Steve Martin. Comparing marriages from early 1970s to those of the early '90s, Martin found that the rate of breakups within 10 years of marriage dropped by one-third among college-educated women while remaining stable among less-educated women.
Purdue OWLthe American Psychological Association (APA) citation and format style
Purdue OWLThis resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.
