Culture
razib | February 8, 2009Conor Clarke observes that in Animal Spirits George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller point to the popularity of Texas hold 'em as symptomatic of the speculative fever of the past decade. I've been reading a fair amount of financial history from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Skeptics of Shiller's arguments during that period fairly depict his theses as a mishmash of post hoc ergo propter hoc. The problem is evident all through Irrational Exuberance, the book which made him the Cassandra of the age along with Nouriel Roubini. But though on the specific causal factors adduced I remain…
razib | February 7, 2009FuturePundit points out that Sweden might not phase out nuclear power:
The decision has angered the Swedish opposition as well as environmentalists around the world. "To rely on nuclear power to reduce CO2 emissions," Greenpeace spokeswoman Martina Kruger said, "is like smoking to lose weight. It's not a good idea."
Is the perfect the enemy of the good? All energy sources have costs. Even hydroelectricity & wind power have ecological externalities.
razib | February 7, 2009Just for those curious, there's a new website, Islam in China, which might be interesting to some. The site points out that there are more Muslims in China than there are in Saudi Arabia. In fact, if the Muslims of China were a nation unto themselves they would be equivalent to Iraq in population. Of these Muslims about half are Hui, Chinese speaking Muslims who are defined as a nationality. The other half consists mostly of Turkic speaking Muslims who are of Chinese nationality, but not Chinese speaking. While the Turkic Muslims of China have not traditionally been part of Chinese…
sheril | February 6, 2009
It's February once again, just a week away from that very special holiday in which we celebrate the one we love (or bemoan the greeting card industry). Last year, I composed a post called The Science of Kissing provoking all sorts of interesting discussions on and offline. Now that I'm about to participate in the upcoming AAAS symposium of the same title, let's talk osculation (the scientific term for kissing). Here's the original entry...
I expect most of us hope to experience the 'ever-elusive, out-of-the-ballpark-home-run, earth-shattering, perfect kiss,' but what exactly is it? How…
razib | February 5, 2009Octuplets' mother wanted 'huge family' for feeling of connection:
The mother of octuplets born last week in Bellflower told NBC News she wanted to have a "huge family" because she longed for personal connections she felt she lacked in her childhood.
"I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I -- I really lacked, I believe, growing up," Nadya Suleman said in an interview today with NBC's Ann Curry. "Reflecting back on my childhood, I know it wasn't functional. It was pretty -- pretty dysfunctional, and whose isn't?"
razib | February 5, 2009Japan's Big-Works Stimulus Is Lesson for U.S.. I'll be honest, some of the glowing projections about the multiplier effect I see on some blogs are giving me flashbacks (I was blogging by Spring of 2002).
razib | February 5, 2009I recently finished The Hero of Ages, which concludes the Mistborn trilogy. The author, Brandon Sanderson, has been selected to finish Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Sanderson is a Mormon, so I was curious if anyone else thought that the resolution to the series resembled a very distinctive aspect of Mormon beliefs? (it didn't bother me personally, mythic literature and religious cosmology seem to be moving around the same cognitive furniture)
razib | February 4, 2009If you read my previous post on CEO salary cap, check out Jim Manzi's thoughts. Also, Felix Salmon and Megan Barnett debate the pay cap (he is in favor, she against). After Salmon presented his case I'm inclined to be less charitable to Barnett than I was before. But this post by Bob Sutton seals the deal:
The results still amaze me: After controlling for traditional size and performance measures, the amount of money made outside directors, especially those on the compensation committee, had a huge effect on CEO pay. O'Reilly and his colleagues report that for every $100,000 that the…
amillikan | February 4, 2009The Blogosphere is abuzz about an article in the LA Times regarding Second Lady Jill Biden's preference to be acknowledged by her honorific title of "Doctor," which references her Ph.D in education. The article states that many prominent newspapers, including the LA Times and the Washington Post, only use the honorific title in articles if the doctorate degree in question is in a medical field, calling into question the context in which the "Dr." title is used in other situations, and whether it is more accepted for males to be acknowledged by this title than females.
Related ScienceBlogs…
razib | February 3, 2009Bonnie Newman will be appointed Senator from New Hampshire. That means that 4 of the female Senators will be from the northeast portion of England; all of New Hamphsire & Maine's Senators are women. What about the rest of the country? Map below the fold.
Red = both Senators male
Tan = one Senator female
Blue = two Senators female
amillikan | February 3, 2009As the field of genetics sheds its sci-fi image and gains approval in the public eye, the possibilities unravel for mainstream commercial use. But some worry that if couples can use In-Vitro Fertilization to screen for disease during pre-implantation procedures, they could use it to select desired physical characteristics like eye color and gender as well, as dozens of couples from Australia have been traveling to the U.S. to do. But ScienceBlogger Daniel MacArthur from Genetic Future doesn't anticipate that this recent trend will catch on, and discusses why he thinks there won't be a large…
sheril | February 2, 2009We arrived in Austin on Thursday night and I've been pleasantly surprised to find such a progressive, musical, and fun corner of The Lone Star State. I've also got a feeling many of our readers have been through there, so let's see how many locations you can identify from these photos:
cmooney | February 2, 2009So...how cool is this?
I'm 31 years old. I graduated from college in 1999. Since then I've been a journalist--for ten years.
But now, at this very minute, I'm finishing my first reading assignment for Princeton's History 293, "Science in a Global Context," taught by D. Graham Burnett. Today is the first day of classes. (Princeton starts late.)
I am a student again, exhilarated by the prospect--and also deeply confused by it.
For example, I currently have numerous journalistic and book assignments, in various stages of completion. So while I'm being a student, I'm also going to have to keep…
razib | January 31, 2009A commenter below wondered how much of Southern American religiosity is just a function of black religiosity, seeing as how blacks make up a larger portion of the American South's population. A fair amount. That being said, I decided to look at two GSS variables, GOD & BIBLE, and break them down by region & race. The regions are from the Census, and I dropped all the regions where the N's for blacks were less than 100. Obviously there aren't that many blacks in the Mountain region, so comparing that region's blacks & whites is going to be difficult with a GSS size sample. In any…
razib | January 31, 2009My Sister's Keeper:
They called it a lesbian paradise, the pioneering women who made their way to St. Augustine, Fla., in the 1970s to live together in cottages on the beach. Finding one another in the fever of the gay rights and women's liberation movements, they built a matriarchal community, where no men were allowed, where even a male infant brought by visitors was cause for debate.
...
"To me, this is the real world," she said. "And it's a very peaceful world. I don't hear anything except the leaves falling. I get up in the morning, I go out on my front deck and I dance and I say, 'It's…
cmooney | January 30, 2009Maybe teenage geeks and fantasy-loving atheists have a shared faith after all? As Dylan Otto Krider reports over at the Colorado Daily, a University of Colorado postgraduate named Theo Zijderveld is making a serious argument to this effect:
For the paper, Zijderveld applied the French sociologist Danil Hervieu-Lger's four dimensions required to be considered a religion: community, ethics, culture and emotion.
He believes playing with friends constitutes community, the rules of the game the ethical dimension, the "Warcraft" mythos the culture and the feelings of belonging the emotional…
sheril | January 30, 2009Properly driving cross country involves stopping at unusual roadside attractions and sampling every regional delicacy you find. And once the landscape gets monotonous, calling into the local pop radio station to say you'd like to fill in as their guest DJ. Props to Brad Wells on Louisiana's Star 101.9 for indulging me.
cmooney | January 29, 2009My latest Science Progress column is up: It makes the case that Stephen Colbert is the heir to Johnny Carson in terms of talk show promotion of science.
It also includes various lame and stupid talking points that I made up and didn't use on the show, such as the following hypothetical Q&A responses:
Didn't scientists start the "war" in the first place? Didn't they commit acts of aggression?
Yes, if you mean by learning things.
Why should I care about science?
Because America is really good at it--much better than France.
Is there really a "war" on science? Where are the bodies?
Well,…
cmooney | January 29, 2009
So...I have a new home.
Just two days ago now, I arrived in Princeton, New Jersey and occupied a new apartment here, along with the fiance and the puppy. Los Angeles was a blast, and it's somewhere I think everyone ought to try to live--but I wanted to get back to the hoary old east coast.
I also had reason to do so: I'm now a visiting associate at the Center for Collaborative History here. The professor I'll be collaborating with is D. Graham Burnett, a science historian who taught me Darwin at Yale back in 1997. We're working on a history of science project, not surprisingly...and that's…