Culture
razib | November 3, 2008If you've been following Pollster.com or FiveThirtyEight, you probably think that Barack Obama is a shoe-in. On the one hand, Kathryn Lopez's cherry-picking of polls in The Corner is not impressive. But, I've found some data which strongly suggests that there is a major systematic bias and flaw in all the polls which is grossly overestimating the support for Obama. My results and analysis are below....
BOOOHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHOCK POST!
Sorry, I just like scaring people, and there are many spooked & nervous liberals & Democrats right now. Too tempting & too easy....…
sheril | November 3, 2008Ill Doctrine is a hip-hop video blog hosted by Jay Smooth, the founder of my home town's longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad. Watch, share, spread the word, and VOTE. You matter.
razib | November 2, 2008Dept. of Enduring Myths:
I've just come back from a weekend in Vermont -- and here's how I understand it: Modestly off people -- "real Vermonters," as some people say -- are voting for McCain and Palin. Comfortably off people, such as those who own ski chalets, are voting for Obama and Biden. And the following has been frequently noted about the city of my residence, New York: The rich are voting Democratic. And those who work for them -- driving cars, cleaning rooms, and so on -- are voting Republican.
Yet, when I was growing up, the Republican party was always called the party of the rich,…
edyong | November 1, 2008
In the heart of Bolivia, an Amazonian society is losing its traditional knowledge of the medicinal value of local plants, to the detriment of its children's health. The Tsimane' are a small seven thousand-strong population living in a lowland region of Bolivia, who possess tremendous knowledge about the plants they share their forest with.
Their botanical know-how trickles down through the generations and allows them to use the local plant-life for construction, tool-making, medicine and food. These plants account for over half of their household consumption of goods, while those…
sheril | November 1, 2008Not surprisingly, the winner of yesterday's Halloween poll asking what scares you most was b) Sarah Palin as President. More unexpected was the number of emails in my inbox by this morning requesting photos of my Sarah Palin costume--inspired by the reader who sent these umm, lovely images in August. So without further ado:
[caption suggestions encouraged in comments]
sheril | October 31, 2008Halloween 2008 and I'm dressed as GOP vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin. I tried to find a stuffed animal fruit fly to carry around as means to distinguish myself from the other Sarah Palins wandering 9th St in Durham, but to no avail. So it goes. And now for the second annual HALLOWEEN reader poll on this 31st day of October...
Which of the following do you find scariest and why? (answer in comments)
a) Bush's last stand against the environment
b) Sarah Palin as President
c) The current state of our economy
d) John McCain on SNL
e) Global climate change
* Alternative frightening…
razib | October 31, 2008The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial Inferences that Predict Voting Behavior:
...Contrary to the notion that people use deliberate, rational strategies when deciding whom to vote for in major political elections, research indicates that people use shallow decision heuristics, such as impressions of competence solely from a candidate's facial appearance, when deciding whom to vote for. Because gender has previously been shown to affect a number of inferences made from the face, here we investigated the hypothesis that gender of both voter and candidate affects the kinds of facial…
sheril | October 31, 2008Following our first talk at Beyond Belief 3, we participated in this discussion with Tony Haymet, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Naomi Oreskes was also in our session, but unable to stay for the panel. Watch for interesting comments from Jonathan Haidt, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Sam Harris, Leon Lederman, and more:
sheril | October 30, 2008..she releases the most ridiculous negative campaign ad in history:
The commercial comparing Kay Hagan to a dog was pretty bad, but now Elizabeth Dole is accusing a Sunday school teacher of being 'godless' with a fake voice over at the end. This is not politics. It surpasses bad judgment and I'm embarrassed for my state.
razib | October 29, 2008In response to a Conor Friedersdorf post on hard-working high earners I decided to look around for some data on the differences between socioeconomic categories in terms of hours worked weekly. In the GSS I found a modest association between higher income and more hours, but the N's were rather modest as well. Looking through google scholar I stumbled onto a different issue. Below the fold is a table from The Overworked American or the Overestimated Work Week?
Many years ago I did some QA data analysis for an engineering firm. More specifically it was a company which designed truck…
razib | October 28, 2008Dienekes has a interesting, if not surprising, post on how names can mold how we perceive people. I've posted on this before. The most extreme illustration of this tendency I've ever read is the fact that during segregation some southern hotels allowed international travelers from African countries with obvious black ancestry to check-in. I believe it is important to study and properly define the nature of the social construction of ethnic and racial identity, because it is just as important as the biological reality of race and ethnicity.
Of these two members of congress, one is a member…
sheril | October 28, 2008Earlier this month, we participated in Beyond Belief 3 at The Salk Institute hosted by The Science Network. It was a great chance to air some of the arguments that are developing for our new book--which, as Chad Orzel just mentioned, will be entitled Unscientific America. Here is the first of our sessions, where we lay out how the experience of being involved in Science Debate 2008 led us to think hard about the frayed relationship between science and mainstream American culture:
sheril | October 27, 2008Research highlighted recently in New Scientist suggests that for the fellas, 'braininess boosts likelihood of sex':
To many women, a smart man will appeal because he is likely to be clever enough to keep his family afloat. But he may also pass on "good" genes to his children, say Prokosch and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis.
Surprised?
I'm not. I've long been a sucker for intelligence... Further, while a different cocktail of motivations, hormones, and uh, physical qualities influence male preference, I suspect long-term mate selection favors the same trait in women…
razib | October 26, 2008There was a comment below on Indian American ethnicity in terms of proportion. By "ethnicity," I mean the dominant language-based groups which serve as the organizing unit of many Indian states. The usual figures I see quoted are that 50% of Indian Americans are Gujarati, 25% Punjabi, with the balance a host of other groups (e.g., Bengalis, Tamils, Assamese, etc.). Digging around, I found these data:
In 2006, 26.3 percent of Indian immigrants age 5 and older reported speaking Hindi at home. Gujarathi (14.1 percent) was the next most popular language, followed by English (10.1 percent),…
razib | October 26, 2008William Saletan has an article out on the tendency for many Americans today to always be "hooked in" to technology through mobile devices (cell phones, iPods, etc.). I recall a woman loudly talking about her boyfriend leaving her, and the consequent emotional devastation, in front of me in the supermarket checkout line once. Only after 5 minutes did I notice the very subtle ear piece she was wearing (this was not the express line, so yes, 5 minutes). This was 3-4 years ago. Today my first hypothesis would likely be that she had an ear piece, not that she was schizophrenic, which is what I…
razib | October 24, 2008Obviously the most prominent Indian American politician today is Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana. But Jindal is not very representative of Indian Americans:
...Additionally, there are also industry-wide Indian American groupings including the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin. Despite being heavily religious and having the highest average household income among all ancestry groups in the United States, Indian Americans tend to be more liberal and tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Polls before the 2004 U.S.…
sheril | October 23, 2008Makeovers are popular. They're featured in magazine spreads and reality tv shows everywhere. Not a new trend either... even Hans Christian Andersen was writing about them in 1843. We like watching transformations.
That aside, when the Republican National Committee drops over $150,000 on clothes and accessories for a VP candidate and her family in two months, well, it raises some eyebrows. Including mine.
Sure it's fun to get dolled up before going on the road. Now and then I treat myself to a new top and fresh coat of nail polish before a talk. And yes, appearances matter given…