Culture
razib | October 8, 2008The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality:
We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers.…
razib | October 6, 2008Dawn of Low-Price Mapping Could Broaden DNA Uses in The New York Times. So of course I checked in on Genetic Future:
There's an important message here between the lines: as technology drives the price of sequencing down, massive competition between platforms and service providers will almost certainly drive down the profit margins of sequencing providers. The real money will then be in providing sophisticated, up-to-date and easily understandable genome interpretation services. The best interpretations will come from the companies with the largest databases of genetic information, and with…
razib | October 6, 2008In response to my post below, Are the elites more polarized? Yes!, a comment:
The high "moderation" of low-income voters tends to make me think that what's measured is low-information voters instead, people don't take an active interest and who answer in harmless generalities. And maybe people who feel totally helpless, as though their input cannot make any difference.
This seems plausible. How to figure this out? First, one thing to remember is that there is a correlation between measures of intelligence/knowledge and socioeconomic status. Here is number correct on the vocab test out of…
edyong | October 5, 2008
We like to think that we are masters of our own fates. The thought that others might be instead controlling our actions makes us uneasy. We rail against nanny states, we react badly to media hype and we are appalled at the idea of brainwashing. But words and images are not the only things that can affect our brains and thoughts. Other animals - parasites - can do this too. According to research by Kevin Lafferty from the University of California, Santa Barbara, a common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, could be influencing human culture across the globe.
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-…
razib | October 4, 2008One of the argument from Andrew Gelman's Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State which has percolated into the punditocracy is that the Culture Wars are to a large extent a feature of the upper socioeconomic brackets. Gelman presents data which strongly contradicts Thomas Frank's argument that the less wealthy are voting based on cultural issues as opposed to their economic self-interest. Rather, it seems that the wealthier are voting on social issues because at a particular level of affluence economic concerns have less salience. Mainstream pundits such as Matt Yglesias and Matt…
sheril | October 3, 2008Today we're both off to The Salk to participate in The Science Network's ongoing annual conversation known as Beyond Belief. This year's theme is 'Candles In The Dark':
Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark is the third in an annual series of conversations: an ongoing project to foster and promote the use of reason in formulating social policy. This year, we are asking participants to propose a Candle -- a potential solution to a problem that they have identified in their area of expertise or informed passion.
In The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan wrote:
Science is more than a body of…
sheril | October 2, 2008- Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential Debate October 3, 2008
Uh, yes. Anyone else get the feeling that the VP candidates are speaking different languages tonight?
sheril | October 2, 2008I've written before about a favorite elected official in Congress, Republican Wayne Gilchrest. From today's Washington Post:
Wayne Gilchrest, the nine-term Republican congressman who represents Maryland's Eastern Shore and parts of Anne Arundel County, has had it, and he's ready to talk.
He's had it with his own party, which he says "has become more narrow, more self-serving, more centered around 'I want, I want, I want.' " He's finished with his party's presidential candidate, John McCain, who Gilchrest says "recites memorized pieces of information in a narrow way, whereas Barack Obama is…
razib | October 1, 2008Ta-Nehisi Coates asks:
...I don't want to scapegoat my brown bothers--my sense is that ethnicity is a really bad filter here--for blacks, whites and Latinos. For instance, is homophobia tied to wealth? Is it tied to education? Is it tied to region? What is the best predictor of homophobia? Is it really race? Or is it something like poverty or even church attendance?
The charmingly named "HOMOSEX" variable in the GSS has large sample sizes, so I decided to look into the various relationships. The question is: "What about sexual relations between two adults of the same sex?" The responses are…
sheril | September 30, 2008Palin vs Kirshenbaum
Apparently readers, sciblings, many bloggers, and C-SPAN agree it might be fun.
Okay folks, well I'm game if Sarah is...
sheril | September 30, 2008Over at Bora's place you'll find lots and lots of videos from our day at the North Carolina Zoo. The overlords at Seed outfitted us with these cool little Flip camcorders which were a lot of fun to play with. Here I interview Bora [note my excellent skills as camerawoman]:
Lots more poorly edited clips available Around The Clock....
razib | September 29, 2008The New York Times has an article up about how French Muslim girls are enrolling in Catholics schools, in part because of the relatives freedoms these religious schools offer in terms of their dress vis-a-vis the normal public schools. I found this portion interesting:
The biology teacher at St. Mauront has been challenged on Darwin's theory of evolution, and history class can get heated during discussions of the Crusades or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, some Muslim students shocked the staff by showing glee, Mr. Chamoux recalled.
I am not one of…
razib | September 29, 2008Agnostic has three posts of interest over the past week: Graphs on the death of Marxism, postmodernism, and other stupid academic fads, Response to criticism on the death of academic -isms and Graphs on the rise of scientific approaches to humanity.
sheril | September 29, 2008I just received this warning by email:
'The house voted against the bailout. Hello Great Depression part II.'
What do readers think?
sheril | September 29, 2008Really.
Everyone's worried that no matter what Biden says on Thursday, Republicans will cry 'sexism'. Well I'm a woman too. So why not? No I'm not on any ticket, but consider: I've got more experience in Washington than the governor and arguably better ideas on energy, foreign policy, the economy, and homeland security.
Please oh please?
There's more... Sarah's not so into natural history, I worked at the Museum of Natural History. She was mayor of a small northern town, and I lived in Old Town, Maine. She supports oil drilling, I don't. I'm pro-choice, Sarah's not. I've had my…
razib | September 28, 2008FuturePundit comments on the recent story about the shift away from the "Mediterranean diet" in the Mediterranean, specifically Greece. This is naturally leading to greater obesity. FuturePundit states:
Fresh produce and olive oil can't compete with hamburgers and fries. We need to either genetically engineer ourselves to dislike junk food or we need to genetically engineer our metabolisms to handle junk food without harmful effects.
I've been trying to avoid fried foods myself; but one thing that I have been noting is that when I walk by a restaurant where there's a lot of frying going on I…
razib | September 26, 2008Of Names and Politics: The Palin Story (H/T Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science):
Characteristic blue state names: Angela, Catherine, Henry, Margaret, Mark, Patrick, Peter and Sophie.
Characteristic red state names: Addison, Ashlyn, Dakota, Gage, Peyton, Reagan, Rylee and Tanner.
I would like to see state-level data broken down on a finer grained level. After all, it could be that people in red states who give their children very conservative names are the most conservative, and inverted in the liberal states. But it's a really interesting observation. Remember that on…
razib | September 26, 2008I have an interview in the form of 10 questions with Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order.
razib | September 24, 2008What if there were no God? Politically conservative and liberal Christians imagine their lives without faith:
A sample of devout Christian adults, ranging widely in political orientation, described what their lives (and the world) might be like had they never embraced faith. Politically conservative Christians (also scoring high on right-wing authoritarianism) tended to imagine a life deficient in impulse control, wherein unrestrained sexual and aggressive urges, addictive behaviors, and human selfishness undermined the social good. By contrast, politically liberal Christians (also scoring…