Culture

Do we have something against David Attenborough in this country? First his narration for Planet Earth was overdubbed by Sigourney Weaver, and now I've heard that Life in Cold Blood is not even going to be televised in the States. I got this email from Herpdigest this morning: Animal Planet just emailed me. "Life in Cold Blood" will not be airing May 7 or 14. They do not know of any new dates. Sounds like they are dumping it. Won't be seen in U.S. And the only way to see it is to buy the DVD if they do produce one. Lame. At least Herpdigest is offering the book though: Or you can buy the book…

Last Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) with a vote of 414 to 1. Lauded by most media pundits as an example of "forward-looking" legislation, the bill forbids companies from viewing the genetic profiles of their clients or employees. President Bush has promised to sign the bill. But just how "forward-looking" is GINA? Does current genetic technology really put us in danger of genetic discrimination? How much longer before the themes in Gattaca become reality? Click Here for PollOnline Surveys | Online Poll | Email…

In one week exactly, I will be attending a scientific conference in a hot vacation spot for people across the world. Millions flock there every day to relax, socialize and wtfpwn your face with their Night Elf Mohawk. It ain't Belize, baby; it's the World of Warcraft. "Convergence of the Real and the Virtual", the first ever scientific conference to be held within WoW, was proposed by John Bohannon, the Gonzo Scientist from Science magazine. It kicks off in Ogrimmar on the Earthen Ring server (RP) next Friday at 12:30 p.m. The conference will focus on MMOs as "natural labs" for research,…

As bloggers and blog readers, we spend lots of time behind a computer. And while I don't recognize many of the cameos in this video, there are enough to convince me I should get out more. This is Episode 1. of a weekly web cartoon by the 'brilliant yet weird' Dan Meth, hosted by Channel Frederator. My buddy, graphic artist Ben Marra, is the voice of Meth's Space Cowboy (Episode 20.) which may appeal to fellow sci-fi fans. So gauge your own interweb habit by checking out how many 'Internet People' you remember... [Hat tip to Homestar Runner, who kept my entire lab laughing through grad…

Over @ Stranger Fruit John Lynch points a section from a paper which recounts the Christian assocation with eugenics: On the whole the evangelical mainstream in the decades following the turn of the century appeared apathetic, acquiescent, or at times downright supportive of the eugenics movement. In this article, I argue that the evangelicals often accepted eugenics as a part of a progressive, reformist vision that uncritically fused the Kingdom of God with modern civilization. In Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity the…

Two waterways meet in a surreal junction at Vale Summit, a small low streambed in the Appalachian forests of Maryland, surrounded by high sandy banks and the faint sound of passing traffic. Bright orange coal mine drainage from the Hoffman tunnel washes iron oxides and sulfates over rocks and tree limbs and completely distorts the little brown flow of Braddock Run, a smaller, slower but rich stream, providing a home to benthic invertebrates and young fish that the drainage cannot. Braddock Run exhibits all the attributes of a healthy stream: neutral pH, low iron levels and a diverse scatter…

Some debate below about the various parameters which shape social pathologies. One of facts which we are well aware of is that the United States has a lot of homicide compared to other developed countries. But another fact which is also well known is that a disproportionate number of these murders are committed by racial & ethnic minorities, as well as by particular subcultures (e.g., Southerners vs. New Englanders). So I took the state-by-state homicide rate and compared them to the international data for selection nations. Results below the fold.... State Homicide/100,000…

Religiousness and Infidelity: Attendance, but not Faith and Prayer, Predict Marital Fidelity: High religiousness has been consistently linked with a decreased likelihood of past infidelity but has been solely defined by religious service attendance, a limited assessment of a complex facet of life. The current study developed nine religiousness subscales using items from the 1998 General Social Survey to more fully explore the association between religiousness and infidelity. Interestingly, logistic regressions using currently married participants (N = 1,439) demonstrated that attendance, but…

Last Wednesday, Nature released the results of an informal survey about cognitive enhancers—drugs known to improve concentration and counteract fatigue. Twenty percent of the 1,400 international respondents said they had used cognitive enhancers (such as Ritalin and beta blockers) for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. Eighty percent thought that healthy adults should have the option of taking these drugs if desired. This week, we're polling our own readers: Should healthy adults have the option of taking cognitive-enhancing drugs for non-medical reasons…

About 10 years ago Eugene Volokh wrote How the Asians Became White. I think it's aged rather well. Volokh starts: Don't believe me? A recent MSNBC news headline announced a "Plunge in Minority University Enrollment" at the University of California, with UC Berkeley reporting that "minority admissions had declined 61 percent." Actually, the total percentage of racial minority students at Berkeley, Asians included, fell from 57% to 49%. If you exclude the burgeoning group of people who decline to state their race, the minority percentage fell only three percentage points, from 61% to 58%.…

The reports about the widespread use of drugs, cognitive enhancers, among scientists is making the rounds. I tend to think that it might be a positive thing, even if there are side effects. The fact is that if you go into science you're looking at a life of relatively meager remuneration for the intellectual firepower you can bring to any question. Someone who has the abilities and skills to get a tenure track position could almost certainly have been able to make a go of it in a much higher paid profession, but they didn't. Why? Many reasons, from fame to doing what you love. The…

When I was a little kid I would check out countries whose vital economic and social statistics were not as good as Bangladesh's. I basically was curious as to what could have happened, how can you be more miserable than Bangladesh??? How??? During the 1980s Vietnam was one of those nations. Torn by war for decade & saddled by a anti-productive Communist economic system this was a nation where I noted that indices like caloric intake and GDP PPP actually had Bangladesh on top! No more. Vietnam's economy has grown a great deal from its extremely low base over the last 20 years, and it…

There was a recent article in The New York Times about the boomlet in philosophy majors. Seemed like a classic "journalism by the numbers" (like a coloring book). But via Tyler Cowen via Kids Prefer Cheese comes the graphic to the left. I suppose undergraduates aren't really responding to rational financial incentives, huh? Well, depends on how you define rational: Jenna Schaal-O'Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive. "That whole deep…

About six months ago, I started a book club with a bunch of my girl friends. So far, we've only read three books. But despite the infrequency of our meetings, the club has been both fun and intellectually fulfilling. Anyway, the whole experience got me thinking about the popularity of book clubs. The Association of Book Group Readers and Leaders (AGBRL), a "cooperative information clearinghouse to provoke, inspire, and reward individual readers and members of book discussion groups," boasts over 500 members in 40 states and six foreign countries. And that's only counting clubs that bother to…

When I was traveling around the country for media conferences in college, the very first thing I did upon arrival was find the aquarium, the zoo and the natural history museum, find how to get there via public transportation and go. I've been living in Atlanta for about a month now, and I haven't done any of the above. Why? I blame money, mostly. The Georgia Aquarium, which is supposedly beautiful and engaging, is also exquisitely expensive. So is the zoo. And the art and natural history museums. We were casually planning on taking a trip to the aquarium yesterday, but including parking fees…

A new piece in TNR, Iranian Chic, highlights the fact that nose jobs are all the rage in the Islamic Republic. A more detailed article notes: One prominent Tehran plastic surgeon says his patients include the daughters of senior Islamic clerics. Its use in the Islamic republic was officially sanctioned by Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's late leader and father of the Islamic revolution. He gave the go-ahead after being consulted by a religious figure whose daughter was due to be operated on by Iran's leading plastic surgeon, Mohammed Abidipour. One of the main reasons offered for this fixation on…

Many people are noting Rich Florida's singles map. Half Sigma has decided to dig deeper into the data. He breaks it down by state, region and metropolitan area. I'm assuming there's more where that came from....

A few months ago a paper came out, The Threat of Appearing Prejudiced and Race-based Attentional Biase, which got a lot of press. Here's the important part: The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt's supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers…

Danny Pinkus points me to this post which points to a new paper examing public attitudes in Europe and the United States. They find that though overall attitudes toward immigration don't vary much on either side of the Atlantic, Europeans tend to be less positively inclined toward cultural or religious diversity. Check the post & paper for details. To the left is a scatterplot which John Sides kindly produced upon request. It is interesting to point out that Americans and the French both come out as the least fixated on religious homogeneity despite the fact that among Western…

TNR has a new piece titled The Assimilation Artist, which has the subheading "Jhumpa Lahiri's books are more about the coastal elite experience than they are about the Indian-American one." Well, that's because the Indian American experience is in large part the coastal elite experience. Here are the numbers from the Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey for levels of education of Hindus and the general population:   Less than High School High School Grad Some College College Graduate Post-graduate N Total Population 14 36 23 16 11 35,298 Hindu 4 12 10 26 48 253 Obviously not all…