society
clock | June 26, 2007Apophenia, danah boyd's blog is one of the first blogs I ever read and have been reading more-or-less continuously over the past 3-4 years (since she took a class on framing with George Lakoff and blogged about it).
She is probably the most thoughtful analyst of online behavior. There are thousands who can write about technology and "killer apps", but she understand better than anyone the users' point of view: what works and what not and why.
Her ethnographic/sociological/anthropological/psychological approach to the study of the Web is, to me, much more insightful than any technology…
clock | June 19, 2007What's in a name? It's just a word, a tag we use to talk about people so everyone knows wo we are talking about, isn't it? Or at least that is how it should be, don't you think?
But it is not, as anthropologists (and now psychologists as well) have been telling us for a long time. There is a reason why names run in families (with the addition of Jr., II, III, ...). There is a reason why there is a big market for Baby Names books. Names have subtle power over people.
Now, Sheril discusses a recent study from the University of Florida about the subtle effect of female names on their…
clock | June 16, 2007What is it?:
Blip is a forum for artists, scientists and members of the public interested in new forms of art that explore generative and procedural processes, interaction, emergence and artificial life. We are based in Brighton, UK, and in the last 4 years we have organized presentations, exhibitions, gigs and three Big Blip festivals. To facilitate access, we primarily organize events in bars, clubs and other public venues in the centre of the city.
I have not been in Brighton since 1980 and I have not heard of Big Blip festivals until last night. Can someone tell me more? It sounds…
clock | June 13, 2007"Fine in practice, but how does it work in theory?"
This headline (in a French paper, of course), prompted Sally Green to pen a fine, fine post - an Obligatory Reading of the Day - about class, education, the psychology of class, the difference between academia and the real world, the difference between theory and practice, and the difference between the people who fight for the equality of opportunity and the people who oppose it (and their rhetoric).
clock | May 31, 2007In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days.
Enrique has the best one-sentence summary of the article:
The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science.
The article divides that "what children know prior to their exposure to science" into two categories: the intuitive grasp of the world (i.e., conclusions they come up with on their own) and the learned…
clock | May 27, 2007First, as I reported earlier, Archy persuaded PZ Myers to host a one-time carnival about the opening of the Creation Museum - and here is the carnival - a lot of good stuff to read.
I especially liked the only (so far) on-the-scene report by Martha Heil.
I also tend to prefer posts that try to take in a Big Picture and place stuff in broader historical and/or geographical context, thus, I really liked contributions by Laelaps and Greg Laden. They are optimistic, though. The view from outside, from Europe, can be much more pessimistic.
Also, some of the comments on this post remind me of my…
clock | May 22, 2007Well, it's been a while.... since I hosted the CotL #3 about a year and a half ago. It's ripe time to do it again. Not that it was ever easy to choose ten best written and most creative posts out of dozens of great entries! I spent the last few days agonizing and wishing I could include 20 or 30 or 40...but rules are rules, so here it goes, the brand new Carnival of the Liberals:
The Ridger of The Greenbelt digs for deeper causes in Not slavery - abolition:
Upsetting tyrants is noble, isn't it?
Charles H. Green knows that Trust Matters and right now you should trust me that his post is well…
clock | May 17, 2007A must-read by Sara Robinson. You can use it to understand the persistence of Creationism. Or the lack of Internal Locus of Moral Authority in people belonging to Moral Majority.
clock | May 8, 2007I will be offline for a couple of days so I will not be able to post at my usual frantic pace. Instead, I decided to write something that will take you a couple of days to read through: a very long, meandering post, full of personal anecdotes. But there is a common theme throughout and I hope you see where I'm going with it and what conclusions I want you to draw from it.
Pigeons, crows, rats and cockroaches
I was born and grew up in a big, dirty city and I am not going back (my ex-Yugoslav readers have probably already recognized the reference to the good old song Back to the Big, Dirty…
clock | May 1, 2007In a large proportion of the surface of our planet, people are not supposed to go to work today. Not here, though. Eh, the good old days back home when my parents would go off for a ten-day vacation on May Day and leave my brother and me to rule the house and host parties...
clock | April 27, 2007Last week's Casual Friday study on Cognitive Daily tried to look at the way various curse words are used and perceived by their blog readers.
Today, the results are in and, though not surprising, they are quite interesting. The sample is probably skewed towards well-educated folks interested in cognitive science, as well as towards the US readers (or at least English-speaking readers), but they had a large enough sample this time to get significant differences between sexes, if not races.
Do you find "bitch" less offensive if you are a dog breeder? Or if you are a regular reader of Bitch…
clock | April 26, 2007They are asking you to rate them here.
I have never heard of about half the people on the list - perhaps they are 'influential' in their small circles. Others are celebrities, and they may be influential in distracting people from things that matter. Some used to be influential in the past, or are influential abroad but not here. PZ suggests everyone gives Dawkins a 100%. Sure - the only scientist on the list (although they call him, gasp, an "evolutionist"!!!!).
Watch out - the stuff loads really slowly and it is too easy to give a 50% when your intention is to give a different rating…
clock | April 7, 2007Here, have a go at it. Even better, if you can get the actual paper and dissect it on your blog, let me know so I can link to that. Have fun!
Good Behavior, Religiousness May Be Genetic:
A new study in Journal of Personality shows that selfless and social behavior is not purely a product of environment, specifically religious environment. After studying the behavior of adult twins, researchers found that, while altruistic behavior and religiousness tended to appear together, the correlation was due to both environmental and genetic factors.
According to study author Laura Koenig, the…
clock | April 6, 2007My SciBlings Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet just published an article in 'Science' (which, considering its topic is, ironically, behind the subscription wall, but you can check the short press release) about "Framing Science"
Carl Zimmer, PZ Myers, Mike Dunford (also check the comments here), John Fleck, Larry Moran, Dietram Scheufele, Kristina Chew, Randy Olson, James Hrynyshyn, Paul Sunstone and Alan Boyle have, so far, responded and their responses (and the comment threads) are worth your time to read. Chris and Matt respond to some of them. Matt has more in-depth explanations here, here and…
clock | March 31, 2007When I ask a guy for something, I may get Yes as an answer half the time and No half the time. Yes mostly means Yes and No means No. If the answer is "Let me think about it", that means usually that within 24 hours or so I will get a definitve Yes or No answer.
If I ask a woman for something, I rarely ever get a No. I may get Yes half the time and "Let me think about it" the other half. And moreover, Yes need not necessarily mean Yes, and "Let me think about it" ALWAYS means No - as in: I never hear about it again from that person.
On the surface, that sounds like dishonesty and playing…
clock | March 29, 2007On The Scientist website you can find their new experimental feature - an article with questions to the public that will be used in forming the articles for the print version of the magazine next month. Go see Special Feature: Stem cell cloning needs you: In a unique experiment we're inviting you to participate in a discussion that will help shape our next feature on stem cell research and post comments:
We're inviting people to give us their thoughts and questions on whether we need to rethink the scientific and ethical approach to stem cell cloning to help shape a feature that we'll be…