Science & Society
When America invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan, critics of President George Bush insisted that Muslim countries were not ready for democracy and he would fail.
Were they right? Does Islam only lend itself to dictatorships?
The record in the past hundred years is not good. What was once a cradle of scientific thought hasn't produced anything meaningful since the new fundamentalism took hold. But sociologists say Muslims may be ready than western liberals think.
"One of the key markers for a successful liberal democracy is a high degree of social tolerance," says Robert…
Due to increased regulations, a culture war against pharmaceutical corporations, and the high costs of trials, companies have increasingly allowed early taxpayer-funded biomedical research to spread the risk among hundreds of millions of people. The pace of invention has slowed considerably and it may be because of academic culture, according to a new study.
An analysis of patented university inventions has revealed early bottlenecks on the path to commercialization and the authors suggest that better communication of basic research results during the discovery stage could lead to faster…
Hank |
A 'kitemark' that identifies randomized-controlled trials reviewed by specially trained peer reviewers would improve public trust in the robustness of clinical trials, according to an opinion piece in the open access journal BMC Medicine. Jigisha Patel, BioMed Central's Medical Editor argues that peer review should be recognized as a professional skill in the clinical medical field. The article was openly peer reviewed and the reports published alongside, as is the case for all BMC Medicine articles.
Peer review and its effectiveness is the subject of much heated debate within medical and…
Hank |
Your preference for whether you would rather spend your time with cloying religious fundamentalists or annoying atheists is solely a matter of taste. To people in the middle, they are two sides of the same coin.
But there may be hope for New Atheism, according to a sociologist. They just need to lighten up a little.
New Atheism is ill-defined but it claims to be a little less angry than traditional atheism, and not frame every issue through how stupid religious people are. In a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco,
University…
By Chris Cocking, University of Brighton
The town of Ferguson, Missouri has now seen ten days of almost nightly disorder following the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by the police. The decision to bring in the National Guard has not quelled the disorder and in fact may be aggravating the situation.
Society often has a tendency to fear crowds and to presume they need to be tackled by force but it is in fact this force that can make a tense situation spill over into violence. In many cases it is the cause of a problem, not the solution.
Does this make you feel calm? EPA/Larry W Smith…
In China, there is no wage disparity for one classification of women but there is pay inequality among similarly classed men, according to a sociology presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association which analyzed economic disparity among obese Chinese adults.
What is the classification? Obese people. When men gain weight, they are penalized in wages compared to thinner men. With women, there is no difference.
The difference is most notable among obese manual laborers. For example, results showed that overweight professional workers made from 18.5 to 41.5…
14 days are left in my kickstarter and I have $55 in pledges as of this writing. However, I have discounts from the publishers. This kickstarter may have influenced the prospective publishers of my papers to give me about $1000 in discounts. So instead of using all the money for publishing instead I will use it to enhance my astronomy classes by the purchase of a large, computerized, reflecting telescope.
A computerized reflecting telescope.
A computerized reflecting telescope would enhance my astronomy classes enormously. For my last course students…
In the 1950s and '60s, economics in America really had a heyday. Tinkering is easy when the economy is good. By the 1970s, it was realized that economics truly was, as historian Thomas Carlyle labeled it in the 19th century, a "dismal science" - except leave off the science.
Instead of being prospective efforts, economics tends to be retrospective - they take past events and create models that successfully predict them and then try to convince people that predicts the future. It's nice to read Paul Krugman in the New York Times but no one wants to actually give him control of any money. At…
If there is one thing we can all agree on it’s that food is a good thing. Food is what provides our bodies with the vitamins, nutrients, carbohydrates and proteins that fuel our daily lives. James Beard said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” Former cook, food writer and snarkicist, Anthony Bourdain says that knowing people’s food is a start to understanding them:
“If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their…
Note: California voters approved medical marijuana in 1996, but the retailing of pot did not bloom until 2009, when local communities and the state finally issued “guidelines,” proving once again that you do not need marijuana to procrastinate.
2010
Wednesday, Nov.4: Friend from England, soon to visit, asks if can arrange “some good smoke” while he visits. Not that it’s a priority, of course.
Monday, Nov. 9: Friend from England calls “just to see if you’ve made any progress.” Decide to see doctor. But where? Not mine!
Friday, Nov. 13: Friend tells of great doctor who can help me. Basic…