To Be Titled

Striving to be a good dad, a good husband, a good son/brother, a good political scientist, a good photographer, a good cook and a good homo universalis.

“The Viral Me”

This is definitely one of the more interesting analyses of the social network phenomena. [via GQ]

I don’t consider myself to live in a “man box,” but this talk by Tony Porter at TEDWomen gave me some things to think about.

Rory Sutherland argues that corporations should have a Chief Details Officer and governments should have a Ministry of Details. Apple Inc. has a CDO already—his name is Steve Jobs. [via TED.com]

We’re certainly not in this world yet, and I’m not sure if we ever will be. Older generations (30+?) frequently think of the younger generation as a whole as being highly technologically and technically adept. My experience with college students always contradicts this conventional wisdom. The best analogy I can think of is the following: Most kids know how to use a VCR, but it’s still only a small subset that know how to program one. Most kids today know how to browse the web, but very few would know what an IP address is. [via xkcd]

We’re certainly not in this world yet, and I’m not sure if we ever will be. Older generations (30+?) frequently think of the younger generation as a whole as being highly technologically and technically adept. My experience with college students always contradicts this conventional wisdom. The best analogy I can think of is the following: Most kids know how to use a VCR, but it’s still only a small subset that know how to program one. Most kids today know how to browse the web, but very few would know what an IP address is. [via xkcd]

This was the question asking about gender on an online survey for Cal alumni.

This was the question asking about gender on an online survey for Cal alumni.

Between Angels and UFOs

Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy successfully contextualizes where global warming fits in:

  • Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55
  • Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39
  • Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36
  • Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34
  • Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34

Freakonomics Blog | Is Locavorism for Rich People Only?

I’m generally skeptical of the “buy local” movement that has been increasingly gaining momentum in the U.S. McWilliams makes an interesting case that the movement also divides communities along socioeconomic lines and reduces cultural diversity.

I’m hot!

Apparently, I used to be hot, but now I’m hotter. And I’m not talking about the 24-hour low-grade fever I ran two days ago. Social scientists call this ecological inference fallacy, but, hey, I’m hot!

Carolyn Steel tells a historical story of how we got separated from the food we eat. The main problem today is how we can effectively produce high-quality food with low environmental impact at the scale necessary to feed cities. I don’t think growing/eating local meaningfully solves the problem.

Political “Science” under Attack

Yesterday, the world of political science—admittedly not a large world—was stirred up by an amendment that a Senator Coburn proposed to a spending bill. From his summary:

The National Science Foundation (which receives a 6.6% increase in this bill over last year) spent $91.3 million over the last 10 years on political “science.” The purpose of this amendment is not to restrict science, but rather to better focus scarce basic research dollars on the important scientific endeavors that can expand our knowledge of true science and yield breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition.

Here is the background research write-up that presumably his staffers have done.

American Political Science Association (APSA)—the principal professional association of political scientists—alerted the members of the amendment yesterday, attempting to mobilize against the amendment.

Political scientists with blogs commented on the development. Gelman from the Monkey Cage:

But, really, the list of “wasteful projects” seems pretty lame to me. Golden Fleece material, it ain’t.

Drezner from Foreign Policy argues for funding basic research across the board:

Basic research in the hard sciences or the social sciences is a public good — these things tend to get underprovided in a perfectly free market.  It’s not clear to me at all why Coburn thinks that the $9 million spent on poli sci is a waste but the gazillions from the public trough spent on the hard sciences are not a waste when private corporations, industrial associations, scientific publications, universities, and private citizens couldn’t fund this stuff.

Sides from the Monkey Cage takes up the challenge by Coburn to generate research relevant to the human condition. Sides would like to create a new award called The Cobie for political scientists working on research relating to improving the human condition—Double Cobie if the research is funded by the NSF.

In general, I agree with Josh Tucker from The Monkey Cage, and wondered “Why is he picking on political science?” Among all the other social sciences supported by the NSF, Coburn singled out political science. Then I stopped wondering this morning when I saw this. Steve Krasner famously quipped in one of his earlier articles that “[s]tupidity is not a very interesting analytic category” (1976, 319). I would beg to differ at this point.

Shopping: Keeping It Local

Whether the reasons are environmental or economic, the movement toward shopping local stuff has both a progressive side and a regressive side. The movement is purportedly for improving local and global welfare but doing so in a way that turns communities less interdependent and more autarkic. [From The Economist]