I think the public is getting suspicious…
Archive for the ‘Sociology’ Category
When BP Spills Coffee
Thursday, June 10th, 2010The World…
Saturday, May 22nd, 2010Yikes. The World just keeps on growing…
Night-flight
Monday, August 24th, 2009theOwl
Dreamt It Through the Grapevine – Night-flight.
I’ve had a lifelong fascination with dreams. I can remember some very vivid BIG dreams from very early in my childhood – two in particular from a time when my family lived in a house in Ohio from which we moved when I was 4 years old. My early intrepid experiments in expanding consciousness, my interest in and identification with Native American cultures, my love at first sight when I was finally exposed to Carl Jung (Man and His Symbols was my first contact), my full speed ahead obsession with lucid dreaming at a time when science, before Stephen LaBerge at Stanford, still insisted we lucid dreamers were self-delusional or just plain nuts, my later embrace of Joseph Campbell’s work identifying Myth as Public Dream (and Dream as Private Myth) – all this has been an ongoing central theme throughout my life.
Time Use Graph
Sunday, August 16th, 2009theOwl
Do check out this link to The American Time Use Survey’s Time Use Graph. It is interesting on several levels. First of all, it is simply technically amazing. Scroll down and play around with the Time Use Graph tool. Click in the little boxes. Pass your cursor over the graphs and read the changing text in the pop up window. Wow.
Also, it’s curious to have this graphically explicit insight as to what, say, middle aged people are doing at 10 PM verses what, say, youngish people are doing.
Even if it’s not very accurate it’s very cool. And who knows, maybe it’s accurate…
Post Updated 8.16.09
Pee in the Shower
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009theOwl
From Discover:
Diderot’s New Piano?
Monday, August 3rd, 2009theOwl
Perhaps you’ve heard the story of how the French philosopher, art critic and writer Denis Diderot was gifted a new dressing gown by a friend who was appalled by the old gown Diderot habitually wore? Diderot liked the new gown at first, but found that the desk in his room looked quite shabby in the new dressing gown’s company, and so felt compelled to buy a new desk. Beside the new desk the tapestry was inadequate…and so forth until Diderot’s cozy room was stiff and formal and uncomfortable. (more…)
The God Spot
Thursday, March 12th, 2009theOwl
Where is religion processed in the human brain? From the Daily Mail via Huffington Post:
First, volunteers were asked to think about statements about whether God intervenes in the world, such as ‘God’s will guide my acts’.
This activated the lateral frontal lobe regions of the brain, used by humans to empathise with eachother.
Then they were asked to dwell on God’s emotional state. When it came to statements such as ‘God is wrathful’, the areas that lit up were the medial temporal and frontal gyri, which helps us to judge emotions of others.
Finally the participants were asked to contemplate abstract statements such as ‘a resurrection will occur’. This time they tapped into the right inferior temporal gyrus, which we use to understand metaphorical meaning.
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower
Friday, January 2nd, 2009theOwl
Here’s a very interesting article about the limits of higher education, published at the Atlantic and written by an adjunct professor of English who might feel compelled to flunk me on account of this awkward sentence…