tagged w/ Sociology
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A new study in Japan has found that Japanese women who live with their in-laws face three times the risk of a heart attack than those living just with their husbands. a study finds. Interestingly, wives who live with children, as well as in-laws, face double rather than triple the odds. Though more likely to have a heart attack, the rate of death did not change, and it's thought that this is because the in-laws were at least at home to care for them.
Interestingly, husbands were found to be unaffected: “They’re immune from the stresses in the home,” said the study.A new study in Japan has found that Japanese women who live with their in-laws face... more
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Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners, a survey suggests.
Men were most likely to do this to appear intellectual or romantic, found the poll of 1,500 people by Populus for the National Year of Reading campaign.
The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics.
Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela's biography or Shakespeare.
Among the 1,500 who took part in the research were 864 teenagers.
About four in 10 of the 1,500 said they had lied about what they had read to impress friends or potential partners - 46% of men and 33% of women.
Among teenagers, the figure rose to 74%, with most saying they would pretend to have read social networking pages or song lyrics.
One in five adults said they would read their chosen material whilst waiting for their date to arrive in the hope of making a good first impression.
Honor Wilson-Fletcher, director of the National Year of Reading campaign, said: "Reading is a brilliant tool for self-expression.
"I love the fact that every generation seems to know that it can help us all increase our potential appeal in the search for love and romance.
"For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too."Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to... more
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In a stunning comeback, U.S. Senate candidate Mark Begich has snatched reelection away from incumbent Ted Stevens by a margin of 3724 votes after Stevens led the vote count immediately after election day. The state recently completed counting absentee, questioned, and early ballots which heavily favored Begich... Enough so to bring an end to the longest republican senate career in history. The 2008 General Election has produced another historic result.
After 40 years as one of Alaska's U.S. senators, Stevens found himself in the middle of a criminal corruption investigation and trial. Days before the Nov. 4th election a jury found Stevens guilty on all 7 counts, nevertheless, he emerged on election day winning by a slim margin. It wasn't until after the absentee and early voter ballots had been counted (ironically most of them cast before Stevens conviction) that Stevens lost the race to Begich who currently serves as Mayor of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city.
Early and Absentee voting also answers the question of why voter turnout was so low on Nov. 4th. In the midst of record-breaking turnout nationwide, fewer Alaskans showed up to vote on Nov 4th than did so for the 2004 election. Once the Early and Absentee ballots had been counted, Alaska-like many other states-broke all previous records for voter turnout. making this a truly historic election all around.In a stunning comeback, U.S. Senate candidate Mark Begich has snatched reelection away... more
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USA Today examines a poll of young adults that shows that most are waiting for the "right time" to get married. The median age is now the oldest since the U.S. Census started keeping track in the 1890s: almost 26 for women and almost 28 for men.
Researchers, sociologists and family experts are taking a closer look at the attitudes behind the trend to see if there really is an optimum age to marry that maximizes the benefits of matrimony and minimizes possible problems.
A study being drafted by sociologist Norval Glenn of the University of Texas-Austin finds that those who marry in the early to mid-20s are slightly happier and less likely to break up than those who marry in the later 20s, but are significantly more satisfied with their relationships than those who marry at 30 or older.USA Today examines a poll of young adults that shows that most are waiting for the... more
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Imagine a society where the surreal was normal. A place where people could live in singing trees. A world where your name was an animal and a plant, where family units were structured around collective houses and where you worship in the massive underground Temples of Humankind. Welcome to the Federation of Damanhur.
As one of the largest communes in the world, Damanhur has over 1000 members, and boasts its own police force, newspaper, education system and currency. Spiritually it is just as ambitious and the religious philosophies they have developed form a large part of Damanhurian life. I came here to find out if this really was utopia.Imagine a society where the surreal was normal. A place where people could live in... more
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The green giveaway of the moment - the reusable shopping bag - is a case study in how tricky it is to make products environmentally friendly.
It's manufactured in China, shipped thousands of miles overseas, made with plastic and could take years to decompose. It's also the hot "green" giveaway of the moment: the reusable shopping bag.
Ouch!The green giveaway of the moment - the reusable shopping bag - is a case study in how... more
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On June 16, 2008, lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married in the first same-sex marriage ceremony since the California Supreme Court ruled in May that it was unconstitutional for the state to deny the right to marry to gay or lesbian couples. The Court-issued equality ruling went into effect at 5pm on June 16th. And moments later, Del and Phyllis were married.
Sadly, Del Martin, 87, passed away in August, just six weeks after her wedding. She and Phyllis had shared 55 years together and are widely acknowledged as two of the founders of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement.
Today GroundSpark is honored to release this exclusive footage of Phyllis and Del’s historic wedding ceremony, which was officiated by Mayor Gavin Newsom in his office at San Francisco City Hall.
We do so in tribute to Del Martin, a true civil rights pioneer for her entire life, and in support of the efforts across the United States to guarantee the right to marry for all U.S. citizens, regardless of sexual orientation.
GroundSpark’s executive director, Debra Chasnoff, visited Del and Phyllis this summer and asked them if they wanted to share this wedding video with the world. They talked about the upcoming ballot initiative to amend the California constitution to eliminate this new right to marry for same-sex couples and about similar ballot measures in Arizona and Florida. “If it will help,” Del said in a whisper, “then let’s do it.”
Enjoy.On June 16, 2008, lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married in... more
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On June 16, 2008, lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married in the first same-sex marriage ceremony since the California Supreme Court ruled in May that it was unconstitutional for the state to deny the right to marry to gay or lesbian couples. The Court-issued equality ruling went into effect at 5pm on June 16th. And moments later, Del and Phyllis were married.
Sadly, Del Martin, 87, passed away in August, just six weeks after her wedding. She and Phyllis had shared 55 years together and are widely acknowledged as two of the founders of the lesbian and gay civil rights movement.
Today GroundSpark is honored to release this exclusive footage of Phyllis and Del’s historic wedding ceremony, which was officiated by Mayor Gavin Newsom in his office at San Francisco City Hall.
We do so in tribute to Del Martin, a true civil rights pioneer for her entire life, and in support of the efforts across the United States to guarantee the right to marry for all U.S. citizens, regardless of sexual orientation.
GroundSpark’s executive director, Debra Chasnoff, visited Del and Phyllis this summer and asked them if they wanted to share this wedding video with the world. They talked about the upcoming ballot initiative to amend the California constitution to eliminate this new right to marry for same-sex couples and about similar ballot measures in Arizona and Florida. “If it will help,” Del said in a whisper, “then let’s do it.”
Enjoy.On June 16, 2008, lesbian rights pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were married in... more
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Thought that I'd share this site with you -- a blog wherein the blogger's opinion/issue of the day is depicted, not in an essay, but in a graph of her own making. It's like a short course in thinking about graphics the way scientists and statisticians do. But, hers depict ordinary ideas or comments or issues or debates. She has a lovely mind and expresses herself in a delightful way. Thought you'd like to know....
BTW, check out her past stuff so that you can see the range of her illustrations....Thought that I'd share this site with you -- a blog wherein the blogger's... more
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Email and cell phones might be bringing us three degrees closer than we thought, according to a recent study.Email and cell phones might be bringing us three degrees closer than we thought,... more
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The article speaks of Read Montague and how his discoveries concerning dopamines can provide the explanation of all things psychological, economic and social. Something of course that can raise criticism, might can really be true.The article speaks of Read Montague and how his discoveries concerning dopamines can... more
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Boys to men: Why guys aren’t growing up
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Grumpy old man whinning about the youngsters and trying to sell a book or does he have a point?Boys to men: Why guys aren’t growing up
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Grumpy old man... more
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lecoke
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added this
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3 years ago
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One of the basic tools of any good hacker has always been the ability to utilize the concept of social engineering as made famous by people like Kevin Mitnick and the Badir Brothers. The idea being -– according to Wikipedia — that “All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases. These biases, sometimes called "bugs in the human hardware," are exploited in various combinations to create criminal attack techniques.”
While this type of ploy has been used to gain access to computer systems for various reasons, it also raises an interesting idea of it being used to get people to willingly do things on the Web that they might not think of doing on their own. Its possible that this is just another form of the mob mentality that we see in things like flash mobs, but isn't this just another form of social hacking?
Long before things like social networks and social media were the hot buzzwords used to spark VC feeding frenzies, Web forums and newsgroups were the main social communication tool. People would scour Web forums to spread news about people or products, good or bad. The overall effect of this type of promotion was usually limited, but it was still possible to get people riled up over something on a much larger scale.
Then along came blogs and the ability to instantly publish or comment about a person or a product. It provided a much easier way to galvanize people into acting, even if only verbally. To this mix now come things like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, or any number of instant social tools that can broadcast your message instantly around the world to a potentially unlimited number of people. The effect being that within minutes you can galvanize an immense number of people into a single action.
One of the best of the classic online flash mobs can be seen anytime anyone says something negative about Apple products. The moment someone posts something like this, whether on a Web forum or a blog, you can be sure that in very short order the site will be inundated with Apple’s faithful arguing against whatever has been said. This varies from intelligent discussion to hateful things being said about the person who wrote the post.
Bring this forward to today and we see, as Svetlana Gladkova at Profy.com points out in a post, just how easy it could be to cause a major news group to pull down a service because of a social hack.
CNN editors expected to receive opinions from the site’s main target audience (which definitely is not in Russia) but what it received instead were mainly votes from Russia with the first answer getting 92% of votes (or over 329 thousand of people).
How did this happen? Very simple actually. The information about the CNN poll quickly made it to the Russian blogosphere (it is impossible to determine where it all started because of the huge number of posts on the topic) and bloggers started encouraging their readers to go to CNN and vote for the first option. The news was quickly disseminated over an enormous number of the Russian blogs and the results were predictable: 92% supported the official point of view of Russia.
The reality is that even with the simple social media tools that we have today it would be incredibly easy to use them to organize people unknowingly to attack the Web presence of a person or brand. Just as we can see daily on services like Twitter, where people are being directed to charities or new products, this group mentality could potentially be used as in the CNN story to cause damage. Why use things like botnets when you can just as easily obtain the same results by using social media - and it’s legal to boot.
Is it really that large of a step before incidents like the one that happened with CNN become part of the norm? Are we really beyond being used in such a way without even realizing that we have been a part of a social hack attack? Would you even realize it if you had been socially hacked?One of the basic tools of any good hacker has always been the ability to utilize the... more
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Myth, Magic & Medicine:
A Look at the Sociology of Cannabis Use Throughout World History
Contrary to popular perception,” marijuana” is not a phenomenon rooted in the 1960s.
Cannabis hemp is part of our global heritage and was the backbone of our most stable and longest surviving cultures.
Recent psycho-pharmacological studies have discovered that THC has its own unique receptor sites in the brain, indicating man and marijuana have a pre-cultural relationship—indeed, human culture could very well prove to be the blossom of our symbiosis with cannabis. (See Appendix)Myth, Magic & Medicine:
A Look at the Sociology of Cannabis Use Throughout... more
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Since people are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them, having fat friends can cause you to put on weight too, researchers suggest.
An international study based on data on 27,000 people across Europe dubbed the phenomenon "imitative obesity" - or "keeping up with the Joneses" on calories.
Researchers suggest choices about appearance - on which decisions such as job offers or being deemed attracted - are based are determined by the choices others around you make. So, if people around you are fat, it is ok for you to be fat too.
Professor Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick said: "Consumption of calories has gone up but that does not tell us why people are eating more. Some have argued that obesity has been produced by cheaper food, but if fatness is a response to greater purchasing power, why do we routinely observe that rich people are thinner than poor people?"
He said: "A lot of research into obesity, which has emphasised sedentary lifestyles or human biology or fast-food, has missed the key point. Rising obesity needs to be thought of as a sociological phenomenon not a physiological one. People are influenced by relative comparisons, and norms have changed and are still changing."
Since people are subconsciously influenced by the weight of those around them, having... more
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Have you ever tried to find a movie amongst your best friend's monster collection and not been satisfied? Or stared at a restaurant menu with so many choices you can't decide? If so, you're not alone. Barry Schwartz makes a good argument of how our expanding smorgasbord of choices in western culture may actually limit us...
Could this really be affecting our culture and nation?
Have you ever tried to find a movie amongst your best friend's monster collection... more
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Women who are dominant and agressive are more likely to give birth to sons than daughters accrdring to a new study. The link could explain socialoogical phenomena such as 'the war time effect' when disproportionate amounts of boys are born at the end of periods of hardship such as wars. Women who are dominant and agressive are more likely to give birth to sons than... more
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Mastamind Productions presents A Kevin Epps Film.
This is the movie trailer to the highly anticipated film "Straight Outta Hunters Point 2"
Mastamind Productions presents A Kevin Epps Film.
This is the movie trailer to the... more
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What do you guys think, are the kids just graduating college and entering the work force totally self-absorbed, selfish babies? Should we do what they say in the video and coddle them and expect calls from their parents about their performance reviews? Do WE have to change how business operates to fit the way they are? Should they just suck it up and get with the program? If they don't will they just be poor or will we change so that we have a work force?
This is a confusing one that has me really thinking.What do you guys think, are the kids just graduating college and entering the work... more
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