Category: sociology

  • last pre-election political post

    A sociology colleague of mine sent me the following email last night.  I know I’ve been more political than usual lately (for obvious reasons), but I’m hoping this is seen as more sociological than political, even though it is politically biased: Subject: What if… Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin What if things were switched around?…..think about it. …

  • no trip to Iran, a puzzle game instead

    I hadn’t mentioned it to many people, but I had a paper accepted to a conference in Iran over the summer and was supposed to travel there next week (I even got my university to pay for most of the trip).  I was very excited and was going to come back with thousands of pictures…

  • A Publication! A Publication!

    I know I’ve been posting a lot about politics lately.  Sorry.  Not much else of interest going on.  However, I think some may find it interesting that Debi and I just published an article (with a couple of co-authors).  It’s listed in PubMed, the mega database on medicine and health related research.  The article is…

  • a better post on the current financial shenanigans in D.C.

    This post comes from fellow Sociologist, Dave Purcell, at Kent State.  I liked it so much I asked him if I could repost it here.  So, with his permission: I don’t claim to be an expert on government spending, so please correct me if I am interpreting the budget numbers below in the wrong way.…

  • Learning Styles

    As we prepared for classes this summer, we were asked to prepare information in one of our classes on “learning styles” as well as Myers-Briggs personality tests.  I’ve long been skeptical of these ideas, so I did a little digging with Debi.  Below is what we found.  We wrote a report to give to the…

  • Colorado City and Home

    Our trip to Southern Utah was pretty short, just 3 days.  My in-laws wanted to see the Shakespearean festival (though Cyrano de Bergerac is not by Shakespeare), Zion National Park, and Les Miserables.  I suggested Mountain Meadows and one other stop: Colorado City.  For those not familiar with Colorado City, Arizona, it’s a town literally…

  • politics and meat

    I’ve spent the last couple of weeks buried in my research (some of which is getting published, but I’ll post about that when it actually comes out, which will be in a few months), so I haven’t had much to blog about on here.  But two news stories caught my eye today. First is this…

  • why John McCain will probably win…

    I have an aunt and uncle who are super nice and really great people.  But they also happen to forward to me (or Debi) every political email they receive.  They are pretty conservative, so the emails tend to be on things that I disagree with (as a liberal independent).  I’ve probably received close to 10…

  • you need worms

    I read a lot of science news.  Much of it is very cool, but only occasionally do I read something and find myself saying, “Holy Crap!  I never thought of that and it makes perfect sense!  Genius!”  I did when reading this NYTimes article on parasitic worms.  The article basically explains that, in our evolutionary…

  • the latest Steve…

    In case you’ve never heard of “Project Steve” of the National Center for Science Education, here’s a quick recap: NCSE’s “Project Steve” is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of “scientists who doubt evolution” or “scientists who dissent from Darwinism.” (For examples of such lists, see the FAQs.) Creationists draw…