by theoryforthemasses Election fever has dissipated for most Americans since President-Elect Obama’s November 4th victory. The word “change,” which characterized Obama’s candidacy, no longer dominates the language of news anchors, correspondents, and pundits. As Obama makes his Cabinet selections, however, a new idea is being embraced: the “team of rivals” paradigm. The “team of rivals” refers to the cabinet that Abraham Lincoln appointed at the commencement of his presidency and was popularized by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. As a...
by dsantore It seems like only yesterday that O.J. Simpson’s murder trial whipped up the country into a frenzy over crime, celebrities, race, and justice. In the years since, we’ve had several chances (aided by mass media, of course) to revisit these themes: American football star Michael Vick and his dog-fighting ring, Michael Jackson’s bedroom, and several other high-profile instances come to mind. This past week brings us a new case, involving New York Giants football player Plaxico Burress. ...
by rbobbitt Turn on the news on any given channel at any time during the day and more than likely you will hear something of the “hard times” befalling Americans as we continue to struggle through was has finally been recognized as a recession. As the holidays are upon us, pundits lament how holiday sales are down and people are modestly spending on one another. However, perhaps we Americans should be putting in perspective what we view as “tough times.”...
Today marks the twentieth annual World AIDS Day, an international day designed to raise awareness of the global pandemic of HIV/AIDS a preventable disease which has killed more than 27 million people globally since its first reported cases in 1981. Today, an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, many in the developing world where a lack of adequate information and financial resources has resulted in substantially higher mortality rates. Since the focus of World AIDS Day is to...
by kiddingthecity My barber doesn’t bother at all: “Hair -he told me last week – will always grow on people’s head!”. The phantasmagorical numbers of the capitalist crisis do not mean anything at all to him (do they mean anything to most of us, by the way?). He carries on as he can, as he has almost always done, a coffee and a cigarette here and there, a joke quite often. He made me think that everyday’s life is a...
By PThrelfall With the research community barely scratching the surface of the cyber-conduct and behaviors of college students, the recent controversy over a site that has been proliferated and abused by college students is hardly surprising. Juicycampus.com is a website that has rapidly grown from 63 to over 500 campuses across the United States in the past year and allows students to anonymously post “juicy” gossip, personal exploits, and controversial opinions, all without the threat of IP identification. Its founder...
by paulabowles The recent horrific death of Baby P, at the hands of family members, has raised many critical questions for Britain, not least the way in which we care for our children. Most recently, the Chief Executive of children’s charity Barnardo’s, Martin Narey, has expressed his shock both at the toddler’s tragic death, and the events which led up to it. At a lecture focusing on child poverty, Mr Narey took the opportunity to make an astounding prediction that...
by ishein1 The ubiquity of news programs on contemporary American television is palpable. The four major network stations all have their own sister news station. It can be said, without many cavils, that the Fox news station, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, oscillates at varying degrees along the right side of the American political spectrum. Fox News’ longest running and second highest rated program, only behind the O’Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes, at the end of the year...
by NickieWild [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu-PF3O0ZpY] Remember all the reports immediately following the conclusion of the presidential campaign that an unnamed McCain-Palin campaign policy advisor leaked to the media that Sarah Palin didn’t know that Africa was actually a continent, and not a country? Remember all the interviews Palin did denying the reports, and calling the unnamed sources cowards and liars? Soon afterwards, reports swirled on cable news that the source of the leak had identified himself as Martin Eisenstadt, a member of...
On November 18, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Center for Future Storytelling. One of the center’s primary concerns, according to a recent NY Times article, is to examine whether the “old way” of telling stories is on the decline. By “old way”, the center is apparently referring to stories told with a traditional beginning, middle, and end. Not surprisingly, given that the center is receiving $25 million a year from a film production studio (Plymouth...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G_7CzddUR4] By linanne10 Along with the presidential election, a proposition promoting the decriminalization of sex-workers, Proposition K, was also put on the voting ballot in San Francisco, California. Proposition K is mainly concerned with sex-workers rights and citizenship. There are three main points proposed in the proposition. First, it stated that law enforcement agencies should not allocate any resources for the investigation and prosecution of sex-workers for prostitution. Second, the proposition noted that any agencies of the City and County...
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U67Eg-3jP5k] by PThrelfall Joe the Plumber, the Johnny-come-late hero of the failing McCain-Palin presidential campaign, was a call to Americans to identify themselves, and hence the candidates, using a perspective that assumes that we are what we do. Moreover, the subliminal message was that we are who we associate with. In this sense, the campaign was attempting to build their social capital with a particular segment of middle American voters. Theories of social capital include arduous debates on issues of...
by socanonymous An article in the New York Times demonstrated from anecdotal evidence how many teens are indeed engaging in ‘normal’ teen behaviour – only through the internet. Keeping in touch with friends, maintaining romantic relationships, and looking for information (such as how to install a video card) are a few common examples of what teens typically do during long hours on the internet. Personal computers and home internet use are quite prevalent today, especially among young people. There have...
nmccoy1 The media, the government, and the stock market are reporting and reflecting on the economic crisis that seems to worsening by the minute. People are out of work, jobs are not paying enough, savings are disappearing and Congress must act now (see article below) to protect the millions affected. But none of this is new or any less urgent today than it was five, ten and twenty years ago to a large population of marginalized peoples. The question is,...
By nathan jurgenson Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO) said recently at the 2008 Web 2.0 Summit: “I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and [the] next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before.” The Web 2.0 summit discusses the user-generated web, and of sociological interest here is that when people are given tools to share information about themselves online, they do,...
by theoryforthemasses A recent article in The New York Times explored the burgeoning popularity of homebirth among New Yorkers. Citing the success of the documentary film, The Business of Being Born, the article suggests that New York City women are increasingly opting for birthing at home rather than in hospitals. Researchers such as Robbie Davis-Floyd and Melissa Cheyney have offered interesting insights into the unique experiences of homebirthers, particularly into their acquisition and use of knowledge, power, and control during...
