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For a scientists, citations are key. If your papers get cited by others, the assumption is your work is valuable. But is this a safe assumption? This article questions the validity of citation counting and finally concludes that the measurement is neither a reliable nor a valid measurement of a scholar’s “impact” on the world.
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The beheading of American freelance photojournalist James Foley by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world. He was taken prisoner in northwest Syria in November 2012 while on assignment for the Global Post. ISIS …
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This photo of my parents reveals much about their personalities (hers vivacious and outgoing, his withdrawn and closed off), their relationship (little real contact), and also the times. The typicality of their lives reveals much about the USA. My mother …
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Max Weber, one of this planet’s most famous sociologists, was not a fan of modern society. Max Weber said that we are all stuck in an “iron cage of capitalism” and that this cage would slowly squeeze the very soul out of our skin. In a world of pervasive Prozac and ubiquitous mental angst, is the sociologist’s prognostication really that far from reality? In this article Tony Waters explores some of the details of the soul crush we all experience in the corralled world of Bos primigenius academicus.
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Sociology has a lot to say about the education system. In this article Dr. Waters talks about status and education. He draws our attention to the mysterious world of hierarchy and how people learn to deal with that. This is a peek into the hidden world of the meritocracy that we all suffer within.
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Today’s political landscape is deeply polarized. From liberals to conservatives, there are serious divides that are pervasive throughout politics. One group that has used the Internet and email in particular to contribute to and sustain an environment of polarization is …
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Homo sapiens has enjoyed singular success at tweaking the environment because of the unique psycho-social wiring of the human mind ( Pagel ). Hearkening back to the nature-nurture debate, the human mind is a multi-dimensional intellectual construct that emerges from …
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Humanity used to believe in God, but now they believe in Darwin. This is a bit of an extreme statement, since most people still believe in God, but the sentiment is accurate. Darwin’s theories of the MECHANISMS of evolution has had a major impact on the social, emotional, and even spiritual fabric of this planet. There is a problem though. In a lot of ways Darwin’s theories seem more like canon, or ideology, than good science. This article explores early awareness of the ideological nature of Darwinian theory, and provides some suggestions on how scientists can break free of dogma that has more to do with religion than with good science.
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For reasons that anthropologists have not yet fully uncovered, Homo sapiens evolved a pronounced aesthetic sensibility (Schellekens and Goldie, 2011): not only has Homo sapiens developed more sophisticated tools and weapons than any other species, Homo sapiens has also cultivated …
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What is money? What is the nature of money? This is a problem that has occupied Sociologists since Karl Marx wrote his magnum opus, Das Kapital. If you go by Karl M’s massive, or by any of the many Economics 100 texts (which often don’t even bother to define money), money is a mystified, magical thing that requires incredible effort to understand. In reality though that’s not the case. Money is simply abstracted labour, pure and simple. Once you understand that, then you have the key to understanding the whole of modern society, including the pernicious problems we all face, problems caused by the easy way money allows us to accumulate labour.
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