Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Category: Socio / Anthro / Archae

  • Juggling Social Roles in Social Media

    Sociology has a concept of us holding multiple social roles. At home, I am both a husband and a father. With relatives, I am a son, nephew, or cousin. At work, I am a supervisee, mentor, subject matter expert, or organization historian. Things get a bit more undefined out in the wider world, but I…

  • Politics as storytelling

    Two decades ago, during my biweekly game in Berkeley, the black, white, and Latino players engaged in a series of long, heated debates about O.J. Simpson’s guilt or innocence. We didn’t necessarily change each other’s opinions about the case, but we gained a far deeper understanding of each other—and our respective group’s experiences—in the process.…

  • Unwritten Rules

    A while ago, a baseball player coworker and I had a conversation about the unwritten rules of baseball. These are expected sportsmanship behaviors. When players are perceived to violate these moral guidelines, the other team may result in retaliation. Teams can end up in brawls on the field over the escalations started by someone violating an unwritten rule.…

  • Paleo Sleep

    Several people I know talk about having sleep issues. One of the highly cited things of late is that the blue light from our electronic devices messes with our brains to reset the Circadian rhythm making us fall asleep later. Even I use f.lux to change the light of my computer to a warmer tone just…

  • Moral behavior in animals

    TEDxPeachtree focuses on ideas worth spreading in myAJC mentions this video. By the way, TEDxPeachtree returns this Friday, November 8th. This features Frans de Waal showing videos demonstrating animals cooperating on tasks, something we think of as human behavior. One I really liked was chimpanzees give the researcher a prosocial (feed both) or antisocial (feed…

  • TED Talk: Advice to young scientists

    E.O. Wilson on inspiring people to get into science. If the below video does not display, then try E.O. Wilson: Advice to young scientists

  • TED Talk: The power of vulnerability

    Brené Brown talks anput the fear of disconnection from the social fabric. To me this ties well with a book, Loneliness, where a big point is that social isolation hits the same areas of the brain as physical pain. In case the above video does not show, the try this link The power of vulnerability.

  • TED Talk: How Kids Teach Themselves

    Find it amazing children who have never been exposed English can learn it from a kiosk with just 1980-90s computer games made available to them. That the kids worked in groups appears to enhance the effect was also pretty interesting. One child would operate with 3 advising and all 4 would test the same, so…

  • TED Talk: David Brooks: The social animal

    Some quotes I liked from this talk. “Emotions are not separate from reason. They are the foundation of reason as they show us what to value.” “The first gift or talent is Mindsight: the ability to enter into other people’s minds and learn what they have to offer…. Babies are born to interpenetrate into Mom’s mind and…