Sociologist Andrew Cherlin discusses new trends regarding marriage in the United States. One major trend according to Cherlin: “marriage is an economic decision now.”
Monthly Archives: September 2010
World War I reparation payments from Germany to end soon
From the dustbins of history, CNN reports that Germany will on Sunday (October 3) make its last reparations payment from World War I. Here is a brief history of the payments:
The initial tally in 1919, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, was 96,000 tons of gold but was slashed by 40 to 60 percent (sources vary) a few years later. The debt was crippling, just as French Premier Georges Clemenceau intended.
Germany went bankrupt in the 1920s, Der Spiegel explained, and issued bonds between 1924 and 1930 to pay off the towering debt laid on it by the Allied powers in 1919’s Treaty of Versailles…
Germany discontinued reparations in 1931 because of the global financial crisis, and Hitler declined to resume them when he took the nation’s helm in 1933, Der Spiegel reported.
After reaching an accord in London in 1953, West Germany paid off the principal on its bonds but was allowed to wait until Germany unified to pay about 125 million euros ($171 million) in interest it accrued on its foreign debt between 1945 and 1952, the magazine said.
In 1990, Germany began paying off that interest in annual installments, the last of which will be distributed Sunday.
I had no idea that these payments were still being made. I don’t know the answer to this: are reparation payments between nations still a common method for helping to rectifying the wrongs of war?
It is also a reminder of the major consequences of World War I, a war that gets a lot less attention in the United States due to a smaller US role and a majority of the fighting taking place away from American shores.
How a curved glass Las Vegas hotel can burn people at the pool
According to a story in the Daily Mail, the design of the Vdara hotel in Las Vegas is leading to burnt guests at the pool. Because of the concave design of the building plus its glass exterior, several guests have reported being burned by this “death ray”:
The Las Vegas Review Journal quotes one hotel employee as saying the building’s design causes the sunshine to be diverted ‘like a magnifying glass that shines down’ over a space of about 10 by 15 feet as the poolside.
And as the Earth rotates, the spot moves across the pool area. The ‘death ray’ can increase temperatures by around 20 degrees.
The article also suggests the architects foresaw this problem but their initial solution didn’t solve the issue.
Interesting stuff – the unintended consequences of building a large, concave, glass building in desert conditions. This could lead to a cheesy movie or some pontificating about the folly of humankind trying to build in a climate like that of Las Vegas.
A more upbeat assessment of the state of Detroit
In recent years, numerous media outlets have focused on the troubles of Detroit. Photo essays of now abandoned but once glorious buildings have become normal.
There is one grassroots news organization that is now pushing back against these more bleak images. VICE/VBS.TV explains their approach:
In August 2009, Vice published a story called “Something, something, something, Detroit: Lazy journalists love pictures of abandoned stuff,” about the roving gangs of photojournalists prowling the empty city and feasting on its highly photogenic carcass. Since then, some of the worst offenders have abashedly changed their approach to covering Michigan’s largest city. But most outlets are still fixated on the all-you-can-click pageview buffet that is “misery porn” of the decaying Motor City…
The fact of the matter is that the situation in Detroit is daunting. The city that so successfully realized the 1950s American dream is now a visual testament to its grandiose demise. But is that really news?
We like to think that the story is better told by identifying those who remain in Detroit and those who are moving back precisely because it is challenging. We set out to give the people of Detroit a platform to tell their story. The city has become a place where enterprising classes can find the space and time to do whatever they want, cheaply and hassle-free. It’s a raw space where they can create community and start rebuilding their city from the inside out.
I’ll be curious to see how much attention their coverage generates. And the possible transformation/regeneration of Detroit will continue to be a fascinating story.
NRC ratings of doctoral programs
The National Research Council has released its long-awaited report that measures and compares doctoral programs in a number of disciplines. Check out the interactive tool at the Chronicle of Higher Education that allows users to compare programs on a variety of the 21 criteria.
Some interesting features of the data:
1. The surveys were conducted in 2006-2007 so the information is somewhat dated. This would be particularly true in departments with productive new or departed faculty.
2. The NRC doesn’t assign ordinal ranks to schools but instead now gives ranges for each program. This seems like a sound decision that helps suggests what schools are like/near each other without having to introduce what may be artificial distinctions by saying one school is #4 while another is #6.
Just quickly looking through some of the S-rankings in sociology, some schools seem to be quite a bit off compared to other rankings over the years.
Sorting the good from the bad statistics about Evangelicals
Sociologist Bradley Wright talks with Christianity Today about his latest book: Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…and Other Lies You’ve Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media. Here is CT’s quick summary of the argument:
Young people are not abandoning church. Evangelical beliefs and practices get stronger with more education. Prayer, Bible reading, and evangelism are up. Perceptions about evangelicals have improved dramatically. The data are clear on these matters, says University of Connecticut sociologist Bradley Wright, but evangelicals still want to believe the worst statistics about themselves.
One question to then ask is why Evangelicals buy into these negative statistics. The subculture argument, when applied to evangelicals, might suggest that these numbers help keep people fired up by reminding them that the group could lose its distinctiveness if drastic action is not taken.
Wright suggests his goal is to encourage Evangelicals:
This is not a call for complacency but for encouragement. Why not say, “We’re reading our Scriptures more than most other religious traditions; let’s do even better”? Instead, what we hear is, “Christianity’s going to fail. You’re all a bunch of failures. But if you buy my book, listen to my sermon, or go to my conference, I’ll solve everything.” These fear messages demoralize people, hinder the message of the church, and hide real problems.
I would like to see exactly what statistics he looks at and debunks. Wright is not the first to suggest Evangelicals have some issues with statistics.
The zip codes with the most expensive real estate
Forbes put together a list of the American zip codes with the most expensive real estate. Of the top 10, 9 out of 10 are in California or New York City. (The lone outlier is a New Jersey zip code.)
Autism case #1
Autism is a growing diagnosis in the United States. The Atlantic profiles the man, Donald Triplett, who was the first autism case in the United States diagnosed in the early 1940s.
The main question raised by this article, and one that is important to consider in the coming decades, is what will happen to autistic adults? There are a number of programs today for autistic children and teenagers but care is much more spotty for adults. Additionally, what happens when the parents of autistic children die? Donald has made a life for himself that includes plenty of golf and world travel but he lives in a close-knit Southern community that protects him from outsiders.
I used this article recently in class to illustrate how two journalists used a purposive sample to make their argument. Rather than try to look at autistic adults as a whole, they selected a prominent case to raise questions about autistic adults. While Donald may not be truly representative of this group, his life illustrates how an autistic adult can have a good life.
Good news about Chicago traffic and congestion – but due to new criteria
A new report from a group named CEOs for Cities claims that Chicagoans spend the least amount of time in rush-hour traffic compared to other major cities:
The report’s ranking of mobility in 51 cities found that Chicago-area residents spend the least time in rush-hour travel. In Chicago and some of the other best-performing cities — including New Orleans, New York, Portland, Ore., and Sacramento, Calif. — commuters typically spend 40 fewer hours a year in peak-hour travel than the average American, the report said.
In metro areas with the worst urban sprawl — including Nashville, Detroit, Indianapolis and Raleigh, N.C. — residents spend as much as 240 hours per year in rush-period travel on average because commuting distances are much longer, said the report, which was produced with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation.
This seems to be contrary to other studies I’ve seen that suggest Chicago is quite congested. One reason this study might have different results is a new criteria in the methodology.
The report’s author criticized other mobility studies that focus on the amount of traffic congestion in a region without factoring in travel distance.
The Urban Mobility Report, issued every two years by the Texas Transportation Institute, is regarded by many experts as the authoritative voice on traffic congestion issues. The report consistently ranks the Chicago region as the second or third most-congested area of the nation. It does not account for travel distance.
I am left wondering whether travel distance an important factor to include…
The Infrastructurist comments on the disparities in the two sets of rankings.
A disconnect between being open to other religions vs. welcoming them
Robert Putnam and several other researchers discovered that there is a large gap between what Americans say about religious freedom and what they are actually willing to live near:
Three quarters of Americans said they would support a large Buddhist temple in their community, but only 15 percent would explicitly welcome one. Americans, in other words, supported the idea of a temple but weren’t so crazy about the bricks-and-mortar aspect of things.
Recent survey findings in the wake of the Ground Zero controversy reveal similar findings:
Polling last week from Quinnipiac University revealed exactly the same paradox. Seventy percent of Americans support the rights of Muslims to build the mosque, but 63 percent believe it would be inappropriate to actually build it.
It sounds like there is an ideal that Americans hold about freedom of religion: many different groups are welcome. But this ideal is difficult to put into action.
Legally Sociable 