Monthly Archives: December 2010

The problems in one of the best American communities, Falls Church, VA

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Newspaper editorials or commentary that discuss how wonderful a particular community is can be interesting. I recall one humorous article about Naperville from the early 2000s that defended the community for “wanting the best.”

This editorial about Church Falls, VA moves from the positives to things that still need to change:

With the release of data by the U.S. Census Bureau, it is now official. As we reported in last week’s edition, the City of Falls Church is officially Number One in the entire U.S. of A. in the categories of median household income, and percentage of the adult population with college and post-graduate degrees.

These statistics don’t lie, although some could argue that degrees in political science and sociology aren’t of the same gravitas as physics or biology. But still, given that it’s lawful that political majors are more prominent here, given our proximity to the nation’s capital where almost everyone works, the puzzle is all the more pronounced.

It’s this: How can the smartest, most politically savvy, best-off people in the nation turn out barely a quarter of its registered adult population to vote in local elections?…

Then there is the issue of affordable housing and a serious commitment to diversifying the community, economically and socially. Clearly, being “well off” financially does not correlate with generosity. This City’s leadership has permitted embarrassing repudiations of these principles, in practice, and no one seems to mind.

Of course, the school system in Falls Church is second to none, but not without a ferocious struggle by administrators, teachers and staff to maintain it in the face of recent years’ funding scale backs, and if that process continues, something is going to give fairly soon.

Even as the schools’ quality is above reproach, however, the issue of the well-being of the students in it, operating as they do under enormous pressure to perform at a high level in academics, athletics and everything else…

If that’s the case, then it may be that a lot of people in Falls Church should be reassessing their priorities in life.

From the outside, it looks like a town filled with self-indulgent people who care for nothing but their home values, on the one hand, and their kids’ SAT and other test scores, on the other. And this, ladies and gentlemen, this is the crème de la crème of America.

Several quick thoughts about this editorial:

1. This editorial comes off as fairly negative. Do the majority of Falls Church residents agree with this assessment about things that need to change? Or is this newspaper arguing for more than the community would be willing to tackle?

2. Is the concern over these issues the mark of a well-educated, wealthy community? If these are the primary concerns and things like a lack of jobs, bad schools, crime, high taxes, and stretched local budgets are not really an issue, then this community is indeed in good shape.

3. The quip that “political science and sociology aren’t of the same gravitas as physics or biology” is intriguing. What exactly do they mean? People take biologists and physicists more seriously? They are seen to be doing “real science” versus interpretation or commentary? They make more money and therefore deserve more respect? And this comes from a newspaper that admits that political science degrees are more prominent due to its location near Washington, D.C.

Sadly, Emile Durkheim didn’t make into a video game

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All sociology majors learn about the Big Three sociological theorists from the 1800s/early 1900s: Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. But while Marx and Weber still get discussed and brought up in public conversations, Durkheim doesn’t seem to get as much attention.

However, some curious gamers thought that they had discovered that Durkheim made it into the video game “Deus Ex: Human Revolution:”

In our first teaser ever released, the cyber-fetus had the name “Emile” written on his skin. The fans thought it had to be directly connected to the story, so they started digging for info and researching the name. They came up with all sorts of very cool theories and possible in-game conspiracies related to it. For example, they found a 19th century French sociologist named Émile Durkheim and came up with some pretty nifty concepts based on their find. The funny thing is though, that the name Emile is nothing more than an inside joke created by the Digital Dimension guys, the studio who produced the teaser for us. During the long nights of overtime working on the teaser, they simply decided to name the cyber-baby and went ahead with Emile. One afternoon, when I walked into their studio for a review session, they asked me if they could leave the name on him. I said yes.

Alas, the Emile in the game is not the intrepid sociologist. And how exactly did these curious gamers link the Emile in the game to Durkheim? If one Googles “Emile,” Durkheim only comes up as a related search in the first few pages of search results.

I wonder if any sociological theorists have ever made it into a video game…

Quick Review: The Social Network

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Much has been written about the movie The Social Network since it was released earlier this year. Adding to the positive buzz about the movie, commentators think it will be up for some Oscars and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was recently named “Person of the Year” by Time (more on this shortly). While sagescape has already offered his views (from Harvard itself), I have some thoughts after finally seeing this movie in the theater:

1. This story revolves around two primary themes and plot devices: social status and two court cases.

1a. Social status. Zuckerberg is portrayed as a computer genius who is desperate for social acceptance on a campus where the rich, beautiful, and athletic get attention. The movie begins and ends with this as he tries to reestablish a relationship with his one-time girlfriend. He is shown wanting to be accepted into Harvard’s prestigious social clubs and is petty when his friend Eduardo has an opportunity to enter one of these clubs himself. Ultimately, the story is not that different than any film about high school or college: people have cliques and personal vendettas, nerds and the rich/beautiful don’t travel in the same circles, and all of them spend years trying to get a leg up on others.

1b. The two court cases involve people suing Zuckerberg regarding Facebook. On one hand, this is a useful plot device as we see all of the pertinent characters providing testimony at depositions as they retell how Facebook began. On the other hand, this seems to make the court cases out to be particularly important moments in Facebook’s history. These court cases tie back into the issue of social status as those suing Zuckerberg suggest he was out to improve his own status and Zuckerberg still seems interested in knocking them down a peg or two.

1c. As others have noted, these two themes seem to be quite dependent on the book used as the main source for this film. Since this book details one of the two court cases, this is what may be responsible for the plot structure. However, other texts, such as The Facebook Effect, are much more favorable toward Zuckerberg and treat these issues as minor irritants on the way to Facebook’s success. Both court cases were settled out of court with money payouts and non-disclosure agreements so we may not really know what happened.

2. Zuckerberg is not a likable character in this film. But we don’t really learn much about his background or what makes him tick. The most we know from this film: he is eccentric, doesn’t have many friends, likes his own ideas, and tells it as he sees it. This does not endear him to many people in the film.

3. I imagine the story of Facebook’s origins will be up for more interpretation as time goes on. And I think these stories will depend heavily on the angle of the storytellers and the relationship the author/interpreter/commentator has with Mark Zuckerberg.

4. Because of the emphasis on these two issues, we don’t see much about how Facebook grew. We see a lot of the initial work in the dorm and early on in California but not much after Facebook has its one millionth user. Obviously, much has happened since then as Facebook has now over 500 million users and has spread around the globe.

5. Much has been said about Justin Timberlake’s role as Sean Parker. He is an energizing figure but doesn’t play a huge role. In fact, his character has an ignominious end with the company toward the end of the film. And this final stretch of the film featuring Parker seemed to drag on a bit.

6. Without this film, I don’t think there is any way Zuckerberg would have been named Time’s Person of the Year. Yes, he helped found a company that has grown incredibly quickly and become a part of people’s lives. But in terms of being consequential for human events or world history, does Zuckerberg really rank up there? And why pick him out this year as opposed to previous years when Facebook was also gaining popularity? But perhaps once You were named Person of the Year in 2006 (yes, I mean You), Person of the Year lost some of its gravitas.

Overall, this is an interesting film about a popular social phenomena. Whether this is the real story or not, it is an engrossing look at an enigmatic former Harvard student whose website idea has changed how people connect.

(This film received positive reviews from critics: the reviews were 96% fresh, 248 fresh out of 257 total reviews, at rottentomatos.com.)

James Loewen still educating people about real cause of Civil War

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Sociologist James Loewen has written several good and accessible books about American history (one about textbooks, one about historical monuments). One of the main issues he confronts is about the true cause of the Civil War: slavery or something else (like states’ rights)? Loewen explains again why we can be sure slavery was the main issue:

“One hundred and fifty years ago Christmas Eve day, everyone knew why South Carolina was seceding because they said so — it’s a wonderful document,” said James Loewen, a sociologist and co-editor of The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.

Four days after South Carolina seceded on Dec. 20, 1860, the state adopted a second document titled “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” Loewen considers the record, central to his new collection, one of the five most important documents in the history of the country, launching as it did a seminal chapter in America’s ongoing struggle to define itself.

“So why does nobody ever read it?” he asked. “Everybody knew [secession was] about slavery. This document is all about slavery.”

Seems like a fairly cut and dry issue to me. This may become a more public issue as we near the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

But historical events are often open to interpretation. In the same article, noted Civil War scholar James McPherson says, “Probably 90 percent, maybe 95 percent of serious historians of the Civil War would agree on the broad questions of what the war was about and what brought it about and what caused it.”

So how could we get to a point where most or all Americans would acknowledge slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War?

Thinking about what tolerance actually means

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This BBC News page has some commentary about the origins of the word tolerance and what it means to people today.

I would be curious to know how this word has developed in the American context. Is it tolerance to let my neighbor or fellow citizen do what s/he wants as long as it doesn’t impinge on my freedoms?

Deciding whether to buy or rent

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One of the New York Times blogs discusses whether residents should buy or own. The decision could be based on a ratio for metropolitan areas that gives some indication of whether owning or renting is a better choice:

A good rule of thumb is that you should often buy when the ratio is below 15 and rent when the ratio is above 20. If it’s between 15 and 20, lean toward renting — unless you find a home you really like and expect to stay there for many years.

While the metropolitan average is 15.1, 17 metro areas have ratings over 20 (led by East Bay, CA, Honolulu, HI, San Jose, CA, San Francisco, CA, and Seattle) and 14 metro areas have ratings below 15 (with the five lowest being Pittsburgh, PA, Cleveland, OH, Detroit, MI, Phoenix, AZ, and Dallas – Fort Worth, TX).

The blog writer come to this conclusion about the data: “It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. The country has suffered through a terrible crash in home prices, yet buying a house remains an iffy proposition in many markets.”

While this may be true, what is even more remarkable is that homeownership is still such a widespread goal. If this measure is reliable and valid (meaning that it is consistent and it really tells us something about buying vs. owning), then homeownership might never really be about an economic improvement over renting. Rather, Americans have made owning a home an important cultural value and then use economic rationales to justify their decisions.

What exactly is it that appeals to people about owning their home? They get to make their own decisions, they don’t have to pay a landlord or wait for them to take care of repairs, they get some separation from their neighbors, and overall, they feel like they have made it on their own. If renting was a cheaper option but people could still afford to buy a home, how many Americans would decide to rent?

Discussing “princess culture”

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The topic of gender stereotypes in American culture tends to provoke interesting conversations. Virginia Postrel writes about “princess culture” and why this has such staying power in a culture and country that has never had real princesses:

Yet among today’s educated urbanites, “princess culture” is the subject of raging debate. What some parents consider innocent make-believe, others deem character-eroding indoctrination. Calling your daughter a princess fosters “a sense of entitlement and undeserved superiority,” declares one mother, commenting on a CafeMom post called, “Is the Princess Fantasy Dangerous?” Others fear that princess stories teach girls to be pretty and helpless, waiting for a prince to rescue them instead of acting on their own behalf. Should liberated women let their daughters play Cinderella? It’s a topic with which mommy blogs never seem to tire…

To play princess is to embrace two promises: “You are special” and “Life can be wonderful.”…

Neither of these need entail narcissistic entitlement or female passivity. Even that old-fashioned children’s classic, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1904 novel “A Little Princess,” portrays an imaginative, individualistic young heroine. Suddenly orphaned and destitute, Sara Crewe imagines herself a princess not only to escape her miserable circumstances but to maintain her good manners and self-control. “If you were a princess,” she reminds herself, “you did not fly into rages.” When unfairly abused, “you can’t sneer back at people like that—if you are a princess.”

For all its Victorian stoicism and sense of duty, this princess dream shares the mixture of openness and elitism that gives princesses their contemporary appeal. Like the superhero, the princess has a special identity and destiny. She is more than an ordinary girl. But her value is not determined by playground hierarchies. You don’t have to be popular to be a princess. You can be an iconoclast, even an outcast, but you must be worthy. You must be good. In this version, as my then-5-year-old niece once wrote me, “Anyone can be a PRINCESS.”

Postrel suggests that princess should be a broader term than referring to a girl who is just pretty or just acts in a dignified manner. Perhaps this is the key to the whole debate: simply change the definition of what a princess looks and acts like. Could we have a brainy princess? Could we have a devious or curious princess rather than just submissive princesses?

Thinking about it from another angle, what powerful alternatives to being a princess are there that would appeal to young girls? Wanting to be a princess seems to be powerfully shaped by being raised in a particular cultural milieu. While I’m sure there are lots of people who would say that there are all sorts of alternatives, are these commonly presented in the media (movies, TV) or in popular culture at large? Do we have and want heroines who kick butt and don’t take no for an answer? And can’t we push for alternatives by buying and consuming different goods?

h/t Instapundit

Quick Review: How Music Works

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I like reading about music so I recently thought I would take a chance with a recently published book by British physicist John Powell: How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, From Beethoven to the Beatles. A few thoughts about this text which is intended for a general audience:

1. One of the key things this text tries to do is explain why we have the music structure today that we do. So he includes explanations about musical modes that developed in history (of which we use two today, one the major scale and one the minor scale) and how instruments, like the harp, can be configured to produce notes.

2. One of the most interesting things to me in this book was the fact that agreement about modern notes didn’t happen until a conference in 1939. Before that, an A in Leipzig and an A in Paris might not be the same sound. It wasn’t until this conference that a particular frequency (A = 440) was set so that all instruments could be set to the same pitches. And even then, Powell suggests choosing this particular frequency occurred not because it is a better sound but rather because it is somewhere in the middle and seemed good. To think that the sounds we know today are really a social construction is intriguing.

3. There are number of little discussions that a reader might find interesting about perfect pitch, the physics of sound versus noise, how we can rate sound intensity (and he does not like the decibel system), and whether there are certain keys that are happier or sadder (the conclusion: no, they all share the same patterns of notes).

4. While I enjoyed a number of these shorter discussions, I wonder whether someone with limited or no musical knowledge could take much from this book. At various points, Powell suggests one doesn’t need to know how to play or read music to understand the discussions but I think it would be difficult. To his credit, Powell does suggest that anyone of any age can learn music – yes, it takes time (and he invokes Gladwell’s rule of 10,000 hours needed for expertise) but he suggests the idea that some people are musical and others are not does not hold water.

Overall, a book with some interesting points. The discussion bogs down in places and may be difficult for those with little music knowledge but it is an interesting start in considering how music is made.

The most and least Christian American cities

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The Barna group has put together a report that includes the American cities with the most and least residents who identify as Christians. Here are the lists of the most and least Christian cities:

The cities (measured in the Barna research as media markets) with the highest proportion of residents who describe themselves as Christian are typically in the South, including: Shreveport (98%), Birmingham (96%), Charlotte (96%), Nashville (95%), Greenville, SC / Asheville, NC (94%), New Orleans (94%), Indianapolis (93%), Lexington (93%), Roanoke-Lynchburg (93%), Little Rock (92%), and Memphis (92%).

The lowest share of self-identified Christians inhabited the following markets: San Francisco (68%), Portland, Oregon (71%), Portland, Maine (72%), Seattle (73%), Sacramento (73%), New York (73%), San Diego (75%), Los Angeles (75%), Boston (76%), Phoenix (78%), Miami (78%), Las Vegas (78%), and Denver (78%). Even in these cities, however, roughly three out of every four residents align with Christianity.

It appears the report goes on to talk to talk about a few implications: this shows that even in the least Christian cities, around three-quarters of the people identify as Christians and the figures confirm some stereotypes about regions (the Christian South vs. the secular Northeast and West).

However, I had a different sort of question: is life in the more Christian cities qualitatively different than the life in the less Christian cities? Are the Christian cities marked by different actions or programs? Are people in the Christian cities more welcoming and are they more willing and active in helping those who need help? Would a visitor be able to know which cities were the more Christian based on interactions with its people versus other measures like the number of churches or religious advertising? Does the Christian faith of the individual residents translate into a different kind of community or local government?

And if the answers to these questions is “no, it really isn’t that different,” then why not?