Monthly Archives: September 2010

Job outlook: either high-paying or low-paying, few in between

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Perhaps adding to the bleak economic outlook, some economists are suggesting that future jobs will fall into two categories: high-paying or low-paying with few jobs in the middle.

This would have implications for the size of different classes within the United States. To have a high-paying job, employees will generally need higher-education or specialized degrees. Having a service job means struggling to make ends meet. In this scenario, what kinds of industries or sectors might provide more middle-class jobs?

Considering the effects of darker fiction on younger brains

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An academic conference this past weekend considered how fiction, particularly the darker fiction of recent years, might affect the brains of teenagers and children. Here is a quick overview of what was being discussed:

The trend for darkness and dystopia in children’s literature reflects concerns in the wider, adult world, Nikolajeva [the conference organizer] said. A hundred years ago, books for kids were dominated with stories about boys having adventures and girls finding husbands; then, from the 1950s to the 1970s, the themes were emerging sexuality and parental conflict.

Inside the teenage brain, synapses are breaking and reforming, and the chemistry keeps changing. Teenagers can’t make decisions in the same way adults can, Nikolajeva said, and she noted that authors, filmmakers and game developers have a moral obligation to make sure that their works contain some positive ethic.

As the Post writer notes, this sounds like an interesting conference. In general, narratives can have a powerful effect. If children’s literature has indeed turned darker, this could have implications for future adults.

And I’d be curious to know how people at the conference defined the “positive ethic” that Nikolajeva suggests should be included in children’s literature.

Quick Review: an Amtrak short trip

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In order to visit family, I recently traveled by Amtrak from Naperville, IL to Quincy, IL and back. I haven’t been on Amtrak for years – and so I’ll share a few thoughts.

1. The advantages to Amtrak travel: larger seats than found in coach sections in airplanes, plenty of space for luggage, a quicker trip than driving (4 hours one way and 3.5 on the return compared to 5 hours driving), the ability to read/do other things while traveling (instead of sitting behind a steering wheel), a reasonable round-trip price (cheaper than the gas would have cost and no extra wear on my vehicle), a generally quiet ride.

2. The disadvantages: limited travel times (either very early in the morning or later in the evening), no car to drive once arriving at my destination plus need someone to pickup/drive to the train station, having to travel with more people, a snack car with very limited offerings.

3. The kind of route I traveled seems to be one where the train could be positioned to succeed: the train cuts down on the travel time, the price is reasonable, and there is no competition from airlines. At the same time, there can’t be too much traffic on this route – while there were more people than I expected (undoubtedly helped by the fact that the train was linked to the third largest metropolitan area in the country), I imagine it might be difficult to generate revenue.

Overall: it was a good trip but there could be a lot of factors that would push me to drive instead. Perhaps this is an American perspective: driving is the default mode unless another form of transportation is an overwhelmingly better option. I could see why there are proponents of high-speed rail (and there are major plans to have a network in the Midwest that centers around Chicago): it would offer a helpful and needed alternative to driving.

The value of stretching for athletes

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Henry Abbott at Truehoop looks at some recent research regarding stretching which suggests stretching before athletic events is not that helpful.

The question arises: why then do athletes go through a stretching routine before a game? I’ll throw out a possible answer: stretching is part of a routine that is psychologically helpful in preparing for a game. Even if stretching beforehand has limited value, as long as it is not harmful, it could help athletes feel like they are doing something worthwhile. Perhaps it helps improve their mental focus. For many, I assume it is part of an established routine that they were socialized into either at a younger age or by an expert. Since they have been doing it in the past, going through the motions helps them prepare.

Where this research could be used is with younger athletes. It is hard to break people out of established patterns but teenagers and kids could chart a new path that includes little or no pregame stretching and more postgame stretching. These younger athletes could then establish new kinds of routines that will be with them throughout their athletic careers.

A course on strangers: Stranger Studies 101

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For a number of early sociologists, the city was a fascinating place. Of particular interest was the changing nature of human relationships – instead of primary group relationships formed in small villages or towns, more and more people were flooding into cities were relationships were characterized by indifference and blase attitudes.

Professor Kio Stark has picked up on these themes in what he calls “Stranger Studies.” At Atlantic, Stark has laid out a brief syllabus for what Stranger Studies 101 might look like.

This looks like a fascinating course. And Stark’s conclusion is humorous “Although I do not recommend it, by the end of the semester my students could likely launch successful careers as grifters.”

Finding community in the Wrigley bleachers

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In the midst of a gloomy Cubs season, a new book titled Wrigley Regulars: Finding Community in the Bleachers might provide some hope. Not written by just a normal fan, it is written by an anthropologist. The website Bleed Cubbie Blue provides some insights into the book’s content:

Before I tell you about this book, you should know a couple of things. First, Holly Swyers, who is an assistant professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College, is one of the “Wrigley Regulars” and has been a personal friend of mine for more than ten years. She asked me (and other regulars) to read through her drafts to make sure all the facts were correct, and that means you’ll find things about me (and about this site) in the book. It’s also written not just about baseball and the Wrigley bleachers, but it’s designed to be a college-level sociology/anthropology textbook about communities and how they come together…

This book is highly recommended for anyone who’s a Cubs fan — or baseball fan — to understand why some of us spend so much time in the bleachers. Yes, it’s about baseball, but as Holly points out, it’s also about community and those you get to know so well over the course of many baseball seasons become family. We all found this out just within the last week, when someone who is a bleacher season ticket holder and one of the “Wrigley Regulars” became seriously ill. The outpouring of love and concern I saw everyone show is a perfect example of the family and community that Holly writes about.

A couple of quick thoughts:

1. This sounds like a fun research task.

2. I haven’t read the book but I’ll take a quick guess at the premise: American community has declined over time as we have become more individualized and separated from others. Here, in the unlikely setting of the Wrigley Field bleachers, strangers came together, not just for Cubs game but for authentic social relationships that transcended typical social categories that tend to separate people (social class, age, gender, etc.).

3. The plug from Bleed Cubbie Blue brings up an interesting point: sports isn’t just about competition and winning for fans. Perhaps for males in particular, sports allows people to build bonds over an external focus. A friendly relationship or community can develop without having to sit down and have deep conversations.

Seeing TV tropes as a kind of programming language

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A new season of television is nearly upon us. Some of the new shows will survive, many will not. Most of the shows will draw upon established television tropes. (How many procedural shows do we need??)

In the midst of these tropes, Scott Brown of Wired suggests we shouldn’t expect novelty but instead should look for something else:

But here’s an original thought. Let’s embrace the standard semantics of tropery—let’s stop seeing a welter of clichés and instead call it what it is: a programming language. The site [tvtropes.org] was launched by a computer programmer, and the coder’s ethos comes through: Seeing all of TV (and film and literature and theater and manga) history written in Trope, you begin to understand how these story widgets—standard, reusable parts like phonemes or Legos or the basic codons of DNA—can be arranged and rearranged to create something unique.

This is an interesting perspective – instead of focusing on what is being repeated, viewers should examine how writers and producers use their creativity to rearrange the existing pieces of the existing television corpus.

This article reminds me of some other recent news, particularly that about college students and plagiarism. What some research has found is that some students have difficulty accepting the argument for intellectual property; they see content as sharable and open. What matters more then is taking existing content and putting it together in new ways.

Brown suggests “originality is dead.” I hope not. But perhaps taking his advice will make watching similar-but-slightly-different television shows more palatable.

The poor cleaniness of home kitchens

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Occasionally, one can find stories about how dirty homes can be. Here is more evidence, this time regarding unclean kitchens:

The small study from California’s Los Angeles County found that only 61 percent of home kitchens would get an A or B if put through the rigors of a restaurant inspection. At least 14 percent would fail — not even getting a C.

In comparison, nearly all Los Angeles County restaurants — 98 percent — get A or B scores each year.

On its own, these are interesting results: restaurant kitchens are generally more clean than home kitchens. But there is more to this story: how exactly researchers found out about the kitchens.

The study, released Thursday, is believed to be one of the first to offer a sizable assessment of food safety in private homes. But the researchers admit the way it was done is hardly perfect.

The results are based not on actual inspections, but on an Internet quiz taken by about 13,000 adults .

So it’s hard to use it to compare the conditions in home kitchens to those in restaurants, which involve trained inspectors giving objective assessments of dirt, pests, and food storage and handling practices.

What’s more, experts don’t believe the study is representative of all households, because people who are more interested and conscientious about food safety are more likely to take the quiz.

A more comprehensive look would probably find that an even smaller percentage of home kitchens would do well in a restaurant inspection, he suggested.

On one hand, this sounds like innovative research that is the first to provide a broad overview of the cleanliness of American kitchens. On the other hand, the way the data was collected suggests one should be wary about making definitive conclusions.

The online quiz is also reliant on self-reporting.

Reflecting on Swedish paternity leave

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At Slate, Nathan Hegedus discusses his 18-month paternity leave in Sweden. Hegedus has some intriguing thoughts including the observation that “The dads act exactly like the moms” and more broadly, about how Swedish culture has seemed to prepare men for child-rearing:

I had expected great physical comedy in Daddyland—fathers covered with diaper leakage, babies covered with motor oil, men forcing resentful toddlers into soccer matches. I realize now how insensitive to my Swedish brothers this was. Swedish dads of my generation and younger have been raised to feel competent at child-rearing. They simply expect to do it, just as their wives and partners expect it of them (even though women still do far more child-related work in general). It’s eye-opening in a really boring way…

But there are deeper societal processes at work here, a shift of the very notion of Swedish masculinity. In a 2008 article in the journal Fathering, Anna-Lena Almqvist wrote that Swedish men have developed a “child-oriented masculinity.” Almqvist compared the attitudes of a selection of Swedish fathers with their French counterparts and found that, among couples with similar incomes, Swedish men emphasized the importance of parental leave and helping to raise their children. They also negotiated explicitly with their partners on child care issues. The French men did neither of these things.

While these are the observations of one man, Hegedus hints at the cultural socialization that accompanies child-rearing. It sounds like the policy decisions in Sweden have pushed men toward a new kind of masculinity that involves child-rearing, a domain that was traditionally left to women.

It would be interesting to read more about this, particularly about what this means more broadly for fatherhood and masculinity as well as how Hegedus’ experience is viewed by his American counterparts.

A new kind of TV heroine

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The Wall Street Journal reports that television executives are moving ahead with shows that feature a new kind of heroine:

The show reflects new thinking among television network executives: Their core audience—female viewers—want to see a woman take down the enemy, preferably with a little bloodshed along the way. The approach overturns years of belief that violent shows turn off women who prefer to watch earnest nurses, headstrong housewives or quirky career women.

Viewers who grew up with video games and Angelina Jolie action movies are driving the types of shows networks will debut this month and redefining how the classic TV heroine is portrayed.

The market research behind this also found that women tend to think men have gotten wimpier on TV and in movies. Therefore, female characters need to come in and take control.

This article also hints at a question about causation: it is media that drives these images (as the article suggests, through Angelina Jolie action movies) or is it that the culture’s image of women has changed to the point where media now needs to reflect it? It probably works both ways but television and movie executives want portrayals of women that are going to make money.