Author Archives: legallysociable

Quick Review: You Never Give Me Your Money

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This book by Peter Doggett, which shares its name with a Beatles song from the Abbey Road album, is about the interactions between the Beatles from 1968 through today. While most of the information about 1968 to 1970 can be found elsewhere, the rest of the book was illuminating what happened between the four after the break-up.

Once the Beatles broke up (unofficially in 1969 and officially in 1970), the four members went their separate ways. In the forty years since then, the relationships have been primarily marked by two types of events:

1. Squabbles.

2. Brief moments of friendship.

The squabbles began in the late 1960s as Apple Corps started falling apart and the group couldn’t agree about who should handle the business end of their relationship. Reading about all this took some of the tarnish off what I knew about the Beatles. The author kept hinting at this as well; despite all the great music and idealism, the band couldn’t even be friends after breaking up.The Beatles, heroes to many, were reduced to sniping at each other over money and control.

The brief moments of friendship were pretty consistent. However, a lot of the talk about possible reunions (and they received a number of large offers) tended to push them apart rather than pull them together. It seems that they eventually realized that once they were Beatles, they couldn’t stop being Beatles. But they also chafed at being remembered together, as if they didn’t exist as competent individuals.

Ultimately, the events recorded here say much about human frailty – even some of the best musicians are just human. In fact, it is remarkable that the individual members were able to produce some of the fine solo work that they did while the business and personal fights were taking place in the background.

So while the Beatles will remain known for their music, innovation, and idealism, they can also be remembered for their faults.

How Hollywood portrays those without cars

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There is little doubt that the automobile is an important part of the American cultural ethos. So what about people who don’t have cars?

Tom Vanderbilt, author of the fascinating Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), argues at Slate that Hollywood tends to portray those without cars as losers. In different ways, Vanderbilt claims that the fact that characters do not have cars is often made to be symbolic of other failings in their lives.

Farming back on the upswing in Massachusetts

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Farming is not a common occupation in the United States today. According to these figures from the EPA, less than 1% of Americans claim farming as an occupation and about 2% of people live on farms.

Yet the Boston Globe reports that farming is on the upswing in Massachusetts. According to the figures:

From 2002 to 2007, the number of farms in Massachusetts jumped by about 27 percent to 7,691, according to the US Department of Agriculture census. That’s a reversal from the previous five years, when there was a 20 percent drop in the number of farms and, presumably, farmers, many of whom sold land to developers.

But the start-up farms are smaller than the family enterprises of the past. The average farm in Massachusetts, 85 acres in 2002, was 67 acres five years later.

American society experienced such a shift away from agriculture from the late 1800s to today that I wonder if this is part of a shift toward a slightly more balanced world between agriculture and other sectors of society. There are plenty of books and pundits talking about how we are disconnected from the land and our food – perhaps a new generation is listening (and the article does make it sound like many of the new farmers are younger) and charting a new course.

(Even after an upswing, the number of farms in Massachusetts is still small. A lot more people would need to go into agriculture to become a movement.)

Getting a new passport to avoid taxes (and other reasons)

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The Financial Times reports an increased number of Americans are looking to turn in their American passports at the UK embassy. The waiting list is growing apparently because Americans are looking to avoid paying taxes on worldwide income and capital gains. As the article notes, the main disadvantage is that a person may not be able to reverse their choice.

It would be interesting to know how many people do this each year. Switching allegiances from one particular country to another seems like a weighty decision.

Quick Review: The Harry Potter series

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Over this past weekend, I finished reading the Harry Potter series for the first time. Somehow, I managed to know very little about the story coming in. I enjoyed the books and have some thoughts on the seven books:

1.These are books addressing fairly weighty topics. From love to death, friendship to evil, Harry and his friends encountered a lot. Some portions, particularly much of the last three books, were quite dark.

2. Even with weighty topics, the books had a wit about them. There were many small humorous moments that Rowling included. Perhaps it is just a dry British wit or perhaps it was the often funny interplay between the wizard and Muggle worlds.

3. I’m not quite sure what the main theme is that readers should take away from the books. It has a basic good vs. evil theme though it has more nuance since it is the love Harry’s mom has for him as a baby that eventually helps him meet his goals. But where this love comes from (and also where evil comes from) is left unexplored. This could be read as a coming-of-age story as Harry learns who he is and completes his task. It could be a hero’s journey tale as Harry overcomes obstacles to set the world right. Friendship is a major theme, particularly between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. There is a lot here in addition to the main action sequences and it might have been worthwhile for the characters to reflect more on the implications of their actions.

4. The characters are likable. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had a strong relationship and it was satisfying when Ron and Hermione finally came together. I was surprised by the number of school friends who were constant characters including the other Weasley kids, Neville, Luna, and others. The saddest part of the series for me was Dumbledore’s death – of course, it turns out it happened a little differently than it first appeared. Perhaps my only complaint: some of the teenage angst (among Harry, Ron, and Hermione) seemed like overkill. Another small complaint: two of the main female characters, Hermione and Ginny, could have been more fleshed out.

5. The ending seemed somewhat abrupt with the flash-forward sequence. I was left wanting to know more about life for all of them.

6. I’m not sure I want to see any of the movies. Of course, I have seen some images of the actors. But I feel that if I saw the movies, it would change my understanding and mental images of the books. (Looking back, I wish I had read all of the Lord of the Rings books before seeing the first movie.)

My conclusion according to my wife: I shouldn’t have waited so long to read such a great series.

My conclusion: even if I was behind, I still enjoyed reading the series this summer.

Taking Project Runway to the classroom

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With school starting up soon and professors and teachers lookin for new ways to present material, Time suggests modeling class after Project Runway.

In the spring issue of Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Brad van Eeden-Moorefield, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Central Michigan University, presents the results of his 2006 study on the effects of modeling a research-methods class after Project Runway. The show that just began its eighth season makes budding fashion designers vie for a grand prize by competing in weekly challenges. And though it’s hard to imagine a realm farther removed from the sexy world of fashion than a small-town campus in sleepy Mount Pleasant, Mich., van Eeden-Moorefield’s Project M (the M is for Methodology) proved successful. By the end of the semester, 100% of the students said they thought the curriculum should be used in future classes. They reported being more invested and also retaining more material. And perhaps most important, they said they actually had fun in a class in which students are trained to write theses, academic papers and similarly mind-numbing (but necessary) stuff.

According to the article, a few reasons this works in the classroom: competition, making material more relatable by using popular culture, and interactive criticism.

h/t Instapundit

Selling black market grilled cheese as “seedy sociological phenomenon”

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The New York Post reports on a man “selling grilled cheese on the black market.”

Vanity Fair comments on the story and concludes: “It goes without saying that this seedy sociological phenomenon, like many others, will likely be optioned into a David Simon–HBO series.”

Plagiarism in the Internet age

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The New York Times reports on how getting information from the Internet has changed students’ perceptions about plagiarism:

It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism.

Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

Anthropologist Susan D. Blum studied students at the University of Notre Dame and came to this conclusion regarding attitudes toward authorship:

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

If so, this is an interesting change. It suggests the concept of individualism is changing from one where a person develops unique ideas to one where individuals are creative with existing material.

Perhaps this generation tends to think information on the Internet (and other creative material) is common knowledge. One traditional rule about avoiding plagiarism has to do with common knowledge; if it is widely known, then no citation is needed. What is being confused then is the ease in which the information can be obtained versus whether it has an author. It is true that it is often easy to do an Internet search and find something out. That does not mean that the information is known to all – easy access does not equal common knowledge.

It seems like the best course would be for students to cite all external sources, even if a student thinks it is common knowledge.

Bleak job market in sociology and other disciplines

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The job market in sociology is down quite a bit in recent years, according to a report from the American Sociological Association. The results are reported in Inside Higher Ed:

An association report issued Friday shows a 35 percent decline in the number of academic job postings in its job bank between 2008 and 2009, and that drop follows a 23 percent drop between 2006 and 2008, the year that the economic downturn started in full. (While not all sociology jobs are listed with the association, the job bank is a good proxy for the overall market, especially for tenure-track positions.)

While the report holds out hope for coming years, this will be tied to the fate of universities and colleges in general, which are then dependent on the overall economy. If certain pundits are right, such as Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, in suggesting that we may be on the verge of a higher education bubble, the job market could be tight for a while.

From awe to impatience with machines

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Christine Rosen at InCharacter.org writes about our relationship with machines. Her argument: people in the 1800s and early 1900s were awed by machines while today, “the more personalized and individualized our machines have become, the less humility we feel in using them.” Rosen suggests how this came about:

The awe experienced by earlier generations was part of a different worldview, one that demonstrated greater humility about many things, not least of which concerned their own human limits and frailties. Today we believe our machines allow us to know a lot more, and in many ways they do. What we don’t want to admit – but should – is that they also ensure that we directly experience less.

A thought-provoking essay. Machines are now so common and cheap that I think we often hardly recognize how they have changed our lives. In fact, new machines need to be almost life-altering (or have some new image attached to them) to gain our attention. Many of our common machines, like the automobile or many kitchen appliances, haven’t changed all that much over time as they still perform the same basic functions.

Having a sense of awe about a machine might also help us recognize some of the downsides of using new machines. If we are used to computers, we don’t think much anymore about the implications of joining a site like Facebook. Or we may not consider how having a search engine like Google affects how we think or gather and process information. We tend to accept new machines today as inevitable signs of progress (and we are progressing, right?) rather than stepping back and assessing what they mean.