Tag Archives: American culture

Is selling the naming rights to Chicago El stops annoying or cool because Apple is sponsoring a station?

Posted on by

The Red Line El stop at North and Clybourn may soon be the Apple Red Line stop. It is not named that yet but there is plenty of Apple already in the station:

???There’s reason to be grateful to Apple for the metamorphosis of this patch of Chicago. Apple has not only built a store more stylish than anything nearby, it has invested close to $4 million in the North/Clybourn station.

It’s the equivalent of mowing the neighbor’s weedy lawn — and paying the neighbor to let you.

Outside, the station has clean new brick, big new windows and a sleek new look, partly 1940s and entirely 2010.

The inside isn’t stylish, but it’s improved. Someone has scrubbed the red concrete floors, brushed red paint on the old railings, tried to wipe the grime from the escalator stairs.

And the Apple name is everywhere, except out front.

From the moment you push through the turnstile, Apple ads as bright as searchlights beam at you. Down in the tunnel, all the other ads are gone.

Apple expressed interest in calling it the Apple Red Line stop. The CTA, which is exploring the possibility of selling naming rights to its stations, said Apple would get the right of first refusal for this one.

A further sign that corporate America is taking over or a clever revenue generating trick from the city of Chicago?

Vatican newspaper says Homer J. Simpson is a Catholic

Posted on by

The Vatican’s newspaper recently said that they consider Homer Simpson to be a Catholic:

But in an article headlined “Homer and Bart are Catholics”, the newspaper said: “The Simpsons are among the few TV programmes for children in which Christian faith, religion, and questions about God are recurrent themes.”

The family “recites prayers before meals and, in their own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter”…

“Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J Simpson is a Catholic,” insists L’Osservatore Romano.

This must be a very loose definition of what a Catholic is or how one should act. In fact, it strikes me as a very American sort of idea: Homer’s Catholicism is a grab-bag of practices and beliefs of his own choosing. Is Homer’s approach to religion really much different than many Americans?

But one point the newspaper makes seems accurate: the Simpson’s portray “old-fashioned family values” in a way that few other shows do today.

Americans walk less than other countries

Posted on by

The Infrastructurist sums up some recent research that shows Americans walk less than residents of other countries. Explaining why this is the case is interesting:

The report’s lead author, David R. Bassett of the University of Tennessee, blames America’s poor performance on its auto obsession and lack of public transportation…

The researchers found no association between daily steps and living environment (e.g. urban, suburban, or rural)…

For the year 2009 alone, the top five walking commuter cities were Boston (14.1 percent commuted by foot), Washington (11.1), San Francisco (10.3), New York (10.3), and Philadelphia (8.7). The city with the lowest commuter walking share for the year was Fort Worth, at 1.2 percent. Freemark comments:

“As the chart shows, automobiles have a majority share in all cities except New York, Boston, Washington, and San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, these are dense cities and the places in the United States with the most complete transit systems.

These arguments make sense at face value: driving and setting would seem to play a large role. However, the first research study’s finding about driving may indicate that driving just trumps other factors for most Americans: whether Americans live in cities or suburbs or rural areas, driving is the preferred mode of transit.

Additionally, perhaps the number of people living in large cities with established and effective mass transit (the five top walking cities cited above) is simply not enough to counter all the drivers in other places.

Fighting “immappancy” by looking at the true size of Africa

Posted on by

Many people have skewed perceptions of the world due to maps. Americans are used to seeing the United States (and North America) as the focal point of their maps; woe to those who put eastern Asia as the main point or even the Southern Hemisphere as the right way up! (What is interesting in these cases is that it reduces the United States to more of an afterthought. This doesn’t fit American cultural perceptions of our ) Another issue is one of size: because of the typically used projections, Greenland can vary from the largest mass in the world to a small mass. Relative sizes can be difficult to judge.

To combat “immappancy” (which apparently is a mash-up of illiteracy and innumeracy), here is a graphic that shows the size of Africa. Notice how large it is: the contiguous United States, China, all of Europe, and India all fit inside it. Yet how many people would know the true size of Africa?

American life can’t be too bad if people can spend lots of time tracking down a fast food sandwich

Posted on by

Times are dire, bad, fraught with difficulty. This is now what we have heard, and many have experienced, for months.

But it struck me today that American life is not that terrible if there are some people who are very devoted to tracking down McDonald’s McRib sandwich. It is this sort of quotidian hobby or interest that is only possible in societies where people have extra time and money on their hands.

So what exactly is going on here? Couple this story with the fervor that Chick-fil-A has inspired in the Chicago region with the opening of new stores and it is clear that many Americans love their fast food.

The appeal of Google and its driverless cars

Posted on by

It was recently revealed that Google has been testing automated cars for some time now:

With someone behind the wheel to take control if something goes awry and a technician in the passenger seat to monitor the navigation system, seven test cars have driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control. One even drove itself down Lombard Street in San Francisco, one of the steepest and curviest streets in the nation. The only accident, engineers said, was when one Google car was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light.

Autonomous cars are years from mass production, but technologists who have long dreamed of them believe that they can transform society as profoundly as the Internet has.

Why does this story have as much as appeal as it seems to have on the Internet? A quick argument:

This is a dream dating back decades. The futuristic exhibits of the mid 20th century had visions of this: people blissfully enjoying their trips while the cars took care of the driving. To see the dream come to fruition is satisfying and fulfilling. On a broader scale, this is part of the bigger narrative of technological progress. Although it has been delayed longer than some imagined, it demonstrates ingenuity and the progress of Americans. Since Americans have a well-established love affair with the automobile, driverless cars offers the best of all worlds: personal freedom in transportation without the need to actually do any work. And if we soon get cars that run on electricity or hydrogen, it can be completely guilt-free transportation!

The sociology of competition and winning

Posted on by

Sociologist Francesco Duina has written a new book about the sociology of competition:

“My goal was to figure out what the language of competition is all about,” he said. About 90 percent of the book is analysis, looking at winning in politics, business, sports and elsewhere, he said.

He compared European, North American and Asian societies and he broke down different ways of winning, comparing the consistent winners to the ones who won only occasionally and to the steady losers.

I would be curious to read about how American competition differs from that found in other countries. Additionally, it would be interesting to know how kids in different settings are taught about winning and competition.

America’s Four Gods: Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical, Distant

Posted on by

A new book from two Baylor sociologists, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God – and What That Says About Us, examines Americans’ image of God. They uncovered four viewpoints: an authoritative God, benevolent God, critical God, and distant God. And the image individuals had of God then influences how they view other issues in the world:

Surveys say about nine out of 10 Americans believe in God, but the way we picture that God reveals our attitudes on economics, justice, social morality, war, natural disasters, science, politics, love and more, say Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, sociologists at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Their new book, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God — And What That Says About Us, examines our diverse visions of the Almighty and why they matter.

Based primarily on national telephone surveys of 1,648 U.S. adults in 2008 and 1,721 in 2006, the book also draws from more than 200 in-depth interviews that, among other things, asked people to respond to a dozen evocative images, such as a wrathful old man slamming the Earth, a loving father’s embrace, an accusatory face or a starry universe.

Researchers from the USA to Malawi are picking up on the unique Baylor questionnaire, and its implications. When the Gallup World Poll used several of the God-view questions, Bader says, “one clear finding is that the USA — where images of a personal God engaged in our lives dominate — is an outlier in the world of technologically advanced nations such as (those in) Europe.” There, the view is almost entirely one of a Big Bang sort of God who launched creation and left it spinning rather than a God who has a direct influence on daily events.

The image of God that we develop is likely strongly influenced by our cultural background which include our families and our surroundings. A couple of questions spring to mind:

1. How do churches promote or push these separate viewpoints of God?

2. At what age do children already have one of these images of God?

3. How difficult or common is it to change one’s image of God?

4. How much do people fit their image of God to their already developed or developing views of the world?

5. How are each of these four viewpoints rooted in wider American culture?

A complete ban on cell phone use in cars?

Posted on by

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggests banning all cell phone communication in the car might be needed to reduce accidents and injuries:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he believes motorists are distracted by any use of mobile phones while driving, including hands-free calls, as his department begins research that may lead him to push for a ban.

LaHood, whose campaign against texting and making calls while driving has led to restrictions in 30 states, says his concerns extend to vehicle information and entertainment systems such as Ford Motor Co.’s Sync and General Motors Co.’s OnStar.

If LaHood pushes forward with this, it will be fascinating to see how people, companies, and interest groups respond. One analyst suggests in this article that these practices are already ingrained and would be very difficult, if not impossible to change. Perhaps people will even suggest it is their “right” to use a cell phone in the car. However, the government could enact certain regulations tied to certain incentives that might help people (and lower levels of government) make this choice. All in all, this could be a very interesting cultural battle between safety and individualism.

A reminder: it wasn’t that long ago that no one could talk by phone while in the car.

How technology might contribute to being late

Posted on by

A writer at the Wall Street Journal argues that technology has contributed to more people being willing to be late to appointments:

Now, thanks to cellphones, BlackBerrys and other gadgets, too many of us have become blasé about being late. We have so many ways to relay a message that we’re going to be tardy that we no longer feel guilty about it.

And lateness is contagious. Once one person is tardy, others feel they can be late as well. It becomes beneficial to be the last one in a group to show up, because your wait will be the shortest.

The writer admits that lateness is not caused by technology since lateness has existed for a long time. Yet at the same time, I can see how this might work: because the late person is still able to maintain contact with the person who is waiting for them, the late person could feel that it is less of a problem that they are late. After all, at least they let the other person they were going to be late.