O.S. sent in this neat video found at Flowing Data that illustrates the spread of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores across the U.S. since the early 1960s:
Archive: Apr 2010
Yes, but not, perhaps, as non-religious as you might think.
A study just published in Sociology of Religion, by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, reported that about 3/4ths of professors report some belief in God or a higher power. About 35% of professors are absolutely certain that God exists, while 21% believe, but are not absolutely sure.
Only 10% of professors are athiests and another 13 percent are agnostic.
So, is 23 percent many or only a few non-believers?
On the one hand, it may seem like very few if you consider that the professoriate is routinely characterized as radically liberal and anti-religious. As Shannon Golden at Contexts Crawler says:
Devout parents often worry about the “secularizing” effects of sending their children off to college. They envision professors pushing secular thoughts and anti-religious values on their impressionable students.
Despite the stereotype, this data suggests that the majority of professors would welcome religious belief in their classrooms.
On the other hand, it may seem like a lot of athiests and agnostics if you compare the numbers to the general U.S. population. According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, only 4% of the U.S. population is athiest or agnostic (see the data waaaay down at the bottom there):
From this perspective, 23% is a lot.
So what do you think? Are you surprised by how few professors report being athiests or agnostics? Or are you surprised by how many?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Dmitriy T.M., Jody, and Emily F. sent in a new public service announcement aimed at preventing teen pregnancy. It features Sarah Palin’s daughter, and teen mom, Bristol Palin.
Transcript:
What if I didn’t come from a famous family?
What if I didn’t have all their support?
What if I couldn’t finish my education?
What if I didn’t have all these opportunities?
Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Pause… before you play.
The ad is fantastic in its raw truth. But not, perhaps, in the way it is intended to be. While the ad is, I think, trying to tell all teenagers (not just non-rich ones) to “pause,” it also clearly lays out who pays the highest price for early motherhood. Privileged teenagers (who are, by the way, more likely to abort than disadvantaged ones) will often be provided resources that mediate the negative consequences of keeping their child. In contrast, when disadvantaged teenagers become mothers, it tends to entrench their disadvantage.
So thanks, Palins, for reminding us how nice it is to be rich.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Coincidence? Or based on stereotypes about women and, especially, PMS?
From Dr. Grumpy, sent in by Dan S. Also from Dr. Grumpy, the shaming vending machine.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Below a pro-birth control public service announcement, by a sex-ed-type organization called Sex Really, that makes the argument that all men are total assholes, therefore women should make sure they use birth control…
…but they should still have sex with them of course! Duh!
Trigger warning for sexist language:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight posted this graph showing different types of federal taxes as a percent of total U.S. GDP (estimated through 2014 based on the current tax code):
Despite widespread beliefs that we’re all taxed to death, and that taxes are strangling the business sector, we can see that the only taxed that have clearly trended upward since 1935 are payroll taxes (SSI/Retirement). And corporate and excise taxes have actually decreased over time.
Total federal taxes make up less than 20% of our total GDP. Interestingly, a (non-random convenience) sample of Tea Partiers at a recent protest found that half of the attendees thought that federal taxes make up over 40% of GDP, and the mean answer was 42% (the highest answer being 99%).
This reminds me of watching The Price Is Right with some of my relatives as a kid. We’d watch, and inevitably someone would win a car or at the end get the Showcase Showdown package, and being kids my sisters and I would be agog over their riches. But one of the adults in the room would then give us a lecture about taxes, saying you’d have to pay a tax of 50% of the value of the winnings, so you’d really just end up owing money. The implication was that this was really unfair and robbed people like us of our birthright to go on TV and try to win stuff because we wouldn’t be able to come up with the money to pay the taxes on our winnings (though they did wonder if you could convince Bob Barker to just give you the cash value of the items rather than the things themselves so you’d have the cash to pay the taxes).
So basically, they would get riled up and resentful over the amount of taxes they thought they would have to pay if they flew to L.A., got on The Price Is Right, and won something of value. They were complaining about something that didn’t exist, a theoretical tax in a situation they were not going to face, ever.
The point is, a lot of the opposition to and anger about taxes strikes me as completely theoretical: it’s not derived from specific knowledge of tax codes or tax rates or how many services you got in return for the taxes you paid. It’s a more diffuse anger based on assumptions that the government is always out to over-tax you and that your life would be a lot better off if you could just reduce the tax burden and take the ski boat and bedroom set you just won on CBS home in peace, unmolested by the IRS.
UPDATE: Drat! It appears this graph is out of date, at least. Reader Ben O. points out a NYT article saying that Snapple no longer uses high fructose corn syrup. ChartPorn is generally pretty good about attributions and all, so I didn’t look into it thoroughly before posting it. Sorry! I’m leaving the post up just so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to hide my mistake, but be aware of the sketchiness here.
From ChartPorn, a neat little graphic illustrating the relative amounts of different ingredients in a Snapple iced tea:
Ah, high fructose corn syrup. What would we consume in copious amounts without really thinking about it if we didn’t have you?
Crossposted at Jezebel.
Ajax was searching for majors on College Board, a website aimed at helping people get into and through college. She wanted to search for colleges with women’s studies majors and when she typed “women” into the keyword field, the search function returned two majors: women’s studies and fashion design.
This would make perfect sense if the search function returned only women’s studies since it has “women” in the name and all. But fashion design? It suggests that somehow fashion design has been marked as a major-for- or about-women, but no other major has.
What about, say, history? Nope, no women in that.
Psychology? Well, there is a Psych of Women class. But, otherwise no.
Economics? Don’t make me laugh!
Queer Studies? Afro-Am? Wait? Women are gay!? And black!?
Politics? Oh honey, don’t worry your pretty little head about it!
Literature? Oh yeah! We forgot literature! Let’s slap a “women” tag on that one and call it a day.
UPDATE: Brenden L. went to the website and typed in men. Guess what he got?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Yes, but not, perhaps, as non-religious as you might think.
A study just published in Sociology of Religion, by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, reported that about 3/4ths of professors report some belief in God or a higher power. About 35% of professors are absolutely certain that God exists, while 21% believe, but are not absolutely sure.
Only 10% of professors are athiests and another 13 percent are agnostic.
So, is 23 percent many or only a few non-believers?
On the one hand, it may seem like very few if you consider that the professoriate is routinely characterized as radically liberal and anti-religious. As Shannon Golden at Contexts Crawler says:
Devout parents often worry about the “secularizing” effects of sending their children off to college. They envision professors pushing secular thoughts and anti-religious values on their impressionable students.
Despite the stereotype, this data suggests that the majority of professors would welcome religious belief in their classrooms.
On the other hand, it may seem like a lot of athiests and agnostics if you compare the numbers to the general U.S. population. According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, only 4% of the U.S. population is athiest or agnostic (see the data waaaay down at the bottom there):
From this perspective, 23% is a lot.
So what do you think? Are you surprised by how few professors report being athiests or agnostics? Or are you surprised by how many?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Dmitriy T.M., Jody, and Emily F. sent in a new public service announcement aimed at preventing teen pregnancy. It features Sarah Palin’s daughter, and teen mom, Bristol Palin.
Transcript:
What if I didn’t come from a famous family?
What if I didn’t have all their support?
What if I couldn’t finish my education?
What if I didn’t have all these opportunities?Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Pause… before you play.
The ad is fantastic in its raw truth. But not, perhaps, in the way it is intended to be. While the ad is, I think, trying to tell all teenagers (not just non-rich ones) to “pause,” it also clearly lays out who pays the highest price for early motherhood. Privileged teenagers (who are, by the way, more likely to abort than disadvantaged ones) will often be provided resources that mediate the negative consequences of keeping their child. In contrast, when disadvantaged teenagers become mothers, it tends to entrench their disadvantage.
So thanks, Palins, for reminding us how nice it is to be rich.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Coincidence? Or based on stereotypes about women and, especially, PMS?
From Dr. Grumpy, sent in by Dan S. Also from Dr. Grumpy, the shaming vending machine.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Below a pro-birth control public service announcement, by a sex-ed-type organization called Sex Really, that makes the argument that all men are total assholes, therefore women should make sure they use birth control…
…but they should still have sex with them of course! Duh!
Trigger warning for sexist language:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight posted this graph showing different types of federal taxes as a percent of total U.S. GDP (estimated through 2014 based on the current tax code):
Despite widespread beliefs that we’re all taxed to death, and that taxes are strangling the business sector, we can see that the only taxed that have clearly trended upward since 1935 are payroll taxes (SSI/Retirement). And corporate and excise taxes have actually decreased over time.
Total federal taxes make up less than 20% of our total GDP. Interestingly, a (non-random convenience) sample of Tea Partiers at a recent protest found that half of the attendees thought that federal taxes make up over 40% of GDP, and the mean answer was 42% (the highest answer being 99%).
This reminds me of watching The Price Is Right with some of my relatives as a kid. We’d watch, and inevitably someone would win a car or at the end get the Showcase Showdown package, and being kids my sisters and I would be agog over their riches. But one of the adults in the room would then give us a lecture about taxes, saying you’d have to pay a tax of 50% of the value of the winnings, so you’d really just end up owing money. The implication was that this was really unfair and robbed people like us of our birthright to go on TV and try to win stuff because we wouldn’t be able to come up with the money to pay the taxes on our winnings (though they did wonder if you could convince Bob Barker to just give you the cash value of the items rather than the things themselves so you’d have the cash to pay the taxes).
So basically, they would get riled up and resentful over the amount of taxes they thought they would have to pay if they flew to L.A., got on The Price Is Right, and won something of value. They were complaining about something that didn’t exist, a theoretical tax in a situation they were not going to face, ever.
The point is, a lot of the opposition to and anger about taxes strikes me as completely theoretical: it’s not derived from specific knowledge of tax codes or tax rates or how many services you got in return for the taxes you paid. It’s a more diffuse anger based on assumptions that the government is always out to over-tax you and that your life would be a lot better off if you could just reduce the tax burden and take the ski boat and bedroom set you just won on CBS home in peace, unmolested by the IRS.
UPDATE: Drat! It appears this graph is out of date, at least. Reader Ben O. points out a NYT article saying that Snapple no longer uses high fructose corn syrup. ChartPorn is generally pretty good about attributions and all, so I didn’t look into it thoroughly before posting it. Sorry! I’m leaving the post up just so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to hide my mistake, but be aware of the sketchiness here.
From ChartPorn, a neat little graphic illustrating the relative amounts of different ingredients in a Snapple iced tea:
Ah, high fructose corn syrup. What would we consume in copious amounts without really thinking about it if we didn’t have you?
Crossposted at Jezebel.
Ajax was searching for majors on College Board, a website aimed at helping people get into and through college. She wanted to search for colleges with women’s studies majors and when she typed “women” into the keyword field, the search function returned two majors: women’s studies and fashion design.
This would make perfect sense if the search function returned only women’s studies since it has “women” in the name and all. But fashion design? It suggests that somehow fashion design has been marked as a major-for- or about-women, but no other major has.
What about, say, history? Nope, no women in that.
Psychology? Well, there is a Psych of Women class. But, otherwise no.
Economics? Don’t make me laugh!
Queer Studies? Afro-Am? Wait? Women are gay!? And black!?
Politics? Oh honey, don’t worry your pretty little head about it!
Literature? Oh yeah! We forgot literature! Let’s slap a “women” tag on that one and call it a day.
UPDATE: Brenden L. went to the website and typed in men. Guess what he got?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.