A recent article from the LA Daily News discusses the Alvarez death penalty case in California and the recent verdict to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Juan Manuel Alvarez, 29, was charged with eleven counts of murder in connection with the Glendale train crash that occurred just north of downtown Los Angeles in 2005. The crash was the deadliest in MetroLink history, killing 11 people. 

More about the Glendale train crash…

The LA Daily News writes: 

University of Colorado at Boulder sociologist Michael Radelet, one of the nation’s leading criminologists and most-cited experts on the death penalty, said that often the extent or even the depravity of the crimes alone does not guarantee death sentencing convictions.

“This case reminds me a great deal of the Jeffrey Daumer case in Wisconsin where so much emotional testimony was allowed during the sentencing phase but Daumer wound up (with) 15 life terms in prison and eventually died there,” said Radelet.

“In this case, the jury agreed that this guy is going to die – it’s just going to be in prison and a few years down the road.”

Read the full article. 

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports on the difficulty graduates face finding employment after completing college. Some of these students are choosing programs like the Peace Corps which are becoming increasingly difficult to be placed in.

Star-Tribune reporter Emma Carew writes:

This year, as the economy hit a downturn and employers cut jobs instead of creating them, a record number of graduates applied to programs that try to change the world — something experts believe is a top priority for today’s youth.

At Teach For America, a two-year program that places college graduates in low-performing schools around the country, the number of applicants fell in 2007 but this year jumped 36 percent to nearly 25,000 would-be teachers. Only 3,700 are placed. When the program began in 1990, 2,500 students applied. Even the Peace Corps, now in its 47th year, has had a 14 percent increase in applicants so far this year over last.

And the sociological commentary…

Teresa Swartz, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, said current college graduates are experiencing an extended period of adolescence, as the gap between high school and adulthood widens.

It’s harder for students to make livable wages right out of school, so they spend a few years exploring, she said.

Read more.

Check out this past Sunday’s episode of ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,’ on National Public Radio where one of the quiz questions references the work of Contexts Magazine contributor, sociologist Robin Simon.

Listen online.

The Times Online (UK) recently published an article entitled, ‘Paranoia has taken over child protection,’ marking yet another alarming reflection on the fear that grips so many parents in the 21st century.

Times writer India Knight writes,

We don’t even trust ourselves to raise our own children: we need books written by childcare “professionals” and television programmes featuring advice from child-less “experts”. In actual fact we know a great deal more than these charlatans, but since we don’t any longer trust instinct we genuinely believe that our vast repository of knowledge (and that of our mothers, sisters, aunts, grannies, friends) is worthless and that a newborn baby is better off with a strict routine dreamt up by someone with a financial motive.

In a report co-authored with Jennie Bristow a few weeks ago, the sociologist Frank Furedi, lamenting the demise of trust, mentioned as an example a mother whose child was invited over to play at a new friend’s house. The parents reassured the mother that they were “cool” – they’d passed a CRB check. I find this chilling.

Visit Furedi’s website and learn more about this sociologist’s new book.

The latest issue of Newsweek surveys a number of recent economic studies which suggest that economic growth may have a great deal to do with attitudes of a nation’s people. Newsweek writer Stefan Theil writes,

Much of the worldwide economic and political debate these days circle around ensuring continued growth—which, it’s hoped, will help various countries escape the global downturn, create more jobs and finance the rising cost of social services. What the conversation overlooks is that it turns out some countries might not want to grow.

These recent studies have been best summarized by Meinhard Miegel, of the think tank Denwerk Zukunft, who found that “while two thirds of Germans favor economic growth in principle, only about a sixth of them are willing to work for it. The rest value leisure, safety and early retirement over work and achievement. Given these attitudes, says Miegel, the popular idea that a low-birthrate country like Germany can grow its way out of the rising costs associated with an aging population ‘is reckless and built on sand.'”

But where does Weber come in? Theil continues…

Miegel might be unduly pessimistic, but he is part of a growing movement of experts who argue that economic growth is actually dependent on a state of mind. In fact, the idea goes back to Max Weber, the German sociologist who argued more than a century ago that England’s Protestant work ethic gave rise to modern capitalism. Today’s Weberians aren’t sociologists wielding historical arguments, however, but economists, pollsters and biologists working with actual numbers and data sets. Their interest in how personal attitudes might affect growth is part of the broader reinvention of economics, in which the classical view—that people make rational choices in a world of perfect information—is coming under increased scrutiny. The movement also reflects rising concern over whether growth can be increased—especially now with the ugly specter of stagflation in large parts of the globe.

Economists now claim Weber as their own…sociologists don’t work with ‘actual numbers and data sets?’

Read on.

CNN reports:

From the frontiers of mirth research, scholars offer these words of comfort: If you are mortified of dancing for fear of being the butt of jokes, don’t worry, you are far from alone. There’s even a word for it — gelotophobia. Sound like a disease involving Italian ice cream? No, it’s the potentially debilitating fear of being laughed at. This condition — the term comes from gelos, Greek for laughter — was among the topics discussed this week at a four-day meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies, an Oakland, Calif.-based collective of psychologists, sociologists, linguists and other academics who probe funniness from every conceivable angle

The setting for all this debate is the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of “Don Quixote,” the mad knight who was always good for a laugh as he tilted at windmills. The president of the humor society, British sociologist Christie Davies, offered insights Tuesday on the state of humor in today’s world. Among other things, he said, jokes in eastern Europe were a lot better when the communists ran the show.

“Once you have a democracy with free speech, you have fewer jokes,” said Davies, an emeritus professor at the University of Reading, in England. “Jokes, in many ways, are a way of getting around restrictions on what you can say. That was a very important factor in eastern Europe.”

The full story.

A recent broadcast from Minnesota Public Radio‘s Midmorning program, titled “Women, Earning Power, and the Economy,” took an in-depth look at the complex factors that determine how women are faring in today’s economy. In an attempt to discern the what has the greatest impact on women’s earning potential, this piece discusses a number of possible reasons beyond conventional explanations such as marital status and number of children.

This broadcast includes commentary from two sociologists: Leslie McCall, professor of sociology at Northwestern University and Maria Kefalas, professor of sociology and director of the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention at St. Joseph’s University.

Listen online.

Russel Ogden, a sociologist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, studies people with terminal illnesses who choose to take their own lives.

Ogden’s research has received significant media attention, including a recent piece from Inside Higher Education. Kwantlen Polytechnic University is trying to prevent Ogden from observing assisted suicides despite the approval he received from an ethics review board at the university. Currently, Ogden is barred from carrying out his research by the university, which has equated Ogden’s proposed observation of assisted suicides with participating in them himself.

Inside Higher Education reports:

The dispute has become public in the last week, with Canadian faculty groups charging that the university’s actions are a violation of academic freedom, and that the principles cited by the university endanger not only Ogden’s research, but the work of social scientists throughout the country who study illegal acts in part by observation. Sociologists in the United States say that the case is important for them as well — and illustrates how studying some of the cutting edge issues in bioethics can create challenging ethical and political issues for academics and universities.

Ogden is no stranger to controversy or to suicide, which he has been studying for 18 years. He first became interested in the subject when “as a teen, I had a couple of close friends who took their lives,” he said. “Those suicides had a profound impact on me.” Ogden doesn’t romanticize suicide. “I regret that they died. I wish that they were still here.”

But with legal and political debates growing about whether people with incurable diseases should be able to end their lives — and with some people not waiting for the law, and doing so — Ogden found the topic to be one in need of sociological inquiry.

Read the full story

MSNBC reports on the recent trend towards more mothers undergoing dramatic cosmetic surgery to alter their bodies post-birth.

The trend…

Among women in their 30s, there was a 9 percent to 12 percent rise in tummy tucks and breast surgery between 2005 and 2006. In 2007, 59 percent of American Society of Plastic Surgeons members surveyed said they saw an increase in patients seeking post-childbirth cosmetic surgery procedures in the previous three years. “Many of my patients are young moms who are doing their best to take care of themselves, but their bodies have gone through some irreversible changes that they find discouraging,” says David Stoker, M.D., of Marina Plastic Surgery Associates in Marina del Rey, Calif.

The sociologist’s commentary…

Others point out that many mothers today are not “just” mothers — they have professional and personal lives outside of the home and don’t want to look like the stereotypical mom. They want to feel better about their bodies, and that desire shouldn’t be dismissed or criticized, says sociologist Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Ph.D., author of “Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture” (Rutgers University Press). “I don’t think we should judge women for wanting to look like they did before they got pregnant,” Pitts-Taylor adds. “Social approval is empowering in our society.”

Read on…