Archive: 2011

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a link to the website If It Were My Home. The site allows you to select two nations and then explains how your life would compare if you lived in each one in terms of rates of HIV/AIDS, employment, energy consumption, infant mortality, class inequality, and other factors (based on CIA data). As an example, Dmitriy chose to compare the U.S. and Ukraine, “the 2 greatest countries in the world, as determined by the poll conducted in my head”:

You can then choose one of the items for more details; I selected life expectancy:

The site is set up with the U.S. as one of the default comparisons, but at the top there’s a button that lets you select a non-U.S. comparison. (Note: Reader Parodie says it appears to detect whatever country you’re accessing the site from and set that as one of the default comparisons.) It’s a fun site that you can spend quite a bit of time playing around with.

UPDATE: Just a caution–a couple of readers seem to have found situations where the math doesn’t add up in the comparisons of some countries. And other readers noted that this does an enormous amount of averaging, which definitely hides the differences in quality of life in various countries, which are so extreme in some nations that “averages” might be nearly meaningless.

I bumped up against two pieces of information today regarding caloric intake. I can’t confirm either, but I found both quite interesting. First, State Info features a map showing the average number of calories consumed each day in different countries across the globe. In the U.S., for example, the average is 3,754, in Argentina it is 2,959, in China it is 2,940, and in Congo it is 1,606.  Citizens of some countries, then, eat more than twice as many calories as citizens of others.

The fact that the average in almost every country exceeds the 2,000 calorie goal suggested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is fascinating in itself.

I was surprised at the average number of calories consumed in the U.S., where I live.  But then I came across the second graphic at GOOD which purports to reveal the number of calories and distribution of food types in the average school lunch and prison meal.  The comparison between the two is interesting enough, but I was struck by just how high the numbers were.  An average of 1,400 calories in your typical school lunch may very well indeed translate into over 3,000 calories a day.

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.

A number of celebrities, including Meghan McCain — daughter of Senator John McCain of Arizona — recently posed naked (visible from the shoulders up) in a skin cancer prevention awareness ad. Meghan’s father had to have melanoma removed from his face, prompting her interest in the issue. Here’s the ad:

Christie W. sent in a segment (via The Pragmatic Progressive Forum) from Glenn Beck’s radio show in which he reacts to the video, and particularly to the image of Meghan McCain in it…by pretending to throw up violently. In this 8-minute clip from his show (audio only), Beck repeatedly pretends to puke, and someone says, at about 5:28, “Has she thought about, like, a burqa, so she’s extra safe?” and “I’m not sure that covers enough, because you can get skin cancer of the eyeballs” (I can’t distinguish all the voices, so I’m not sure who is speaking). They say she looks like “John McCain with long blonde hair” and, at 6:35, mockingly refer to her as “luscious” repeatedly:

Criticizing Glenn Beck for being mean-spirited is really a pointless task — I might as well go yell at the tree in my yard for shedding leaves — so I’m not going to expend much energy on it. But it’s a good example of policing of women’s bodies and fat-shaming (when McCain is described as “luscious,” it clearly isn’t a compliment). Who cares about the message? Never mind about skin cancer! Those women are so gross they make me sick!

Sigh.

Over the weekend I came across an interesting video of Mike Rowe, creator and host of Dirty Jobs. Rowe recently testified before the U.S. Senate’s Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. He made an impassioned case for the type of difficult but essential jobs he highlights on his show, as well as the vocational and other training programs that prepare workers for them — programs facing tremendous cuts due to state budget crises. While we hear a lot about the need to increase the level of 4-year college degree completion in the U.S., Rowe argues that skilled plumbers and welders are every bit as essential to our economic development, and that such jobs are worthy of respect and public support:

In this 16-minute video Professor of Political Science Wendy Brown does a clear and concise job of outlining eight frightening changes that privatization will bring to higher education. The talk is part of a six-part “Save the University” teach-in at UC Berkeley.

Via John McMahon at Facile Gestures.

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.

Nico G. sent along a sweet seven-minute film short about a little girl who wants to win the heart of a boy, and does so by his equal instead of his object. It’s cute.

Directed by Michelle Lehman, 2008 award winner Tropfest Australia

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. sent in a link to an article by David Leonhardt in the New York Times about differences in income between various religious groups in the U.S. This graph shows the percent of households earning more than $75,000 a year (the numbers along the side; and note that, somewhat counterintuitively, the shade of each color gets lighter as the percentage gets higher), as well as the percent of each group with a college degree (along the top). In order from least to most educated, we have Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, the unaffiliated, Baptists, Muslims, Catholics, Mormons, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, those who identify as secular, Orthodox Christians, Buddhists, Unitarians, Episcopalians, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, and Hindus. Not surprisingly, income is pretty strongly correlated with education:

The data come from a 2007 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey (which we’ve posted on before), though the NYT reports that they did smaller surveys in 2010 and 2011 and found similar patterns.

Also see our posts on the demographics of the non-religious and religion, income, and 2008 Presidential voting behavior.

Kristie V. let us know about a new item in Skechers’ Shape-Ups line of shoes. If you aren’t familiar with Shape-Ups, they’re the sneakers with the specially-shaped soles that supposedly firm your butt as you walk. Now Skechers has introduced a line of Shape-Ups targeted at tween girls (via Shine):

I was particularly struck by the scene at 23 seconds in, where the girl confidently bounces along in her Shape-Up, trailed by exhausted-looking boys dressed up as food:

Apparently Shape-Ups not only firm your butt, they give you the ability to reject food as well.

Though Skechers apparently claims to be targeting childhood obesity, at least two independent studies found that these types of shoes have no benefit in terms of fitness, whether measured by calories burned or level of muscle toning. But as Morning Gloria at Jezebel points out, girls are never too young to be socialized into buying products of questionable effectiveness — and avoiding food — in the hopes of “looking good and having fun,” as the ad put it.