The Dearth of Conservative Professors Explained

in Politics | February 20th, 2008

Lib­er­als out­num­ber con­ser­v­a­tives in the acad­e­my. That’s a known fact. What explains this diver­gence? Some have attrib­uted it to lib­er­als cre­at­ing a hos­tile envi­ron­ment for con­ser­v­a­tives. But new research calls that view into ques­tion and offers an intrigu­ing alter­na­tive expla­na­tion.

As described in The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, Matthew Woess­ner (a con­ser­v­a­tive aca­d­e­m­ic) and April Kel­ly-Woess­ner (a lib­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic) looked at sur­veys com­plet­ed by 15,569 col­lege seniors, and what an analy­sis of the data sug­gests is that “the per­son­al pri­or­i­ties of those on the left are more com­pat­i­ble with pur­su­ing a Ph.D.” “Lib­er­al­ism is more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a desire for excite­ment, an inter­est in cre­ative out­lets, and an aver­sion to a struc­tured work envi­ron­ment. Con­ser­v­a­tives express greater inter­est in finan­cial suc­cess and stronger desires to raise fam­i­lies. From this per­spec­tive, the ide­o­log­i­cal imbal­ance that per­me­ates much of acad­e­mia may be some­what intractable.” Or, put dif­fer­ent­ly, this imbal­ance may not be going away any time soon.

To delve fur­ther into their research, you can read their report online here.

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Paris at Night

in Uncategorized | February 13th, 2008

They don’t call it the city of light for noth­ing.

The Vegetable Orchestra

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 13th, 2008

It’s right up there with the Ukulele Orches­tra per­form­ing ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it.’ Both are added to our YouTube Playlist, which now has 130 sub­scribers, which is not bad for a fledg­ling col­lec­tion.

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The Secret History of Silicon Valley

in History, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science | February 12th, 2008

What set the stage for Sil­i­con Val­ley to change the entire land­scape of tech­nol­o­gy? What made com­pa­nies like Google, Yahoo and Hewlett Packard pos­si­ble? Accord­ing to this talk pre­sent­ed at Google by Steve Blank, it all goes back to the after­math of World War II. It starts when Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and its engineering/electronics depart­ment began to focus heav­i­ly on mil­i­tary R&D. And it con­tin­ues dur­ing the Kore­an War, when the Uni­ver­si­ty starts devel­op­ing new tech­nolo­gies that con­tribute to mil­i­tary intel­li­gence (or what Blank calls “spook work”) and var­i­ous weapons sys­tems. The next thing you know you’ve got a brain trust in the Bay Area that starts spin­ning out com­pa­nies lik Fairchild Semi­con­duc­tor, the father of all semi­con­duc­tor com­pa­nies, and, with that, Sil­i­con Val­ley becomes Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Psychedelics Revisited

in Science, Video - Science | February 10th, 2008

On Fri­day, we men­tioned the BBC pro­duc­tion called “What on Earth is Wrong with Grav­i­ty.” Below is anoth­er video by the same pro­duc­ers called “Psy­che­del­ic Sci­ence,” which sur­veys the past and present of psy­che­del­ic drugs, and the new era of sci­en­tists explor­ing ways to use these drugs again for ther­a­peu­tic pur­pos­es (i.e., the treat­ment of schiz­o­phre­nia and addic­tion).

via Boing Boing

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Hitchcock 2008

in Film | February 8th, 2008

What would it look like if you stuck today’s stars in Hitch­cock­’s clas­sic films? Van­i­ty Fair tried to fig­ure it out.

The Mystery of Gravity

in Uncategorized | February 7th, 2008

Cour­tesy of the BBC, this video fea­tures Bri­an Cox, a par­ti­cle physi­cist and ex D:Ream key­board play­er, who trav­els across the US, fir­ing lasers at the moon and going wild in the Ari­zona desert, all in order to under­stand the deep secrets of grav­i­ty — some­thing that nei­ther New­ton nor Ein­stein ful­ly under­stood. It’s in grav­i­ty, Cox thinks, that we can find the mean­ing and log­ic of the Uni­verse.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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Don’t Forget to Vote

in Politics, Video - Politics/Society, YouTube | February 4th, 2008

If you’re a res­i­dent of a Super Tues­day state, we hope you can find some time to pull the lever tomor­row. Also, we hope you’ll for­give (at least) one more polit­i­cal post before Super Tues­day. What­ev­er your polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, the video below is a com­pelling exam­ple of new media at work. Accord­ing to the New York Times’ polit­i­cal blog, the lead singer of the Black Eyed Peas round­ed up 30 or so celebri­ties and put togeth­er this video set to the sound­track of Barack Oba­ma’s con­ces­sion speech in New Hamp­shire. Because the group worked for free and edit­ed the video on their own, they turned the project around in two days. The effect is pow­er­ful (and the video is added to our YouTube Playlist). You can see Oba­ma’s orig­i­nal speech here.

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Philosopher Attack Ads: Kant and Nietzsche Go Negative in ’08

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | February 4th, 2008

On the eve of Super Tues­day, things are get­ting ugly. Immanuel Kant has gone neg­a­tive on Friedrich Niet­zsche (see below), and the Niet­zsche cam­paign has wast­ed no time respond­ing. These enlight­ened attacks ads have been added to our YouTube Playlist.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Enlight­en­ment on iTunes: The Phi­los­o­phy of Immanuel Kant
• Ideas and Cul­ture Pod­casts
• Oth­er Phi­los­o­phy Arti­cles

NASA to Beam Beatles’ Song into Space

in Music | February 2nd, 2008

“Across the Uni­verse” was writ­ten by John Lennon in 1969. On Mon­day, NASA will beam “Across the Uni­verse” lit­er­al­ly across the uni­verse, straight to Polaris, the North Star. Accord­ing to Wired Mag­a­zine, the song trav­el­ing at the speed of light will take 431 years to reach its final des­ti­na­tion, which is a mere 2.5 quadrillion miles away. Lennon must be smil­ing some­where.

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