tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-193463662012-02-02T07:46:19.061-07:00See sidebar for accessing my original data-rich blog, and its table of contents (PayPal button below)agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger9671100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-12561761968428182632012-02-02T03:25:00.003-07:002012-02-02T03:38:16.337-07:00

On the topic of how socially avoidant women have become, when did all these women-only gyms start popping up? Curves was founded in 1992, and began franchising in '95. That suggests it's part of the cocooning trend since the early '90s, one aspect of which is the re-segregation of the sexes.I couldn't easily find data on numbers of women-only gyms across the years, but the two sources that

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72567584341551358022012-01-30T23:35:00.007-07:002012-01-31T00:13:34.083-07:00

On Norah Jones as an example of the rise in fearful-avoidant women, Ziel left a comment about how painfully uncomfortable she is in this duet for "Love Hurts" with the admittedly oddball Keith Richards. She should've just gotten over it for a few minutes in order to give a good performance for the crowd, but she totally freezes.Compare that to the 1983 duet, "We've Got Tonight", by Kenny Rogers

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33042625706291000382012-01-30T01:13:00.002-07:002012-01-30T02:15:14.942-07:00

Over Christmas vacation my family watched a bunch of old home movies from when my brothers and I were little, around 1982 to '85. We made movies after that as well, but they must be under a pile somewhere. The last I remember was probably Christmas of 1990 or '91 being taped, and anything after that would have been very sporadic.My mother has a DVD compilation of all of her old 8mm home movies

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22102823530547462272012-01-29T23:56:00.001-07:002012-01-29T23:58:49.080-07:00

Here's the abstract from a newer paper by the always enlightening Stan Liebowitz (free PDF):The file-sharing literature has focused mainly on whether file-sharing has decreased record sales, with less attention paid to the size of any decline. Although there is still some contention, most studies have concluded that file-sharing has decreased record sales. What has not been noted is that most

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-1387206003659617392012-01-29T03:16:00.004-07:002012-01-29T03:20:09.894-07:00

I think I've already got two other graphs like this on the blog somewhere, but the 2010 data are in.The first drop-off takes place in 1990, actually a bit before the peak in the crime rate. This is another example of cocooning behavior slightly preceding a drop in violence rates. During the mid-2000s, it looked like it might have been slowing down, but it's only fallen at a faster rate within the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-14138081881258364112012-01-28T02:20:00.001-07:002012-01-28T02:21:39.580-07:00

Stumbled upon this hit from the Jazz Age, where a clingy girl wonders why her crush doesn't make a move on her, even after sending him such forward signals:"He's So Unusual" by Helen Kane, 1929In tone it's not so different from this hit from the New Wave Age:"Johnny Are You Queer" by Josie Cotton, 1982One of the biggest changes that people undergo when violence rates start rising is to desire

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-23273126093888222742012-01-25T01:49:00.004-07:002012-01-25T02:05:23.278-07:00

That wasn't the question I had in mind when looking at these data, but one I realized I could take a crack at after picking apart something that I had felt like looking at for no reason at all. *The General Social Survey asked two questions about regular smoking -- do you regularly smoke now (SMOKE), or if you don't now, did you ever regularly smoke in the past (EVSMOKE). Adding the "Yes" answers

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-54028887476267215852012-01-23T15:09:00.000-07:002012-01-23T15:11:00.214-07:00

In a move that recalls the anti-social drive-in culture of the mid-century, Burger King has begun testing a home delivery service.There's virtually nothing to be saved in terms of time or money. You have to live within 10 minutes of the restaurant, and they only aim to get your food to you within 30 minutes. So on your own, less than 10 minutes there and back, plus the time to get your food

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-77366938828055746982012-01-23T03:38:00.000-07:002012-01-23T03:39:59.261-07:00

East Asians and Central Americans flock to all sorts of low-paying jobs, but you hardly ever see them driving taxis or trucks (long-distance, anyway).The stereotypical cab driver is from north and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and the more northern and western parts of South Asia. Occasionally from Western Africa. The stereotypical truck driver is a restless Scotch-Irish hillbilly.Being

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-24217094846606906262012-01-18T23:46:00.004-07:002012-01-18T23:48:30.483-07:00

"Imagine a world without free knowledge" -- if that means a world without Wikipedia, well, it would be like 2003. Even if it meant a world without the web or the internet itself, it would be like 1994.We haven't gotten any richer, happier, or more productive since either date, so really who cares? You'd lose the minor buzz you feel from visiting your favorite sites, but they're more than

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-77243912988184794112012-01-17T13:29:00.010-07:002012-01-17T13:51:35.902-07:00

After listening to this EconTalk podcast with Nassim Taleb on how sometimes a little stress can make a system stronger, I remembered some data I looked at but never wrote up. Might as well now.The property they talk about is hormesis, where some stress to a system, even a lot of it, can make the system stronger, although there is usually a limit that can be reached. For example, stressing your

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-71501172612047906302012-01-16T04:04:00.001-07:002012-01-16T04:23:35.504-07:00

Those sure felt like different times, compared to the '90s, early and late 2000s, and so far into this decade. It may not have been a reversal of the trend over the past 20 years toward more trivial, off-putting, and meaningless popular culture, but it sure was a breath of fresh air.For a brief time, a decent minority left their silly lifestyle centers and soulless big box centers, heading back

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-13312023409874758342012-01-13T02:01:00.004-07:002012-01-13T02:22:04.458-07:00

One of the striking features about our culture since the early 1990s is how juvenile people's interests have become, among younger and older alike. Going from a world where the most popular icons for children were He-Man and G.I. Joe to one where they are the Teletubbies and SpongeBob is sad enough, but it's not the end of the world if elementary school kids prefer kiddie junk.What's really

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-31677163670026223962012-01-11T01:04:00.002-07:002012-01-11T01:11:56.596-07:00

One of the most striking changes over the past 20 years is how little importance young people attach to being popular anymore, part of the general shift toward cocooning.It wasn't an overnight switch. In the mid-'90s, the pretty girls in my middle and high school still made some effort to mingle with a wide variety of people, to be more broadly liked and accepted, and so did the athletic guys.

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-65341507739147556742012-01-05T22:26:00.004-07:002012-01-05T22:48:55.390-07:00

This Christmas vacation I've spent a lot of time re-connecting with the places no one visits anymore, like the woods, especially the real thing that isn't right alongside a bike path or road, where you have to trample through leaves, sticks, and logs, and where you often have to cross a creek by jumping or very steadily walking across a fallen tree.I don't hardly recognize most of the stores in

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-30789826275207851912012-01-01T23:51:00.003-07:002012-01-02T00:27:51.876-07:00

Looking over songs that were popular after the 1992 peak in the violence rate -- as the culture became a lot less energetic, carefree, and emotionally open -- some stand out for being catchy rather than repulsive or saccharine. They sound like they came from a slightly earlier time, and in fact they did.During the 1991-92 period, one phase of the zeitgeist was grinding to a halt and the society

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-57205639704458301282011-12-31T00:29:00.002-07:002011-12-31T00:31:25.552-07:00

This is an update to a similar post that went up through 2009, now including the past two years.Among the 10 highest-grossing movies released in a given year, here is the number of them that show at least partial nudity, according to the parental advisory section of their IMDb entries:The last two years continue the trend since 1989 of showing hardly anything. The median and mode for this period

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-35806124913458883472011-12-29T23:14:00.000-07:002011-12-29T23:15:47.798-07:00

My hunch is that it was sometime in the early-mid 1990s, during the shift in the entire zeitgeist.Halloween changed from a carnival holiday for children, testing and proving the strength of guest-host relations within the community, to a one-upsmanship contest among grown-ups to see whose costume is the most ironic, clever, and effortful, or which female can whore for the most attention while

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-85083475671375705472011-12-29T22:09:00.000-07:002011-12-29T22:16:59.739-07:00

I might write this up in broader terms later with pointers to some social psychology studies, but I just got back from a long series of family gatherings and don't have the state of mind to focus too much.The standard story in psychology about "deindividuation" -- losing yourself in the crowd-feeling, no longer very aware of yourself as a cut-off individual -- is that it leads to all kinds of

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-73637494715450896422011-12-16T05:06:00.009-07:002011-12-16T05:42:44.676-07:00

When people see their world getting more dangerous, they feel a stronger impulse to seek out and provide mutual aid, specifically in a face-to-face way rather than by relying on distant, abstract institutions. In the middle of a crime wave, such institutions don't seem to be very good at their most basic job of ensuring physical security, so people withdraw their faith in technocracy.By pursuing

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-71283616515274746152011-12-14T15:39:00.000-07:002011-12-14T15:40:04.518-07:00

In a recent podcast on sex differences, psychologist Roy Baumeister mentions that men and women feel lonely for different reasons. Men feel a greater desire to belong to large, broad groups, and they therefore feel less socially satisfied when community life starts to evaporate. Women are not as alienated because they prefer fewer but closer friends, and you don't need a rich, extensive community

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-85803141746721853022011-12-14T03:17:00.007-07:002011-12-14T03:30:38.121-07:00

It remains an unsolved mystery what possessed men to wear such short shorts during the '60s through the '80s, so let's take a crack at it. I'm focusing on men because it was a much more extreme departure from the norm, and because it didn't have to do with trying to look sexy. So it requires a more thoughtful answer.From the timing of its rise and fall, it looks like it's tied to the trend in the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-66472450271321829342011-12-12T03:11:00.002-07:002011-12-12T03:30:39.921-07:00

Loneliness is a subjective feeling that your actual level of social interaction isn't meeting your desired level. So, you feel more lonely when you raise your desired level higher, or when your actual level falls. And conversely, you feel less lonely when you desire less interaction in the first place, or when your actual level rises.The trend in people's actual level of social interaction, over

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-37825236810961656772011-12-10T05:31:00.015-07:002011-12-10T05:50:56.837-07:00

One of the more striking signs of how disconnected people are today, especially in the boy-girl context, is the hover hand (click for endless hilarious examples):In a situation where hand-on-body contact should be fine, even called for, the guy wimps out and doesn't touch her. There are degrees of hover-handedness: he might drape his hand over her shoulder, leaving it dangling in the air, or

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-48891753073161476072011-12-08T04:25:00.001-07:002011-12-08T04:30:50.971-07:00

After John Lennon was shot, the other former Beatles released two memorial songs, "All Those Years Ago" and "Here Today". Given how close they were to him, how widely worshiped he was across Western societies, and how abruptly and senselessly his life was cut short, you might expect to hear something somber or even grief-stricken. Yet they don't go there. The emotional coloring is mellow, cooling

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-20644834600871440472011-12-06T06:12:00.002-07:002011-12-06T06:22:32.345-07:00

The Western world has become obsessed with NO SPOILERS since sometime in the 1990s.When exactly? Hard to tell, but there was a 1991 episode of the Simpsons where, in a flashback to 1980, Homer is leaving the theater after seeing The Empire Strikes Back and blabs that Darth Vader is Luke's father, angering the people in line who haven't seen it yet. I'm almost certain that was projecting the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33224818124659380022011-11-28T23:58:00.006-07:002011-11-29T11:05:19.254-07:00

From a bird's-eye-view the Northeast Asian peoples are all remarkably similar, lack of variation being a hallmark of intensive agriculture because taking risks does not pay off, only the same monotonous grind day-in and day-out. So a variety of types playing different strategies will not be maintained as they are in pastoralist or horticulturalist groups, where you can certainly do well by

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-24496922647485877032011-11-28T04:13:00.007-07:002011-11-28T04:17:34.928-07:00

One of the greatest misconceptions about periods of increasing safety, such as the 1950s, is the view that people are out and about, chatting up their neighbors, strolling down Main Street and socializing with fellow pedestrians, and so on. In reality, the falling-crime period of the mid-'30s through the late '50s was one of ever greater cocooning. The TV show Mad Men depicts this very well,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-71974841155899455162011-11-25T03:06:00.011-07:002011-11-25T04:11:45.499-07:00

Examples of people cocooning themselves more over the past 20 years are too numerous to list. But one apparent counter-example is Black Friday -- even if only for a day, aren't people out-and-about, strengthening social bonds by buying gifts for others?For awhile I didn't have too good of a feel for what this day has been about. I've avoided shopping on Black Friday for a very long time because

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-61950928797630239262011-11-24T05:58:00.002-07:002011-11-24T06:04:55.528-07:00

Many of our most visible and cherished "traditions" don't go back very far at all, showing that traditionalism isn't about maintaining whatever there was in ye olden days, but about preserving the good innovations of earlier eras (and weeding out the bad ones).A good example are large-scale Thanksgiving parades, where all of the major ones were founded during the 1920s and early '30s. The Macy's

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-74487590231023852512011-11-22T04:19:00.006-07:002011-11-22T04:52:12.406-07:00

Big thanks to commenter Miguel Madeira who linked to an article on global differences in personality by Schmitt et al. (2007). These kinds of papers pop up now and again, and it doesn't conflict with the gist that I got from earlier ones. This paper has much better graphs and tables, though.There's a lot that could be covered, but I'll stick to clearing up a major misconception about East Asian

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-40492741327168671002011-11-21T02:32:00.005-07:002011-11-21T02:43:54.855-07:00

In the first post on how the early 20th-C wave of violence gave birth to Expressionism, I went over its core traits and explained why artists would move that way during a period of rising crime, especially during the second half when the future looks more apocalyptic.Now I'll show how the same basic styles emerged yet again during the later 20th-C wave of violence, particularly during the second

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-27352399247224966822011-11-15T06:09:00.000-07:002011-11-15T06:10:07.035-07:00

Looking through some guidebooks for international businessmen who have to be hypersensitive to cultural differences in non-verbal communication, it seems like there's a single general factor, that some cultures are closer and others distant. This includes lots of separate things like touching others more, standing closer to others, making more prolonged eye contact, showing more facial

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-57836762066450732372011-11-14T03:24:00.014-07:002011-11-14T13:31:19.480-07:00

From the turn of the 20th C. through the early 1930s, there was a crime wave that went against the centuries-long decline in violence. It was somewhat uneven, hitting some countries and not others, or some countries only for a portion of the period. (Here in America, the homicide rate rose steadily from at least 1900 to a peak in 1933.)Times of rising violence rates produce visual art that is,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-73476826844400037772011-11-09T03:13:00.006-07:002011-11-09T03:26:35.884-07:00

Yes it would be silly to treat something like sleepovers so seriously in themselves that the terms "birth" and "death" would be appropriate. However, they're part of the larger family of guest-host relations, which are central to a cohesive community and a meaningful life. So, as with the case of trick-or-treating, we can use sleepovers as a window into broader social life. Because it's costly to

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-36135339313560749552011-11-02T03:20:00.009-06:002011-11-02T03:29:16.587-06:00

Over the past couple years, I've looked enough at how the trend in the violence rate affects the narrative and verbal parts of the culture. After looking at the history of car shapes and the Art Deco revival of the later 1970s through the early '90s, I figure I might as well start focusing more on how visual culture responds to the trend in the violence rate.Three obvious case studies like the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-91473063819534329462011-10-31T04:14:00.000-06:002011-10-31T04:15:15.505-06:00

Even long generations like Baby Boomers and Generation X tend to have sub-divisions within them. The earlier Boomers were the ones who took all the counter-culture stuff seriously, while those born from about 1958 to 1964 couldn't have cared less then or at any time since. The Gen X-ers born in the later '60s and early '70s didn't spend as much of their young adulthood during the fagged-out

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-47834932963083439012011-10-30T06:19:00.000-06:002011-10-30T06:20:17.470-06:00

You couldn't pick a worse time to try to socialize in a night club, bar, house party, etc., than the Saturday around Halloween, when everyone goes out.Before the great wimpification of the '90s, it used to be a "rite of rebellion," where the normal order of things is inverted for a little while, until everyone goes back to life as usual. We all recognize the need for the occasional break from our

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-14616846321412069642011-10-24T01:24:00.003-06:002011-10-24T01:25:47.413-06:00

Having gone over the motivation last week, let's look at when great actors were born, and so what kind of world they came of age in. I'm using AFI's nominations for their 100 stars list, which includes 250 men and 250 women. I don't care who ranked where, just whether or not they made the nominations. They're all classical Hollywood stars, so no one is born after 1950. Perhaps they didn't want to

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-41571973650538085112011-10-19T03:25:00.000-06:002011-10-19T03:26:13.143-06:00

(I'm chopping this up into a short series of posts. In the next couple days I'll present and analyze some data. Today is just the motivation.)To be truly convincing in their roles, actors must both have a wealth of emotions and personal experiences to draw on (or else they could only play themselves), and they must be comfortable enough in stepping out of their ordinary persona and assuming that

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-41196034381846737112011-10-17T03:57:00.010-06:002011-10-17T04:30:37.058-06:00

The post below on changing car shapes during rising vs. falling-crime times got me thinking about design in general. Later I'll write up something more detailed about how architecture changes as the violence rate swings up or down. For now it's enough to note that when people see the world getting more dangerous, they want and make visual art that has more color, ornamentation, and allusions to

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-71850085071097300842011-10-15T03:26:00.009-06:002011-10-15T15:54:03.505-06:00

There is almost no picture of pre-1950 life in the popular understanding, causing us to be blind to the cyclical nature of society. In an earlier post I showed that an easy rule-of-thumb to cross that border is to subtract 60 years from a more recent year, since that's how long it was between the same points in the cycle.But to get a more vivid feel for it, it may be easier to just watch Sunset

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-46827316173121156242011-10-09T05:22:00.002-06:002011-10-09T05:27:56.466-06:00

That's a question in the comments to the post below. I take it to mean which songs embody the general feeling in the air. Well the '80s were part of the apocalyptic phase of the zeitgeist cycle, which began in the mid-'70s and lasted through the early '90s. That new worldview brings along all sorts of other changes in people's thinking, feeling, and behavior.Those features are what really set

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-1935790936992557152011-10-06T01:59:00.001-06:002011-10-06T02:10:40.863-06:00

The other day I heard that song for the first time in over 20 years, and haven't been able to get it out of my head since! You try to after a couple listens:This was probably the last big hit from a new wave band -- 1988, a good 4-5 years after the peak in '83-'84. And since so many new sounds were coming out back then, five years was a long time. Of course the differences are apparent too: the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-73740892433396604162011-10-04T03:05:00.004-06:002011-10-04T03:26:27.483-06:00

One of the biggest changes I've noticed in my own lifetime is the shift away from more slender females and toward more fleshy ones. We see this at the level of the average girl, celebrity sex symbols, porno chicks, phrases that guys use to describe what they like, and so on.Now I don't mean BMI, waist-to-hip ratio, etc. No existing measurement captures the intuitive sense of whether a girl has a

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-80676086299004947382011-09-30T03:06:00.003-06:002011-09-30T03:10:53.990-06:00

Same point as the post below, only now looking at 1960 to present. I let in more non-candy-bars this time since chocolate/nut/etc. candies were mostly perfected during the early 20th C. There were still some improvements to make, but most of the inventiveness in the past 50 years was in more sugar-based candies, not to mention snack cakes, cookies, and fruit snacks.We don't know what will be

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-37261276999076612852011-09-29T00:27:00.003-06:002011-09-29T00:32:40.159-06:00

I went to the supermarket to look for stuff I might buy later for trick-or-treaters and send to my nephew, and noticed there haven't been too many new candies from the past 15 to 20 years. We see greater cultural invention during periods of rising crime for all sorts of reasons, which I won't explore / review here. Is even candy included in this pattern?Thankfully there were two crime waves

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33659655818640601102011-09-26T14:54:00.001-06:002011-09-26T14:54:34.954-06:00

Those of us who grew up in trick-or-treating times took for granted how much trust and hospitality it took at the community level for the ritual to thrive.On the kids' side, both they and their parents had to have enough good faith in their neighbors to venture out in the first place. I don't mean that otherwise they might suspect their neighbors of slipping them poisoned candy, apples with razor

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72001927387586929722011-09-18T01:17:00.009-06:002011-09-18T01:25:32.818-06:00

Stumbled on this collection of pictures from malls across America, around 1989-'90. Look how many old people there are. And I don't mean old compared to the teenagers -- like, the early bird special crowd. Couples, groups of friends, even some loners sitting near each other.I've never forgotten that aspect of going to the mall during their heyday. It was just one sign of their carnivalesque

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-7378629305988328112011-09-13T23:26:00.001-06:002011-09-13T23:27:47.285-06:00

Scrolling through your Facebook feed is more boring than wading through emails back in the day, which at least had some point. So imagine the joy when I saw this hidden in there:Thank Jesus it's not another remake, and it looks like they aren't cluttering it with lame CGI like Lucas did when the original Star Wars trilogy was re-released in theaters.If I saw Ghostbusters when it first came out, I

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-18142516658791835812011-09-12T02:41:00.000-06:002011-09-12T02:42:09.031-06:00

What makes one zeitgeist different from another is mostly due to where each society was in the violence cycle. Was the violence rate at its peak, falling halfway to the nadir, etc.? So from a bird's-eye view, a snapshot of the nation during two peaks (or other matched points) will look similar.Then we can use the length between peaks to tell us how far back we should look to find a zeitgeist

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33327050239463108002011-09-10T14:43:00.004-06:002011-09-10T14:44:32.863-06:00

Here's the trend over time for the percent of books in Google's digital library (American English) that have the phrase "Pearl Harbor" or "September 11" --Within 7 years of Pearl Harbor, the attention that writers paid it had settled down to its long-term level, far lower than in the immediate aftermath of the attack. I assume the blip in 1991 is just a 50th anniversary thing.With 9/11, the print

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-20598699779251628932011-09-06T01:41:00.003-06:002011-09-06T01:41:55.064-06:00

One of those things that Everyone Knows Causes Violence is income equality, a slightly more highbrow version of the "poverty causes crime" canard. According to the theory, as the lower tiers of society see a greater gap between themselves and the upper tiers, they're more likely to feel envious, to feel like life's contests are more winner-take-all, etc., which makes them more willing to use

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-6262961937723617902011-08-29T01:22:00.003-06:002011-08-29T01:31:43.984-06:00

If young people build trust, it is through shared rites of passage. Some of these activities have existed for ages, although new ones seem to get introduced during the apocalyptic second half of a violence wave, when you really need to count on others. The last such time was the mid-1970s through the early '90s. Of that period's cultural inventions, my bet for which will prove to be an enduring

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-12450522096781224402011-08-25T01:16:00.002-06:002011-08-25T01:50:31.806-06:00

I remember being taken aback by this fact when reading Arthur De Vany's Hollywood Economics: In 1986, the combined share of the six classic [major movie studios]—at that point Paramount, Warner Bros., Columbia, Universal, Fox, and MGM/UA—fell to 64%, the lowest since the beginning of the Golden Age. Disney was in third place, behind only Paramount and Warners. Even including it as a seventh

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-86437004601548074972011-08-20T04:39:00.004-06:002011-08-20T05:13:10.019-06:00

Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., and RUN-DMC and Aerosmith, being very far back on the stage -- not letting-themselves-go enough, and too goofy, respectively. Chaka Khan only does back-up vocals with Steve Winwood on "Higher Love". I'm thinking more of a Riggs and Murtaugh, Rocky and Apollo, Foley-Taggart-Rosewood kind of team result. Heard the one below on the radio today, and it's got to be

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-87571326458110045362011-08-15T05:22:00.005-06:002011-08-15T05:36:12.116-06:00

Adults chastise adolescents for being too focused on the short term when playing the dating and mating game, but I wonder whether we're really so neglectful of cultivating longer-term prospects for marriage. Perhaps that's what mixed-sex friendships are when you're young -- an investment that only pays off later in life, when you're looking for stability and a soulmate. Now, it is true that when

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-51909214923205888322011-08-10T03:19:00.002-06:002011-08-10T03:25:51.384-06:00

Awhile ago I noticed that the telling of urban legends has been in decline since the early or mid-1990s, and that by now it is all but dead. Here I mean in the sense of a modern ghost story or bizarre cautionary tale of what happened to a friend of a friend, not in the vaguer sense of any old off-beat rumor. Data on the prevalence of urban legends are hard to come by, as oral storytelling

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-21473298026233189442011-08-01T08:35:00.003-06:002011-08-01T08:41:46.972-06:00

Better catch up fast like me if you haven't seen it on TV yet, you never know when Netflix is going to yank it from their streaming service. I'll hold off on any big-picture comments since I've only gotten through the first season and a half.It's true what everyone has said about the crisp writing, sympathetic characters, and lack of self-consciousness in the acting. Whatever the TV equivalent of

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-43205040108924028312011-07-26T07:15:00.002-06:002011-07-26T07:43:57.187-06:00

Unfortunately when Amy Winehouse kicked the bucket, no one learned anything about the dangers of drug addiction: they could never put themselves in her place, and so they believe it couldn't happen to them or any other normal person among their friends and family -- only to a complete and total freak like her.The next time the zeitgeist enters a wild phase, they will be among the first to

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-49402413148754541992011-07-24T08:24:00.004-06:002011-07-24T08:33:46.673-06:00

Durkheim thought that one reason why people in modern economies set up such a specialized system of division of labor was to recover a sense of solidarity that had been lost after we left a primitive way of life, where we were compelled to rely on each other more directly. By distributing tasks so broadly across people, even though it's not necessary to subsist, we commit ourselves to a more

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-2352111373778504262011-07-19T17:37:00.001-06:002011-07-19T17:37:42.375-06:00

The glue that holds together a group of developing kids who are roughly the same age is a feeling of trust that they have actively created through shared rites of passage. They separate themselves from the ordinary world and its structures, level the outside distinctions, and cease competing against each other for a small while in order to lose themselves in the revelry of their crowd, returning

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-70321361334569993092011-07-18T07:12:00.009-06:002011-07-18T15:57:32.339-06:00

Earlier I looked at how prevalent certain themes and images were in the titles of #1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, from 1959 through 2010 (search this blog for Billboard to see them all). For the most part, the evocativeness of hit song titles reflected the violence rate -- rising throughout the '60s and '70s, and reaching a peak sometime in the later half of the '80s, then declining or

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-75270007878007427232011-07-16T03:09:00.002-06:002011-07-16T03:27:45.168-06:00

During the past 15 to 20 years, the trend in advertising has been toward the annoying and snarky. As long as they're going to try to be funny by ripping into others, it should be those who deserve it -- who are so assured of their greatness, despite being hollow receptacles for whatever their priestly caste feels is "it" at the moment.Sadly the main targets are instead whoever The Other Guys are,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-41968381661800453042011-07-14T03:22:00.007-06:002011-07-14T03:39:44.167-06:00

Perhaps one reason that young females today are particularly loud cheerleaders of the movement to normalize gay deviance is that more and more of them have either said "what the hell?" to a same-sex adventure themselves, or know another girl who has. As far as I can tell, so far this possibility hasn't been explored very much, at least compared to the clearer trend of them having more gay male

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-39980697806822942582011-07-13T03:47:00.004-06:002011-07-13T04:04:40.281-06:00

In the New York Times there are no references to beer pong as a common game until 1999, and Google Ngrams shows that the prevalence of the term in its digital book collection was flat and nearly invisible until the second half of the '90s, when it began exploding in popularity. The first time I remember it first-hand was freshman year of college, 1999-2000, and had never seen it at any party in

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-72149155561638458382011-07-12T05:32:00.003-06:002011-07-12T05:34:13.245-06:00

Over the past two years I've detailed lots of not-coincidental pairs of changes in the violence level on the one hand and some other social or cultural variable on the other. So far the link between them has always been easy to understand.For example, rising-crime times cause people to believe in, or at least focus on, the supernatural, one clear signal of which is the proliferation of religious

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-42841437906665298132011-07-10T04:34:00.005-06:002011-07-10T05:27:57.742-06:00

After listening a lot to a mostly '80s internet radio station for several weeks now, I'm reminded of how good even the filler music used to be. Well, that's what we used to call it anyway. I think the technical name is adult contemporary -- lighter, play-in-the-background tunes that are soothing but still upbeat, a popular music version of Mozart.Just as nobody listens to Beethoven all day long,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-14912713789704384822011-07-09T04:36:00.008-06:002011-07-09T04:49:18.002-06:00

By now most straight people have either heard, read, or just noticed with their lying eyes that AIDS never was a problem for heterosexuals, and continues to be a non-issue today.That is a totally different view from the mid-'80s through the early-mid-'90s, when it was new and frightening. Could you catch it from a public toilet seat? What about if some kid with AIDS went to your school and you

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-20900477557947567862011-07-08T06:23:00.001-06:002011-07-08T06:31:16.387-06:00

For about two years off-and-on I've been detailing the decline in rites of passage during eras of helicopter parenting, so I don't know how this one escaped notice -- school field trips.This LA Times article shows that even by the mid-2000s they were being taken away, before the recession made the gutting deeper. It also says some museum that opened in 1998 saw falling attendance for several

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-12957309100347718002011-07-07T03:51:00.001-06:002011-07-07T03:54:12.035-06:00

There's now both a trailer out for the re-make of Footloose and a music video for the song "Fake ID."God, are they really thinking of re-doing not just the movie but the soundtrack too? Watching the trailer and the video, I heard a cover of the original "Footloose" song, but the rest was entirely new songs -- rap, emo, and fucking country. Probably the least do-you-wanna-dance? genres around. I

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-4792088335210642842011-07-06T02:59:00.008-06:002011-07-06T03:27:39.349-06:00

Compared to the European average IQ of 100, Ashkenazi Jews are about 1 standard deviation above, at 115, and Northeast Asians are at about 110. If we imagine IQ as a type of "height," and let's say that the average European male was 5'10, it would be as if Jews were on average 6'1 and Asians 6'0. This IQ advantage makes these two groups over-represented in the hard sciences, where braininess

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-3278208797473327502011-07-05T05:21:00.002-06:002011-07-05T05:37:57.998-06:00

The post below on the disappearance of midgets from pop culture walked through the basic links from rising violence rates to a greater interest in the unusual. The other side of the no-more-midgets pattern is of course the disappearance of giants. Chewbacca, Jaws (the James Bond character), the Predator, Andre the Giant's character in The Princess Bride, Sloth from The Goonies, Bigfoot (where did

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-13860913662288844012011-07-04T05:03:00.006-06:002011-07-04T05:09:40.728-06:00

Sometime later I'll write up a proper analysis of how underwear and swimsuit shapes have responded to changes in the violence rate, as part of the larger project on how appearances respond to societal changes. For now I'll just note that progress in how attractively girls make themselves up can easily be lost -- and thankfully recovered -- because of the cyclical nature of fashion. However, it is

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-64746126334022531212011-07-02T05:46:00.003-06:002011-07-02T06:10:43.670-06:00

I can't leave a post about attention whores at the top of the page for long -- it'll just feed them. So how about a musical interlude from a low-point in the attention whoring cycle.

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-67863131969791245242011-07-01T05:07:00.003-06:002011-07-01T05:20:02.681-06:00

From Time Magazine:Says a Minneapolis priest: "The young American male is increasingly bewildered and confused by the aggressive, coarse, dominant attitudes and behavior of his women. I believe it is one of the most serious social traits of our time-and one that is certain to have most serious social consequences."The shrieking blonde ripped the big tackle's shirt from his shoulder and

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-88388492152450496292011-06-29T01:01:00.009-06:002011-06-29T01:37:23.925-06:00

After looking through the relevant Wikipedia pages and some cursory googling, I noticed that there isn't a common understanding among people who study music -- whether musicologists, sociologists, philosophers, or whoever -- about what the difference is between art music and popular music. (I'm viewing "folk / traditional music" as popular music that has survived a long time, become an ethnic

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-74854038496413068892011-06-28T04:37:00.000-06:002011-06-28T04:38:33.046-06:00

I won't pad this one out by detailing how it fits into the framework of violence levels affecting the culture. Briefly, rising violence rates cause people to be more curious about the dark parts of human life that they were unaware of during safer times, so that culture-makers will focus more on the grotesque in periods of rising crime. One of the most visible examples for them to notice and

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-3001882668888793592011-06-26T05:16:00.007-06:002011-06-26T06:01:30.892-06:00

The dangers of a state as influential as New York legalizing gay marriage are the primary effect of allowing a bunch of people with an addict's brain to indulge their addictions without shame, and a secondary effect of sending the signal to the broader non-gay society that abandoning yourself completely to your vices is A-OK. If consenting adults want to destroy themselves and the wider society,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-43467413141075949602011-06-24T05:25:00.016-06:002011-06-24T05:56:05.061-06:00

Via Steve Sailer, here's an article from last year by Virginia Heffernan, mourning the analog phone call. She explores how the changes in engineering have disrupted the intimacy of the phone calling culture, for example the more frequent dropped calls, the chewed-up sound quality, and with tiny handsets the vanishing of "the awesomely strange sensation, via the mouth- and earpieces, of being

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-73961611198864881842011-06-22T03:38:00.009-06:002011-06-22T04:13:59.697-06:00

Nassim Taleb has a uniquely helpful way of categorizing people and institutions based on how they are affected by shocks, whether in some physical sense (like if they take a fall, do they break a bone or get stronger) or in an epistemic sense (like if some piece of their worldview is wrong, do they collapse or grow). See his easily readable presentation here, and check out his blog for more

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-78798731555612864152011-06-21T03:44:00.004-06:002011-06-21T04:04:02.245-06:00

During the Vancouver riots, some skater faggots were beating up on a car, when a community defender walked in and started getting in the way, lecturing them about how they shouldn't treat "our" city that way, and so on. Within a minute or so, the whole group of them, including some onlooker friends who made empty threats with their skateboards, walked off.Even this tiny display of "you won't get

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-75168915340884853202011-06-20T16:01:00.003-06:002011-06-20T17:19:14.677-06:00

There's something wrong about not having the radio on during the summer, but ever since new music became unlistenable around the mid-'90s (and it was only tolerable in the early '90s), I haven't bothered with it. But over the past week I've tried out internet radio again, having found it lacking before, and discovered a great station.Radio cannot be replaced by listening to CDs or putzing around

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-47071724889431705592011-06-20T02:04:00.005-06:002011-06-20T02:19:58.259-06:00

Feeling like a movie about family for Father's Day, I watched Uncle Buck, a later John Hughes movie that while not great is still a nice experience. This one, along with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, came after he finally dropped the preachy and angsty tone of his earlier teen comedies.What makes it a good family flick? First, the surrogate father puts the whiny spoiled brat of a daughter in

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-16904032224378200992011-06-18T04:30:00.005-06:002011-06-18T04:52:34.040-06:00

The most pathetic thing about the recent riots in Vancouver is not the packs of video game addicts finally emerging from hibernation to smash windows, loot, and set things on fire -- which, by the way, proves what pussies they are, as they'll only lash out when there is zero risk of detection or punishment, when they can slink like cowards into a vast crowd.No, what's more disgusting is everyone

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-22518168424157865322011-06-16T05:11:00.003-06:002011-06-16T05:25:51.096-06:00

Sometimes the zeitgeist expresses itself in a characteristic sound within popular music, which is not to say that it is found everywhere or even that it is clear at the time what it is. Still, you can look back and say that the sound captures as much of the feel of the times as possible. For example: the Byrds' 12-string guitar during the carefree days of cruising or hitching a ride on the open

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-28169127628000341652011-06-15T05:09:00.002-06:002011-06-15T05:33:56.440-06:00

I've never been to England, but by all accounts the level to which it has sunken would have appalled the Victorians, who saw the country at its most influential politically and culturally. Although they don't appear to be destined for the gutter, they are never going to recover those glory days. In this they join the post-Roman Italians, the modern-era French, the Turks, Celts, Mongols, Persians,

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-11308898908551359542011-06-13T22:50:00.002-06:002011-06-13T23:02:46.825-06:00

As Jim Goad details over at Taki's Magazine, the Syrian lesbian martyr-blogger put-on is just the latest in an ongoing series of homosexual hoaxes that the elite have eagerly eaten up and swallowed whole. (Even as I write this entry, news breaks that another member of the Lesbian Blogger Hall of Fame is actually a middle-aged guy as well.) And of course it doesn't end with the gays, as there's

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-12065637074635980842011-06-12T04:06:00.005-06:002011-06-12T04:29:51.787-06:00

Awhile ago I discussed the ubiquitous kabuki faces in our culture as an example of the decline in sincerity, and how difficult they make it to sympathize with anyone these days -- including people you know in real life, who post them on Facebook.Looking over the pictures in that post again, recalling music videos, and observing the faces that college kids make when some of them lip-sync at '80s

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-84999570287994065412011-06-11T04:34:00.002-06:002011-06-11T04:34:41.105-06:00

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-57820936335870267202011-06-09T05:03:00.004-06:002011-06-09T05:18:21.061-06:00

Sometime in the recent past it became against the law to have natural pubic hair. I don't mean some piece of legislation passed by Congress that no one would obey, but the tacit social law that people live by. Many have been curious to find out roughly when this happened. After all, the change was not trivial, like abandoning yellow shirts for blue ones. I don't mess around with my hair down

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-15801928502341975612011-06-08T03:12:00.002-06:002011-06-08T03:26:44.107-06:00

Do you remember when stores used to sell things? If you wanted some thing, you went to a store that carried things like that, browsed around, and either found the thing you wanted or moved on to another store. Now stores don't carry anything because everything must be sold online to reduce the costs of bla bla bla, but don't worry because those savings are passed along to the consumer.The one

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-21160524190557615632011-06-07T05:04:00.002-06:002011-06-07T05:19:20.818-06:00

Writing in wet cement is a harmless rite of passage that lets kids feel more strongly bonded to their community and to one another, while also filling their need for risk-taking in a way that stops short of setting a dumpster on fire.I still remember the day when they finally began to re-do parts of the sidewalk in front of my house when I was about 10 years old (around 1990). At last the

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-49537848828855343022011-06-05T06:25:00.004-06:002011-06-05T06:37:49.370-06:00

Probably not, judging from this snapshot of a big dance scene, where everyone is isolated and not even making eye-contact with anyone else, facing anyone else, or even particularly close to anyone else. Slow dancing? Even less likely.Some people must think I'm just making shit up here sometimes about kids these days, but you wouldn't know unless you had the first-hand experience. Just go to a

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-20117777914228510002011-06-04T02:23:00.006-06:002011-06-04T02:39:52.552-06:00

A strange fact about periods of soaring violence rates is that people roam over much larger areas and for a far longer portion of the day, the two greatest examples being the Jazz Age and the similar apocalyptic times of the mid-'70s through the early '90s. In such a dangerous world, that would seem like a death wish. When violence rates plummet, you find people locking themselves in their homes

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-79769888126675948452011-06-01T16:25:00.006-06:002011-06-01T17:52:14.666-06:00

There's a new cross-cultural study out that measures what they call tightness vs. looseness within a range of modern and developing countries. By "tight" they mean that individuals in those places do not have a whole lot of wiggle room in their daily behavior across a variety of social contexts. "Loose" means that people are cut a lot more slack if they deviate from what they're expected to do in

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-57230812252217776222011-05-31T03:46:00.002-06:002011-05-31T03:48:25.741-06:00

Continuing the series about how changing patterns of song titles over time reveal broader changes, * let's look at how much social cohesion vs. social anomie there has been. The General Social Survey shows high or rising trust levels from the early 1970s through the late 1980s, a reflection of the greater need to depend on others when violence becomes more prevalent. After awhile, violence

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-20348301086227412972011-05-30T16:13:00.004-06:002011-05-30T16:27:04.945-06:00

The practice of naming your children sure has gone to hell, hasn't it? Girl names like Morgan and Jordan sound like a throwback to the matronly days of Edna and Gladys, while boys have never had dorkier names than Grayson (the other kids at school: "more like GAY-son!") and Jayden (sounds like a porn chick who died on-set of a cocaine overdose).In poking around the Social Security

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-86671769866747643872011-05-28T16:48:00.006-06:002011-05-28T16:51:17.024-06:00

Earlier I showed that Americans have gotten much softer on crime as a result of the fall in violence rates over the past 20 years, so much so that women used to be more thirsty for revenge than men are today.At first glance this looks sensible -- if the problem recedes, don't devote as much effort to curbing it. But of course that lax attitude will only allow the problem to re-emerge after our

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-19034195248173790972011-05-27T21:50:00.003-06:002011-05-27T22:01:13.319-06:00

There's a lot of inconsistency in the estimates of how promiscuous gay men are -- are they more in the direction of the librarian who wears a sweater vest or the disco dancer who blows random guys in public toilets? Much of those apparent contradictions are almost surely due to differences in when the estimates were taken: before AIDS hit, gays must have felt little restraint, whereas in the wake

agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.com3