Freud is, as you note, a historical figure. But he was trained as a scientist and as a medical doctor; he was interested in neurology and neural anatomy.
I think, too, you exaggerate the unity of the epistemology behind science. There are a lot of philosophies of science, and they differ greatly from each.
You should take a look at Bruno Latour's "Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts" someday for an interesting sociology of science.
Most of the blowhards railing against the social sciences aren't interested in a critique of science as it is practiced today, though. They have a crude model whereby the natural sciences (which they don't actually practice) are tough, rigorous, and manly, and "real," and all the others are soft, weak, and airy-fairy. And, they're angry about it, because they can't stand people making criticisms of society which leave them uncomfortable.
I've seen more angry-white-guy rhetoric on Slashdot recently than I have in quite a while. Perhaps the Obama administration has driven them mad or something.
You should look at pre-war and war-time Japanese anime. There is a major debt to Max Fleischer all around, but the Disney effect hasn't taken place yet. The stories have a very different pacing to them.
When games are designed in Japan for export, one of the principles that is used in character design is "mukokoseki" - the removal of national characteristics. The characters are designed to appear ambiguously undecidable between Asian and white interpretations. This is, more than anything, due to the fact that the American market is less flexible about identifying outside of white characters than the Japanese market is of identifying with non-Japanese characters, and because of what can be called Western hegemony, with the corresponding presumption of "whiteness" as "normal", as the human default.
There is no contradiction between the fact that CJ turns out to be a sympathetic and even admirable figure in GTA:SA and that he might promote negative stereotypes.
Personally, I love GTA:SA and I think that its depictions are thought-provoking and worthwhile, yet it still is a problem that one of the very, very few depictions of a black "lead" videogame character is a gang-member and car thief. What if 95% of all white characters were undereducated rednecks (even if they were admirable undereducated rednecks?)
Look, many buildings cut off cell reception just by having thick walls, etc. People do not have a right to universal cell reception; a lot of people work in places where they have to step outside of the campus area to make a call. I have to do that all the time where I work, just due to the architecture.
I think most teachers would be happy to have to step outside if they could put an end to cell use in the classroom. An alternative would also be to turn off the jammers during breaks and lunch.
What's wrong with NYC schools? They're pretty good, as I understand it. Unlike the California public education system, which is in a state of utter collapse.
My problem with your number 2: teaching is not entertainment, and there will always be devices that are more interesting and attention-grabbing in the short term for most of the students than whatever is being taught. Sometimes, there is a certain amount of drudge in learning, and if teachers were such stellar entertainers that they could make sentence-diagramming, long division, and basic biology more interesting than the girl you have a crush on and keep texting, they'd be making hundreds of thousands of dollars in Vegas, not teaching in your local junior high.
You do not have a constitutional or moral right to good cell reception, or indeed to the ownership of a cell phone at all. Unless you want to argue that the government should be buying each and every child in that school a cell phone, and mandating that no building ever interfere with cell signals for those inside them.
A Google Voice account lets you stop giving away your mobile number, and give out your Google Voice number instead. You can then direct that Google Voice number to your mobile number, or your home number, or your work number, either based on a schedule, or by setting it to do so in the Google Voice interface. You can set up different groups of callers, so that only family members will go to mobile, others will go to voice, etc. It gives you incredible control over your own telephony. This is a huge threat to AT&T.
Remember, in the US, you get charged for incoming calls. You can significantly reduce the number of incoming calls that go to your mobile. That alone threatens carriers.
It will also let you screen calls and read the voicemails; think visual voicemail with speech-to-text transcription. Again, reducing the amount of airtime you use on your mobile.
Carriers will not like Google Voice. It is interesting that Google was able to install the client on the G1 without the apparent objections of T-Mobile.
This is obviously a bigger deal than what chewing tobacco your grocer carries. This involves changes in the nature of telephony, the relationship between the platform and the applications on which it runs (and issues of lock-in) and, in this case, is a collision between two companies that generally have played well together: Apple and Google.
I think you're just uncomfortable with anything which implicitly critiques Apple.
Family is a hedge against inflation or catastrophic loss. If the US enters a Zimbabwe-like inflationary spiral, wiping out the value of savings, it is people with social capital like a network of relatives that will thrive.
I think the current recession indicates a time when finances are no longer more reliable than family is again on its way.
If you are rational, of child-bearing age and poor, then having a lot of children is probably your best strategy for getting cared-for in old age. You may barely eke by, you may live off the state, you may live off charity, but in the long run, you'll be better off when you have a couple kids sending remittances and letting you stay with them (even if its to help raise their kids) than you would having no children.
The less of a social safety net exists, the larger you'll see poor families grow, as well.
Some elements of beauty - facial symmetry, certain feature ratios - may not be simply historical, but fairly universal, and it may be these elements of beauty which are, indeed, becoming more common.
Also, if body-type ideals change over history, it is worthwhile noting that body-type is plastic: we can change it. Perhaps the great-grandmother of today's wispy waif was a Rubenesque earth-goddess, and the great-grandmother of today's obese lonely-heart was an underfed peasant (who still managed to reproduce.) I see a lot more variety in body-type intergenerationally in my family than I see variety in facial features.
Slashdot Mirror
Is mathematics a science? It strikes me that psychology is closer to a natural science in terms of its methodologies than mathematics is.
Freud is, as you note, a historical figure. But he was trained as a scientist and as a medical doctor; he was interested in neurology and neural anatomy.
I think, too, you exaggerate the unity of the epistemology behind science. There are a lot of philosophies of science, and they differ greatly from each.
You should take a look at Bruno Latour's "Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts" someday for an interesting sociology of science.
Most of the blowhards railing against the social sciences aren't interested in a critique of science as it is practiced today, though. They have a crude model whereby the natural sciences (which they don't actually practice) are tough, rigorous, and manly, and "real," and all the others are soft, weak, and airy-fairy. And, they're angry about it, because they can't stand people making criticisms of society which leave them uncomfortable.
I've seen more angry-white-guy rhetoric on Slashdot recently than I have in quite a while. Perhaps the Obama administration has driven them mad or something.
You should look at pre-war and war-time Japanese anime. There is a major debt to Max Fleischer all around, but the Disney effect hasn't taken place yet. The stories have a very different pacing to them.
When games are designed in Japan for export, one of the principles that is used in character design is "mukokoseki" - the removal of national characteristics. The characters are designed to appear ambiguously undecidable between Asian and white interpretations. This is, more than anything, due to the fact that the American market is less flexible about identifying outside of white characters than the Japanese market is of identifying with non-Japanese characters, and because of what can be called Western hegemony, with the corresponding presumption of "whiteness" as "normal", as the human default.
They won't get it. It is invisible to them.
There is no contradiction between the fact that CJ turns out to be a sympathetic and even admirable figure in GTA:SA and that he might promote negative stereotypes.
Personally, I love GTA:SA and I think that its depictions are thought-provoking and worthwhile, yet it still is a problem that one of the very, very few depictions of a black "lead" videogame character is a gang-member and car thief. What if 95% of all white characters were undereducated rednecks (even if they were admirable undereducated rednecks?)
I think that a PhD comes with an income drop from an MS or an MBA.
Just because someone draws the line poorly, doesn't mean a line shouldn't be drawn.
Look, many buildings cut off cell reception just by having thick walls, etc. People do not have a right to universal cell reception; a lot of people work in places where they have to step outside of the campus area to make a call. I have to do that all the time where I work, just due to the architecture.
I think most teachers would be happy to have to step outside if they could put an end to cell use in the classroom. An alternative would also be to turn off the jammers during breaks and lunch.
What's wrong with NYC schools? They're pretty good, as I understand it. Unlike the California public education system, which is in a state of utter collapse.
My problem with your number 2: teaching is not entertainment, and there will always be devices that are more interesting and attention-grabbing in the short term for most of the students than whatever is being taught. Sometimes, there is a certain amount of drudge in learning, and if teachers were such stellar entertainers that they could make sentence-diagramming, long division, and basic biology more interesting than the girl you have a crush on and keep texting, they'd be making hundreds of thousands of dollars in Vegas, not teaching in your local junior high.
You do not have a constitutional or moral right to good cell reception, or indeed to the ownership of a cell phone at all. Unless you want to argue that the government should be buying each and every child in that school a cell phone, and mandating that no building ever interfere with cell signals for those inside them.
Impersonating an officer.
I would fly anywhere in the world to see two trains filled with Skittles crash into each other.
The iPhone is an ecosystem. Google is another ecosystem. The more "Googlish" your way of doing things is, the less wed you are to Apple solutions.
Anthropomorphizing corporate entities a bit, you could say that Google actually likes Apple more than Apple likes Google.
A Google Voice account lets you stop giving away your mobile number, and give out your Google Voice number instead. You can then direct that Google Voice number to your mobile number, or your home number, or your work number, either based on a schedule, or by setting it to do so in the Google Voice interface. You can set up different groups of callers, so that only family members will go to mobile, others will go to voice, etc. It gives you incredible control over your own telephony. This is a huge threat to AT&T.
Remember, in the US, you get charged for incoming calls. You can significantly reduce the number of incoming calls that go to your mobile. That alone threatens carriers.
It will also let you screen calls and read the voicemails; think visual voicemail with speech-to-text transcription. Again, reducing the amount of airtime you use on your mobile.
Carriers will not like Google Voice. It is interesting that Google was able to install the client on the G1 without the apparent objections of T-Mobile.
This is obviously a bigger deal than what chewing tobacco your grocer carries. This involves changes in the nature of telephony, the relationship between the platform and the applications on which it runs (and issues of lock-in) and, in this case, is a collision between two companies that generally have played well together: Apple and Google.
I think you're just uncomfortable with anything which implicitly critiques Apple.
The Google Voice app is an official application. GV Mobile was not. The latter was pulled from the market yesterday; the former was rejected today.
Family is a hedge against inflation or catastrophic loss. If the US enters a Zimbabwe-like inflationary spiral, wiping out the value of savings, it is people with social capital like a network of relatives that will thrive.
I think the current recession indicates a time when finances are no longer more reliable than family is again on its way.
His writing is fine. The ability to read attentively is dying, getting drowned out in the sloganeering and partisan tone of forum-speak.
It isn't a matter of blaming man or anything: it is about pricing externalities.
If you are rational, of child-bearing age and poor, then having a lot of children is probably your best strategy for getting cared-for in old age. You may barely eke by, you may live off the state, you may live off charity, but in the long run, you'll be better off when you have a couple kids sending remittances and letting you stay with them (even if its to help raise their kids) than you would having no children.
The less of a social safety net exists, the larger you'll see poor families grow, as well.
I hate to say this. God knows, I hate to say this. I already love myself less, but: "correlation is not causation."
I say this as a parent. It's amazing what sleep-deprivation will do to your looks.
Some elements of beauty - facial symmetry, certain feature ratios - may not be simply historical, but fairly universal, and it may be these elements of beauty which are, indeed, becoming more common.
Also, if body-type ideals change over history, it is worthwhile noting that body-type is plastic: we can change it. Perhaps the great-grandmother of today's wispy waif was a Rubenesque earth-goddess, and the great-grandmother of today's obese lonely-heart was an underfed peasant (who still managed to reproduce.) I see a lot more variety in body-type intergenerationally in my family than I see variety in facial features.