If you’re tired of the garbage you see online and in the media, stop reading, watching and participating in it. That’s the advice of columnist and bestselling author Mitch Album, who says, “Show no interest in it.But good luck doing that in a country infatuated with outlandishness. We are increasingly becoming a nation that revels in saying, “Oh my god, did you see that?” We don’t want to think, we want to be amused. We don’t want to try, we want to feel superior. We don’t want to correct people, we would rather mock them. We don’t do, we watch.” Mitch Albom: This honey child is a real boo boo
U.S. Representative Todd Akin (R-MO) sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which is a concern given Mr. Akin’s lack of understanding about certain basic scientific principles. Mr. Akin’s ignorance aside, it’s high time that more actual scientists run for and serve in office. We need to reduce the “glaring instances of technical ignorance on both sides of the aisle,” according to Bill Foster, former Democrat of Illinois. Groups Call for Scientists to Engage the Body Politic
Interested in the intersection between technology and social science? Computational social science may be the thing for you. For example: “People’s decision to join Facebook varies not with the total number of friends who are already using the site, but with the number of distinct social groups those friends occupy. In other words, finding that Facebook is being used by people from, say, your work, your sports club and your close friends makes more of an impression than finding that friends from only one group use it.” Computational social science: Making the links
Is the law evenly and fairly applied? According to a study involving 200 trial judges across the United States, “Even though we can be educated about realities of how the psychopath is hardwired differently and feels no empathy for their victim–we still feel a twinge of sympathy when we hear it isn’t something they cannot help. ‘His brain made him do it.’ It is as though we are impressed by neurolaw explanations but don’t really realize how much it impresses us–even when ‘we’ are a judge.” Judges are biased in favor of psychopaths whose “brains made them do it”