R.I.P. Google Reader

Tonight at midnight, Google Reader dies. I’m glad that this was announced back in March, giving me time to prepare for its demise (unlike some websites that are simply here one day and gone the next), because for the past five or six years, Google Reader has been my most-visited site. Turning on my computer in the morning, whether on campus or at home, I open my e-mail and Google Reader.

For those who are unfamiliar, Google Reader is a web-based program that uses RSS, or really simple syndication, to deliver the news from all of the websites you want to follow to a single place. Part of the difficulty in saying goodbye stems from the fact that I started using it when working on my dissertation. Given my struggles with Major Procrastination Disorder, I spent a lot of time in graduate school visiting websites and reloading them to see if anything was new. Google Reader allowed me to continue seeing if anything was new on the internet without visiting each site individually. This may sound simplistic, but I cannot emphasize the amount of time it saved me.

Over time, RSS has fallen out of vogue as sites have increasingly urged users to follow them on Facebook and Twitter for new information. I may be old-fashioned, but when I like to go to Facebook for news about my friends, not news (unless, of course, my friends are posting about the news). Now, it is time to move on. If you use Google Reader and you haven’t done so already, you need to download your subscriptions so that you can import them into whatever program you choose to use next. It appears that Feedly is currently the best replacement, though sites such as Digg are also making a play for those that Google has spurned.

Goodbye Google Reader. You will be missed.

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TV news is dead

Tuesday night, the most exciting thing to watch was not available on TV, it was only available as a web stream. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’s attempted filibuster of Senate Bill 5, which would have make abortions in Texas very difficult to obtain, and its aftermath, were far more interesting than anything on cable news late at night. As this post at Buzzfeed highlights, however, the cable news channels were focused on things like reruns and the number of calories in blueberry muffins. This post at Medium.com gives a good rundown of the experience of watching the stream of the proceedings online with others on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Davis’s filibuster, and the public filibuster that followed and prevented the Texas State Senate from voting before the midnight deadline was ultimately successful (although it took until after 3 am for them to admit it), though this success is likely short-lived, as Governor Rick Perry has scheduled another special session starting July 1 that will likely end in the passage of the bill. Nevertheless, as this Slate article suggests, Davis’s filibuster raised the profile of a bill that Texas hoped to pass quietly and may have revitalized the Democratic party in Texas.

Beyond the fate of Senate Bill 5, Davis’s filibuster was one part of an online explosion this week signaling the death of TV news. In addition to the fact that coverage of the filibuster was not available on TV, news of the Supreme Court’s rulings on important cases such as the Voting Rights Act and DOMA marked the first time that I turned to Facebook for news, first repeating the basic rulings and then linking to the best sources for insight and analysis – the sort of role that TV news would usually play. Even the ESPN analysts on tonight’s NBA draft program are referring to information about trades that they have received via Twitter.

As a freshman in college, my 20th Century History professor told the class that if there was ever a war or terrorist attack (this was after Oklahoma City but before 9/11) he would not be in class because he would be sitting on his couch watching CNN. This week, I imagine that he spent his time online, glued to Twitter.

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High fashion for kids

I recently discovered the Pinterest board “My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter” via Facebook (of course). It is the product of Tiffany Beveridge’s wit and advertising images of haute couture for kids and follows the adventures of a girl named Quinoa and her friends with similarly ridiculous names (including Chevron, Paloe, and Humboldt). She is a bit like Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World. You can read more about it here. In it you can surely find deep messages about social class, gender, and consumerism. I have primarily found hilarity. Lots of hilarity. Here is a small sample:

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The lessons of Monsters University

As a college professor, I am interested in depictions of college life. In addition to seeing whether they “ring true” with my own experiences, I like to consider how they might affect the perceptions of the general public regarding academic life. As a movie aimed primarily at children, Monsters University may be the first depiction of college life that many are exposed to. What, then, does Monsters University teach us about college life (other than the fact that imaginary institutions can have better-designed webpages than real ones)? (Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber covers some of this, but focuses more on the institutional aspects of the university.)

Lesson One: College is largely vocational. The students enrolled at Monsters University take courses that are very narrowly focused on particular employment outcomes. While the Scaring program is the most prestigious, there are also programs related to canister design and door making. As depicted in the movie, none of these programs prepare students very well for unforeseen changes in the workplace (such as those that occur in Monsters Inc., as Kieran points out).

Lesson Two: No matter how hard you work, you may not be able to attain your dream. The Scaring program at Monsters University highly competitive even though some students clearly have more innate talent for scaring than others. Applied exams mean that those who are books smart but lack this innate talent are likely to fail the program. It does not seem like there is much room for theoretical work in scaring (Mike Wazowski seems like a prime candidate for a Ph.D. in Scaring).

Lesson Three: You need to go to college to get the job you want, unless you don’t. Despite the applied nature of the courses, the link between education and employment in Monstropolis does not seem very strong. The closest analog in the American higher education system seems to be acting. Some actors undergo years of training at prestigious universities while others are discovered looking cute at the mall. It would have been interesting to see Pixar approach scaring as something more closely aligned to college athletics, with most monsters using college to continue doing something that they enjoy but a few in high profile programs using it to hone their skills for the big leagues and an even smaller number going directly from high school to the pros.

Lesson Four: Coursework is unimportant (especially courses outside of your major). Students at Monsters University are shown attending two courses during the movie. For a large portion of the movie the characters do not mention anything about class at all, focusing instead on an extracurricular competition. Since this competition takes place during the semester, I assume that these students were attending other classes. Of course, in a vocational system like this breadth doesn’t seem to be that important.

Lesson Five: College life revolves around the Greek system. The aforementioned extracurricular competition has the highest profile of all campus activities (it is sort of like the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter). Students must be affiliated with a fraternity or sorority to participate and even the Dean is heavily involved in the organization and outcome.

Lesson Six: Things will be okay even if you cheat. Without giving too much away, some of the students at Monsters University cheat. They are punished for doing so, but not to the extent that they are unable to fulfill their lifelong dreams.

Lesson Seven: Computer graphics are getting really good. Okay, this is not a lesson about college, but the level of technical detail in Monsters University is incredible, especially in the lighting and textures. The Blue Umbrella, the short that precedes the movie, is similarly impressive.

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Distortion in public sociology

At the end of my last post, I noted that the difficulties I faced writing an entry for an academic encyclopedia are likely to be shared by sociologists attempting to reach a broader audience. The lack of peer review* in this type of work also means that there is a greater possibility for distortion**, as Philip N. Cohen highlights when critiquing W. Bradford Wilcox’s recent article about fatherhood at Slate. The greatest danger with these types of articles that are aimed at a broader audience is probably not deliberate distortion but the type of subtle distortion that occurs when we try to remove the context and subtlety from the research we discuss.

*Incidentally, I’ve been told that the experience of writing for Contexts is similar, though the fact that Contexts articles are peer-reviewed hopefully reduces the likelihood of distortion.

**Of course, the recent controversy surrounding Mark Regnerus’s work demonstrates that the possibility for distortion exists within peer-reviewed work as well.

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Encyclopedic

I recently wrote an academic encyclopedia entry for my area of specialization; it was strange. The first reason for strangeness is that I associate writing encyclopedia entries with graduate school. Several of my graduate student colleagues wrote encyclopedia entries that had been passed on to them by professors – sometimes these professors coauthored the entries and sometimes they did not. This association is likely faulty – I’m sure that many professors, even those at my graduate institution, have written encyclopedia entries that I am not aware of since they aren’t likely to be publicized much – but it still made the thought of writing one myself seem strange.

This association was easily overcome by the fact that writing the entry would be relatively easy since it in my area of expertise and it would count as a form of the “evidence of scholarly activity” my school wants to see; the second was more difficult. The instructions and sample encyclopedia entry made it clear that I was to write with no citations in an authoritative tone. As an academic, the first of these requirements was difficult. After years of citing everything and instructing my students to do the same, I had a hard time writing about research findings without the context provided by authors and dates.  As a sociologist, the practice of writing in an authoritative tone was also difficult. I’ve read a number of psychological studies where the authors state that their findings “prove” a hypothesis while sociologists are more likely to say that their findings “demonstrate” something. For the encyclopedia entry, though, I had to write as if the findings by one or two groups of researchers could be taken as fact. I attempted to overcome this as much as possible by mentioning the context in which studies were conducted (e.g., “a nationally representative sample” or “a study of women in their 30s”).

In the end, I think that the difficulties I experienced were similar to the obstacles sociologists face when communicating with the general public. We like to emphasize the contexts in which research was conducted in order to recognize the diversity of the social world. This diversity also prevents us from making broad declarative statements regarding the generalizability of our findings. The public, or at least the media that typically exposes the public to our research, likes short, easily digestible statements (possibly in bullet-point form). Finding a comfortable middle ground is a challenge that we have to face if we want to reach beyond the ivory tower.

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The top ten most sexist car ads

As a sort of spiritual foll0w-up to my most-viewed post, Jalopnik has posted their ranking of the top ten most sexist car ads. Two of the entries from the previous list made the cut. Also included were things like this:

The ad states:

One of the special delights which ladies find in Cadillac ownership is the pleasure of being a passenger. First of all, there is the sheer physical luxury of riding in a new Cadillac. The car is wondrously spacious and comfortable – and perfectly proportioned for complete freedom of movement. Then there is the enchanting interior beauty…the marvellous convenience of it’s appointments…the great smoothness of ride…and the marvellous quietness of operation. We invite you to visit your local dealer soon…with the man of the house – and spend an hour in the passenger seat of a 1959 Cadillac. We know you will agree that it is the world’s nicest place to sit.

See also: Previous posts about sexism and cars related to Volkswagen’s Beetle, female mechanics, and sexist Kia ads.

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Tropes vs. women in video games

Parts 1 and 2 of Anita Sarkeesian’s video series examining gender tropes in video games are now available, and are embedded below. In addition to exploring some of the things that most gamers probably don’t think about, the story of Sarkeesian’s series also serves to remind us that misogyny is alive and well in America. Shortly after launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the series, Sarkeesian was inundated with attacks (she gives a personal account here):

Two hours is all it took for her video to go viral with over 100+ misogynist comments. The same video that would later garner tens of thousands of comments and over 300,000 views was barely the tip of the iceberg. What started as typical internet backlash soon grew to include threats of extreme violence on several of Sarkeesian’s personal profiles.

Her social media accounts were targets of false reports of fraud, spam and even terrorism. Hackers tried to break into her website and email account. Some even attempted to locate and distribute her personal information including email, phone and home address. Sarkeesian’s Wikipedia page was edited to include sexism, racism and pornographic images. Finally, a game was made in her likeness called, “Beat the Bitch Up,” where upon a few clicks her picture would grow to be increasingly battered and bruised.

In the time since her campaign launched, it doesn’t seem like the internet has grown up much, as comments on websites linking to the work demonstrate. Commenters on completely unrelated videos also invoke Sarkeesian in a negative way, such as those regarding a version of Donkey Kong that a father hacked to allow his daughter to play as a girl (incidentally, the father in this case inverted the very trope that Sarkeesian talks about in these videos). Reading comments like these is disheartening, but it is good to see that Sarkeesian has not backed away from her efforts. The fact that her Kickstarter campaign far exceeded her goals is also a sign that not everybody on the internet is a sexist asshole – the backlash has also allowed her to reach a wider audience. Enjoy!

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