Sunday Special

A roundup of non-work-related “stuff” that I considered interesting.

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Street Gang: 1907
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave

Circa 1907
“Oak Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
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Bosco Verticale: The World's First Vertical Forest
via Big Think by Big Think Editors

Amid the hustle and bustle of city life in Milan, a vertical forest will arise. The facade of a two-tower apartment complex will be covered with hundreds of trees and thousands of other plants.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Orchestras in crisis. The problems are many, not least the cynicism and short-sightedness of the managerial class… more

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How Tabasco Sauce is made

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
I am a committed Tabasco Sauce fiend. It is neither too hot, nor too mild, nor too vinegary – I put it on pretty much everything. I’d use it for contact lens solution if I could. My life was radically transformed by my discovery of tiny, individual Tabasco sachets that aviation security X-rays don’t identify as liquids, which means I can carry Tabasco with me at all times without worrying about getting stopped at airports for not having a stupid baggie with my liquids in it.
I found this video describing the production of Tabasco absolutely riveting. The fermentation process, the salted barrels, and let us not forget le petit baton rouge.
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

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Why are barns red?

via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker

If you’ve ever spent much time in American farm country, then you’ve probably noticed that there’s a strong tradition there of coating barns and outbuildings with red paint. Why?
Because nuclear fusion.
Okay, the actual answer is simply because red paint has long been a cheap colour to buy. But, explains Google engineer Yonatan Zunger, there is some really interesting physics lurking in the background of that price point.
Continue reading

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
A science of ourselves. In 1930s Britain, amateur anthropologists researched “beards, armpits, and eyebrows” and the “shouts and gestures of motorists”… more

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Prevent divorce – with science!
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Back in 2002, psychologists studying how couples argued found four different behaviours that correlated strongly with future divorce. In fact, in a small sample of 80 couples, the combination of those behaviours could be used to predict who would divorce over the next 14 years with 93% accuracy. The good news: While these behaviours are all things that people probably do sometimes, it’s the frequency of behaviours that matters … and, better yet, they’re all things that you can change.
At PsySociety, Melanie Tannenbaum uses the amazingly spot-on example of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries to illustrate how unhealthy arguments can lead to relationship collapse.

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“I was almost eaten by a hippo”

via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Hippopotamuses – big, lumbery, and related to whales – are described as being “mostly herbivorous”. They are also MUCH faster than they look. And they are one of the most aggressive animals you’ll ever meet.
This combination of traits created an incredibly harrowing experience for river guide Paul Templer.

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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
A science of ourselves. In 1930s Britain, amateur anthropologists researched “beards, armpits, and eyebrows” and the “shouts and gestures of motorists”… more

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A little brain training goes a long way

via nature: international weekly journal of science by Alla Katsnelson

A new study tested older adults’ mental acuity by timing how quickly they clicked on images in a “brain training” computer game.
People who use a “brain-workout” program for just 10 hours have a mental edge over their peers even a year later, researchers report today in PLoS ONE.
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Using skills development strategies to tackle poverty and inequality

an article by Chris Goulden (Manager, Poverty Team at Joseph Rowntree Foundation) published in Journal of Urban Regeneration & Renewal Volume 7 Issue 3 (Spring 2014)

Abstract

On the face of it, it seems obvious that enabling people to develop their skills and improve their education would be an important way of decreasing their chances of experiencing poverty. For individuals, this can often be true, but when one looks at the full distribution of families and households in the context of wider changes in both the labour market and tax and benefit systems, the picture becomes much less straightforward.

This paper outlines research to test strategies for developing skills that might be used, and argues that these could worsen levels of poverty and income inequality if some of the interactions and underlying relationships are not better understood.

Too Soft for Economics, Too Rigid for Sociology, or Just Right? The Productive Ambiguities of Sen’s Capability Approach

an article by Milena I. Kremakova (Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick) published in European Journal of Sociology Volume 54 Issue 3 (December 2013)

Abstract

The capability approach has been developed by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and others as a human-centred normative framework for the evaluation of individual and group well-being, quality of life and social justice.

Sen and Nussbaum’s ideas have influenced global, national and local policy and have been further developed in a number of academic disciplines, but so far have remained largely unnoticed in sociology. This article examines recent capability-informed theories and empirical applications in the sociology of human rights and other academic fields adjacent to sociology, focusing on examples of social policy studies in the fields of welfare, the labour market, health and disability, and education.

The article outlines several potential areas in which capability-informed frameworks are relevant for critical social theory, public sociology and global sociology.