provides links to information management, information sources and other "useful stuff" with a strong bias towards the management of information in a careers guidance context.
As of 17 July 2017 I include mental health information and comment.
I tweet as @careersinfo and am on LinkedIn and Facebook as Hazel Edmunds
by Nik Shuliahin via Unsplash.
Do you feel as if your professional success is due to some kind of mistake? That you don’t deserve your grades, promotions, or accolades? That you’re somehow getting away with a fraud which could be uncovered at any moment? We have a name for that cluster of anxieties: you’re suffering from impostor syndrome.
At the heart of impostor syndrome is a mismatch between external measures of success – prizes or good grades, entry to a selective university or career, workplace progression – and internal feelings of self-doubt. It’s said that sufferers from impostor syndrome fail to “internalise” their success, that they ignore objective evidence which is apparent to their friends and mentors. Impostor syndrome is pictured as a form of irrationality, a psychological deficiency characterised by flawed thinking.
a post by Hilary Jacobs Hendel for the World of Psychology blog
Now, more than ever, people need tools to handle their emotions. Specifically, we need tools for calming our nervous system down and making sure we don’t take stress out on our own loved ones. Families are going to fight more when they’re cooped up. The best thing we can do for our relationships is become aware of our emotions and learn skills to calm them so we don’t behave too badly.
“Every couple I know said they fought after going to the grocery store last week. Even one that went separately. That’s when I picked a fight with my boyfriend. And it makes sense because the grocery store scene right now is really scary and people don’t realize they’re feeling fear, they push it all to anger,” Jessica Hendel, an LA-based screenwriter, told me. “People are in there fighting each other over toilet paper!”
an article by Gordon Pennycook (University of Regina, Canada) and David G. Rand (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) published in Journal of Personality Volume 88 Issue 2 (April 2020)
Abstract
Objective
Fake news represents a particularly egregious and direct avenue by which inaccurate beliefs have been propagated via social media. We investigate the psychological profile of individuals who fall prey to fake news.
Method
We recruited 1,606 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for three online surveys.
Results
The tendency to ascribe profundity to randomly generated sentences—pseudo‐profound bullshit receptivity—correlates positively with perceptions of fake news accuracy, and negatively with the ability to differentiate between fake and real news (media truth discernment). Relatedly, individuals who overclaim their level of knowledge also judge fake news to be more accurate. We also extend previous research indicating that analytic thinking correlates negatively with perceived accuracy by showing that this relationship is not moderated by the presence/absence of the headline’s source (which has no effect on accuracy), or by familiarity with the headlines (which correlates positively with perceived accuracy of fake and real news).
Conclusion
Our results suggest that belief in fake news may be driven, to some extent, by a general tendency to be overly accepting of weak claims. This tendency, which we refer to as reflexive open‐mindedness, may be partly responsible for the prevalence of epistemically suspect beliefs writ large.
an article by Marco Magnani (University of Padova, Italy) published in Journal of Economic Surveys Volume 34 Issue 2 (April 2020)
Abstract
Online user reviews have become an increasingly relevant informational tool during product search and adoption.
Recent surveys have shown that consumers trust and rely on online reviews more than they do on website recommendations and experts opinions. As a new way of driving consumer purchasing intentions, online user reviews have therefore come under scrutiny by researchers.
The objective of this paper is to offer an overview of the literature regarding the impact of online user reviews on economic indicators (e.g., sales, marketing strategies) and on consumer behaviour.
Furthermore, following the growing interest of academics and professionals alike on the topic, the present work provides an exploratory analysis of the consequences of online reviews on individual rating behaviour – empirical regularities showed that online rating distributions tend to be concentrated on extreme values, possibly because of rating biases.
As consumers and firms incorporate the heuristic cues from such distributions into their decision‐making processes, biased ratings might lead to suboptimal choices.
This overview presents established results (e.g., the impact of volume on product sales) and insights as issues for future research.
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” Plutarch
People-pleasing can seem like a way of connecting with others. We believe that if we keep people happy, then they’ll like us and want us around. While it may be true that pleasing others will win us approval and a place in their lives, changing and editing ourselves can’t create the connection we long for.
We confuse people-pleasing with kindness. After all, aren’t we, as people-pleasers, described as too nice? People-pleasing can be seen as giving of ourselves to put others first, but people-pleasing isn’t the kindest way to treat ourselves or the people around us.
If I had a pound for every time my husband has said “I only did it please you" or I thought that’s what you wanted” I would be a millionaire. Labels:
people_pleasing,
an article by Xichen Zhang and Ali A. Ghorbani (University of New Brunswick (UNB), Fredericton, Canada) published in Information Processing and Management Volume 5, Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
Over the recent years, the growth of online social media has greatly facilitated the way people communicate with each other. Users of online social media share information, connect with other people and stay informed about trending events. However, much recent information appearing on social media is dubious and, in some cases, intended to mislead. Such content is often called fake news. Large amounts of online fake news has the potential to cause serious problems in society. Many point to the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign as having been influenced by fake news. Subsequent to this election, the term has entered the mainstream vernacular. Moreover it has drawn the attention of industry and academia, seeking to understand its origins, distribution and effects.
Of critical interest is the ability to detect when online content is untrue and intended to mislead. This is technically challenging for several reasons. Using social media tools, content is easily generated and quickly spread, leading to a large volume of content to analyse. Online information is very diverse, covering a large number of subjects, which contributes complexity to this task. The truth and intent of any statement often cannot be assessed by computers alone, so efforts must depend on collaboration between humans and technology. For instance, some content that is deemed by experts of being false and intended to mislead are available. While these sources are in limited supply, they can form a basis for such a shared effort.
In this survey, we present a comprehensive overview of the finding to date relating to fake news. We characterise the negative impact of online fake news, and the state-of-the-art in detection methods. Many of these rely on identifying features of the users, content, and context that indicate misinformation. We also study existing datasets that have been used for classifying fake news. Finally, we propose promising research directions for online fake news analysis.
The underrated value of stargazing
via the OUP blog by Chris Lintott ‘Starry Night‘ by Paul Volkmer, public domain via Unsplash
When did you last look up at the night sky? Before the advent of streetlights, paying attention to the heavens above us would have been an everyday part of existence, as commonplace as noticing the weather. Now, as many of us hurry from brightly lit office buildings to the cosy lights of home, few remember to look up and notice the celestial spectacles above our heads. Stargazing – if it’s thought of at all – is regarded as something left for a bucket list trip; it’s a special evening spent under the dark skies of New Zealand, or a chilly cruise to northern Norway to see the Northern Lights. A once in a lifetime treat, not part of our real lives. Continue reading
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Coram to digitise archives dating back to 18th century
via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Joe Lepper in Charity Digital
The National Lottery has funded the children’s charity to digitise records dating back to when it launched as a children’s hospital in London in 1739.
Coram has been handed £1.26m from the National Lottery to digitise its archives, which date back to the Eighteenth century.
The UK’s oldest children’s charity has been awarded the money through the National Lottery Heritage Fund to carry out a four-year digitisation project of its archives.
The Voices Through Time: The Story of Care digital project involves data from as far back as 1739, when the charity was first established as the Foundling Hospital, which looked after abandoned babies in London. Continue reading
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Look at this amazing "shirt-pocket" sound movie camera from 1976
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Steve Hines designed this 5-oz. shirt-pocket sound movie camera for Kodak Research Laboratories in 1976. His website has photos and information about the device, which was far ahead of its time.
Image: Hineslab
[via Evil Mad Scientist]
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Perception of musical pitch varies across cultures
Is the way we hear music biological or cultural?
via the Big Think blog by Anne Trafton (MIT News Office)
People who are accustomed to listening to Western music, which is based on a system of notes organised in octaves, can usually perceive the similarity between notes that are same but played in different registers — say, high C and middle C.
However, a longstanding question is whether this a universal phenomenon or one that has been ingrained by musical exposure. Continue reading
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Mathematics As A Cultural Force
posted by S, Abass Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Jessica Gross in Longreads: Tuileries Garden in 1680, Paris, France, engraving from Les Promenades de Paris (The promenades of Paris), by Adolphe Alphand, published by J Rothschild, Paris, 1867-1873. (Photo by Icas94 / De Agostini
In his new book, Proof!: How the World Became Geometrical, historian Amir Alexander advances an audacious claim: that Euclidean geometry profoundly influenced not just the history of mathematics, but also broader sociopolitical reality.
In prose that makes his passion for the material both clear and catching, he describes how Euclid’s Elements present a vision of a perfectly rational order, but one that was viewed as purely theoretical: There was no place for geometrical ideals in messy reality.
In the 1400s, Leon Battista Alberti, an Italian polymath, upended that understanding, countering that the world was, in fact, fundamentally geometrical. Other thinkers, from Copernicus to Galileo, followed. And, as Alexander argues, this sea change had profound implications: If the world was geometrical – not only rational, but also hierarchical and permanent – then that was the divinely ordained social order, too. Euclidean geometry, that is, was used to justify monarchy. Continue reading
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Edwardian Values: Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a glorious edition of the bestselling scouts’ manual Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship has become one of a select subset of books: the bestseller which hardly anybody has read. If, as Mark Twain had it, a classic was a book everybody praises and nobody reads, Scouting for Boys is the book everybody buys but (virtually) nobody reads – at least, not these days. Yet the book is, along with the akela (the title lifted by Robert Baden-Powell from The Jungle Book by Kipling, a writer the Scout-founder admired), as synonymous with the Boy Scouts as the famous woggle. Indeed, Baden-Powell’s manual for his new movement, published in 1908, is reckoned to be the second biggest-selling English-language book of the twentieth century: until the post-war period, sales were exceeded only by those of the Bible in the English-speaking world. Continue reading
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10,000-Year-Old Engraved Stone Found to be World’s Oldest Lunar Calendar
via Ancient Origins The 10,000-year-old pebble which is believed to be the oldest lunar calendar in the world. Source: SAPIENZA, Università di Roma
A new study, coordinated by Sapienza, claims to have discovered the oldest lunar calendar in the world in a pebble that was carved during the Upper Paleolithic period.
The remarkable find has been announced by Flavio Altamura of the Department of Sciences of antiquity of Sapienza, in collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendence of Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan area of Rome, the Province of Viterbo, and southern Etruria. The authorities have presented the results of their analysis conducted on the enigmatic stone - which has shown it to be decorated more than 10,000 years ago - making it the oldest known artifact of its type. The full report is published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. Continue reading
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Commodore PET 4032 vintage computer restoration project before and after photos
via Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin
Here's a pretty incredible vintage computer restoration project from IMGURian and classic computing aficionado Skottyboy. The finished product is amazing, so's the crusty old “before” snapshot! Continue reading
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Study of Dead Sea Scroll sheds light on a lost ancient parchment-making technology
via ResearchBuzz Firehose: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Phys.Org Light microscopy of the TS, showing its layered structure from the macroscale to the microscale. (A) Photographs of the TS showing damage to the upper part of the scroll (left). The reverse side of the preserved section (right) shows the follicle pattern of the hairs removed from the skin, which indicated that the text is written on the flesh side of the treated skin. [(A): Courtesy of the Estate of Yigael Yadin.] (B) Column 54 of the unrolled TS. The enlarged inclusion (inset) shows that some parts of the bright, text-carrying inorganic layer have been detached. [(B): Photo credit: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.] (C) Fragment of TS showing inorganic layer on text side (left) and reverse side (right). The organic layer has partially detached, revealing the inner surface of the inorganic layer. (D) The same fragment in light transmittance from the back differentiating the thinner lower part, where the detachment has occurred from the thicker upper part. (E) Enlarged optical micrograph of the boxed region in (C). Credit: Science Advances (2019). https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/9/eaaw7494
First discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds looking for a lost sheep, the ancient Hebrew texts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls are some of the most well-preserved ancient written materials ever found. Now, a study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere elucidates a unique ancient technology of parchment making and provides potentially new insights into methods to better preserve these precious historical documents. Continue reading
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10 of the Best Poems about Light
via Interesting Literature
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Randall Jarrell once said that a good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning 5 or 6 times. And many poets have ‘seen the light’, and written about it: whether a sudden flash of light like a lightning bolt, or a deeper, more enduring, contemplative ‘light’ pointing to a spiritual experience. Here are ten of the very best poems about light. Continue reading
an article by James Foreman-Peck anbd Peng Zhou (Cardiff University, UK) published in Regional Studies Volume 54 Issue 3 (2020)
Abstract
Devolution of taxes to sub-national jurisdictions could reduce expected tax revenue if some households move to lower tax regimes, constraining devolved government policy.
This paper develops an indirect approach to establishing lower bound revenue impacts of possible devolved tax changes by allowing for tax-induced migration.
The results suggest that limited tax devolution, such as conferred on Wales by the UK 2014 Act, could trigger substantial tax revenue and gross value added (GVA) spillovers from migration on the devolved economy.
The prospect may have, and perhaps should have, discouraged decentralisation of taxation to the same extent as decentralisation of spending in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
an article by Sharon Wright and Alasdair B. R. Stewart (University of Glasgow, UK) and Del Roy Fletcher (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in Social Policy and Administration Volume 54 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
A defining feature of UK welfare reform since 2010 has been the concerted move towards greater compulsion and sanctioning, which has been interpreted by some social policy scholars as punitive and cruel.
In this article, we borrow concepts from criminology and sociology to develop new interpretations of welfare conditionality.
Based on data from a major Economic and Social Research Council‐funded qualitative longitudinal study (2014–2019), we document the suffering that unemployed claimants experienced because of harsh conditionality.
We find that punitive welfare conditionality often caused symbolic and material suffering and sometimes had life‐threatening effects. We argue that a wide range of suffering induced by welfare conditionality can be understood as ‘social abuse’, including the demoralisation of the futile job‐search treadwheel and the self‐administered surveillance of the Universal Jobmatch panopticon.
We identify a range of active claimant responses to state perpetrated harm, including acquiescence, adaptation, resistance, and disengagement. We conclude that punitive post‐2010 unemployment correction can be seen as a reinvention of failed historic forms of punishment for offenders.
an article by Tracey Warren (University of Nottingham, UK) and Clare Lyonette (Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 72 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
Research on part‐time work has concentrated over many decades on the experiences of women but male part‐time employment is growing in the UK.
This article addresses two sizeable gaps in knowledge concerning male part‐timers: are men's part‐time jobs of lower quality than men's full‐time jobs? Are male part‐timers more or less job‐satisfied compared to their full‐time peers?
A fundamental part of both interrogations is whether men's part‐time employment varies by occupational class.
The article is motivated by the large body of work on female part‐timers. Its theoretical framework is rooted in one of the most controversial discussions in the sociology of women workers: the “grateful slave” debate that emerged in the 1990s when researchers sought to explain why so many women expressed job satisfaction with low‐quality part‐time jobs.
Innovatively, this article draws upon those contentious ideas to provide new insights into male, rather than female, part‐time employment. Based upon analysis of a large quantitative data set, the results provide clear evidence of low‐quality male part‐time employment in the UK, when compared with men's full‐time jobs. Men working part‐time also express deteriorating satisfaction with jobs overall and in several specific dimensions of their jobs.
Male part‐timers in lower occupational class positions retain a clear “lead” both in bad job quality and low satisfaction.
The article asks whether decreasingly satisfied male part‐time workers should be termed “ungrateful slaves?” It unpacks the “grateful slave” metaphor and, after doing so, rejects its value for the ongoing analysis of part‐time jobs in the formal labour market.
an article by Paul Sharkey (British Broadcasting Corporation, Salford, UK), Jonathan A. Tawn (Lancaster University, UK) and Simon J. Brown (Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK) published in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Applied Statistics: Series C Volume 69 Issue 2 (April 2020)
Summary
Windstorms are a primary natural hazard affecting Europe that are commonly linked to substantial property and infrastructural damage and are responsible for the largest spatially aggregated financial losses. Such extreme winds are typically generated by extratropical cyclone systems originating in the North Atlantic and passing over Europe.
Previous statistical studies tend to model extreme winds at a given set of sites, corresponding to inference in an Eulerian framework.
Such inference cannot incorporate knowledge of the life cycle and progression of extratropical cyclones across the region and is forced to make restrictive assumptions about the extremal dependence structure.
We take an entirely different approach which overcomes these limitations by working in a Lagrangian framework. Specifically, we model the development of windstorms over time, preserving the physical characteristics linking the windstorm and the cyclone track, the path of local vorticity maxima, and make a key finding that the spatial extent of extratropical windstorms becomes more localised as its magnitude increases irrespective of the location of the storm track.
Our model allows simulation of synthetic windstorm events to derive the joint distributional features over any set of sites giving physically consistent extrapolations to rarer events. From such simulations improved estimates of this hazard can be achieved in terms of both intensity and area affected.
an article Mohammad A. Alsmirat, Ruba A. Al-Hussien, Wala'a T. Al-Sarayrah and Yaser Jararweh (Jordan University of Science and Technology) and Morad Etier (The Hashemite University, Jordan) published in International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms Volume 15 No. 4 (2020)
Abstract
The wide spread of digital devices and tools causes the simplification of the manipulation of any digital multimedia content. As a result, digital videos and photos are not trusted to be used as evidence in courts.
This fact raises the need for finding techniques to ensure the authenticity of digital multimedia contents.
Experts in digital-signal processing conducted a huge number of researches to find new strategies, using digital forensics, to verify digital evidences and trace its origins.
The aim of this paper is to collect and provide the definitions of the main concepts related to media forensics.
Also, this paper gives an overview of the different techniques used in media forensics concentrating on video forensics.
Furthermore, it classifies the work done in the field according to the main technique used in the proposed solution approach.
an article by Ruth Patrick (University of York, UK) published in Journal of Social Policy Volume 49 Issue 2 (April 2020)
Abstract
Drawing on participatory research with people living in poverty, this article details the possibilities inherent in this research tradition and its particular applicability and as yet often unrealised potential for poverty and social security research.
The dominant framing of ‘welfare’ and poverty foregrounds elite political and politicised accounts, which place emphasis on individual and behavioural drivers of poverty, and imply that the receipt of ‘welfare’ is necessarily and inevitably problematic. A large body of academic evidence counters this framing, illustrating the extent to which popular characterisations are out of step with lived realities.
What is often missing, however, are the voices and expertise of those directly affected by poverty and welfare reform.
This article argues that placing experts by experience on poverty at the centre of research efforts is best understood as constituting a direct challenge to the marginalising and silencing of the voices and perspectives of people living in poverty. While this hints at participatory research’s great potential, it is vital also to recognise the inherent challenges of taking a participatory approach.
Significantly, though, participatory research can undermine popular characterisations of poverty and welfare and provide opportunities for alternative narratives to emerge, narratives which could contribute to the building of a pro-welfare imaginary over time.
Rutger Birnie (European University Institute, Florence, Italy) and Rainer Bauböck (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria; European University Institute, Florence, Italy) published in Citizenship Studies Volume 24 Issue 3 (2020)
Abstract
Deportation and denationalisation policies, which states employ to expel persons from their territory and membership respectively, have steadily increased in prominence over the last two decades.
This special issue investigates these distinct but related phenomena and their relationship with, and implications for our understanding of, citizenship.
In this editorial introduction, we outline the two main questions the different contributions to this special issue address.
First, why has the 21st century seen a (partial) reversal of the trend of increasingly constrained denationalisation and deportation practices that occurred in the second half of the 20th century?
Second, what are the normative implications of this reversal, specifically for our understanding of citizenship and belonging in our increasingly interconnected and mobile world?
The individual contributions to this issue are introduced throughout, and the introduction concludes with some remarks on future research.
Aitor Erce (affiliation unknown), Antonio Garcia Pascual (Johns Hopkins University) and Toni Roldán Monés (ESADE Centre for Economic Policy and Political Economy) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
The amount of financial resources needed to fight the COVID-19 is so large that most euro area member states will need a backstop from Europe.
This column discusses how to use the European Stability Mechanism toolbox to finance the fight, using Spain as an example. It shows that an ESM loan with low margins and a smoothed repayment schedule would stabilise debt stocks and gross financing needs, and that ESM financing could help Spain save around €150 billion in interest payments between 2020 and 2030.
A combination of bold ESM and ECB support could reinforce Spain’s debt sustainability after the COVID-19 shock, and could do the same for other member states.
an article by Peter J. Jost, Johanna Pünder and Isabell Schulze-Lohoff (WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany) published in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics Volume 85 (April 2020)
Highlights
This paper examines how individuals make judgements and decisions when faced with fake news and how situational and social forces influence this.
The paper uses an experimental setup to test the effect of anchoring when subjects have different levels of awareness and are confronted with sources marked by different levels of authenticity.
Our results show that increasing subjects awareness as well as source credibility are crucial instruments for combating fake news.
Abstract
The present paper experimentally investigates the effect of anchoring on fake news. In particular, we test how different levels of authority and awareness influence this effect.
Subjects were presented with false information as an unreasonably high anchor and had to fulfil a related estimation task afterwards. Results show that all subjects, including those who were told that the information was false, were influenced by the anchor.
Furthermore, a higher level of awareness of fake news led subjects to adjust more strongly downwards from the anchor. The effect of anchoring was also reduced when subjects without prior awareness were presented with arguments that were inconsistent with the anchor information.
an article published in CentrePiece Volume 25 Issue 1 (March/Spring 2020)
Paper No CEPCP573
Higher education has long been thought of as a tool to equalise opportunities. But according to research by Gill Wyness and colleagues, if we really want to improve the life chances of disadvantaged students, we need to pay much more attention to the types of universities and subjects in which they enrol.
an article by Rivke Jaffe (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Eveline Dürr (LMU Munich, Germany), Gareth A Jones (London School of Economics, UK), Alessandro Angelini (Johns Hopkins University, USA), Alana Osbourne (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde, the Netherlands) and Barbara Vodopivec (Independent researcher) published in Urban Studies Volume 57 Issue 5 (April 2020)
Abstract
The emergent field of ‘sensory urbanism’ studies how socio-spatial boundaries are policed through sensorial means. Such studies have tended to focus on either formal policies that seek to control territories and populations through a governance of the senses, or on more everyday micro-politics of exclusion where conflicts are articulated in a sensory form.
This article seeks to extend this work by concentrating on contexts where people deliberately seek out sensory experiences that disturb their own physical sense of comfort and belonging.
While engagement across lines of sensorial difference may often be antagonistic, we argue for a more nuanced exploration of sense disruption that attends to the complex political potential of sensory urbanism. Specifically, we focus on the politics of sensation in tours of low-income urban areas.
Tourists enter these areas to immerse themselves in a different environment, to be moved by urban deprivation and to feel its affective force.
What embodied experiences do tourists and residents associate with urban poverty?
How do guides mobilise these sensations in tourism encounters, and what is their potential to disrupt established hierarchies of socio-spatial value?
Drawing on a collaborative research project in Kingston, Mexico City, New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro, the article explores how tours offer tourists a sense of what poverty feels like. Experiencing these neighbourhoods in an intimate, embodied fashion often allows tourists to feel empathy and solidarity, yet these feelings are balanced by a sense of discomfort and distance, reminding tourists in a visceral way that they do not belong.
an article by Michael Richards (Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK) published in Disability and Society Volume 35 Issue 3 (2020)
Abstract
Since the Winterbourne View abuse scandal in the United Kingdom, there have been responses and reports which have aimed at preventing this from happening again; however, more cases have emerged, including at Whorlton Hall, UK.
There appears to be no hurry by the UK government to ensure a cultural shift occurs which places disabled people as the driving force in leading improvements in tackling systematic abuse in institutions that are meant to show compassion and care for people.
In response, this article argues that person-centred care in its current form is out of date and needs to be scrapped in exchange for a new perspective that encapsulates People First values, which could go some way in ensuring that disabled people are no longer treated and classed as sub-humans.
Laura Tateosian, Michelle Glatz and Makiko Shukunobe (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA) published in Behaviour and Information Technology Volume 39 Issue 4 (2020)
Abstract
Narratives enable readers to assimilate disparate facts. Accompanying maps can make the narratives even more accessible. As work in computer science has begun to generate stories from low-level event/activity data, there is a need for systems that complement these tools to generate maps illustrating spatial components of these stories.
While traditional maps display static spatial relationships, story maps need to not only dynamically display relationships based on the flow of the story but also display character perceptions and intentions.
In this work, we study cartographic illustrations of historical battles to design a map generation system for reports produced from a multiplayer battle game log.
We then create a story and ask viewers to describe mapped events and rate their own descriptions relative to intended interpretations. Some viewers received training prior to seeing the story, which was shown to be effective, though training may have been unnecessary for certain map types.
Self-rating correlated highly with expert ratings, revealing an efficient proxy for expert analysis of map interpretability, a shortcut for determining if training is needed for story-telling maps or other novel visualisation techniques.
The study's semantic questions and feedback solicitation demonstrate a process for identifying user-centric improvements to story-telling map design.
That would be so very useful when reading fantasy fiction, probably too expensive but wow! Labels:
visualisation, maps, user_study,
a column by Alexander Dietrich (University of Tuebingen, Germany), Keith Kuester (University of Bonn, Germany), Gernot Müller (University of Tübingen, Germany and CEPR) and Raphael Schoenle (Brandeis University, USA and Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, USA) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy are still largely unknown. The short-term economic impact will depend importantly on people’s expectations of the overall effect, and the amount of uncertainty thereof.
This column uses a survey of US households to show that the expected economic effect is negative, large, and highly uncertain. An asset-pricing equation is used to quantify the implication of these expectations for the natural rate of interest. The natural rate declines by several percentage points, suggesting a role for monetary accommodation to (partially) offset the shock.
a column by Richard Baldwin (The Graduate Institute, Geneva) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
“Go big. Act fast. Keep the lights on” is good advice for governments trying to flatten the epidemiological and recession curves simultaneously.
This column argues that the combination of containment policies that dampen production and stimulus policies that maintain spending will generate supply-side problems. Cost-push inflation may return, political pressures for price controls and rationing may be irresistible, and governments may find themselves engaged in thinking about production and logistics of the type not undertaken since the 1940s.
an article by Louise Tomkow (University of Manchester, UK) published in Ageing and Society Volume 40 Issue 4 (April 2020)
Abstract
Frailty has recently emerged as a dominant concept against a backdrop of media and governmental narratives that frame the growing ageing population as an economic threat to the current configuration of health care in the United Kingdom (UK).
Despite frailty's popularity amongst geriatricians and policy makers, the concept faces resistance from other health-care professionals and older people themselves.
This paper draws on the Foucauldian idea of biopower; by suggesting that the contemporary emergence and utilisation of frailty represents a biopolitical practice a number or critical observations are made.
First, despite biomedical experts acknowledging ambiguities in the definition of frailty, the concept is presented as a truth discourse. This is driven by the ability of frailty measurements to predict risk of costly adverse outcomes; the capability of frailty scores to enumerate complex needs; and the scientific legitimacy frailty affords to geriatric medicine. Consequently, frailty has become pervasive, knowable and measurable.
Second, the routine delineation between frail and robust objectifies older people, and can be said to benefit those making the diagnosis over those being labelled frail, with the latter becoming disempowered.
Last, studies show that frailty is associated with increasing wealth inequalities in the UK; however, experts’ suggested management of frailty shifts the focus of responsibility away from ideologically driven structural inequalities towards the frail older person, attempting to encourage individuals to modify lifestyle choices.
This neglects the association between lifestyle opportunities and socio-economic deprivation, and the impact of long-term poverty on health. These observations, set against the contemporary political climate of economic austerity, cuts to public services and rationalisation of health resources, bring the urgency of a critical consideration of frailty to the fore.
an article by Vikki McCall and Corinne Greasley-Adams (University of Stirling, Scotland) and Madhu Satsangi (University of Glasgow, Scotland published in Social Policy and Society Volume 19 Issue 2 (April 2020)
Abstract
This article explores older owner occupiers in lower value properties who, having acquired their home through the Right to Buy (RTB) in the 1980s, are now experiencing housing-related challenges in older age.
This article outlines the views and perceptions of older owner occupiers, social landlords, voluntary groups and housing organisations to explore the legacy of the RTB.
Current and future policy challenges in the area include the differentiation of home owners, difficulties of selling property with low equity in older age and the relationship between health and housing.
This article calls to widen the analysis of the long-term impact of the RTB to owner occupiers in lower value properties and notes that ‘ageing in place’ goes beyond looking at people’s current house to the linked housing choices available to them.
We recommend that policy support be extended to older home owners to increase housing choice in older age.
an article by Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge, UK) and Marianne Sensier (University of Manchester, UK) published in Regional Studies Volume 54 Issue 3 (March 2020)
Abstract
The disparity between the least and most productive regions in the UK is wide by the standards of many other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies. An important factor is the concentration of public investment around London.
The appraisal process for infrastructure investment projects follows the methodology set out in HM Treasury’s The Green Book.
It is argued that this methodology has reinforced the regional imbalance; that recent changes are unlikely by themselves to redress the London bias in infrastructure; and that infrastructure investments also need to be based on a strategic view about economic development for the whole of the UK.
an article by Phil Almond and Heather Connolly (University of Leicester, UK) published in European Journal of Industrial Relations Volume 26 Issue 1 (March 2020)
Abstract
We offer a defence of, and framework for, comparative research in industrial and employment relations, based on a long-term engagement with the social contexts under study.
We locate ‘slow’ research strategies in relation to predominant approaches and establish a number of basic precepts of slow comparativism as a practical methodological approach. We aim to provoke a discussion among those conducting comparative research on work and employment about how truth claims are generated.
We also seek a basis by which those conducting slower forms of comparativism, through what we term ‘implicit ethnographies’, can find better ways of developing and defending their modes of research within an often hostile academic political economy.
Guilherme Ramos and Carlos Caleiro (University of Lisbon, Portugal) and Ludovico Boratto (EURECAT (Centre Tecnológic de Catalunya), Barcelona, Spain) published in Information Processing and Management Volume 57 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Highlights
We propose a novel hybrid Collaborative Filtering algorithm to counter bribing.
We identify, from the point of view of a seller of an item, which users are profitable to bribe.
We show that our algorithm is as effective as the state-of-the-art approaches, while being more efficient.
We illustrate our framework, by studying the impact of bribing in our algorithm and a real-world system.
Abstract
Recommender systems are based on inherent forms of social influence. Indeed, suggestions are provided to the users based on the opinions of peers. Given the relevance that ratings have nowadays to push the sales of an item, sellers might decide to bribe users so that they rate or change the ratings given to items, thus increasing the sellers’ reputation.
Hence, by exploiting the fact that influential users can lead an item to get recommended, bribing can become an effective way to negatively exploit social influence and introduce a bias in the recommendations.
Given that bribing is forbidden but still employed by sellers, we propose a novel matrix completion algorithm that performs hybrid memory-based collaborative filtering using an approximation of Kolmogorov complexity. We also propose a framework to study the bribery effect and the bribery resistance of our approach.
Our theoretical analysis, validated through experiments on real-world datasets, shows that our approach is an effective way to counter bribing while, with state-of-the-art algorithms, sellers can bribe a large part of the users.
‘Black and white image’ by Element5 Digital. CCO public domain viaUnsplash.
There are at least 19 African countries where the heads-of-state have overstayed beyond their term limits via (un)constitutional revisions: Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea (which is trying once more in 2020), Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. But there are also 11 notable European countries that have no term limits at all on how long the Prime Minister or Chancellor could stay in office, which is probably why the Africans do not pay heed to lectures from the Europeans, because the latter do not believe in term limits themselves!
In all European cases (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom) the prime minister could remain in office for as long as their parliamentary majority is retained and the majority party wants them there, which is exactly what is currently practised in Angola, except that the Angolan constitution allows two maximum terms.
an article by Jo Ingold (University of Leeds, UK) published in Social Policy and Administration Volume 54 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
This article examines the under‐explored demand‐side of active labour market policies (ALMPs). Based on interview data from a comparative study of the UK and Denmark, the paper analyses employers' perspectives and experiences of ALMPs.
In both countries, employers were favourably disposed towards employing unemployed job-seekers but held negative views on conditionality.
First, benefit conditionality led to employers receiving large numbers of unsuitable and unfiltered job applications, with associated negative resource impacts.
Second, employers perceived this as a product of ‘box ticking' and compliance targets.
Finally, employers criticised policy and media rhetoric for focusing solely on the supply‐side and for problematising unemployed candidates.
The paper argues that these crucial, but neglected, employer perspectives demonstrate that the current benefit conditionality regime in the UK risks irrevocably ‘tarnishing' candidates, which undermines, rather than enhances, their chances of securing employment through ALMPs. This unique dataset provides further evidence that the current direction of policy requires urgent and radical re‐thinking.
an article by Bastian A. Betthäuser and Erzsébet Bukodi (Nuffield College, University of Oxford, UK) and Mollie Bourne (EngineeringUK, London, UK) published in The British Journal of Sociology Volume 71 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
Research in social stratification has shown that children from working‐class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labour market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds.
However, we still know relatively little about the micro‐level processes that account for this empirical regularity.
Our study examines the roles of two individual‐level characteristics – cognitive ability and locus of control–in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain.
We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment.
These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability.
We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers – at labour market entry and at occupational maturity – and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.
a column by Samuel Bowles (Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, USA) and Wendy Carlin (University College London, UK; CEPR) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
In the shadow of the Great Depression, Paul Samuelson placed the “really interesting and vital problems of overall economic policy” – notably persistent unemployment – at the front of his introductory text. What future citizens learned from their economics courses was transformed by the new knowledge – Keynesian economics – applied to the new problems.
This column asks whether we are now at a similar juncture. Using topic modelling, it finds that the novel themes in published research in recent decades – concepts that empower economists to address today’s major challenges of climate change, inequality, and the future of work and of property rights in the knowledge-based economy – are strikingly absent from today’s leading textbooks.
an article by Ans De Vos (University of Antwerp, Belgium), Beatrice I.J.M. Van der Heijden (
Radboud University, the Netherlands; Open University of the Netherlands; Kingston University, London, UK) and Jos Akkermans (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands) published in Journal of Vocational Behavior Volume 117 (March 2020)
Highlights
Sustainable careers can be described in terms of happiness, health, and productivity.
Three key dimensions are useful to study sustainable careers: person, context and time.
Insights from core theoretical frameworks add to understanding sustainable careers.
Abstract
This paper aims to move the research field on sustainable careers forward by building conceptual clarity about what a sustainable career means and delineating what distinguishes sustainable from non-sustainable careers, thereby providing key indicators of a sustainable career. Moreover, we approach sustainable careers from a systemic and dynamic perspective and address influential factors associated with stakeholders situated in multiple contexts and evolving over time.
We elaborate on core theoretical frameworks useful for enhancing our understanding of what makes careers sustainable and present three key dimensions that can help to analyse and study sustainable careers: person, context, and time.
Finally, we propose a research agenda that we hope will spur scholars to examine the topic in more detail in future empirical work.
a post by Linda Sapadin for the World of Psychology blog
Keith hadn’t thought about his father in many years. Though he had some good times with his dad, one of his most vivid memories was not so good. He was 10 years old and his father was determined to teach him how to dive. He remembers feeling pressured to get on the diving board and just do it. He remembers trying, really trying but he just couldn’t take the plunge.
“Let’s go, boy,” his dad yelled. “Just do it. Don’t be a wimp! It’s no big deal. Jump!” Keith wished it was no big deal, but for him it was. He felt terrified as he listened to his dad shouting and saw the other kids staring. But he could only stand there, his limbs frozen, his heart pounding.
an article by Nivi Manchanda (Queen Mary University of London, UK) and Sara Salem (London School of Economics, UK) published in Current Sociology Volume 68 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
This article thinks theory otherwise by searching for what is missing, silent and yet highly productive and constitutive of present realities.
Looking at Afghanistan and Egypt, the authors show how imperial legacies and capitalist futurities are rendered invisible by dominant social theories, and why it matters that we think beyond an empiricist sociology in the Middle East.
In Afghanistan, the authors explore the ways in which portrayals of the country as retrogressive elide the colonial violence that has ensured the very backwardness that is now considered Afghanistan’s enduring characteristic. Specifically, using the example of the institutionalisation of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), they ask what alternative narratives might emerge if we take empire’s ghosts seriously on their own terms?
In Egypt, the authors look at the ways in which Gamal Abdel Nasser’s anticolonial project continues to haunt present-day Egyptian political, social and economic life. In particular, they ask how anticolonial nationalism and its promises produced lingering after-effects, and how we can understand these through the figure of the ‘spectre’.
The article asks what it would mean to produce social theory through (re)visiting sites of resistance, violence and contestation, proposing haunting as a means through which to understand and analyse political, social and economic change in the Middle East.
an article by Nick Williams (University of Leeds, UK), Robert Huggins (Cardiff University, UK) and Piers Thompson (Nottingham Trent University, UK) published in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 4 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract
Spatial approaches to examining entrepreneurship have increasingly built on theories of social capital. However, the nature and extent of local social capital in less successful deprived communities remains under researched and inadequately understood.
This article examines the association between social capital and entrepreneurship in a deprived urban neighbourhood in the city of Leeds, UK as a means of contributing to an improved theoretical understanding of how space moderates this association.
It is found that social capital has a strong association with patterns of entrepreneurship in deprived urban neighbourhoods, with the potential impacts being both positive and negative. The forms of social capital are found to differ from that found in more affluent localities, with a prevalence of bonding social capital as the key facilitator of entrepreneurship, which may help in the early stages of venture development, but which over time may become a constraint.
Also, a lack of the bridging social capital associated with entrepreneurial success is found within the locality. From a policy perspective, it is recommended that policymakers responsible for entrepreneurship in deprived urban neighbourhoods should seek to enhance initiatives for developing social capital which incorporate local businesses, residents and local government agencies.
a column by Simon Evenett (University of St. Gallen; CEPR) for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal
Given the centrality of China to many international supply chains, there is considerable interest in the impact of COVID-19 on global trade flows. And a troubling trade policy dimension is now coming to light.
This column reports on and assesses a finding of the Global Trade Alert that 24 nations have recently imposed export restrictions on medical supplies.
A stop-motion animator breathes life into Russian nesting dolls
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
Charmingly simple, and simply charming, Co Hoedeman's stop-motion short, "Matrioska," (1970) gives life and humor to eight wooden nesting dolls. I couldn't help smiling at a few parts of the film. [via The Kid Should See This]
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We Contain Multitudes
via 3 Quarks Daily by Marie Gaglione
Things are changing. Always, everywhere, immensely and minutely, the history of mankind unfolds as we rotate around a grand burning star (also, everything everywhere else changes; the history of mankind may be of the least consequence on a cosmic scale, but I digress). I digress too early; I include parentheticals too soon; I stall with flowery descriptions of the sun. Because – ugh – I’m going to talk about “how divided we are as a nation.” It’s such a tired phrase; I don’t want to write about it. It’s stale because it’s static, and anyway, the declaration is often accompanied by divisive rhetoric. Wherever one may fall on the political spectrum (and here I’m being gracious; how often do we now identify with a “side”), they likely have established opinions of those who lie elsewhere. It does seem increasingly difficult to imagine a sweeping reconciliation when we continue to pour our definitions in concrete and defend our positions by reason of consistency. Inflexibility begets inability to listen, and thus to understand, which is why we find our differences so baffling and allow our prejudices to influence our opinions. So, finally, here it is: my own personal take on how we can get people to stop saying how divided we are. Bear with me, because I’m going to try and sell contradictions as potential energy for unity. Continue reading
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Literature before Homer: The Epic of Gilgamesh
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle travels back 4,000 years to find the world’s first great epic.
In 1850, a series of clay tablets came to light in the Middle East, in what is now Iraq. They were shipped back to the British Museum, where they sat for some fifteen years before anyone got round to giving them any serious attention. Then, in 1865, a young man named George Smith was tasked with deciphering the cuneiform script inscribed on the tablets. Smith worked for a printing firm by day, but his real hobby was trying to work out what these ancient tablets said. For seven years he worked tirelessly on the clay tablets and, in 1872, he published his translation of what we now know as The Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem that had been lost from the literary canon for millennia but which has a claim to being the oldest surviving epic poem in the history of the world. Continue reading
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Viking Drinking Hall Unearthed On Orkney Provides ‘Unparalleled’ Insights Into Chieftain’s Life
via Ancient Origins by Ashley Cowie Skaill Norse Hall, the discovered Viking drinking hall below the present farmstead. Source: UHI Archaeology Institute .
Archaeologists excavating on a tiny island off the north coast of Scotland have discovered an 800-year-old Viking ‘Bu’, or drinking hall , once serviced by a high-ranking Orcadian Norse chieftain. The Discovery of the Viking Drinking Hall
Orkney was once a great seat of Viking power and the archipelago was ruled by the Scandinavian kingdom until 1468 AD when King Christian I of Denmark sold it to the Scottish crown. This newly discovered vestige of Orkney’s past Norse glory was discovered at Skaill Farmstead in Westness, on the island of Rousay and this ‘high-status’ Norse drinking hall is believed to date as far back as the 10th century. Continue reading
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If Bob Ross taught math
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
From Toby's "Tibees" YouTube channel: "A math lesson about logarithms inspired by the legendary painter Bob Ross."
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10 of the Best Poems about Mountains and Hills
via Interesting Literature
Previously, we’ve gone among the rivers and streams with the poets, we’ve explored the forests and trees, and we’ve even taken to the seas with them. Now, it’s time to pick up your crampons and head to the mountains with these classic poems about hills and mountains from the Romantics to the present. Continue reading
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Chekhov: a writer for grown ups
posted by S. Abbas Raza in 3 Quarks Daily: Richard Ford in Literary Hub:
Until I began the long and happy passage of reading all of Anton Chekhov’s short stories for the purpose of selecting the twenty for inclusion in The Essential Tales of Chekhov, I had read very little of Chekhov. It seems a terrible thing for a story writer to admit, and doubly worse for one whose own stories have been so thoroughly influenced by Chekhov through my relations with other writers who had been influenced by him directly: Sherwood Anderson. Isaac Babel. Hemingway. Cheever. Welty. Carver.
As is true of many American readers who encountered Chekhov first in college, my experience with his stories was both abrupt and brief, and came too early. When I read him at age twenty, I had no idea of his prestige and importance or why I should be reading him—one of those gaps of ignorance for which a liberal education tries to be a bridge. But typical of my attentiveness then, I remember no one telling me anything more than that Chekhov was great, and that he was Russian. Continue reading
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The Boy King Behind the Mask: Tutankhamun’s Life and Legacy
via Ancient Origins by Sarah P Young Mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun. Source: Dieter Hawlan / Adobe Stock.
The incredible golden mask with its dark blue stripes of lapis lazuli and serious young face is probably the most famous ancient artifact in the world. It is instantly recognizable, and the iconic death mask has ensured millions of people remember the name of the man whose mummy it adorned – Tutankhamun.
He was a pharaoh of Egypt who ruled between approximately 1332 BC and 1323 BC ascending the throne at only nine years of age. But his youth and relatively short time as pharaoh belie the significance of his reign. Continue reading
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Milestones to peace: The Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye
via The National Archives Blog by James Cronan Boundaries of Austria by the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, 10 September 1919, showing old boundaries and plebiscite area. Catalogue reference: FO 925/20026
The Treaty of Versailles, signed with Germany on 28 June 1919, brought an official end to the war between Germany and the Allied and Associated Powers, but it did not bring an end to the peace negotiations. There were still treaties to be signed with Germany’s partners who had formed the Central Powers in the First World War: Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. The first of these was to be Austria. Continue reading
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Fantasy Book Review: Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reads an enjoyable and high-octane fantasy from one of the genre’s most original voices
Here’s a question for you. Have you heard of the poet William Ashbless? He has his own Wikipedia page. Yet he doesn’t exist. He never has. Ashbless was the creation of two writers, Tim Powers and James Blaylock, in the 1970s when they were college students. Unimpressed by the terrible poetry being published in their school magazine, Blaylock and Powers decided to invent their own poet and submit ‘his’ work to the magazine as a joke. It was enthusiastically accepted. Continue reading
a post by John Amodeo for the World of Psychology blog
Infidelity, deception, broken promises. Being human means having to face the pain of betrayal at some point during our lives. As I explore in my book Love and Betrayal, the important question is how do we deal with it?
How can we face this most difficult aspect of the human condition without succumbing to cynicism or despair?
Whether a betrayal happened recently or years ago, we need to find our way toward healing.
Here are some tips for moving forward in our lives after a life-changing betrayal.
a post by Robin Varghese for 3 Quarks Daily: Nick Martin in The New Republic:
Ian Gavan/Getty Images
This is a time to sustain. To find ease where we can in a world rapidly placing us into chaos. “We do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way,” Odell wrote. But we should.
This piece, the one you’re reading right now, took roughly an hour longer for me to write than it normally would have because I am currently sitting in my New York apartment thinking about a million different things: Are all my grandparents properly secluded? Is my extended family taking this seriously enough? Should I rent a car and drive home and get away from the city before it all really goes to hell? Are rental car companies going to be price gouging? When will the money from my cancelled vacation return to my account? Did I order enough cat food? Do I have enough food? What will things look like two weeks from now? A year from now?
That is normal, now. That is the experience I am sharing with my friends and cousins and family and neighbours. While I’m still reading emails and scanning my drafts for revisions, my mind is miles away with the people that matter most to me. For those with the privilege and ability to conduct their work from home, the coming weeks should be a time to focus on ourselves, our communities, and our loved ones. It should be a time to do nothing and produce little without the accompanying feeling of guilt or panic caused by a ping from a higher-up that you should be doing more as the rest of your world slowly cranks to a halt.
an article by Jan Kleinnijenhuis, Tilo Hartmann, Martin Tanis and Anita M. J. van Hoof (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) published in Communication Research Volume 47 Issue 2 (March 2020)
Abstract The hostile media effect (HME) entails that partisanship incites hostile perceptions of media content. However, other research underscores that partisans selectively turn to like-minded media, resulting in a friendly media phenomenon (FMP).
The present study suggests that the HME and FMP co-exist, and, furthermore, jointly affect people’s voting behaviour. More specifically, based on a media content analysis and a long-term panel survey surrounding the 2014 election for the European Parliament in the Netherlands, we find that people selectively turn to like-minded friendly media (FMP), but perceive coverage about the EU (European Union) in these media as relatively unsupportive of their own position (HME).
In this context, the FMP and HME appear to jointly influence voting behaviour. People cast votes in line with the objectively partisan-friendly media tone of their self-selected media. However, to a certain extent they do so, because they seem motivated to counteract the seemingly unfair or insufficient coverage about the EU.
a report by Jorge Cabrita, Julie Vanderleyden, Isabella Biletta and Barbara Gerstenberger published by Eurofound: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working
Conditions
Key findings
Men are more likely to work in more demanding physical environments and have relatively worse working time quality than women, but more likely to enjoy better pay. Men report higher levels of quantitative demands (for instance, working to tight deadlines), while women are much more likely to report being exposed to emotional demands (such as handling angry clients, patients or pupils).
In terms of social environment, men tend to receive less support from colleagues and managers, while women are much more likely to be exposed to adverse social behaviours, such as threats, verbal abuse or harassment.
Access to training is more limited among less-skilled occupations; within these occupations, women have even less access to it.
Variable forms of pay, such as shares in the company or payments based on company performance, are becoming more common. These pay components are increasing more rapidly among men than women and the gender gap is therefore widening. This is a trend that requires further investigation.
Mixed occupations – those with the most balanced shares of men and women – not only differ from the male-dominated and the female-dominated occupations but also show better job quality in most, if not all, dimensions. Such occupations also display the smallest differences between men and women.
Abstract
Gender inequality at work persists across Europe, despite the long standing attention paid and efforts made to tackle it. This Eurofound report presents a closer look at women’s and men’s working conditions, using data from Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and complementing previous Eurofound research on, among other things, working time patterns, work-life balance and workers’ health.
Beyond the general differences in the labour market, it highlights many important gaps in men’s and women’s working conditions and job quality which require specific attention.
According to the EWCS data, the reduction of gender gaps in those areas showing improvement over the last 5 to 10 years remains limited. European and national strategies aimed at achieving job quality for all, that seek to mainstream gender equality, could help address persistent inequalities between men and women.
an article by Jenny Preece (The University of Sheffield, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 57 Issue 4 (March 2020)
Abstract
This article draws on repeated, biographical interviews with 18 households to explore how people construct a sense of belonging in two post-industrial neighbourhoods in the ‘ordinary’ urban areas of Grimsby and Sheffield, UK.
It argues that experiences of low-paid, precarious work undermine the historic role that employment has played in identity construction for many individuals, and that places perform a crucial function in anchoring people’s lives and identities.
Three active processes in the generation of belonging are elaborated.
Through identification, dis-identification and the micro-differentiation of space, people constructed places in order to belong with others ‘like them’. Residents also internalised the symbolic logics of places through their daily movement, territorialising space as they learned how to be in particular environments. Finally, places were temporally situated within relational biographies and experienced in relation to past and imagined futures. Places fulfilled an important psycho-social function, anchoring people’s identities and generating a sense that they belonged.
an article by Henry Overman (LSE and CEP, London, UK) published in CentrePiece Volume 25 Issue 1 (Spring 2020) Paper No: CEPCP570
Abstract
As has been much discussed since the election, economic performance varies widely among the towns, cities and regions of the UK. Henry Overman argues that policies to address these spatial disparities should be judged on whether they improve individual opportunities, not whether they narrow the gaps between different parts of the country.
Hellenistic Elite Found Buried on a Bronze Bed with Gold in Her Mouth
via Ancient Origins by Alicia McDermott The Hellenistic tomb of a woman found in the Kozani region of Greece. Source: Kozani Ephorate of Antiquities
Ancient tombs are fascinating finds, especially when they’re intact. They can provide us with clues on how a person died, social status, burial styles, and funerary rites. The last of these is perhaps the most exciting because it can provide a wealth of knowledge about how our ancestors viewed life and death and what may lay beyond. Let’s see what an intact tomb of a woman who died in the Hellenistic period may say about rituals surrounding death in her time. Continue reading
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When This German Artist Tried to Use His Work to Warn About Hitler, the World Ignored Him. It's Time to Listen
via Arts and Letters Daily: Mary M. Lane in Time Magazine
German-born painter George Grosz working on a satirical painting that depicts Adolf Hitler resting with skeletons at his feet, in studio at home
Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
When Adolf Hitler took charge of Germany 85 years ago this summer [2019], he did not, contrary to popular belief, “seize power”. Rather, Germans elected him their Führer, or leader, in a referendum on Aug. 19, 1934 and subsequently chose to subscribe to the cultural narrative that he created: that Germany had become too open, too tolerant of cultural diversity in the early 20th century. This openness, Hitler argued, had caused their recent national identity crisis.
Hitler knew that to conquer the wounded hearts of a broken citizenry, he must first conquer culture itself. Dozens of artists faced his persecution when he pushed “Degenerate Art” out of museums and into a derisive exhibition in 1937, but very few tried to warn against it through their work. Continue reading
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Watch how this adorable hummingbird makes friends with a human
via Boing Boing by Carla Sinclair Continue reading
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Ancient Mesopotamia and the Rise of Civilisation
via Ancient Origins by Sarah P Young Mesopotamian relief of Assyrian warriors. Credit: kmiragaya / Adobe Stock
In ancient times, Mesopotamia, meaning ‘land between two rivers’, was a vast region that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates river systems, and it is where civilization emerged over 7,000 years ago. The first inhabitants, the Sumerians, established an advanced system writing, spectacular arts and architecture, astronomy and mathematics. The Akkadians would follow the Sumerians, borrowing from their culture, producing a new language of their own, and creating the world’s first empire.
Mesopotamia corresponds to what is now Iraq, Kuwait, Eastern Syria, Southeast Turkey, and parts of the Turkish-Syrian and Iran-Iraq borders. The region encompassed some of what is known by historians as the ‘ fertile crescent ’. The conditions in the fertile crescent, which also includes the Levantine coast, the Iranian-Iraqi modern border, and significant ancient sites such as Göbekli Tepe and Jericho, made it ideal for agriculture. All eight of the ‘founder’ crops of Neolithic agriculture (the wild forms of emmer wheat, barley, flax, einkorn, pea, lentil, chickpea, and bitter vetch) were found in abundance along with easily domesticated animals (pigs, sheep, cattle, and goats) with horses nearby. Continue reading
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The Best of Early Wyndham
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys some vintage science fiction courtesy of The Best of John Wyndham, 1932-1949
I’ve blogged before about my discovery of John Wyndham’s science fiction in a local charity shop, which had a number of old paperbacks for 99p each. That initial book haul yielded, among others, The Seeds of Time, one of a number of short-story collections published by the master of what Brian Aldiss called (perhaps a tad unfairly, if not reductively) the ‘cosy catastrophe’. But John Wyndham had served a long apprenticeship by the time he became a household name in the 1950s thanks to The Seeds of Time, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Chrysalids, The Kraken Wakes, and, first and chief of all, The Day of the Triffids. The Best of John Wyndham, 1932-1949 showcases the best of John Wyndham’s early stories. Continue reading
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The skull of Sultan Mkwawa
via The National Archives Blog by Dr Juliette Desplat
Signed on 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles ended the war between Germany and the Allied Powers.
Between the War Guilt Clause and the Financial Clauses, Article 246 stated: ‘Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty […], Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the skull of Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of British East Africa and taken to Germany.’ (FO 93/36/76) Continue readingand discover a rather macabre story.
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Spooky Factions At A Distance
via 3 Quarks Daily by Ashutosh Jogalekar
For me, a highlight of an otherwise ill-spent youth was reading mathematician John Casti’s fantastic book “Paradigms Lost“. The book came out in the late 1980s and was gifted to my father who was a professor of economics by an adoring student. Its sheer range and humor had me gripped from the first page. Its format is very unique – Casti presents six “big questions” of science in the form of a courtroom trial, advocating arguments for the prosecution and the defence. He then steps in as jury to come down on one side or another. The big questions Casti examines are multidisciplinary and range from the origin of life to the nature/nurture controversy to extraterrestrial intelligence to, finally, the meaning of reality as seen through the lens of the foundations of quantum theory. Surprisingly, Casti himself comes down on the side of the so-called many worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum theory, and ever since I read “Paradigms Lost” I have been fascinated by this analysis. Continue reading
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Beekeeper uses bears to taste test his honey
via Boing Boing by Seamus Bellamy
Trabzon is a northeastern province of Turkey. You'll find a lot of light industry there: small farmers, plantations growing tea and craftsman. It also happens to be home to some of the most sought-after honey in the world.
Ibrahim Sedef, is a beekeeper who, along with his bees, works in the region, producing Anzer honey. It's aromatic stuff and is wildly believed to have curative powers—your healthcare mileage may vary. People love Sedef's honey. Unfortunately, so do a bunch of local bears.
Sedef tried a number of solutions to keep the animals away from his beehives: he locked the hives up for the night. He secured his home against the animals breaking in. He even left out sweet fruit and baked goods for the bears to draw them away from his products. No dice. Over three years, he lost over $10,000 in profits. At this point, a lot of folks may have turned to having the animals killed, in order to protect their profits. Not Sedef: he enlisted the furry brutes to do a bit of taste testing for him, instead.
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A Short Analysis of the Shakespeare Song ‘When Daisies Pied’
via Interesting Literature
‘When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue’ is a song from Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost. Although it’s easy, because this is a song, to dismiss its meaning as frivolous or the words as ‘nonsense’, it’s worth stopping to analyse the lyrics of the song and their place in the play as a whole. Here’s the text of ‘When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue’ followed by a few words of comment and analysis. Continue reading
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When Children Came out to Play: Ancient Toys and Games
via Ancient Origins by Ashley Cowie Children Playing by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (1651) Skokloster Castle ( Public Domain )
The main halls and secured vaults of museums around the world are loaded with vast arrays of grotesque antique weapons, golden lined velvet robes, ceremonial swords and crowns, jewel encrusted scepters and other adult treasures and artifacts. Toys, play paraphernalia and games from the most remote past are generally assigned a shelf or a dusty cabinet but kites, balls, yo-yos and stick dolls wrapped in cloth have been discovered across the face of the planet, proving that children’s imaginations have always mimicked real life. Continue reading
My career in information management started back in 1987 working on the Training Access Points project. Nearly thirty years later I am still concerned to ensure that end users, and their mediators, have access to appropriate, relevant information in a form that they can understand, at a time and in a place that is right for them. The Internet seems to be for everyone and everywhere but the digital divide gets bigger. By pointing advisers in the direction of resources I hope to increase what can be done to help clients/customers.
I ran my own company for 16 years but am now a semi-retired freelancer.
