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Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Social Psychology Network (Tuesday, 11/8/05)
Ironically, social psychology may be one of the least known research disciplines to the general public while also being one of the most important.
Here's why it's so important: One of the principal defining attributes of the modern age is that we have learned a great deal about what it takes to produce trustworthy answers to empirical questions. Evidence for the effectiveness of modern research methods is all around us. If these methods did not work and if they were not necessary, the modern world that surrounds us could not be possible.
However, most people the world over do not do "what it takes" to provide trustworthy answers to empirical questions, which is to say that most of the beliefs that most people have about most things they regard as important do not rest on factual foundations. That is, most of the things that most people believe are simply wrong.
So, how is it that people can feel so certain that their beliefs are correct even though they're usually based on so little? Seventy years of research in social psychology helps answer that question, and the Social Psychology Network may well be the largest social psychology database on the Internet with more than 11,000 links.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership (Wednesday, 11/9/05)
The United States Department of State has joined with Fortune magazine to form an International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Center for the Advanced Study of India (Thursday, 11/10/05)
India often seems to be in competition with China for 21st century economic dominance, with neither worrying too much about the long-term future of the United States, although that may be a mistake. At any rate, those societies that are on top at the moment--e.g., the United States, Western Europe, and Japan--probably should learn more about India, not only because of its growing international economic prominence, but also because its history typically has been misinterpreted and underestimated by many Westerners. To help in your orientation to both the past and future, here is the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Advanced Study of India.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Global Legal Information Network (Friday, 11/11/05)
Among other things, you can search full-text legal documents from around the world on the Global Legal Information Network courtesy of the Law Library of the United States Congress.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Least Fuel-Efficient Cars (Saturday, 11/12/05)
Those who suffer from "testosterone poisoning" may be particularly interested in vehicles that consume energy at really impressive rates. Forbes magazine has identified the least fuel-efficient cars.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (Sunday, 11/13/05)
We've noted numerous times the irony that approximately 1-1 1/2 billion Christians seem to be sinking into deeper conflict with approximately 1-1 1/2 billion Muslims and re-igniting enmities from the Middle Ages. In large part, because of the basic irrationality of many of the ideological competitors, these traditionalists have been scaring the living daylights out of much of the rest of the world's population, much as a four-year-old with a loaded shotgun easily can make a large crowd scatter and head for cover.
While much of the Christian world is very rich and much of the Islamic world is very poor--economic resentments are partially but only partially fueling the conflict--both religious cultures seem to use similar approaches to the problem of arriving at conclusions and formulating beliefs. It doesn't make the world safer when millions of its inhabitants feel they have little to live for and hate their adversaries more than they love life. Nor does it make the world safer for people with relatively unsophisticated ideas to have full access to extremely sophisticated and powerful machines.
The fundamentalist wings of neither the Christian nor Islamic cultures make very heavy use of what humanity has learned during recent centuries about what it takes to develop trustworthy answers to empirical questions, including those relating to the past. For one thing, it isn't good enough simply to make up something or simply to accept familiar ideas that other people have made up, however long ago they did it.
Meanwhile, large numbers of people in China and India who are neither Christian nor Muslim may welcome the fact that Christian and Islamic cultures are distracting each other right now, even attempting to destroy each other. The two most populous countries in the world also have the two fastest growing economies in the world, and both may expect to be the last ones standing sometime later in the 21st century.
In the West, it seems particularly ironic that many "new age" persons who see themselves as offering rational alternatives to fundamentalist Christianity seem to have much in common with the targets of their animosity, at least with respect to the nature and level of their thinking and its foundations.
While some Christian survivors of recent hurricanes in the American Gulf Coast have attributed their survival to "almighty God," it would seem that they have "almighty God" to thank for the deaths of some of their neighbors and for the hurricanes themselves, as well. Meanwhile, many people in the West who see themselves as having been born only once strongly identify with foods and treatments for illnesses that are "natural," all the while seemingly ignoring the fact that snake venom, cancer, and devastating earthquakes also are perfectly "natural."
"Science" is defined in terms of its methods, not its subject matter or its conclusions at any particular time. Moreover, it is about CREATING knowledge, while "technology" is about USING it. It's hard for informed persons to be ambivalent about genuine verifiable knowledge, because the only alternative is ignorance, and it has had a terrible record over many centuries.
"Technology," on the other hand, is a different matter, because knowledge can be put to a variety of uses, including ones which are contradictory. Some of these, to most observers, clearly serve positive human purposes, while others are clearly destructive. In many cases, though, it's not easy to tell or too soon to tell, or it depends on whom you ask.
If the word "organic" makes you feel good, it may simply mean that you are vulnerable to clever marketing strategies. However, if you're sophisticated about "the appropriate uses of knowledge" as applied to agriculture, you may have good reason to be interested in the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Richest Cities in the United States (Monday, 11/14/05)
There are many American cities that are very rich by world standards, but here's Forbes magazine's list of the richest cities in the United States.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Farming Today (Tuesday, 11/15/05)
Farming Today is a BBC radio program dealing with agriculture in the UK and how technological and other changes have been affecting people who live on the land.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: National Low Income Housing Coalition (Wednesday, 11/16/05)
If you and your spouse are both college graduates with good jobs but still wouldn't have been able to qualify to buy a home during the recent real estate boom if it were not for "creative" mortgages which have allowed large numbers of people to get in over their heads, how would you feel if you were among the genuinely poor? The National Low Income Housing Coalition is one among a number of organizations concerned with the availability of low-income housing.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The National Organization on Disability (Thursday, 11/17/05)
During the Civil War, which ended only 140 years ago, the total American population was approximately 30 million, which helps put things into perspective when we learn that the same country now contains 54 million persons with disabilities, according to the National Organization on Disability.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The NOAA Paleoclimatology Program (Friday, 11/18/05)
It's difficult to maintain a broad perspective, given the relatively small size of human beings and the brevity of the human life span. On a geologic, let alone galactic time scale, even the entire history of humanity has been only an instant. Now that Earth's climates seem to be going through a transition, it's particularly important to take into account naturally occurring long-term cycles as we attempt to assess the likely consequences of climate change and the reasons for it.
All signs seem to indicate that Earth's atmosphere and seas are getting warmer, and that increasingly violent storms are occurring with greater frequency. However, according to our best available evidence, the earth's outer layer has been warmer at other times in Earth's history long before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which has resulted in transferring a tremendous amount of carbon from inside the Earth to the planet's atmosphere. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationšs Paleoclimatology Program is helping to provide the long-term perspective necessary for interpreting current atmospheric and oceanic events.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Roll Back Malaria Partnership (Saturday, 11/19/05)
Disease remains a major concern throughout the world. With all the attention given to AIDS during recent years and to bird flu presently, it's easy to forget many of the familiar old diseases continue to wreak havoc in many parts of the planet. One example is malaria, on which relatively little money has been spent, at least until the Gates Foundation recently provided $258 million to research it. In addition, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the World Bank have joined forces in the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Rural Community Assistance Corporation (Sunday, 11/20/05)
The Rural Community Assistance Corporation focuses its work on communities with populations less than 50,000 in 13 Western states on matters having to do with housing, finance, and infrastructure development in rural communities.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The 50 Largest US Charities (Monday, 11/21/05)
The Christian Science Monitor provides a listing of the 50 largest charities in the United States.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Hot and Cold Home Markets (Tuesday, 11/22/05)
Where will you have to go in the United States to buy a house for between $80,000 and $90,000? Go to one of the slowest growing real estate markets. CNN and Money magazine team up to identify the extremes: the hot and cold home markets.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Pandemic Flu (Wednesday, 11/23/05)
Infectious disease has played a major role in world history. For instance, the "Black Death" of the mid-14th century probably still holds the record for killing the largest proportion of a major population, although, given the enormous global population growth of the past 150 years, AIDS may now be the worst pandemic in history, given the number of people infected and affected.
However, the great flu of 1918 surely killed tens of millions of people, although just how many tens of millions still isn't clear, because the disease affected parts of the world in which accurate death statistics were not easy to acquire. However, coming, as it did, at the end of World War I, there were other things on the minds of many people who were not directly affected by the flu. As a consequence, the death toll from 1918's great flu probably has been de-emphasized by history.
Nonetheless, flu once again is very much on the minds of many people throughout the world. You have good reason to worry about bird flu, even if you're not a bird. Will there be a pandemic sometime soon? Nobody can say, as experts readily acknowledge. However, it's best to err on the side of caution. Here's the United States government's Pandemic Flu site intended to help you stay vigilant and informed.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Institute for Women's Policy Research (Thursday, 11/24/05)
The Institute for Womenšs Policy Research has been helping to inform the public and policymakers about issues affecting women for more than a decade.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: World Agricultural Information Centre Portal (Friday, 11/25/05)
Much of whatever you might want to know about agriculture throughout the world might be found through the World Agricultural Information Centre Portal from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: National Adoption Information Clearinghouse (Saturday, 11/26/05)
The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Since 1974, it has been assisting professionals, individuals, and families on matters of adoption.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: American Hospital Association (Sunday, 11/27/05)
The American Hospital Association is in its second century of operation. Its information web site is likely to be of interest to hospital managers and professionals as well as members of the general public. Start with the Resource Center section in order to explore the site's contents.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: What Interests You? (Monday, 11/28/05)
What Interests You? is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and provides career guidance for K-12 education.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Governance Divide (Tuesday, 11/29/05)
Governance Divide is a report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education on improving college readiness and success during a time when many worry that America's lead in scientific and technological innovation may be shrinking fast. Four states were studied.
Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Star Power (Wednesday, 11/30/05)
Hollywood produces hundreds of feature films each year, and most of the major pictures are "star-driven." If you're intending to produce a film, or if you're simply curious, a listing of what producers are likely to have to pay for any of more than a thousand actors is available from The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Their Star Power listing can be downloaded, but it isn't free.
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