Archive for September, 2010

Sociologists in Iraq

Here is an article submitted by CPT Tanya Rosa of the Human Terrain Analysis Team-South, a US Army group tasked with interviewing Iraqi’s and gathering information. According to CPT Rosa, “the team is a mix of education levels, most graduate and PhD.”

Say what you want about the role of the military in IRAQ, but sociology and the social sciences has an undeniable presence in the occupying armies of this world.

Cultural Elite or Imperialist Justifications

We are the cultural and political elite of this world. We believe our society is the pinnacle of evolutionary development (what is better than “democracy” after all), we believe our products and services and capitalist ethics form the basis of our emerging technological utopia, in short we believe we are God’s gift to this earth, developing the lands and bringing culture and prosperity to the unwashed spiritual and scientific heathens. But is that really so? Not according to this commentator who points out that behind our subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) airs of intellectual, spiritual, cultural, and scientific superiority lies a brutal and greedy imperialist reality. Exaggeration or brutal truth? You be the judge. Imperlialism in Action

May the Fittest Survive: The National Academy of Sciences vs. Creationism

BOOK REVIEW: Science, Evolution, and Creationism 2008. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. [amazonify]0309105862[/amazonify]In an effort to extol the virtues of evolution, the National Academy of Sciences has published an updated version of Science, Evolution, and Creationism (2008). In this brief, but colorful book, a coterie of prestigious scientists take readers on a whirlwind tour of the triumphant and tumultuous [...]

Athletes and the ‘Club’: Nothing Good Ever Happens After Midnight

So what’s with professional athletes and violent behaviour? Are these individual just “thugs” or is something else going on. In this short article Earl Smith traces some of the social, class, and economic roots of questionable athlete behavior showing that even the seemingly random nature of some types of social behavior can in fact be understood and explained by some simple, sociological analysis.