Too Complex To Exist? [1] Paul Kedrosky has been pondering complex social systems and why they sometimes fail. Apparently it has something to do with "normalization of deviance," "tight coupling" [2] and "slack." [3]
posted by kliuless on Jun 24, 2009 - 7 comments

"The design of the Society is specially to afford, to dwellers in remote parts of the country, by means of postal facilities, the advantages derivable from interchange of thought on such subjects of common interest as may be elucidated by the microscope." from the Journal of the Postal Microscopical Society c. 1882. It might interest you to know that the Postal Microscopical Society is still in existence and that there are other microscopical societies around the world. Now you can look at slides from the Victorian Era or present day without waiting for the mailman. [previously]
posted by jessamyn on Jun 21, 2009 - 5 comments

"When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism."The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online, a provocative article in the new Wired magazine, examines the effects of the growing influence of online collectivism. I thought this might make for an interesting read and discussion by members of an online community.
posted by Benny Andajetz on May 27, 2009 - 63 comments

NRW 1946—2006. Short articles chronicling North Rhine-Westphalia. The site has one rather large shortcoming though, the video clips cannot be accessed (only available on VHS within the State!).
posted by tellurian on May 12, 2009 - 10 comments

Jared Diamond on the Evolution of Religions. (SLYT)
posted by Artw on Apr 8, 2009 - 46 comments

British academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett believe they've discovered the underlying cause of all modern society's ills: inequality. In their book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, they explain how health and social problems follow a strikingly similar pattern, being closely correlated with income distribution (pdf). To spread the word, they've founded The Equality Trust
posted by Elizabeth the Thirteenth on Mar 15, 2009 - 99 comments

Explore the History of the Ancient Greek World from the Neolithic to the Classical Period. Covering important topics, such as Art and Architecture, Mythology, Wars, Culture and Society, Poetry, Olympics, History Periods, Philosophy, Playwrights, Kings and Rulers of Ancient Greece.
posted by netbros on Feb 21, 2009 - 3 comments

Can you say Hero? The Life and Times of Mr. Fred Rogers One of the most influential people ever to grace television, Mr. Rogers was a neighbor to millions of children across the US. His legacy has left a long lasting impression on the fabric of society. With today's children being force fed Hanna Montana, and Joey 101, wouldn't it be nice if we could go to the kingdom of make believe, just one more time?
posted by Heliochrome85 on Feb 11, 2009 - 57 comments

The Virtues of Godlessness. "It is not the most religious nations in our world today, but rather the most secular, that have been able to create the most civil, just, safe, equitable, humane, and prosperous societies."
posted by plexi on Feb 1, 2009 - 108 comments

"It became an accessory of fashion. Status symbol like jewels, the fan had some additional advantages: you could hide behind, spy through tiny holes in the fan, swirl the fan coquettishly, or move the fan according to difficult fan language conventions, a kind of early telecommunication." [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jan 14, 2009 - 20 comments

The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself
posted by divabat on Jan 3, 2009 - 30 comments

John Taylor Gatto's newest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, is out today. Gatto, a former New York State "Teacher of the Year" (1991), is a critic of state education and compulsory schooling in general: "When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Dec 10, 2008 - 129 comments

Second Great Depression? We should be so lucky. Or so Dmitry Orlov says. Orlov, an engineer who watched the collapse of the Soviet Union, argues that the United States is well into a similar process of collapse. In Orlov's model, collapse is divided into five stages: financial, commercial, political, social and cultural. The first one is currently happening, and the next two are guaranteed to follow; as for cultural collapse, that happened a long time ago, but people were to narcotised by consumerism to notice. And things look set to get very, very dire indeed, with runaway hyperinflation, shortages, the breakdown of political institutions, the fragmentation of the US, and, if the "social collapse" stage is reached, roaming gangs and ethnic cleansing.
posted by acb on Dec 3, 2008 - 65 comments

Depression 2009: What would it look like? "Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Nov 21, 2008 - 48 comments

The Tibet Album: British photography in Central Tibet 1920 - 1950 [previously] via The Best of The Asian Studies WWW Monitor [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Nov 10, 2008 - 15 comments

Google rolls out Mail Goggles, designed to prevent drunk or otherwise impaired emailing by forcing you to answer basic math questions. And no, it's not April 1st.
posted by mattholomew on Oct 7, 2008 - 67 comments

"I would like to take a broader look at the Web. I would like to consider what the Web can do for society on a scale we have not yet seen. And I would like to enlist your help to get us there." ― Tim Berners-Lee announces the World Wide Web Foundation [more inside]
posted by netbros on Sep 20, 2008 - 30 comments

The Role of Inconvenience in Designing Social Systems (slyt via robowhiz) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Sep 19, 2008 - 26 comments

Goth. You just can't kill it.
posted by plexi on Sep 18, 2008 - 87 comments

Overcoming Bias [via]
posted by fantabulous timewaster on Sep 10, 2008 - 26 comments

"Political content aside, the discussion provided a lovely example of how a term from literary theory has established itself in American political discourse." via Language Log

"We may expect the following. Language will be carefully crafted. Advertisements will focus on personal narratives. The campaign will employ “attack” advertisements that emotionally sway voters. Policy will be sketchy with vague descriptions that emotionally satisfy Americans while offering scant details. The emphasis will be on creating narratives that resonate with the values, beliefs, and identities of prospective voters."
– Literary Gulag, on Lakoff, Nunberg, Westen, and the narrative of the 2008 presidential election. [more inside]
posted by iamkimiam on Sep 9, 2008 - 26 comments

Towards a culture of responsible drug use - an essay by the creators of Erowid [via]
posted by daksya on Sep 8, 2008 - 53 comments

Out There: People Who Live Without TV. About one to two percent of Americans do not watch television, which it turns out, is a common ground for the very liberal and the very conservative. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Sep 4, 2008 - 183 comments

A New State of Mind. "New research is linking dopamine to complex social phenomena and changing neuroscience in the process."
posted by homunculus on Aug 12, 2008 - 25 comments

The late, great Tony Wilson is being honoured today with a 24-hour long "intelligent" conversation in Manchester, England. Wilson was a musical Svengali par excellence. He co-founded Factory Records, helped discover both Joy Division and the Happy Mondays and has been credited with reviving the city that was cradle to the industrial revolution. [more inside]
posted by MrMerlot on Jun 21, 2008 - 16 comments

Why do New Yorkers seem rude? A quirky and interesting article about the culture of New Yorkers.
posted by SeizeTheDay on May 20, 2008 - 163 comments

The Most Civilized Country. Fascinating article challenging conventional notions of how best to have a society. [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish on May 17, 2008 - 78 comments

The messy 3-way interaction between grassroots Chinese nationalism, foreign opposition, and the quiet hand of China's media censors continues.
posted by Tlogmer on May 6, 2008 - 21 comments

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus — Clay Shirky on post-broadcast societal outlets.
posted by blasdelf on Apr 26, 2008 - 40 comments

In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally. Or: You weren't meant to have a boss. On the other hand, maybe you are.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 21, 2008 - 36 comments

The International Institute of Social History was founded in 1935. It is one of the world's largest documentary and research institutions in the field of social history. From their collections: Secret Societies: Documents and illustrations of Freemasons, Jesuits, Illuminati, Carbonari, Burschenschaften and other putative secret societies and clandestine organizations.
posted by nickyskye on Feb 24, 2008 - 11 comments

Virginia Woolf: A feminist's view on why we go to war.
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 24, 2008 - 25 comments

The Ephemera Society was glancingly mentioned prior, but deserves a better mention. It includes:
—An exhibit, an article, and links to Michael Ragsdale's 9/11 ephemera.
—A history of Coca-cola print ephemera.
—An article by Will Shortz on the ephemeral history of the crossword.
—Articles from the Louisiana Library Association's journal issue on ephemera, including Principles for Organizing an Ephemera Collection and an Overview of Political Ephemera.
posted by klangklangston on Jan 5, 2008 - 11 comments

The Howling Mob Society. Looking out over the burning Strip District from the safety of his office in Pittsburgh's Union Station, Thomas Alexander Scott must have been humbled. Only days before, as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Scott famously suggested that impoverished and striking railroad workers be given “a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread.” Now, with the local Pittsburgh militia all but mutinied and the State Militia rapidly retreating, he must have wondered if his hard-line stance had backfired… [more inside]
posted by damnthesehumanhands on Dec 3, 2007 - 9 comments

What Makes Us Moral and The Morality Quiz. It's war time, and you're hiding in a basement with a group of other people. Enemy soldiers are approaching outside and will be drawn to any sound. If you're found, you'll all be killed immediately. A baby hiding with you starts to cry loudly and cannot be stopped. Smothering it to death is the only way to silence it, saving the lives of everyone in the room. Assume that the parents of the baby are unknown and not present and there will be no penalty for killing the child. Could you be the one who smothered it if no one else would?
posted by amyms on Nov 25, 2007 - 147 comments

Unqualified Reservations is a fascinating ongoing commentary on society and governance in postmodernity. He's currently on about the pwning of Richard Dawkins, after writing about Mediocracy and Official Journalism. It might be best to first read his earlier posts in which he defines the self-invented terminology he's fond of using, like: Formalism, The Iron Polygon, Universalism, Neocameralism, and The Rotary System. [more inside]
posted by blasdelf on Oct 29, 2007 - 44 comments

Remember the Town Disney Built? -- 50% of the homes in Celebration, Florida are up for sale. A failure of corporate-owned and -planned Community™? or just a fallout of the bursting of the housing bubble? And whither New Urbanism? [more inside]
posted by amberglow on Oct 4, 2007 - 66 comments

National Library Of New Zealand.
posted by hama7 on Sep 25, 2007 - 8 comments

"An open society must be prepared to listen to those who offer a critique of its conventional wisdom—and our conventional wisdom about drugs and addiction should be no exception."
posted by daksya on Sep 22, 2007 - 50 comments

Hello! It can be hard to say. [Previously] Apparently it is treatable.
posted by St Urbain's Horseman on Sep 21, 2007 - 13 comments

Lazy-Ass Nation. "Somewhere along the way, we fell in love with the dream of the effort-free existence."
posted by amyms on Sep 19, 2007 - 41 comments

ENDA House hearings start tomorrow --a record 94% of Fortune 500 companies now provide Sexual Orientation Discrimination Protection, and 89% of Americans polled believe Homosexuals should have equal rights in terms of job opportunities. Repeatedly introduced and then killed since 1994, the 2007 version--H.R. 2015--Employment Non-Discrimination Act (text of bill)--includes transgender protection for the very first time. The TVC is just one of many organizations fighting it. (there is a religious exemption, but groups like the TVC would be covered by it)
posted by amberglow on Sep 4, 2007 - 58 comments

Official transgender blessings -- Kulanu -- the newly-revised manual for LGBT issues and ceremonies put out by the Union for Reform Judaism (1.5 million US Jews are Reform) now includes 2 blessings (written by a Rabbi now male) for those transitioning and who have completed the change, alongside the already existing same sex marriage liturgy and other documents and procedures. A first? (blessings text inside)
posted by amberglow on Aug 9, 2007 - 50 comments

Wendy Shalit keeps it genteel. The author of A Return to Modesty recently put out a new book, entitled Girls Gone Mild, "Shalit reveals how the media, one’s peers, and even parents can undermine girls’ quests for their authentic selves, details the problems of sex without intimacy, and explains what it means to break from the herd mentality and choose integrity over popularity." Audio: Shalit on the Diane Rehm Show
posted by psmealey on Jul 3, 2007 - 148 comments

Social Class Calculator From the NYT series on social class. What is social class in America? Little has changed in fifty years, or has it?
posted by caddis on Jun 26, 2007 - 65 comments

According to a new study in Biology Letters (Royal Society journal), plants respond competitively when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but when placed in a pot with their siblings are more accomodating. PDF, HTML.
posted by christopherious on Jun 17, 2007 - 41 comments

rsspect and AfroSpear -- both bringing more Black voices of the blogosphere to our attention. Rsspect is a growing collection of feeds, and AfroSpear a group blog. The loss of Steve Gilliard of the NewsBlog this week has caused many to rightly question why more minority voices aren't as visible or prominent online.
posted by amberglow on Jun 3, 2007 - 66 comments

People of the Web --very well done short video profiles of interesting people online. Mike Rogers of blogactive is on the front page now. Links to previous profiles are on the right, including Kirk Cameron, Caleb Shikles, Sherman Austin, and Josh Wolf.
posted by amberglow on Jun 1, 2007 - 3 comments

Under the ole shade tree... Welcome to Jena, LA -- mix high school segregation, racism, nooses, fights, ineffective school administration, attempted-murder charges, shotguns, and a town in upheaval--a "racial powder keg". Much more here, including links to help.
posted by amberglow on May 23, 2007 - 87 comments

The slur "white trash" has been used longer than you may think. ^
posted by moonbird on May 19, 2007 - 63 comments