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I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream for Fun Links!

I’ve been storing various links in my rss feed reader that I wanted to share with you folks for several weeks now and haven’t gotten around to posting them, so here goes:

Amanda Marcotte has an excellent deconstruction of a recent evolutionary psychology “study.” (You’ll see why the scare quotes if you read her article.) These evolutionary psychologists do seem to be a hit with the media and I have come across this so-called science more and more often recently. Look, quite simply, there is no way to divorce human behavior from cultural constructions. I don’t mean that there is no science to be done when it comes to understanding our actions and our bodies and how our brains work, but the notion that anything as socially constructed as gender roles can be reduced to genetic and evolutionary impulses misses the point, no only of gender, but also genetics and evolution. If you’ve heard of these various studies and “experts” who claim to trace notions of sexism and misogyny and just plain asshole-ish behavior to the necessities of evolution, this is a compelling take on how such arguments are used. (Link)

As we usher in a new political age with a new President and renewed hope for a common future, let’s not lose sight of some particularly egregious points of disparity in our country. Meteor Blades has an insightful article about the representation of women in our government. Sadly, “America ranks 69th in the world for women’s political leadership.” (Link)

Thankfully, President Obama seems commited to bringing back science–real science and not religious-based pseudo-science–into our national dialogue. He also seems to recognize how important a how important curiousity and knowledge will be to helping us solve many of our problems and to grow as a species. Nature Magazine has a new learning site called “Scitable,” that is billed as a “collaborative learning space for science undergraduates.” I haven’t explored it yet, but I’m willing to bet that there are some compelling articles and tools for smart high school students as well as non-students who might want to learn new ideas and concepts and facts. (Link via BoingBoing)

Finally, do not click through to this link if you are squeamish about maggots. This is definitely on the list of foods I will never, ever eat. (Link again via BoingBoing)

 

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