Hope everyone had a merry Christmas….mine was most definitely lovely.  I got an iPad and a garbage can full of manure.  I’m relatively sure I’m one of only a handful of people on the planet to get that combination of gifts (and love them both!).

Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again”. Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing”. The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again; and, this time, finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing”.

I thought this was an interesting accusation.  If taken seriously though, I wondered how this allows anybody to protest any characterization of any group they happen to belong to?  I mean for the moment we’re talking about feminists, but nearly every religious/ethnic/cultural group has to defend themselves from people who claim that their group is inherently violent/bigoted/crazy.

What always gets me in these claims is that people want to keep with sweeping generalities rather than even admit the data they’d need to ever make that particular claim provable.  Are feminists out to destroy men?  Well, in order to ever assess that, you’d need to figure out approximately how many women define themselves as feminists (using a population representative sample of course) and then figure out how to assess whether or not they wanted to destroy men.  This would get you in to assessing “hidden” agendas as well, as many would likely not admit it, meaning you’d have to ask tricky questions to sort through it, and likely get some false positives.  That’s a lot of work.

Anyway, I’m not a philosopher, but I’d guess the “no true Scotsman” fallacy is one that should be hurled with care.  Group identity is any area where we will almost never have data to back up our feelings, and that needs to be kept in mind.

If that’s what you celebrate of course.

No big post today, as I’m cooking Christmas brunch, but I did want to highlight a few good Christmas gifts.

We didn’t go crazy on Christmas gifts for the little lord this year, opting instead for some books.   He’s just starting to get interested in books put in front of him (mostly to shove in his mouth) but I have a feeling by this time next year he’ll enjoy Dr Suess almost as much as I do (for my money “barbaloot suites” is one of the most fun phrases to say, possibly ever).

Also promising is the book Big Questions from Little People (and Simple Answers from Great Minds).  It’s the kind of book I loved as a kid, and in fact I’m reading it now (he doesn’t seem to mind that I borrowed it).

My favorite Christmas present I can remember was the Big Book of Amazing Facts, which I read so often the cover fell off.  Not actually sure that Amazon link goes to the right book….it seems to be a fairly common title, but the publishing date on that one seems about right.

If you want to see some more fun reminiscing about curiosity inducting gifts, see this NYT article today on “gifts that keep on giving, if not exploding“.

And most of all, happy holidays to you and yours.  Thanks for stopping by.

I know we’re all supposed to stop talking about the Mayans, seeing as how the world was supposed to end on Friday and today’s Monday and all….but this link was too good to pass up.

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask ‘Why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous?’ Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!

I didn’t used to care much about tradition.  Then I got married.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but somewhere on my way down the aisle, I got totally overwhelmed by the idea that I was about to partake in a ceremony that literally billions of people had gone through for thousands of years.  According to Stephanie Coontz,  there is only one documented culture throughout all of history that did not build it’s society on marriage (can’t remember the name now….though I believe it was somewhere in Asia and formed family structure based on siblings all living in the same household).  It was the most connected I’ve ever felt to the rest of humanity (until I had my son), both to those here and the faithful departed.

Since that time, I’ve always been a little dubious of those who want to evaluate cultural tradition as though those deeper roots shouldn’t count.  In case you can’t see where I’m going with this, this happens a lot in sexism research.  Recently, a study performed at UC Santa Cruz suggested that men and women still think men should do the proposing.  The most cited reason by the participants was “a desire to adhere to gender role tradition”.

This whole thing caused some hand wringing, with my favorite Slate writer, Amanda Marcotte commenting that it is “benevolent sexism that leeches women of much of their autonomy beyond just the right to say yes or no”.

Sigh.

Alright, here’s the thing.  We’ve kept the tradition, but the whole back story?  It’s changed.  Nobody gets engaged at random anymore(okay, someone must).  People talk about this stuff first.  Women even initiate a lot of these conversations.  The tradition has stayed, but a woman’s agency to ask where the relationship is going, to discuss rationally if marriage makes sense as a next step, has developed.  This study did not ask men or women what they envisioned leading up to the proposal, just what that one moment would look like. All the articles I read about this talked about “how little had changed” in the realm of marriage when it came to equality for women.  Poppycock.

The traditions haven’t changed, but all the behavior around them has.

One of my favorite advice columnists is Dan Savage, a liberal gay male who is most notable for creating Rick Santorum’s “google problem”.

I listen to his podcast, and he routinely gets callers that say things like “I’ve been living with my boyfriend for 5 years, and now I want to get married but I can’t propose because I’m really traditional so I don’t want to bring it up” or “my boyfriend of 2 months and I are having sex problems, and I think it’s because he’s a really traditional Christian guy”.  He gets straight to the point with these people:  a traditional Christian does not have sex with someone they’ve been dating for two months.  A traditional couple does not live together for 5 years before talking about marriage.  Those things were unacceptable for most of history, and you need to come to grips with that.  People love to call themselves “traditional”, but most of them don’t like to act like it.

So give the college kids a break.  Women have an unprecedented level of say over who they marry and when, they’re just trying to keep their balance.

I was going to post this yesterday, but then I thought maybe the world was going to end.

Oops.

Seemed like such a lock too.

So here we are, a day late, with some entertaining links for your viewing pleasure:

First a bit of holiday cheer from reader Andy….how many elves would Santa need on his staff to get it all done?  12 million, apparently.

In data news:  This week the Sunlight Foundation released a new data app called Sitegeist.  It downloads 5 pages worth of data about your surroundings, including demographic and housing data, political contributions, and interesting things to do.  I’ve been using it for a few days, and it’s pretty interesting.  Apparently my neighborhood donates twice as much to Republicans as Democrats.  Who knew.

Speaking of Republicans….are you conservative?  Do liberals tell you that means your anti science?  Here’s a fast retort….ask them what was up with this.

I’ve had a weird uptick in the number of designers emailing me asking me to share their infographics on my blog.  Don’t they know infographics are dangerous AND I HATE THEM?

All right, I’m a bit of a hypocrite, I did think the top 10 sports infographics of 2012 were pretty cool

I’m still putting together some more for my previous series, but in the mean time:

Definitions are important.  REALLY important.  I’ve blogged before about how confusing things can get when researchers choose to define a word in a way most people wouldn’t think to, and this topic is no exception.

Today, for the first time in my life, a doctor refused to write me a prescription for a medication I actually needed.

Lousy day here in Bad Data Bad-land.  I stayed home from work today because my throat feels like it’s been attacked by razor blades, and in my Nyquil induced haze, I fell down the stairs.   I’m hopeful that I didn’t break anything, but standing/walking/sitting hurts WAY more than it should.

Luckily I still have pain meds left over from my c-section, so that’s a consolation.

If I start slurring my typing by the end of this, you’ll know what happened.

One of the reasons I love the internet is my family’s habit of sending all family emails about random subjects.  The immediate family is 6 + 2 spouses, so the 8 person email chain can get a little amusing.  A few days ago, my mother, who is forever scolding us to get outside more often, forwarded us this article on how hiking boosts creativity.  My brother, a biology teacher, was the first to respond with this:

Love it, but before I love it too much . . .Bethany, could we get an analysis of this creativity test?

I’ve apparently got them all a little nervous when it comes to research now.

Anyway, being the good sister that I am, I thought I’d take a look at the data.  Essentially, the study took a group of people headed on an Outward Bound hiking excursion and gave them a creativity test.  Then it took another group of people, sent them out hiking, and gave them a creativity test after they’d been in the wilderness for about 4 days.  Those out in nature for several days did better to a statistically significant level.

The creativity levels were measured using the Remote Associates Test, which is a test that gives people 3 words and asks them to find the common word that ties them together (ex: falling actor dust*).

Overall, I thought it was an interesting and unique study, definitely one that deserves follow up with a larger sample size and some other variables.  The authors hypothesized that the boost in creativity was due to either technology deprivation or nature exposure, but also noted that:

A limitation to the current research is the inability to determine if the effects are due to an increased exposure to nature, to a decreased exposure to technology, or to other factors associated with spending three days immersed in nature. In the majority of real-world multi-day hiking experiences, the exposure to nature and technology are inversely related and we cannot determine if one factor has more influence than another. From a scientific perspective, it may prove theoretically important to understand the unique influences of nature and technology on creative problem solving; however, from a pragmatic perspective these two factors are often so strongly interrelated that they may be considered to be different sides of the same coin. We suggest that attempts to meaningfully dissociate the highly correlated real-world effects of nature and technology may be like asking Gestalt psychologists whether figure or ground is more important in perceptual grouping.

I would be interested to see a follow up that addressed if this were related specifically to nature, or if it was true of any vacation….how is people’s creativity 3 days in to a cruise?

It was definitely a fascinating study, IMHO.  Daniel, permission to love it has been granted.

I’m going to go lay down now, very gently.

*answer: star 

As the AVI pointed out in the comments on my last post, book lists are troublesome.  Are we ranking books that are important, books that are supposed to be important, books that we’re reading or books we want people to think we’re reading?   What makes a good book anyway?