President Obama, one might argue, is someone we’ve gotten to know over the past two years. At first, he was Zelig incarnate, seemingly everywhere, all the time. That’s calmed down a bit, but by now his nature is clear: a deep temperamental caution, served with a side order of prudence.

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Borger: What exactly does Obama want?

Editor’s Note: Truthout is proud to bring you a new, exclusive series from America’s No. 1 progressive radio host, Thom Hartmann. We’ll be publishing weekly installments of Hartmann’s much-lauded book, “Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became ‘People’ and How You Can Fight Back.” Join us as, chapter by chapter, we delve into issues of corporate power, popular resistance and the nature of democracy itself. We begin today with the book’s introduction, “The Battle to Save Democracy.” read more

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Unequal Protection: The Battle to Save Democracy

“The Information,” by James Gleick, is to the nature, history and significance of data what the beach is to sand.

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Books of The Times: Drumbeat to E-Mail: The Medium and the Message

Professor Brian Cox visits a giant solar calendar built in a desert in Peru in his quest to understand the nature of time in creating the universe.

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VIDEO: Giant solar calendar measures time

BP’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is commonly referred to as the Gulf oil spill, but liquid oil wasn’t the only hydrocarbon that gushed out of the Macondo well for 84 days. Up to 40 percent of the leak was gas, mostly methane invisible to the naked eye, reported scientists who published their findings last month in the research journal Nature Geoscience. read more

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Up to 40 Percent of Gulf Oil Spill was Potent Methane Gas, Research Shows

Mother Nature smiled Saturday on ice-weary metro Dallas residents and Super Bowl visitors, providing sunny skies and ice-melting temperatures in the lower 50s.

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Ice-melting sun shines in Dallas

Foaming at the mouth, rolling of the eyes, assuming serpentine characteristics in the face or body: all classic signs, explains Father Gary Thomas, of demonic influence. Father Thomas, pastor of the Sacred Heart Parish in Saratoga, California, is an avid Giants fan and a 28-year veteran of the priesthood. He is also a practicing exorcist; in the fall of 2005, Father Thomas traveled to Rome to complete a year-long training course under the tutelage of a master Italian exorcist. The story of his training inspired The Rite , a Warner Brothers film starring Anthony Hopkins that opens in theaters Friday. Despite this fictional portrayal, Father Thomas is also the embodiment of a new trend in the American Catholic church: Long the purview of American cinema, Catholic exorcism is being reclaimed, publicly, by its real-life practitioners. A factual account of Father Thomas’s training has been published in a book by journalist Matt Baglio; the Discovery Channel recently announced the airing of a reality show featuring the accounts of trained Catholic exorcists (though the Vatican has denied any official involvement with the series); and last November, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois convened a two-day conference to discuss the practice of exorcism within the Catholic Church. “If a priest has the power to cast out demons, that’s a lot of power.” The Catholic Church does not maintain official statistics on exorcisms. Yet Bishop Paprocki estimates that there are only around 30 priests in the United States qualified to perform the Rite of Exorcism, and he argues that these priests must contend with a growing number of exorcism requests.  The exorcism conference included sessions devoted to canon law and the dangers of an improperly performed exorcism, and the bishop hopes to eventually create a network of exorcists that extends across the United States. He also envisions the establishment of a formal program to train the next generation of exorcists. “The priests who have this responsibility get exorcism requests from all over the country,” he explains. “We want to prevent these priests from being overburdened.” Roughly a quarter of active bishops in the United States registered for the event, underscoring a growing interest in the Rite of Exorcism–a ritual that has remained, among American Catholics, relatively obscure. Historically, Catholics in the United States have been concerned with successfully assimilating into a majority-Protestant culture, explains Mathew Schmalz, a Professor of Religion at the College of the Holy Cross. They began to distance themselves from religious practices that came across as odd or out of place: the 1949 exorcism that inspired the 1970′s film The Exorcist , for example, was the last to be held in the archdiocese of Washington, D.C.   Today, however, broader changes within the church’s leadership and its flock have brought attention back to the ritual. Many of today’s Catholic worshippers are drawn from immigrant communities with a strong tradition of religious exorcism, explains Schmalz, and their members are accustomed to seeking priestly assistance with the expulsion of satanic influences. He believes that the movement also stems from an effort to reclaim the centrality and distinctiveness of the priest’s role. “There is a feeling that priests’ lack of specialness is among the reasons for a decline in interest in joining the priesthood,” he says. “If a priest has the power to cast out demons, that’s a lot of power.” Father Thomas, however, points to more insidious forces: he views the rising demand for exorcisms as a consequence of increased involvement in the occult. And once the door has been opened to satanic influence, he warns, it is both difficult and dangerous to close. An improperly trained exorcist can place both himself and his charge in great peril: “As a cardinal rule you never talk to demons,” he says. “Demons are, by their nature, devious, and they lie. They can engage you in all kinds of conversation to throw you off track.” The priest recently conveyed this advice to Anthony Hopkins, one of the stars of The Rite–a film that joins a long tradition of dramatic fictionalized depictions of the church’s battles with the devil. Yet the reality of Catholic exorcism, cautions one Pennsylvania-based priest, is far more banal. “The worst people do is growl or make noise,” he says, “although I had one client who repeated the first three lines of ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ over and over again–and that drove me crazy.” Rather than a spectacle of spinning heads and violent tantrums, he says, a true exorcism does not necessarily lend itself to the big screen; the real torment and suffering is internal. 

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The Return of the Catholic Exorcism

One of the least important things the uprising in Tunisia is going to do is add more empirical fuel to the long-running debate about the role played by digital social media in fostering political and social change. In the grand scheme of things, what could be less important than the way a real-world revolution proves or disproves the theses put forward about the Internet by a subset of very smart public intellectuals? Nevertheless : expect the “what does Tunisia mean for the future of social media” debate to rage for the next few days on an RSS or Twitter feed near you. Of course, we aren’t lacking in deeply thought positions on this topic. Clay Shirky has written eloquently on these questions in the pages of Foreign Affairs , Evgeny Morozov has positioned himself well as a sort of “anti-Shirky,” and Malcolm Gladwell has stirred the pot in the manner that only Malcolm Gladwell can do. I look forward to hearing more from all them in the coming days. When the debate does pick up again, though, I wouldn’t mind seeing a few new wrinkles added into the mix. What all of the above writers share, I would argue, is, first, a notion of collective action overly-indebted to definitions of action and coordination provided by economics , and (second) a somewhat a-historical focus in digital technology. One of the problems with the debate as it is currently structured is that other academic disciplines, particularly sociology, have largely stopped asking questions about the relationship between the media and social movements. Indeed, sociology has largely stopped asking questions about the media at all . (I’m generalizing wildly here, of course, but as evidence I would point you toward the cogently argued and well-titled article by Jefferson Pooley and Elihu Katz, “Why American Sociology Abandoned Mass Communication Research.” ) A second problem with the current debate lies in the fact that more complex theorizing about the nature of technological artifacts has yet to penetrate the mainstream debates over the roles played by technology in political protest. There are, of course, exceptions. When it comes to deep and important thinking about media and social movements from a sociological perspective I’d point you toward work by Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta at UC Irvine, W. Lance Bennett ‘s work on political communication and protest, and especially research by Andrew Chadwick , and John Downing . In his discussion of “organizational repertoires” and their relationship to media, just as one example, Chadwick draws on a lengthy tradition of thought in classic social movement research aimed at understanding the role “repertoires play in sustaining collective identity. They are not simply neutral tools to be adopted at will, but come to shape what it means to be a participant in a political organization. Values shape repertoires of collective action, which in turn shape the kind adoption of organizational forms.” In short, a primary advantage provided by a core sociological perspective on social movements is that they bring values and culture back into our conversation, problematizing notions of what collective action even means in the first place. In thinking about our understanding of digital technologies and the long history of technologically enabled (or hampered) political protest, I would love to see more work done on the way that audio cassettes impacted the Iranian Revolution, what, exactly, samizdat was from a material perspective , what photocopiers “did” in Eastern Europe, and so on. There may be work on this that I’m not aware of; if there is, I’d love to hear about it. One way to gain insight into the nature of digital technology is to put it in historical context. To his credit, Morozov has argued that one problem with the notion of the “Twitter revolution” is that it draws too many parallels between samizdat and tweeting. One way to correct this, of course, is to be less simplistic in our analyses of the role played by media and technology in the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I’m sure that the comments section will now be inundated by claims that I am totally wrong; that there is work of this kind “here” and “there” and “over there.” Fantastic. If we must argue about the role played by social media in the Tunisian revolution, than there’s no time like the present to start broadening the conversation.

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Tech and Social Movements: Beyond ‘Did Twitter Cause the Tunisian Uprising?’

The mass shootings in Tucson over the weekend led to all sorts of exercises in arm-chair psychology. The media was quick to portray the shooter Jared Lee Loughner as unhinged and paranoid, digging up his Internet ravings and probing former friends and classmates for detailed testimonials of his bizarre statements and aggressive behavior. And, following its polarization meme, we were subjected to endless accounts of how America’s heated and “vitriolic” political climate helped to trigger such action. But what can psychology tell us about the specific ways that regional, locational, and geographic factors can affect gun violence and mass shootings in particular? I was surprised by what I found out when I asked my colleague Jason Rentfrow , the distinguished social psychologist at Cambridge University, about this. While some continue to attribute gun violence and mass shootings to hot climates in the U.S. and elsewhere — “Living in a hot and uncomfortable climate makes people irritable and rates of violence go up,” Rentfrow summarizes — the preponderance of studies focus on a “culture of honor” that is especially pervasive in Southern and Western states. This is something that pundits and commentators need to take a good deal more seriously because, if it is correct, and a considerable body of research suggests that it is, it suggests that deep-seated regional and cultural factors play a substantial role in mass violence. The classic study of the subject is by Richard Nisbett , a social psychologist at the University of Michigan. In his paper “Violence and Regional Culture,” published in the American Psychologist in 1993, Nisbett examined the higher rate of violence in the U.S. south, which he notes has been established since the time of revolution. After considering possible explanations having to do with poverty, slavery, and even the region’s hotter climate, he found a different answer in a cultural vestige of pastoralism: a deep “culture of honor” in which residents place an extraordinary value on personal reputation, family, and property. Threats to these things provoke aggressive reactions, leading to higher rates of murder and domestic violence. Here is how Nisbett himself explains it: Southerners do not endorse violence in the abstract more than do Northerners, nor do they endorse violence in all specific forms of circumstances. Rather, they are more likely to endorse violence as an appropriate response to insults, as a means of self protection, and as a socialization tool in training children. This is the characteristic cultural pattern of herding societies the world over. Consistent with the culture-of-honor interpretation, it is argument-related and not felony-related homicide that is more common in the South… There is another sense in which the culture of honor might turn out to be self-sustaining or even capable of expanding into mainstream culture. The culture is a variant of warrior culture the world over, and its independent invention countless times (Gilmore, 1990), combined with the regularities in its themes having to do with glorification of masculine attributes, suggests that it may be a particularly alluring stance that may  be capable of becoming functionally autonomous. Many observers (e.g., Naipaul, 1989; Shattuck, 1989) have noted that contemporary Southern backcountry culture, including music, dress, and social  stance, is spreading beyond its original geographical confines and becoming a part of the fabric of rural, and even urban, working-class America. Perhaps for the young males who adopt it, this culture provides a romantic veneer to everyday existence. If so, it is distinctly possible that the violence characteristic of this culture is also spreading beyond its confines. An understanding of the culture  and its darker side would thus remain important for the foreseeable future. Rentfrow also pointed me to a more recent study by Ryan P. Brown , Lindsey Osterman , and Collin  Barnes of the University of Oklahoma, published in Psychological Science in 2009, which reinforces Nisbett’s findings and suggests that the culture of honor plays a particularly significant role in high school violence. The study found that the culture of honor to be significantly associated with two indices of school violence: the percentage of high school students who reported having brought a weapon to school during the past month; and the prevalence of actual school shootings over a 20 year period. The authors summarize their key findings this way: Some researchers have suggested that the apparent relationship between general acts of violence and the culture of honor in the United States might be at least partially explained by demographic differences between Southern and Western states, on the one hand, and Northern and Eastern states, on the other, rather than being a product of cultural differences (Anderson & Anderson, 1996). Indeed, culture-of-honor states are typically hotter, more rural, and poorer than non-culture-of-honor states, and any of these differences might explain the link between culture of honor and violence. However, the state-level demographic variables that we examined–  which included temperature, rurality, social composition, and indices of economic and social insecurity–were unable to account for the association between culture of honor and our school-violence indicators, and also were inconsistent predictors of the school-violence variables across the two studies. This marks an important difference between these indicators of school violence and more general indicators of violent crime among adults, which typically show stronger and more consistent associations with temperature, rurality, and environmental-insecurity measures similar to the ones we used (Anderson, 1989; Baron & Straus, 1988; Cohen, 1996; Lee, Bankston, Hayes, & Thomas, 2007). This difference suggests that school violence is a somewhat  distinct form of aggression that should not be viewed through  standard lenses. That the culture of honor appears to be such a robust predictor of school violence supports the hypothesis that school violence might be partially a product of long-term or recent experiences of social marginalization, humiliation,  rejection, or bullying (Leary et al., 2003; Newman et al., 2005),   all of which represent honor threats with special significance to  people (particularly males) living in culture-of-honor states. I am amazed how well this explanation seems to fit the emerging facts and context of the mass violence in Tucson. I don’t mean the obvious fact that the shooting happened in a Sunbelt city — Tucson is a sophisticated college town, not the sort of rural backwater Nisbett had in mind. It is the nature of the culture of honor itself  and the way it acts on and through marginalized young males, just like Loughner. The culture of honor, as Nisbett describes it, sees violence as an “appropriate response to insults” and as “a means of self-protection.” Numerous media reports note that Loughner grew more obsessed with Congresswoman Giffords after he felt she did not give him a respectful answer to the question he asked her at an earlier forum. Then there are the results of the University of Oklahoma study which finds the culture of honor to be a particularly robust predictor of high school violence, especially among young males who have been marginalized, bullied, rejected, or faced other ”honor threats.” And, Nisbett’s some two-decades-old warning that the culture of honor is not something that is necessarily geographically bounded but seems to spreading into broader aspects of young male working-class enclaves in both urban and rural communities is as prescient as it is chilling. My next post will cover the social, economic, political, and cultural as well as psychological factors that are associated with gun violence and firearm deaths across the 50 U.S. states.

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The Psychogeography of Gun Violence

The Web has organized reading audiences and changed the nature of the way new works are evaluated. This frees the critic to engage in more serious tasks.

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Why Criticism Matters: Beyond the Critic as Cultural Arbiter

The Web has organized reading audiences and changed the nature of the way new works are evaluated. This frees the critic to engage in more serious tasks.

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Why Criticism Matters: Beyond the Critic as Cultural Arbiter

A 40,000-year-old finger fragment has tipped scientists off to a possible new race of humans who lived in the Denisova caves in Siberia. The fingertip, from a juvenile female, was discovered in 2008, and a new study in Nature concluded that the…

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New Kind of Human Discovered?

At the Prison Outlet in Florence, Ariz., the nature paintings, jewelry and lunchboxes made out of license plates are all created by inmates.

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One-of-a-Kind Designs and Gifts Created Under Watchful Eyes

Tiffany Bozic’s stunning paintings showing the emotional side of living creatures Masterfully melding science with fine art, self-taught painter Tiffany Bozic explores the subtleties of the natural world through her bold and beautifully executed works. Her whimsical illustrations of instinctual behaviors in the wild result in works that at first blush look straightforward, but an up-close view reveals much more complicated dynamics at play. ” Confiding To Strangers “—currently on display at the Joshua Liner Gallery in NYC—continues her exploration of how all living things (humans included) relate and live among each other in the wild. When possible Bozic studies her subjects in their natural habitat, much like her favorite artist John James Audubon. While travels span Papua New Guinea with a bird scientist (who she later married), Namibia, Australia and beyond, when Bozic isn’t in the field she does research at San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences or examines creatures through her digital photographs. Painting with acrylic on Maple panels or watercolor on paper, Bozic uses her subjects to metaphorically express her emotions. As she explained in a recent video , her painting about sexual selection dubbed “Passion in Paradise” (above right) visually portrays the story of two male animals whose horns got stuck together while fighting over a female. Turning the horns into connected Birds of Paradise, Bozic says the story shows just how powerful the female species can be. With 31 new works in total, “Confiding To Strangers” is a gorgeously thoughtful exhibit about the numerous complex relationships we have with the living environment. The show is on view at Joshua Liner Gallery through 11 December 2010.

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Confiding to Strangers

By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities. The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself. In our economic adolescence, we have regarded money as a “thing”—something independent of the relationship it facilitates. read more

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Time for a New Theory of Money