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first, rather than explain yet another virtual absence, i’ll point you to some things that have unapologetically stolen my time. with any luck, you’ll get lost in at least one of them, and forget that you haven’t read anything here for a while.
{google reader; tiddlywiki; enc of philosophy, eg the problem of induction; the ugly insides of data acquisition; etc}

ny times, glynis sweeny

at any rate, nytimes had a much-needed op-ed by mike males, a guy who helped to start youthfacts.org. the article and the site try dispelling myths about youths. males makes several interesting points as he demonstrates a “ballooning crisis” among americans aged 35-54 in traditionally adolescent issues like drug and alcohol abuse. beware of his numbers comparisons, though, such as this one: of all 35-54 years old americans, “21 million [are] binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined…” here, the adult group range is twenty years, whereas “teenagers and college students” are an age-group spanning only ten years. that is, the population size is probably about double, making roughly the same percentage of binge drinkers in the two age groups.

what i especially appreciated about males’ piece, though, was his willingness to challenge claims about youths that are traditionally made on the basis of irrelevant or misrepresented research studies. i’m not the first to complain about this: the media’s science fetishism, mixed with its sound-byte sensationalism, render impossible any attempt to fully gather data and make fair interpretations. of course, the answer isn’t to downplay the significance or applicability of research… perhaps just to rein in the lay coverage of its conclusion.

for comparison, see also this interesting scientific american human behavioral and fMRI result regarding political disposition and internal conflict. here’s a quotation from the article, which was a review of a recent nature neuroscience paper: ” ‘They are more sensitive to the need for change and more sensitive to the need to change their behavior,’ Amodio says about the politically left-leaning subjects.”