Government as Threat

According to a new CNN poll:

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to the rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

There's the usual, tired "partisan divide."  About 37 percent of Dems see the feds as a threat, but 63 percent of independents think so.  And Republicans?  Seven out of 10 GOPers agree the federal government is a threat.

No questions about mysterious black helicopters, as far as I can tell.

Hosting a tea party, anyone?

Aside from being interesting, this raises an interesting theoretical question.  A successful and functioning democracy relies on a reservoir of goodwill from the public, or so goes the theory.  As that reservoir is drawn down more than it is refilled, things can go very wrong (or very right, I suppose, depending on your anarchist leanings).  Of course from a journalism perspective this is great because, let's face it, a perceived threat makes for a great story.  And if there is one consistent journalism bias, it's for a great story.

Ultimately what can we make of this?

I suspect some of this is the media feeding this sense of threat, which increases the sense of threat, which feeds more media coverage of this sense of threat.  Certain bloviators on radio and TV spread further fuel to the fire, which keeps the circle going on and on until the whole thing will eventually collapse on itself -- at least for most normal people.  What bursts the bubble?  Usually some other major "rally around the flag" incident, or some TV/radio talk host pushes it too far, or a crazy guy flies a plane into a building.  Then the storyline becomes why are we so afraid and who are these wingnuts?  And the frenzy feeds on itself and that becomes the framework of a new set of stories.

Gotta love it.  Keeps journalists and TV/radio bloviators (and bloggers) employed and something to talk/write/bloviate about.

Liberalism, Atheism, and IQ

I'm not sure exactly what to make of this story that reports:

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs.

I suppose we can insert a snarky comment here, depending on our particular ideological viewpoint.  The differences, while not huge, were statistically significant -- meaning large enough to suggest they're real and not by chance.

So how does the causality work here?  Does being liberal or an atheist make you smarter, or vice versa?  According to the story:

these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with "unconventional" philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be "ways to communicate to everyone that you're pretty smart," he said.

So higher IQ folks might be drawn to beliefs that set them apart and signal that, ahem, they're smart.

Data for the study came from this big health study and from the General Social Survey, which is a huge and useful dataset that I've used myself.

And there's sorta good news if you're a meat eater like me.  According to the story, vegetarianism is often linked to intelligence in other research, but this study found no association with IQ.  Whew!  But the evolutionary idea remains the same, goes the reasoning.  Vegans may in general show some higher intelligence because smarter people like to demonstrate superiority -- thus eating their veggies and skipping their burgers.

Race and Knowledge about Lung Cancer

In terms of what people know, it rarely gets more important than knowledge about health.  According to a study out this week:

Blacks were more likely than whites to have certain beliefs regarding fear and risk perception of lung cancer that may interfere with the prevention and treatment of the disease, according to new findings from the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey. 

So race matters, at least according to this study. This brief story even uses multivartiate analysis in a later graph, which for us methodology geeks is something of a treat.  In it, they find that blacks were more likely (than whites? non-blacks?) that it is hard to follow lung cancer recommendations and to avoid an evaluation of lung cancer because they were afraid of the process.

If you're into this, other versions of the story are available at the LATimes, WebMD, and a particularly good one at Science Daily.

In that latter one from Science Daily is an interesting observation:

Both black and white respondents greatly overestimated the percentage of lung cancer patients who survive 5 years or longer -- many said 50 percent when the true number is 15 percent.

I've always been fascinated not only by knowledge but also perceptions -- either of knowledge, or opinion distribution, or of reality.  We apparently tend to overestimate how many people survive lung cancer, and I suspect the reason is an optimism bias. We want to believe they survive longer, especially if we happen to engage in the behaviors that might logically lead to lung cancer.  Interesting stuff.

The Mobile Web

Lots of folks have cell phones, but relatively few use them to access the web, according to a new study reported on here (but see also here).

Of cellphone owners, the majority (66%) send or receive text messages, and more than half send or receive photos. But only 28% currently access Web pages, and 20% download apps to their cellphones. (Time frame: Oct.-Nov. 2009.)

No surprise: It's a generational thing. Of cellphone owners ages 18-29, 48% use the mobile Web and 94% use text messages. Of those 50-64, just 15% use the mobile Web and 51% use text messages.

Lots of room for growth, which in terms of media expansion and potential to inform and entertain people, that's where it'll be happening for the next several years.

Political Knowledge -- from YouTube

This video, I guess done by some high school kids -- not sure -- is a little bit funny, a little bit creepy, a little bit scary, and the best thing I could come up with this morning for the blog. Need more caffeine for inspiration.

Health Knowledge Monday

A simple health knowledge quiz is available here.  Nothing fancy, this quiz, and no way to tell how other people did (which I think is vital for these kinds of things to really work).  Basically it's a health column using a quiz as a gimmick.  Still, it contains good info.

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Speaking of health knowledge, here's an interesting abstract that compares health recommendations from books written in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to advice today.  Fascinating idea.  Some books were right, even back then.  Some, less so.  My favorite:

Inconsistencies or discrepancies between historical and current health knowledge and recommendations will also be presented. For example of historical health knowledge that is inconsistent with current comes from Burkard, Chambers, & Maroney's 1936 book entitled Health by Doing, “Teachers and parents . . . know that the use of tobacco interferes with good attention and with learning.” This is inconsistent with indications from current neurology research that suggests that nicotine enhances mental alertness.

Ah well, even back then, you couldn't be perfect.

This is a neat idea, comparing recommendations long ago to today.  Too bad there aren't good surveys from that period of health knowledge.

Does Google Make Us Stupid?

Some time back The Atlantic ran a provocative story that asked: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Well, the folks at Pew asked that to experts.  The results are here, but the short answer is -- at least according to the experts -- no, Google is not making us stupid.  Or, rather, they anticipate the expansion of Google and similar services will make us smarter, more efficient, and have a higher IQ.

Where do I fall?  Well, I can't imagine any Internet service actually improving IQ.  That would be odd and, to me, unlikely.  I do think young people are better at finding stuff out, but perhaps they do not know as much.  In other words, why store all those awful factoids with you can, in a click or push of a button, know.  I blogged about this here.  In terms of politics, a certain base of knowledge is vital for the orderly interpretation and integration of new information -- which is a fancy way of saying you gotta know something to learn something.  Just looking it up, even a skilled search, is not enough.