The cultural creative class makes up about 30% of the US economy

one of the "canaries" of the "health" of this class is gays.

Ford just quit marketing to gays in a nod to the Religious Right.

It's so sad when C-students are running corporations and governments. We all suffer.

The Hubris of the Humanities

The evolution debate is a symptom of something more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.

science and math, his article is nothing more than a profound illiteracy of the humanities. Only science warriors think that the humanities are incapatible with scientific literacy. These folks are no more culturally competent than someone whose only studied in the "liberal arts". Now someone literate in both, wouldn't that be special.

The correct culprit would be an over specialization of our schools. And thus training children on up through college to be worker bees and not citizen's. The problem is that we have seperated science and math from humanity. Some kids go one way, other kids go another and a few lucky souls straddle the line.

The Math/Science/Physics majors vs the Literature/Sociology/Arts majors.

The "Two Cultures" idea was in vogue in the 1950s, I think.

--p!

At least us who would be Bourdieuian.

And I never even got to the material on Bourdieu, if he was publishing at the time. I even missed the subsuming of Deconstruction into anthropology, my reading is that far out of date. :(

I did a little research on-line, and it appears that the Two Cultures thing re-emerged in the 1990s, just as the "Conservative Intellectual Warrior" mini-movement started. Unfortunately, while most of the essays I scanned are well aware of C.P. Snow and his essay, very few of them understand Snow's worry about the bad effects the cultural divide would have. (And, yes, Snow is usually thought of as Conservative, but from a time when Conservatives were not ninnies.)

As to Bourdieu, I checked Wikipedia, which whetted my appetite for his work. Sounds like a pretty "rad d00d", even (especially?) if the Euro-Trots don't like him. Many of the sketches of his ideas sound similar to my own, except that Bourdieu's undoubtedly outclass my own by several orders of depth of insight.

A propos of Ayn Rand, I am beginning to think that philosophy and ideology are the enemies of freedom, not their supporters. That tendency is already very strong in Libertarianism. Turning "The Two Cultures" into a rallying cry can only be a gravity-assisted jump down on the already-downward spiral of politics.

--p!

multifaceted empirical methods. But he also saw poverty in hyperempiricism that speaks only in the language of statistical procedures, as if that were the world we staring at. The most accesible work is "Invitation to Reflexive Sociology" and is written by a former student and incorporates interviews about key ideas. It's one salvo in the battle against over-specialization. His older works are technically anthropological (though he sees no difference)-an Ethnography in Algeria during the Algerian revolution.

He would read Kristof's article as a reflection of an academy that has specialized itself into esoteric corners. Each fearing the other and operating inside an unreflective discourse merely reproducing professional boundaries. Two cultures, two ways of organizing knowledge. The same distinction at a smaller level is seen between theorists and empiricists in science, and within sects of methodological specialists, all of which reproduce a social structure in the academy that does not reflect the outside world. The "Two cultures" also re-arose as a response to the so called science wars, where scientists felt threatened by sociologists/anthropologists of knowledge, most of whom had an interest in overcoming the "two cultures" problem. They spit in the face of an ally on that one. "You stay on your side of campus with all the political activists and we'll stay in our labs."

I have two B.A.s and one M.F.A. in the social sciences and arts, and I think that math and physics men are sexy as all get out. They're mysterious. They know stuff I don't know.

That's what the "Two Cultures" debate was all about.

Today, I think we'd call it "Discipline Envy". Those in the "Hard Sciences" are ascribed a kind of machismo that is actually funny, even to them. And, there are physicians and engineers with no scientific training at all who call themselves "Hard Scientists" because of the disciplinary emphasis in their fields. Then there are sociologists and psychologists who spend years developing valid statistical studies and the associated math, who are pooh-poohed as "Soft Scientists", as if nothing more than Viagra or one of Dr. Joel's Magic Pee-Pee Pumps would be required.

But if you find one group or another sexy, that's fine. My main criterion these days for "sexy" is "intelligent". It's sad, but wa-a-ay too many women still think "dumb" is the key to romantic and erotic fulfillment. :(

--p!

When profits dip I'm sure they'll blame their "over paid" factory workers.

Idiot corporate managers.

probably pretty damned quickly too.

Many straight people such as myself are turned off by their catering to the Religious weirdos.

them isn't made for only them. When their brilliant plan backfires the scapegoating will commence. They are alienating as you point out a powerful consumer. If I were overseeing the people doing the strategic planning in the marketing department I'd be pretty p.o. ed right about now.

"Build more tanks and sell them to the trucker hat crowd." That's quite a corporate philosophy. A real winner.