Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Datebook: What’s Happening in May and June—and Why It Matters

May 3, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
trayvon-banner

MAY 10 First 2013 Solar Eclipse “For millennia,” according to NASA, “solar eclipses have been interpreted as portents of doom by virtually every known civilization.” Today, hundreds of “eclipse chasers” travel the world to catch the celestial action. A recent survey by an Australian psychologist found that 92 percent of them are male, and they have seen, on average, seven total eclipses—a feat that requires at least 10 years of trying. MAY 12 Mother’s Day Anna Jarvis of West Virginia organized the first Mother’s Day observances in 1908, and helped convince President ... Read More

The Power of Tetris

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
tetris

Tetris is still a game that people play. (Read this excellent history and consideration of the game from Noah Davis.) It doesn't involve flinging bird-heads at fat pigs or shooting aliens with nuclear pistols or even trying to make a three-pointer with Monta Ellis. (The third option here is the least realistic.) It's just a bunch of blocks falling from the sky, and you have to stack them. But you know that; everyone knows that because everyone has played Tetris at some point. Seriously, at least one billion people are estimated to have played the block-arranging game. Why, then? Why is ... Read More

Fame, Once Established, Is Not Fleeting

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
jagger

According to artist Andy Warhol’s much-quoted prophecy, in the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes. In fact, it’s more likely that 0.15 percent of us will have fame for a lifetime. Newly published research concludes that, contrary to Warhol’s prediction, genuine celebrity status does not disappear as quickly as it appeared. Once you become famous, you tend to stay famous. “Fame exhibits strong continuity even in entertainment, on television, and on blogs, where it has been thought to be most ephemeral,” writes a research team led by Stony Brook University ... Read More

In Zambia, Cambodia, Nigeria, Domestic Violence Is Less and Less OK

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SYLVIE BOUCHARD/SHUTTERSTOCK)

For all the dastardly, no-good ideas we see spreading today (jihad, jeggings, kamehameha-ing), it's reassuring to learn that some genuinely good ideas seem to be catching on, too. Case in point: the growing rejection of domestic violence around the world. In a study published last week, University of Michigan doctoral student Rachael Pierotti finds that between 2003 and 2008, acceptance of the justifications for domestic violence in 26 different countries—and not just the Luxembourgs and Monacos of the world, but low- and middle-income countries like the Dominican Republic, Zambia, and ... Read More

The Manly Origins of Cheerleading

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
retronaut-cheerleader

You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s cheerleading was an all-male sport. Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige to an American flagship of masculinity, football. As the editors of Nation saw it in 1911: "The reputation of having been a valiant 'cheer-leader' is one of the most valuable things a boy can take away from college. As a title to promotion in professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a quarterback." Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the ... Read More

Sports No Longer Last Bastion of Homophobia

April 30, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
collins-get

So, are sports fans ready to cheer on openly gay players? A body of recent research suggests they are. A number of studies published over the last three years have found a steep decline in homophobic attitudes among both athletes and fans. There’s no question that NBA player Jason Collins took a risk in telling the world, via this week’s Sports Illustrated, that he is gay. But that risk is far less than it would have been even a decade ago. “Research on masculinities and homophobia today shows that, even in the traditionally conservative institution of sport, matters have ... Read More

Fighting Words

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
broussard

Let me preface this by noting that I know next to nothing about sports, in America or elsewhere. I blindly cheer for my teams back home—the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Bulls, and the Chicago White Sox—with the same intensity I bring to a lot of other aspects of my life. (I've been accused of jingoism on more than one occasion.) But as a gay atheist who grew up in a not-immediately-tolerant environment (atheism wasn't seen as a lack of belief, but an absence of morals), I do know something about intolerance. This morning, I shrugged off the news that Jason Collins, who has already spent ... Read More

NBA Player Jason Collins Becomes First Openly Gay Major American Athlete

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
jason-collins

"I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." Those are the first three sentences of this week's Sports Illustrated's cover story, written by Jason Collins, a 34-year-old black NBA center most recently of the Washington Wizards. Collins played four years of basketball at Stanford and was drafted by the Houston Rockets with the 18th pick of the 2001 NBA draft. He's played for six teams over his 12-year career, scoring over 2,500 points and grabbing over 2,600 rebounds. In the essay, co-written with the help of SI's Franz Lidz, Collins talks about when he realized he was ... Read More

Making (Cheap, Monotonous) Online Work More Meaningful

April 29, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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If you’re looking for low-cost labor on the Internet, you would be wise to frame the assignment as something significant. That’s the conclusion of newly published research, which takes the truism that man craves meaning—postulated by psychologist Viktor Frankl in the 1940s, and preached by behavioral economist Dan Ariely today—and applies it to the contemporary practice of online piecemeal work. The more a monotonous Internet project is perceived as meaningful, “the more likely a subject is to participate, the more output they produce, the higher-quality output they produce, ... Read More

The Great White Hoax

April 26, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Chael-Sonnen

Chael Sonnen spent most of his fighting career as a marginally above average fighter with a bombastic personality and tragicomic penchant for losing big fights in the most embarrassing fashion possible. However, thanks to a depleted pool of contenders in the UFC’s middleweight division and some well-timed wins, he earned a shot at reigning champion and pound-for-pound kingpin Anderson Silva that was scheduled for August of 2010. What followed was straight out of a certain political strategist’s playbook. In the lead up to the fight, Sonnen claimed that Portuguese, Silva’s native ... Read More