Month: June 2013

Will Oremus heralds it:

Once the province of big, professional operations like Rand McNally and National Geographic, cartography is becoming a more democratic realm thanks to publicly available data and software tools. Thanks to online marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms, amateurs and hobbyists can now draw up maps with a niche focus and a geeky appeal and make a little money in the process.

So now we have maps like David Imus’ hand-drawn opus, which has found a market thanks to a rave review from my colleague Seth Stevenson. We have issue-focused maps like Alfred Twu’s fantasy high-speed rail map, which reignited a debate over the country’s stalled high-speed rail plans. We have interactive online maps that make a point or provide a public service, like Slate’s gun-deaths map or ProPublica’s impressively detailed New York flood-insurance map, which lets you compare FEMA’s official maps to the actual damage from Hurricane Sandy.

And then we have people making maps for the sheer fun of it. In that category is Simon Schuetz’s Kickstarter project to create a global “bucket list” map, filling in the borders of the world’s nations not with road markings and city names, but with lovingly scrawled illustrations of the one-of-a-kind sights you can see there.

Elsewhere, OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced cartography project that has been open to contributors since 2004, recently held its annual State Of The Map conference. The project’s 2013 report yielded a meta-map, seen above, that illustrates the dates of map edits by color (green marks the oldest edits and white the newest, with blue and red in between):

While [mappers] were taking stock, it turns out the global open mapping effort has now mapped data on more than 78 million buildings and 21 million miles of road (if you wanted to drive all those roads at, say, 60 miles an hour, it would take you some 40 years to do it). And more than a million people have chipped away at this in an impressively democratic manner: 83.6 percent of the changes in the whole database have been made by 99.9 percent of contributors.

A close-up of edits to a London road map:

Previous Dish referencing OpenStreetMap here.

Chris Mooney builds on the study showing how more assertive political views correlate to physical strength:

Cortisol: This stress hormone may also influence us politically, according to recent research by Hibbing and his collaborators. “You can see people’s cortisol levels go up dramatically when you stress them out,” Hibbing says—for instance, by requiring them to prepare to give a speech that is going to be videotaped. “We are finding there are relationships between cortisol and not voting. Those people who don’t vote are the people who tend to have fairly high cortisol levels. Because politics is pretty stressful.”

Testosterone. “There is genetic variance in how much testosterone someone has at birth, and there are certain things that can enhance or diminish that,” explains Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, a prominent researcher on the science of ideology who authored a recent book chapter on hormones and politics. “One of those things that enhance that is muscle mass—if you build muscle mass, you enhance” your testosterone levels.

What might this have to do with politics? While direct research linking testosterone to ideology is lacking, researchers have recently published data tying muscle mass to political preferences. One study shows that rich men with large biceps are more opposed to wealth redistribution than rich men with small biceps. Another study finds that weightlifting ability correlates with support for, er, a more muscular foreign policy. Plus, get this: Men with wider faces (an indicator of testosterone levels) have been found to be more willing to outwardly express prejudicial beliefs than their thin-faced counterparts.

In our latest Ask Anything video from Dan Savage, he defends himself against charges of biphobia:

Another reader adds to the ongoing discussion thread:

I’m a bisexual woman, so I guess I should speak up. There aren’t enough bisexuals who do, IMO, and we don’t get enough role models, fictional or otherwise. And we are often derided by both sides – from the gays for “being in the closet”, and by the straights, for whom we aren’t straight enough. The irony is, bisexuals are the ones who are confused by all this angst over sexuality. Both totally-gay and totally-straight people get “disgusted” by the idea of physical love with (whichever they’re not). But we don’t know what the fuss is all about, since we’re not “disgusted” by any of it.

Here’s what I wanted to write about, though: for circumstances having nothing to do with my sexuality, I’ve been celibate for several years. And it’s been interesting to note that on my own, with no outside influence of whom I’m dating at the time, my desires will flip back and forth between men and women. For a few weeks or months at a time, I primarily desire men, and then for another few weeks or months, women. It’s enough that I’ll think, “You know what? I’m really straight,” or “I’m really a lesbian.” After a few years of this, I’ve decided that yes, I’m definitely bi, because the other side of me always comes back. It’s been very curious to witness this in myself, and I wouldn’t have discovered it without celibacy. Curious.

Another:

Like the original reader, I am male and have had occasional sexual experiences with other men. My wife of 15 years is aware of these experiences and more often than not has been involved in them. Similarly she has had sexual experiences with women. I suppose we are what Dan Savage calls “monogamish.”

Here’s the thing though:

while technically I guess I am bisexual, I do not identify that way, or see it as integral to who I am. You’ve said in the past that homosexuality is an emotional identity. I accept that this is true, but perhaps bisexuality is not.

Or, more likely, perhaps Kinsey was right and there is a fluid scale to human sexuality and some people are emotionally bisexual (and would be comfortable in a relationship with both men and women) and some people are “predominantly heterosexual, with only incidental homosexual contact.” Incidentally, most of the guys we have encountered that engage in sexual activity with other men consider themselves straight. A few of the younger guys have started using labels like “heteroflexible” to identify themselves. Chris Ryan, whom you previously profiled on your site with a series of “Ask Anything” questions, has a new relationship site, Kotango, where in addition to straight, gay and bi, users can identify as heteroflexible, homoflexible, queer or pansexual.

I agree that for some bisexuals, blending in with the straight community is easier than identifying as a often victimized sexual minority, essentially hiding in plain site. On the other hand, for me and my wife, this is just something we like to do behind closed doors, but that doesn’t really define us emotionally. Most people aren’t out about their sexual proclivities. Their parents and friends don’t know about their open marriages, foot-fetishism, interest in BSDM, cosplay or that they’re secretly furries. I’d argue this is the case for some bisexual, or heteroflexibles as well. It’s not anyone’s business what we do, and we don’t believe it’s defining to who we are, so why talk about it?

As always, thank you for initiating a frank and provoking discussion I’m quite certain would be impossible to find anywhere else on the web.

Read the whole discussion here. My recent conversation with Dan about sex and marriage at the New York Public Library is here. His previous Ask Anything answers are here. Our full AA archive is here.

Derek Markham highlights a potential solution for the lack of Internet access in developing countries:

Google has a plan to deliver the internet to everyone, using balloons that fly in the stratosphere and use specialized radio frequency technology to offer internet connectivity to the ground surrounding them using solar power. … The Project Loon balloons, measuring 12 by 15 meters, are carried on the winds at about 20km above the surface of the Earth, and can be directed by ascending or descending to an altitude that has winds moving in the preferred direction. The electronics are powered by an array of solar panels that are situated between the balloon envelope and the hardware, and the Loons are said to be capable of providing an internet connection on the ground in a 40km radius around their location.

Lisa Wade applauds:

The very first launch of a gas balloon was in 1783.  Two hundred and thirty years later, the company aims to deliver what is arguably the defining feature of our age — the internet — with helium-filled balloons.  That technology will then bring almost countless other technologies, such as medical advances and agricultural information, to people who are largely excluded from them now.  A fantastical plan.

The first major study of suicidal motivations has found that “many motivations believed to play important roles in suicide are relatively uncommon”:

For example, suicide attempts were rarely the result of impulsivity, a cry for help, or an effort to solve a financial or practical problem. Of all motivations for suicide, the two found to be universal in all participants were hopelessness and overwhelming emotional pain. The study also finds that suicide attempts influenced by social factors — such as efforts to elicit help or influence others — generally exhibited a less pronounced intent to die, and were carried out with a greater chance of rescue. In contrast, suicide attempts motivated by internal factors — such as hopelessness and unbearable pain — were performed with the greatest desire to die.

Recently, Stephen Fry revealed that he attempted suicide last year:

‘You may say, “How can anybody who’s got it all be so stupid as to want to end it all?” That’s the point, there is no “why?” That’s not the right question. There is no reason. If there was reason for it, you could reason someone out of it. … Sometimes it’s the expression I imagine on my mother and father’s face – both of whom are alive and happy – that stops me. But there are other occasions when I can’t stop myself, or at least I feel I can’t.’

His full comments are seen above. Recent Dish on mental illness here, here, here, here, and here.