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Optional reading on the topic Student's life here . Seems interesting and up-to-date. Some points are, by all means, debatable. So, I'm looking forward for your opinions and arguments.  Personally I've chosen the following: 'your social media presence needs to reflect responsibility' as a kind of a motto.

I'm overwhelmed by the phenomenon name offered by the author i.e. 'pluralistic ignorance'. Sounds great, seems sophisticated. It could be 'false beliefs shared by the majority' etc. but 'pluralistic ignorance impresses. University and freshmen are obviously in the spotlight in September (in our country, of course). http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/09/06/college-fun-and-pluralistic-ignorance/

Below is a link to another attempt to say 'don't do this and that'. But the fact is that though being a challenge social media are our reality. They exist and develop, and people get more and more involved in them simultaneously shaping all the necessary regulations. So, there's no need inventing them purposely. Nevertheless, here they are - 12 rules. Some issues seem interesting, and the article is worth discussing. http://mashable.com/2012/09/04/students-social-media-warnings/

Yesterday I read  in Pascal Mercier's 'Night train to Lisbon': 'From time to time in the city, he had run into a student he had taught many years earlier. They weren't boys and girls now, but men and women with spouses, professions and children. He was taken aback when he saw changes in their faces. Sometimes just because of change: a premature bitterness, a harried look, a symptom of serious illness. But what usually startled him was the simple fact that the altered faces indicated the incessant passing of time and the merciless decline of all living things. Then he looked at his hands with their first age spots...' Coming across my former undergraduates I usually feel almost the same except for what startles me is their aging against my being as young as I used to be.

It's symbolic that 'rape' needs a new definition. There are legal implications which our legisaltion obviously lacks. There is concern. It's inclusive. It surely deserves consideration. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/06/04/symbolic-consequences-of-the-new-definition-of-forcible-rape/

В поиске термина для интеллигенции как социального класса, но современной интеллигенции, выживающей в условиях рынка. Креативный класс? Почему и как? Какая кроется классовая идентичность? Ответы от социолога Александра Кустарева. http://www.terra-america.ru/prestijnii-socionim.aspx

Is losing weight a matter of individual change or surveillance: control of attitudes and behaviour, and body discipline? Is it class-oriented? http://eth.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/25/1466138111435871.abstract

The problem disscussed is irrational linkage between citizenship and birthplace. Since ancient times birth to certain parents, or in a certain territory has been the primary criterion for citizenship. Now, the notion of citizenship is questioned. Can it be imagined without nationality?   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/opinion/citizenship-to-go.html?_r=1

I'm not sure about tomorrow, so I never save the best for later.

Questioned Manliness Modern men are as neurotic about their weight as women. What a contrast with the relaxed Edwardian era, when Sherlock Holmes could congratulate Dr Watson on putting on seven and a half pounds. If Watson put on seven and a half pounds today, he would be a wreck, pumping iron in the Baker Street gym. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/9246196/Where-have-the-real-men-gone.html

I find it draining to be at social events, especially with large groups of people. I often want to rush back home or to my hotel room and "recharge my batteries." I much prefer one-on-one conversations to group meetings, and rarely feel comfortable around people I do not know. I do my best work sitting in a quiet room, and I hate to make or receive phone calls.  http://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/networking-for-introverts-3-tips-for-success.html

As a member of an academic discipline the sociologist has four basic roles: researcher, teacher, public intellectual and expert. We sociologists behave as if the discipline is only a research discipline, with a corresponding underdevelopment of the three other roles as essential in the creation and maintenance of knowledge and insightes within the discipline. http://jax.sagepub.com/content/6/1/43.full.pdf+html

The Surprising Truth about Motivation (video) http://themojocompany.com/2012/04/the-surprising-truth-about-motivation/

healthy organizational culture is one of the biggest competitive advantages out there right now. Companies have a big opportunity to differentiate themselves in the area of culture. Organizations are full of smart people, and organizations themselves are pretty smart in regards to marketing, technology, finance, and so on. http://themojocompany.com/2011/03/culture-as-competitive-advantage/

deep down, we all know: to thrive at the art of living, at some point each of us has to take a deep breath, step outside the rusting prison or gilded cage, plant our feet in the soil and reach towards the sky. Life feels actively, furiously lived when we love, trust, wonder, care, believe, dream, think, feel, do, count, matter. http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2012/03/overthrow_yourself.html#.T4oIVM655cw.twitter

women have proven significantly more resilient in the midst of a sweeping, economic downturn. They are half as likely to drop out of the workforce; their wages have remained remarkably stable. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/in-a-lot-of-ways-were-looking-at-his-and-hers-recessions/2012/04/12/gIQA9TDYDT_blog.html

It's no secret that the past few decades have transformed traditional gender relationships. Both men and women are operating by a whole new set of rules. Instead of celebrating Mother's Day or Father's Day, some schools are celebrating Parent's Day to accommodate kids from the wide diversity of families today. Gay and lesbian couples and single moms and dads by chance or choice embody changing ideas about sex and sex roles, they are also transforming the gender based definitions of parenting. They are challenging us all to reevaluate the terms of marriage. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peggy-drexler/moms-and-dads-spring-open_b_1406663.html?ref=tw

раньше было принято считать, что богачи должны чувствовать себя виноватыми перед бедняками. Зажравшийся буржуй лопает ананасы и рябчиков, и это предосудительно, и у него несварение желудка, и подагра у него, и язва, и лик его темен. А чистый сердцем простолюдин на утренней зорьке хрустит росистым огурцом и только здоровеет – завидуй, растленный богач. И вот наш лукавый век эту ситуацию выворачивает наизнанку. Теперь бедным приходится чувствовать себя виноватыми за то, что они кормят себя и своих детей генно-модифицированной дрянью с глутаматом да с эмульгатором, и спортом не занимаются, и табак курят, а то и план, и кстати редко бывают на свежем воздухе. http://www.snob.ru/profile/25137/blog/47199 Reality, normality, hard-working families: this is the mantra of the multimillionaire celebrity chef. But the recipes have trouble sticking to it because, despite the homely trappings, they are essentially restaurant food. It’s not only class inequality that lurks beneath the new food culture

Academics are not gender-neutral in issues of childcare. http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=17483

Weight and health issues: correlated or not? People with overweight being discriminated against. It’s time to move past the language of weight and hate and adopt the language of health, specifically of Health at Every Size (HAES). HAES is a new medical paradigm that shifts the focus away from weight and back onto health where it belongs. It embodies a weight-neutral approach, and doesn’t support weight loss for its own sake. http://theconversation.edu.au/moving-beyond-weight-why-the-focus-on-size-is-bad-for-health-5903?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=tweetb

Margaret Mead wrote that we should “never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. Indeed, that’s all who ever have.” Leadership lessons from penguins http://michaelhyatt.com/how-penguin-leadership-will-change-your-team-culture.html

An attempt to find correlation between contraception and education/career. Of the 30% increase in women’s wages the study attributes to early access to the Pill, two-thirds of that came from these women having greater workplace experience. The rest came from women’s access to education and their resulting choices to enter high-earning, male-dominated fields. http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/03/30/contraception-womens-earnings-martha-bailey-healthcare/

Gender stereotyping is on and on. Behaviour patterns are linked to gender. As if no one has heard of gender equality and nothing has been achieved. Nevertheless, a good case for analysis. http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2012/03/29/will-risky-women-on-boards-mean-economic-meltdown/ One more example: http://www.economist.com/node/21551535

These days the problem in the dating market is caused not by women's eternal frailty but by their new dominance. In a world where women in their 20s are, on average, more successful than men, dating becomes complicated. Women no longer need men for financial security and social influence. They can achieve those things by themselves. No one is in a hurry to get married, and sex is, by the terms of sexual economics, very cheap. When sex is cheap, more men turn into what the sociologist Mark Regnerus calls "free agents." They sleep with as many women as possible basically, because they can. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577299391480959420.html

Harassment everywhere: in the street... The article arguments sound reasonable, but nevertheless alert... http://feministteacher.com/2012/03/23/why-teachers-should-join-the-global-movement-against-street-harassment/

Isn’t the culture of organizations to blame for driving some women to use other people, to deceive them in order to get ahead? What exactly is it that shocks us about women deciding they need to misrepresent themselves and manipulate others, if they find themselves in an unfair environment in the first place? As if only women behave like that...)))) http://www.forbes.com/sites/crossingborders/2012/03/20/women-should-not-use-their-sexuality-to-get-ahead-in-a-male-dominated-environment-says-one-corporate-veteran

'The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.' ― Albert Einstein

Presque toutes les sociétés ont donné naissance à des dieux...Un ensemble d’esprits a, en effet, la force spirituelle de créer un univers, des dieux, dotés d’une existence réelle...Des pensées, des idées se transforment ainsi en entités réelles et existent en fonction de la communauté qui les produit. Si cette communauté disparaît, ses dieux meurent. Ce qui est vrai à propos des dieux l’est aussi à propos des idéologies. http://www.lemondedesreligions.fr/culture/edgar-morin-il-est-inutile-de-tenter-de-se-debarrasser-des-dieux-21-03-2012-2369_112.php

Continued ...: ...the United States is—and has been— far from the post-racial paradise...

According to Dr. Bloch, “…because the evidence shows that poverty is a major health condition and the biggest determinant of health, especially for those who live on low incomes.” One only needs to scratch the surface of the growing body of research evidence to see the importance of poverty on health outcomes. http://healthydebate.ca/opinions/screening-for-poverty-identifying-an-important-social-determinant-of-health

The International Journal of Human Sciences is an online academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The International Journal of Human Sciences is an interdisciplinary journal that is open and welcoming to contributions all kind of scientific works in any disciplines, approaches and languages. The journal is categorized as issues published twice a year at January 1 and July 1. International Journal of Human Sciences is an "Open access journal" that uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition of open access, users take the right of read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles. http://insanbilimleri.com/en/

The question arises over and over again: why marry? In order to redo what you can just do? And to find sex and properly done household chores interrelated? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/household-chores_n_1367316.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Mathematical sociology is a vastly under-developed field. It is in its infancy compared to mathematical economics or mathematical psychology.The results sociologists do have are often descriptive or definitional. Instead, there is a smattering of results in collective behavior, networks, social psychology, and stochastic process models. A critical mass of people is needed to hit the topic, develop it, and then teach the rest of the profession. Right now, most soc departments don’t even teach mathematical sociology. Since the field isn’t developed, it’s fair to say that there is no major debate among formal model builders/theorem provers beyond those that exist in specific topics (e.g., network models or collective action). http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/mathematical-sociology-argument-transparency-vs-truth/

It seems as if each progressive movement in the Western social environment, having had more or less prominent achievements, consequently turns upside down or is pushed back as far as the starting point. And even further.So that the context is historically different, but the problem itself remains intact. Feminism in the US, as an example. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/womens-reproductive-rights_b_1345214.html?ref=tw

...we are a society in which research has shown quite conclusively that local newscasts overrepresent blacks as criminals, relative to their actual share of total crime, and overrepresent whites as victims, relative to our share of victimization. A society in which other studies have shown that these racially-skewed newscasts have a direct relationship to widespread negative perceptions of black people. Indeed, a substantial percentage of anti-black racial hostility can be directly traced to media imagery, even after all other factors are considered. A society in which the disproportionate incarceration of black males — especially for non-violent drug offenses, which they are no more likely (and often even less likely) than whites to commit — feeds the perception that they are so treated because they are dangerous and must be kept at bay. A society in which criminality is so associated with blackness that whites literally and almost instantly connect the two things in survey after surv

10 Lessons from Einstein 1. Follow Your Curiosity “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” 2. Perseverance is Priceless “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” 3. Focus on the Present “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.” 4. The Imagination is Powerful “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. Imagination is more important than knowledge.” 5. Make Mistakes “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” 6. Live in the Moment “I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.” 7. Create Value “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” 8. Don’t be repetitive “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 9. Knowledge Comes From Experience “Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience.” 10. Learn the Rules and Then Play Better “You

Health/Race http://www.blacknews.com/news/health_disparities_financial_burdens101.shtml

Family Inequality /USA/ http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/work-product-womens-ethnic-immigration-education-work-patterns/

Human Rights Video Education http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3BbLk5UIQ&feature=share

Enthusiasm makes everything possible, not easier.

The article 'The Politics and Practice of Sociology in the Courts' by D. Tomascovic-Devey

about Coco Chanel http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/02/22/coco-chanel/

Poiesis & Praxis: International Journal of Technology Assessment and Ethics of Science http://www.springerlink.com/content/109376

CNN Contributor Dana Loesch Defends Virginia ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Bill As No Different Than Consensual Sex http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/02/19/428661/cnn-contributor-dana-loesch-defends-virginia-state-sponsored-rape-bill-as-no-different-than-consensual-sex/?mobile=nc

Psychological Science /journal/ http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/1/3.short

To commemorate Pierre Bourdieu: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/21/pierre-bourdieu-philosophy-most-quoted

RESEARCH JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT http://www.theinternationaljournal.org/ojs/index.php?journal=tij&page=index

How I write by PAULO COELHO on FEBRUARY 16, 2012 On Inspiration: “I procrastinate, check some emails … then I start. I write my books very quickly because I cannot stop.” On Confidence: “You cannot sell your next book by underrating your book that was just published. Be proud of what you have.” On Simplicity: “What counts in a good story is the person inside. Keep it simple.” strong>On Trust: “Trust your reader. Don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination.” On Writing: “I write the book that wants to be written. Behind the first sentence is a thread that takes you to the last.” On Expertise: “You cannot take something out of nothing. When you write a book, you use your experience.” On Critics: “Writers want to please their peers. They want to be recognized. Forget about this. Who cares? You should care to share your soul and not to please other writers who will write a review that nobody is going to read.” On Overcoming Stagna

FUTURE INTERNET free access online journal http://www.mdpi.com/journal/futureinternet

Amazing! Arts + Psychology + Politics http://pathogeographies.net/

A new academic journal CULTURE and SOCIETY. It provides unrestricted online access to its contents. http://culturesociety.vdu.lt/

100 World First Problems: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/top-100-first-world-problems_n_1273294.html?

May we live the life we have fancied.

Before you face your goal you must feel free enough to change direction.

Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticise those who do not think like them, people who have never once taken a step unless they were sure they would be respected for doing so, and who prefer certainties to doubts. Join with those who sing, tell stories, take pleasure in life, and have joy in their eyes, because joy is contagious and can prevent others from becoming paralysed by depression, loneliness and difficulties.

Public Sociology Seminar 2 by Manuel CastelLs "The Power of Communication" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcq-7I8f8A

A great article to be thought over and discussed! Devoted to St Valentine's Day: Valentine's Day turns passion into a scarce resource and makes us compete for our share http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/14/love-for-sale-valentines-day ***For students in Written Translation course - the translated (into Russian) version: http://www.rabkor.ru/debate/12126.html

Paulo Coelho allows to pirate his books: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/01/20/welcome-to-pirate-my-books/

К курсу "Перевод деловой корреспонденции и документации" 1) Господи, это опять Вы…. — Thank you very much for your email. 2) Если до завтра не предоставите документы, пеняйте на себя. Тут Вам не детский сад.- We will do our best to proceed with your request however for the best result the documents should reach us not later than tomorrow. 3) Вы читать умеете? — You can find this information below. 4) Сколько можно напоминать!- Kind reminder 5) Неужели так сложно подписать документ там, где нужно?! — Please sign in the place marked with yellow sticker. 6) Что у тебя в школе было по математике? — Let’s reconfirm the figures. 7) Мы уж лучше сделаем это сами.- Thank you for your kind assistance. 8) Я уже сто раз Вам это присылал. — Kindly find attached. 9) Ага, сейчас все брошу и побегу разбираться. — I’ll look into it and revert soonest. 10) Да поймите же Вы наконец! — Please kindly review the matter again. 11) Надеюсь, что теперь Вы перестанете надоедать своими вопрос

Rosa Montero THE BLACK MAN We are at the restaurant of a German University. A red haired student, and undeniably German takes her tray and sits down at her table. She then realizes she has forgotten her cutlery and gets up again to pick it up. Coming back, she sees with astonishment that a black man, possibly sub-Saharian by his appearance, is sitting there and is eating from her tray. Straight away, the young woman feels lost and stressed . But immediately changes her thought and presumes that the African is not familiar with European customs concerning private property and privacy. She also takes into consideration that perhaps he does not have enough money to pay for his meal. In any case, she decides to sit in front of the guy and to smile at him in a friendly manner. The African responds with another dazzling smile. The German girl starts to help herself, –sharing the food with the black man with genuine pleasure and courtesy. And thus, he took the salad, she ate the soup, both to

On the economic effect of Internet piracy: http://www.businessinsider.com/shifting-the-discussion-to-principles-2012-1

Welcome to the website of the first Italian law journal entirely published in English. http://www.ijpl.eu/ The IJPL was established in 2009 by a small group of scholars based in several Italian universities, with the encouragement and support of scholars from other countries.

Some more examples of female bodies used for advertising (food): http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/01/06/more-examples-of-women-as-food-as-women/

Several links on ADVERTISING: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising NB! the questioned ABOVE/BELOW the line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Below_the_line_(advertising) advertising TECHNIQUES: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/types-of-advertising-techniques.html http://www.foothilltech.org/rgeib/english/media_literacy/advertising_techniques.htm