Personal relationships are enacted by talking with each other. If people don't have anything to say to each other, they generally can't sustain a personal connection. We can study social relationships by observing who talks with whom and in what manner.  I will present research on differences in conversations by males or females; young or old; and different social class.   Women and men have distinct styles of talking; but in the upper-middle class, women talk more like men. For children, social class differences develop later: children sound more alike than adults do. People segre ..read more

  The underlying cause of global warming is population growth.   Total human population of the earth went from about 600 million people in the year 1700 to about 1.2 billion in 1850, as the industrial revolution took off. The curve accelerated, reaching 2.5 billion in 1950. Since then, industrialization spread from the Europeanized West to East Asia and elsewhere; reaching 6 billion in 1999, and 8 billion in 2022.   The acceleration in global warming is closely related to the trajectory of population growth since 1950. All the well-known human causes of warming in the atmosphere ..read more

 What can a sociologist say that hasn't been said many times about the Hamas raid and Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza?  I will draw on theoretical generalizations from the history and time-dynamics of violence (Mann 2023; Collins 2022); as applied to a daily chronology of news sources from Oct. 7, 2023 onwards. I will make 3 points.   [1] Hamas's violent incursion, killing and raping civilians and taking hostages, is a reversion to ancient and medieval forms of war. It is a conscious rejection of modern laws and norms. It is also a tactic to compensate for Israel's overwhelming ..read more

 Let us assume Artificial Intelligence will make progress. It will solve all its technical problems. It will become a perfectly rational super-human thinker and decision-maker. Some of these AI will be programmed to act as finance capitalists. Let us call it an AI-robot capitalist, since it will have a bank account; a corporate identity; and the ability to hold property and make investments.   It will be programmed to make as much money as possible, in all forms and from all sources. It will observe what other investors and financiers do, and follow their most successful practices. I ..read more

 Researchers on violent criminal organizations have grown more intrepid over the years. Until the 1980s, most information came from interviews in prison, reminiscences of ex-members, or by hanging out in neighbourhoods that had local gangs. Some researchers have been taking the dangerous step of participant observation inside the group itself. Here I will focus on four pieces of insider research: by an FBI agent who spent six years infiltrating the Mafia; Alice Goffman, a white woman who spent six years with a black street gang; Italian sociologist Alessandro Orsini, who went underground ..read more

  The fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by a group of Memphis police officers on January 7, 2023 shows the same patterns as other police atrocities.   Three police tactics and procedures seen in Memphis greatly increase the risk of cops becoming so aggressive and emotional that they lose self-control. The result is prolonged violence continuing long after the suspect is incapacitated; officers making frenzied, loud, even joyous noises egging each other on; mocking the victim, joking, and bragging about the incident for almost an hour afterwards. These are all signs of collective adrenali ..read more

 The family is the oldest human institution, even a pre-human institution existing among the great apes. Along with the deliberate control of fire, which Goudsblom saw as the beginning of socially-imposed self-discipline and the “civilizing process,” early humans also developed a variety of kinship institutions. These were rules about who could or could not marry whom; incest prohibitions and exogamy rules; residency rules about whose group the new wife or husband lived with; descent rules about which lines of descent were considered lineages of membership, obligation and inheritance. &nb ..read more

  Multiple causality versus simple-mindedness:   Glib talk is the stuff of front-stage politics (but not of back-stage politiking).   Of advertisements and journalism (but not of editorial meetings).   Those who are successful in the world do not think that way, although they use talk as a weapon.   Yet there is advantage, even in science and intellect in simplifying to the most powerful causes,   and to win the center of attention among the voices by summing up the complexities in a term, Kuhnian paradigm, spin, vicious and virtuous circles,   but not to thi ..read more

 Written before Putin’s invasion, the progress of the Ukraine war bears out generalizations made in Explosive Conflict: Time-Dynamics of Violence.    [1] Three-to-six month rise and fall in public crisis attention [2] High-tech war reverts over time to older-style warfare [3] Civilian atrocities in the midst of guerrilla war behind the lines [4] Polarization and historical amnesia (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, WWII, WWI-- and Syria)   [1] Three-to-six month pattern Almost every war is popular at the outset. People are outraged and energized. This goes on at a high level of i ..read more

 Beethoven started going deaf in his late 20s.  Already famous by age 25 for his piano sonatas, at 31 he was traumatized by losing his hearing. But he kept on composing: the Moonlight Sonataduring the onset of deafness; the dramatic Waldstein Sonata at 32; piano sonatas kept on coming until he was 50. In his deaf period came the revolutionary sounds of his 3rd through 8th symphonies, piano and violin concertos (age 32-40). After 44 he became less productive, with intermittent flashes (Missa Solemnis, Diabelli variations, 9th symphony) composed at 47-53, dying at 56. His last string q ..read more