Extra Credit: Our pick of stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each Tuesday from the editors of JSTOR Daily.|
Racism in the liberal city (The Atlantic)
By Alana Semuels
Portland, Oregon, often seen as the progressive capital of the country, is also the whitest big city in the U.S. Historians note that racism has shaped the city since 1844, when the provisional government of the Oregon territory banned African Americans from living there, on pain of flogging.
Intellectual theory and amazing food (Wired)
by David Chang
A chef explains how his theory of food, which involves evoking familiar tastes using unfamiliar ingredients, is rooted in a class called Advanced Logic that he took in college.
The mystery of the bicycle (Nature)
By Brendan Borell
People have been riding bicycles for well over 100 years. But it’s only recently that mathematicians have begun to really analyze how the machines are able to do the things they do.
Wives and daughters (The New York Times)
By Jill Filipovic
The two most visible Trump women, Melania and Ivanka, illustrate a common mode of thinking among American men. Studies show men lose certain sexist assumptions when they have a daughter, but when it comes to their wives, it’s a different story.
Want to understand human nature? Don’t just look at U.S. students (Aeon)
by Robert Colvile
For decades, we accepted all sorts of psychological, social, and economic experiments as windows into universal human behavior. The trouble was, the subjects were a particularly unrepresentative set of humans—U.S. undergraduate students. Now, scientists are becoming more aware of the drawbacks of this approach. But actually changing how science gets done is tricky—and requires an enormous shift in perspective.
Have you seen a story online that does a good job of bridging the gap between the news and scholarship? Or something that seems particularly well-researched? Let us know and we may include it in next week’s roundup. Email us at jstordaily_submissions (at) jstor (dot) org.
