High church attendance correlates with lower rates of depression—unless, this study suggests, you're an Asian or Latino/a teenager. I'm not convinced that the correlation has to imply causality—could it be that, in certain cultural combinations, depression drives one to youth group, rather than vice versa? But the story does get at the complex cultural tensions: majority/minority, adolescent/adult, church/secular.

church, community, cultural worlds, depression, teenagers

Nate

:

One of the few studies to look at the effects of religious participation on the mental health of minorities suggests that for some of them, religion may actually be contributing to adolescent depression. Previous research has shown that teens who are active in religious services are depressed less often because it provides these adolescents with social support and a sense of belonging.

But new research has found that this does not hold true for all adolescents, particularly for minorities and some females. The study found that white and African-American adolescents generally had fewer symptoms of depressive at high levels of religious participation. But for some Latino and Asian-American adolescents, attending church more often was actually affecting their mood in a negative way.

Asian-American adolescents who reported high levels of participation in their church had the highest number of depressive symptoms among teens of their race.

Likewise, Latino adolescents who were highly active in their church were more depressed than their peers who went to church less often. Females of all races and ethnic groups were also more likely to have symptoms of depression than males overall.

Setting all other factors aside, the results suggest that participating in religion at high levels may be detrimental to some teens because of the tensions they face in balancing the conflicting ideals and customs of their religion with those of mainstream culture, said Richard Petts, co-author of the study, who did the work as a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University.

Girls' empowerment hits a cultural snag down under, when The Daring Book for Girls offers instructions for playing a traditional aboridginal instrument that run counter to ... aboridginal tradition. Once you get into the role (like, I suppose, my own) of gathering interesting and appreciative bits from other cultures, you're going to eventually wind up offending those you're trying to celebrate—and finding out that sometimes they offend you a bit too.

cultural worlds, girls, music, taboos, women

Nate

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Rose said the didgeridoo, an integral part of many Aboriginal rituals, was “definitely a men’s business ceremonial tool”. The book, originally published in the US, sent out the message that Aboriginal culture was tokenistic, he said. His comments were echoed by indigenous author and chair of the Australian Society of Authors Anita Heiss who said the book’s writers would not have included the offending chapter if “they actually spoke to an indigenous person”.

“It’s cultural ignorance and it’s a slap in the face to indigenous people and to indigenous writers who are actually writing in the field,” she said.

The Australian edition replaces much of the original US content with material such as the rules for netball and a guide to surfing.

The didgeridoo chapter reads: “Playing a didgeridoo appears deceptively simple, until you’ve got a ‘didge’ on your lips and no sound comes out. But a few easy instructions and you’ll be playing like a seasoned pro”.

David Heim reviews Shelby Steele's new book about Obama, A Bound Man, and offers this intriguing thought on the limits of "authenticity" as a test for political leadership. Politics may be the realm where attention to the actual, concrete cultural goods produced, rather than vague appeals to values or identity, is most necessary—worth remembering as the fall presidential campaign moves into high gear.

government, politics, power, race

Andy

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Steele’s deepest worries about Obama are not about his political chances but about his personal authenticity. Whether as bargainer or challenger or some creative mix of the two, Steele thinks, a black leader must don a mask, forging a persona that will charm or manipulate whites. In taking on this task, Steele contends, black leaders lose themselves, for they are never able to locate what they themselves really think. Steele wonders: Is Obama running for president because of his deep convictions or simply because he is aware of “his power to enthrall whites”?

But questions of authenticity can be raised about every politician. The peculiar job of a politician is to fashion repeatedly points of agreement between people with different and shifting points of view and to project a public persona that can elicit action and be the vehicle for people’s hopes. If personal authenticity is your quest, politics is the wrong medium. We can wish for congruence between the inner and the outer person of the politician, but in the end what matters for the voters is the direction of the policies chosen and the decisions made.

It's not enough to daydream—you evidently have to catch yourself in the process for the creativity to stick. Imagination is all about proposing things that don't exist. But even our flights of fancy nonetheless must take place within our cultural frameworks of the possible, the impossbile, the not-quite-possible-yet.

creativity, daydreams, horizons of the possible, leisure

Nate

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However, not all daydreams seem to inspire creativity. In his experiments, Schooler distinguishes between two types of daydreaming. The first type consists of people who notice they are daydreaming only when asked by the researcher. Even though they are told to press a button as soon as they realize their mind has started to wander, these people fail to press the button. The second type, in contrast, occurs when subjects catch themselves daydreaming during the experiment, without needing to be questioned. Schooler and colleagues found that individuals who are unaware of their own daydreaming while it’s happening don’t seem to exhibit increased creativity.

“The point is that it’s not enough to just daydream,” Schooler says. “Letting your mind drift off is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining enough awareness so that even when you start to daydream you can interrupt yourself and notice a creative insight.”

John Maeda has just left a professorship at the prestigious MIT Media Lab to become president of the Rhode Island School of Design. As he says at the end of this fascinating and important interview, "I've already been digital. I want to focus on being human."

design, education, technology, technology and change, visual arts

Andy

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A RISD education is classical and rigorous; first-year students are required to practice the fundamentals of drawing and sculpture. Foundation Studies are taught in rooms filled to the ceilings with thousands of skeletons, taxidermy, minerals, reptiles, birds. (A sign warns “The doves are out so please close the door.”) Other departments cover everything from photography to ceramics. The curriculum is so conservative as to be radical.

Some of RISD’s studios probably haven’t changed in a hundred years. The stuff of art and design is everywhere, in the charcoal dust, the heaps of wet clay, the scraps of wood. A RISD education focuses on what you can do with your hands; an architecture student is expected to be able to draw, a print-maker to use a press. . . .

“A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together,” says Mr. Maeda, cocking his head, widening his eyes, moving his hands as if he were shaping a pot. Mr. Maeda considers himself post-digital; he has outgrown his fascination with hardware and is driven by ideas. “I want to reform technology. All the tools are the same; people make the same things with them. Everyone asks me, ‘Are you bringing technology to RISD?’ I tell them, no, I’m bringing RISD to technology.” He describes a visit to the campus by an executive from Yahoo. Mr. Maeda took him to see the visual resources center in the new library. Hundreds of thousands of drawings, photographs and news clippings, and images of art, architecture and decorative arts—on slides—are cataloged and stored in old-fashioned metal and wood file cabinets. The Yahoo executive was stunned. “This is a real live Google!” Better, says Mr. Maeda.

Oddly, I've never been too enthused by the "there oughta be a word for X" genre (Sniglets, etc.). But I am a huge fan of new words that actually get used, even if they annoy the traditionalists at first. Part of glory of language is the freedom it gives us to come up witn entirely new, yet comprehensible combinations of words and word-parts.

dictionaries, horizons of the possible, language, words

Nate

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Part of the joy and pleasure of English is its boundless creativity: I can describe a new machine as bicyclish, I can say that I’m vitamining myself to stave off a cold, I can complain that someone is the smilingest person I’ve ever seen, and I can decide, out of the blue, that fetch is now the word I want to use to mean “cool.” By the same token, readers and listeners can decide to adopt or ignore any of these uses or forms.

So, please, leave off the “not a real word” apologia. A far better (and dare I say, funner) technique is to jump in with both feet and use whatever word strikes your fancy. Instead of being defensive, demand that any who dare to quibble over your use prove that your word is, in fact, not a word.

In short, if it seems wordish, use it. No apologies necessary.