There is currently a story on Yahoo�s news server about how children who, at age ten, play games or engage in activities across gender stereotypes take on academic skills across gender stereotypes by age 12. One of the examples cited was that when boys play music �a traditionally feminine activity� their math skills improve.

I find this statement baffling for two reasons. First, what kind of music are they talking about? Yes, I am aware that music was �a traditionally feminine activity� � this is, in fact, a portion of my area of academic expertise. But while in the 19th and early 20th centuries music study was unquestionably feminine, I�m not sure the same is true today. It certainly is not in my experience playing in orchestras for years at many levels of skill, all of which were pretty close to 50-50 on the gender breakdown. And what about all of the middle and high school boys teaching themselves guitar and playing in garage bands? But I suspect that wasn�t the type of music this study had in mind. And that is a type that is most definitely stereotyped in the opposite direction, which is not to say that girls don�t play in garage bands, just that they often find themselves in the position of an outsider pushing in.

That failure to acknowledge a variety of types of music is actually quite telling of the real division of music players versus non-music players, which seems to me to have much more to do with class than gender. Those who play [presumably classical] music might do better in math because they are more likely to come from families that generally prioritize educational skills, artistic pursuits and a variety of learning methods while having enough disposable income to pay for the additional education they require.

The second problem with the statement is the implication that girls traditionally do better in math than boys in school, which not only flies in the face of most educational research on the matter, but actually contradicts what is said earlier in the very same article. While girls tend to do better in academics in general, they are still behind in math by middle school. And regardless of music/math gender associations, there has been substantial indication that a music/math connection may have more to do with brain wiring � the idea is that they require similar skills on some level.

The Yahoo story is taken from a study published in the September 2004 issue of Developmental Psychology, which, unfortunately, is not yet available online. As presented in the Yahoo article, this finding seems seriously suspect. But I shall withhold judgment until I can track down the original source.

Also on my reading list this weekend was the New York Times Magazine�s cover story on political bloggers. While I have visited various (mostly left-wing) political blogs over the last year or so, I haven�t paid them a great deal of attention, mainly because I find the current state of American politics so enervating that I don�t wish to spend any more time on it than I have to in order to vote intelligently in November.* I have, however, blogrolled a few of these people after reading the article (see my rings/links page if you�re interested) in order to see what they have to say during the debates. Living in an extremely red pocket of a blue state, I could use a dose of the blues to remind me I�m not alone.

But rather than politics, the article made me think about some issues of blogging and community. These constant media references to the �blogging community� or the �blogosphere� imply a certain cohesiveness that I�m not sure I�ve ever witnessed in my limited experience as an online diarist and reader of blogs. The one thing most of the bloggers interviewed had in common was a high level of education and a low level of tolerance for traditional career paths. Many had feelings of ambivalence about their blogs having turned into paying jobs and public exposure (some quite well paying), while others (*cough*WONKETTE*cough*) seemed to see it as a job to begin with and hoped it would take them to greater levels of public exposure.

In the sense of commonalities, there is a basis for the establishment of some kind of community. But what is the nature of a community that is built upon the premise of relentless self-exposure on the one hand, and rigorous self-eclipse on the other? And what of the nature of a community where, given the anonymous construction of the audience/performance, it is possible to have a fairly intense relationship with someone who isn�t even aware of your existence?

For example, after Aaron�s suicide, his friend trancejen was forced to turn off her comments because she was getting nasty messages from people who thought she was somehow taking advantage of the tragedy for her own benefit (this description is probably cutting the message-writers more slack than they deserve. Also, it was completely unclear what kind of benefit trancejen could possibly have gained). The implication was that grief is personal and is for those who really know the deceased (never mind that trancejen was among the few who actually did). I certainly didn�t know him and had never met him, but I had been reading his blog for some time. Does that make it wrong for me to be saddened by his death? No, but it might make it wrong for me to write about it. I chose not to, but I can also understand how someone else in a position similar to mine might have been moved to do so. It is really an intimacy of artifice � an intimacy for cowards, perhaps. But that doesn�t mean it is a relationship devoid of emotion or even of emotional context of a sort. If grief is personal, what better place to write about it than a diary?

I am going to have to abandon this discussion here for the time being, as duty calls. But as I ponder the nature of creation of alliances and communities that form institutions in my academic work, I am increasingly fascinated by how and why all of us come together and communicate. I actually have more communication with my readers here than I do with my next-door neighbors. What does that say about our priorities for community and how they�ve changed in the last 100 years?

*I use the word intelligently loosely � I�m not convinced that there is actually an intelligent choice in the best sense of the word, although I would be seriously remiss if I didn�t do my best to evict the current administration from the White House. And Mr. Kerry? Throw us a frickin� bone, please! There are so many who wanted to vote for you even before you opened your mouth. And frankly, the more you say, the more of us start questioning your abilities. Give us something to vote for, not against! Please! And try to kick some Republican ass in the debates.

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