It's Hard To See The Handwriting On The Wall When The Wall Once Made You Rich

The decline of Alaska's oil wealth has been predicted for a long time. It's why the Alaska Permanent Fund was established.  Knowing it was a finite resource and believing that one generation wasn't entitled to use it all up, the Fund was set up to help fund government forever.  Note:  help fund, not pay all the bills.   Even before climate change became a household word Alaskans were being told to diversify.  Even before the price of oil dropped precipitously.  Even before the recent refusal of some the country's biggest banks to fund any more Arctic oil projects.  Then the oil companies didn't bid on the ANWR lease sales.  

But the oil diehards, like Governor Dunleavy, even proposed legislation to get Alaska agencies to boycott those banks.  And to offset the apparent lack of interest in bidding on the ANWR leases, The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, a state owned entity, was the biggest leaser in the auction, bidding about $12 million of the $14 million total bids.   This, from a strong supporter of Donald Trump and the Republican Party that is constantly attacking Democrats with the label "socialist."

It's hard to change habits.  Our brains even change physiologically so we can do those habits almost without thinking.  We all know that mastering all the hand and foot and eye coordination connected with driving a car safely in traffic is rather daunting at first.  But eventually most of us get to the point where we drive almost on autopilot, sometimes even getting to our destination without even realizing it.    

I think about Anchorage's legendary mall builder, Pete Zamarello.  A Greek-Italian immigrant to the US, he worked in construction and then switched to being a builder.  Anchorage is littered with his strip malls.  He'd figured a formula that made him rich.  But when the hot, pipeline economy ended in the 80's, he was still on autopilot.  Cranking out strip malls is what he knew how to do.  

The ADN wrote when Zamarello died:

"That optimism was on full display in 1984, when Zamarello pooh-poohed predictions of an Alaska economic crash. 'The gurus of financing say that we're going to have a catastrophe, but we're not," he told Alaska Business & Industry magazine then. "This downturn won't happen. The next 10 years are going to be even better.'"

But it did.  The blog Wickersham's Conscience wrote:

"In the Alaska real estate crash of 1984-1986, Zamarello helped kill half a dozen financial institutions, bankrupted construction companies and their suppliers and ended up in bankruptcy himself."

The bankers had also gotten into a pre-crash Zamarello lending habit.  

And that's where we are today in Alaska.  Those who have prospered most directly from oil - those in the oil industry, the oil support industry, and the oil supported legislators - are having a hard time turning off the oil habit. They want to keep doing what they've always done, even though the conditions have changed. And since everyone else in Alaska has benefited indirectly because oil made up 90% of the State budget, many others keep expecting to be able to go on living the good life with no individual state taxes and even a $1000 or more Permanent Fund payout every year.  

We're like the rich kid whose Dad has gone bankrupt, and she's having trouble with the fact that her credit cards have been cancelled and the mansion has been replaced with a much smaller apartment and she's going to have to get a job to help out.  

We often don't see what's directly in front of us.  I think about the story of the Japanese businessman watching how Alaska fishers just tossed all the fish eggs.  His reaction created a new product with a large market in Asia for fish roe.  (I can't find this story online, so take it with a grain of salt.  But I could find documentation that the herring fishery was revitalized by selling herring roe to Japan. And, of course, the indigenous peoples of Alaska had been harvesting herring roe for centuries.)

Alaska Constitution Article 8 - Natural Resources

§ 1. Statement of Policy It is the policy of the State to encourage the settlement of its land and the development of its resources by making them available for maximum use consistent with the public interest. § 2. General Authority The legislature shall provide for the utilization, development, and conservation of all natural resources belonging to the State, including land and waters, for the maximum benefit of its people.

And that's where we are now.  While the state's GOP keeps pointing to the State's constitutional duty to develop natural resources as the reason to keep pumping oil, they fail to see the most famous and sustainable and valuable resource of all - our huge, mostly untouched, natural beauty and our wild fauna a flora.  These are things the world knows Alaska for.  These are the things they come to Alaska to see.  Tourism is way below oil now as a source of income for the state, but it has huge potential.  

We have some of the largest tracts of nature left in the world.  Let's exploit it - sustainably - for tourism, for the health of the planet, for science, for spiritual renewal.   In a world fast becoming urban and electronic, Alaska is an oasis of peace and calm as well as awe inspiring powerful natural phenomena from grizzly bears to glaciers to giant mountains and volcanoes and earthquakes.  

We'll still produce the oil in existing developed fields.  The earth still needs oil as we move to more sustainable and less climate changing sources of energy.  But the world knows that we must reduce our carbon output.  Just as it was clear to people not living in West Virginia and Kentucky that coal mines had to shut down, it's clear to those not financially benefiting from oil, that the age of oil is over.  That's why the banks decided not to finance Arctic oil development and why nobody bid on the ANWR leases.  

Everyone knows but our governor and those whose incomes come directly from oil.  Even the large oil companies know.  

[Yeah, I'm not sure if the title is inspired or awful.]

Applying Factfulness To Why People Might Vote For Trump Part I

[I thought I would just take a few of the ideas from Rosling's book and them apply them to Trump supporters to see why he still has so many.  But as I started making the list, I realized that so many of the obstacles to good decisions he mentions are relevant.  And because the book has great end of chapter summaries, it's easy to give an outline (though that leaves out most of the examples that help readers understand the points.)  So I'm adding this note on top to say, this post will outline those key points I wanted and I'll do a follow up post applying them to our current political situation.  As I went through them again, I realized they also illustrate problems among those opposing Trump as well.  And I recommend going to the links - particularly to the fact test and to lgapfinder.]

Factfulness::  Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think  by Hans Rosling, starts out with a self test on facts about how the world is doing, which you can take here.  The first question is:

1. In all low-income countries across the world today, how many girls finish primary

school?

 a.  20%

 b.  40%

 c.  60%

In the book he relates the many different places he's given the test - to college students, business people, bankers, doctors, heads of international organizations, Nobel Prize winners, etc.  All the groups, he tells us, scored worse than chimpanzees.  (Who randomly choosing one of three options would get 33% right.)

The questions all relate to how human beings are doing around the world.  He argues they are doing much better than most people think.  And everyone in the West, he argues, think everything is getting worse, because we have mental models of "US" and "THEM" - US being being relatively rich (mostly) Western societies and THEM being the poor starving masses in the rest of the world who will never, ever be able to catch up to how we live in the West.  

Reality, he argues, is much different.  Rather than US and THEM with a giant unbridgeable gap between the two, he presents us with a different model.  One without a gap.  Instead, he says there is US which he calls (income) Level 4, then Level 3, Level 2, and finally THEM in Level 1.  The gap is filled with five billion people.  Levels 1 and 4 have one billion each.  So, most people are in that gap most people mistakenly see.  In fact, the website he and his co-authors (his son and daughter-in-law) set up to present the data they use to convince people their world views are wrong, is called Gapminder.  (Any one who's ridden a subway in Britain or a relatively recent British colony will hear in their heads the warning "Mind the Gap")  

Here's how he describes the levels:

Level 1 - making $1 a day

Five kids, spend hours/day walking barefoot to get water with the single family bucket.  They gather firewood for cooking, little or no access to medical care, the same porridge for every meal. (1 billion people)

Level 2 - making $4 a day

Buy food you didn't grow, raise chickens, sandals for kids, bike, more buckets, less time getting water, gas for cooking, kids can go to school instead of finding firewood. Electricity, but not reliable. Mattress to sleep on. (3 billion people)

Level 3 - $16 from multiple jobs.  Cold water tap. Stable electricity improves kids' homework.  Buys fridge, motorcycle, can travel to better paying job.  (2 billion people)

Level 4 - >$33 a day

Rich consumer.  >12 years education.  You've been on an airplane on vacation.  Hot and cold indoor water.  Can eat out once a month and buy a car.  (1 billion people)

At the Gapminder website on Dollar Street you can see pictures of families at all four levels (it seems that each column is a level) in different countries.  And, of course, you'll notice that there are people living at all four levels in most countries.  

Most of the book talks about why people are so misinformed about facts about the world and how to counteract them.  We have a number of built in human instincts that might have been useful to human beings tens of thousands of years ago, but today can get us into trouble.  We have to learn to control them.  

The Gap Instinct - The tendency to polarize things, to see an unbridgeable gap between rich and poor, them and us.  Remember to:

• Beware comparisons of averages
• Beware of comparisons of extremes
• The view from up here - Things are distorted (as the view from Level 4)

The Negativity Instinct - tendency to see and report on the bad things that happen, not the good.  Remember:

• Better and bad - things can be getting better and still be bad, it's not either/or
• Good news is not news - doesn't get reported the way bad news does
• Gradual improvement is not news - slowly improving conditions aren't newsworthy
• More news doesn't equal more suffering - often bad news due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening.  Our news and social media bring us lots of bad news
• Beware of rosy pasts - The good old days are much better in hindsight than we people lived them

The Straight Line Instinct  - this is seeing a trend and assuming it will always be that way.  Remember to:

• Not assume straight lines - many trends are not straight lines but are curves.  We may be only looking at a short part of the line.  (He talks about various trends, but about population particularly for this one.  He argues that as people improve their wealth and move up to a higher level, they have fewer children and that all the population experts agree that at about 11 billion people the world population will level off.  

The Fear Instinct - Frightening things get our attention.  Our natural fears of violence, captivity, and contamination make us systematically overestimate these risks.  To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks.

• The scary world:  fear v reality - the world seems scarier than it is because it has been filtered by your attention filter or by the media precisely because it is scary
• Risk=danger x exposure - The risk is not related to how scary something is, but by a) how dangerous it is and b) how much you're exposed to it 

The Size Instinct - Lonely numbers seem impressive (large or small).  How to get things into proportion:

• Compare - Single numbers alone are misleading.  Look for comparisons (with past numbers, numbers in other locations, etc.)  
• 80/20 Rule - Generally, a few things account for most of the impact.  Figure out the 20% that's most important
• Divide - Amounts and Rates tell different stories.  Comparing countries, say, the numbers are misleading.  Look for rates per person instead.  

The Generalization Instinct - Categorization is necessary to survive, but categories can be misleading.  We have to avoid generalizing incorrectly.

• Look for differences within groups - find ways to break them down into smaller and smaller categories
• Look for similarities across groups - and ask if your categories are correct
• Look for differences across groups - do not assume what applies to one group applies to another (what applies to Level 4, for example, applies to other Levels)
• Beware of "the majority" - Majority just means more than half, there's another 49%
• Beware of vivid examples - Vivid images are easy to recall, but they may not be representative
• Assume people are not idiots - When things seem strange, be curious and humble and think.  In what way is this a smart solution?

The Destiny Instinct - Many things (such as people, countries, religion, and cultures) appear to be moving in a constant direction because the change is so slow, but slow changes gradually become big ones.  

• Keep track of gradual Improvements - small change every year can become a huge change over decades.
• Update your knowledge - Some knowledge goes out of date quickly.  Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.
• Talk to Grandpa - think about your values are different from those of your grandparents
• Collect examples of cultural change - Challenge the idea that today's culture must also have been yesterday's and will be tomorrow's.

The Single Perspective Instinct - A single perspective can limit your imagination, better to look at problems from many angles to get a more accurate understanding.

• Test your ideas - Have people who disagree with you test your ideas
• Limited expertise - Don't claim expertise beyond your field.  Be humble about what you don't know.
• Hammers and Nails - From the saying: "If you give a young child a hammer, he will think everything needs pounding."  If you get good with a tool don't use it too often.  If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating its importance.  No one tool is good for everything.  Be open to ideas from other fields.
• Numbers, but not only numbers -  Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.
• Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions - History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions.  Welcome complications.

The Blame Instinct - He told a story in this chapter about a problem with a pharmaceutical company for not looking for solutions to poor people's diseases.  A student of his suggested someone should punch the CEO in the nose.  He replied, I will see him next week, but if I did that would it solve the problem?  He answers to the board.  Should I punch them in the nose too?  They answer to shareholders who want profits.  Should I go after the shareholders?  Retirement funds hold lots of pharmaceutical stocks that help pay pensions for old folks.  When you see your grandfather next week, maybe you should punch him in the nose.  The desire to find a scapegoat is universal, but things are more complicated.  

• Look for causes, not villains - spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.
• Look for systems, not heroes.  When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing.  Give the systems the credit.

The Urgency Instinct - When often rush decisions because of a perceived, but not necessarily true, urgency.  Control this by taking small steps.

• Take a breath - When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down.  Ask for more time and information.  It's rarely now or never and rarely either/or.
• Insist on the data - If something is urgent and important, it should be measured.  Beware of relevant but inaccurate data
• Beware of fortune tellers - Any prediction about the future is uncertain.  Beware of of predictions that fail to acknowledge that.  Ask how often such predictions have been right before.
• Be wary of drastic action - Ask what the side effects will be.  Ask how the idea has been tested.  Step-by-step practical improvements are less dramatic but usually more effective.

I'll put a link to Part II here when it's ready, but I'm guessing that readers can start applying these instincts to both Trump supporters and opponents.  

Mask Murderers? And Another Misleading Headline On Race Relations

1.  Virus Notes

Yes, it's a paradox - the more you shut things down, the more it hurts the economy, but then the less you shut things down, the higher the cases go, and that hurts the economy too.  So, accept the economy is going to take a big hit.  If most people wear masks in public, we could open sooner.  Now, will that be with a few deaths or with lots of deaths?  That's the decision.  It's not the economy this time, it's the virus, stupid!

Since I wrote that note here a few days ago I ran across an article  From University of California San Francisco:

"The latest forecast from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation suggests that 33,000 deaths could be avoided by October 1 if 95 percent of people wore masks in public."

 

 30,000 deaths!!??  Dare I call those not wearing masks in public - Mask Murderers?  It almost works, though unmasked murderers would probably be more accurate.  

And if you think there are hardcore folks who won't wear masks, because they won't give up their constitutional rights, wait until you tell parents they have to send their kids to schools that aren't COVID-19 safe.  But DeVos is all about destroying public schools and transferring public school funds to private schools.  This move by the president bleeds money from public schools, and gives Republicans new ways to point at how bad public schools are.  But I think the president's dementia is so obvious to so many people now that it will backfire.


2.  Misleading Headlines  - in March 2019 I put up a post that is still getting regular hits today on Misleading Headlines.  That article goes into the history of misleading headlines.

Well I was struck yesterday by  a very misleading printed LA Times headline, which had a much better headline in the online version.  I've seen that before.  I guess editors have more room online.  I'm not sure how many people actually buy hard copy papers because of headlines any more, but if they do, there is the pressure to make them more compelling still I guess.


The paper headline and first paragraph was:

"Outlooks on race turn gloomier

"Californians’ perceptions of race relations in the state have shifted dramatically since the spring, with views statewide having grown significantly gloomier than they were five months ago, according to a new statewide poll."

Here's screenshot of the paper version:

I read the article, and actually, it's a hopeful article.  Basically, it said that since COVID and George Floyd, people's beliefs about race relations in the US are less positive.  That's not gloomier, which suggests things are getting worse.  But what I took from that was that white people's attitudes got more realistic.  And you have to stop denying before you start changing.  So it's all good.  

When I looked for the link to the online version to put on this post, I found a very different headline - one that mirrored my take on the article:

"Views on race relations in state alter dramatically as more white people see reality of discrimination, survey shows"

NOTE:  I've put up screenshots of the headlines, but I've also repeated them with text.  I do this when I can and it seems important, because seeing-impaired readers can't 'read' images.  the programs that turn text to sound can't read images.

Some Things You Might Not Have Seen - Island Boys And The N-Word

Here are a couple of things I thought others might find worth reading.  The first challenges the narrative of the Lord of the Flies with an account of a real group of boys who were stranded on a desert island for over a year.  The second one is Leonard Pitts calling out Senato McConnell on his rebuke of President Obama.


The Real Lord of The Flies Cooperated With Each Other

"Then, on the eighth day, they spied a miracle on the horizon. A small island, to be precise. Not a tropical paradise with waving palm trees and sandy beaches, but a hulking mass of rock, jutting up more than a thousand feet out of the ocean. These days, ‘Ata is considered uninhabitable. But “by the time we arrived,” Captain Warner wrote in his memoirs, “the boys had set up a small commune with food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.” While the boys in Lord of the Flies come to blows over the fire, those in this real-life version tended their flame so it never went out, for more than a year."

After Senator McConnell said, "“I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut,” Leonard Pitts calls on McConnell to just say it.

"It’s not like the rest of us don’t hear it already in your contemptuous tone. If one didn’t know better, one might think you were addressing a not-so-bright junior staffer who spoke out of turn in a meeting, not a president of the United States. Former GOP Chairman Michael Steele certainly caught your meaning, retorting on Twitter, “I’m sure Mitch is aware that a grown-ass black man who happens to be a former president has agency to speak his mind on how his successor is managing this crisis, especially since his successor has yet to ‘keep his mouth shut’ about him.”

I also had a link here to a Twitter thread that gave a great detailed explanation of different kinds of ventilators, but when I checked the link before posting it was no longer there.

"Women in power are targets of abuse"

That's an LA Times headline today.

The article goes on to say that mayors are subject to abuse at greater levels than the average person and

"A recent study published in the academic journal State and Local Government Review found that mayors — women and men — face greater levels of physical violence and psychological abuse than those in the general U.S. workforce, with social media being the most common channel for that abuse.
Female mayors were not only much more likely to face some form of violence or abuse, but they were also more likely to experience abuse of a sexualized nature.
“Women are facing more of this kind of abuse and violence, and more types of it,” Sue Thomas, a research scientist and co-author of the study, told me."

More specifically:

"If you are a woman who is so bold as to inhabit a vaguely public stage, chances are high that you will be called a lot of things that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. And then some.
It’s a truism that unfortunately appears to transcend industry or geography. Exist in public, and eventually an online mob will nitpick your looks, rate your sexual desirability in relation to your ability to do your job, and probably make threats vague and specific — regardless of whether you’re a female journalist, the founder of an indie game studio or trying to run a small city in the Central Coast region of California."

I would argue that one reason Trump's base doesn't shrink any further is that a sizable section of it includes men who are very much like Trump:  they're insecure about themselves, need constant adulation, are abusive to people with less power than themselves, particularly women. Trump is a role model who helps vindicate their own terrible behavior.  Of course they love him and vote for him.

I've long believed that the way to improve people's social interactions is to work to improve parenting.  How we are raised affects how we feel about ourselves and how we deal with conflict.  As much as I dote on my grandchildren, it's also true that babies can be very annoying and exhausting tor parents who aren't prepared for that responsibility. Even for parents who do everything right.   And for parents whose own parents were poor models, learning how to be a nurturing yet firm parent is difficult.

A study published by the National Institute of Justice, for example, states:

"Using carefully developed methods for eliciting retrospective reports of childhood abuse and neglect, a new study of inmates in a New York prison found that 68 percent of the sample reported some form of childhood victimization and 23 percent reported experiencing multiple forms of abuse and neglect, including physical and sexual abuse. These findings provide support for the belief that the majority of incarcerated offenders have likely experienced some type of childhood abuse or neglect."

The National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse posts:

"Based on the reports we have, it's conservatively believed that in today's society 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys WILL BE sexually molested before they are 18 years old -- which means 1 in 5 of America's youth, or fully 20% to 25% of the population !!
In addition, as we mentioned we're concerned here at NAASCA with helping stop ALL kinds of child abuse, including sexual abuse, violence, emotional trauma and neglect, and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) believes that close to 50% of our youth will experience at least one of these.
In it's most recent study, a few years ago, the CDC estimated the lifetime cost to society for dealing with all issues related to the child abuse of just one year's worth of traumatized kids is $585 billion, an astonishing figure that obviously repeats each year !!!" (emphasis added)

I would argue that having loving parents is the best inheritance any child could have.  These are the truly privileged people in our society.  Furthermore it's clear that many people manage to survive and thrive despite forms of childhood mistreatment.  Just assume  kids raised in poverty manage to get financially secure. But they are the exception now.

All of us are guilty of neglecting these kids to some degree.  The Democrats, who championed all sorts of 'outsiders' saw whites - particularly white males - as a generalized privileged group.  They didn't recognize the pressures on males, they didn't distinguish those white males who had been physically or emotionally abused.  And in part that helped build a base for a candidate like Trump.

But the Republican steadfast focus on abortion is also at fault.  Even if the figure cited above of 50% of American youth experiencing some form of abuse is high (and remember, it could also be low), that's huge!   But the pro-life crowd focused mostly on abortion, not on healthy parenting for kids, not on sex education and the prevention of unwanted kids.  

There are a lot of hurting people in the US.  Online anonymity along with an abuser in the White House has increased their opportunities to vent their own self-anger on to others.  

This is not an issue that will be resolved by just cracking down on apprehended offenders.  It needs a much larger societal approach to raising kids and developing a population of individuals who feel good about who they are.  

Projection And Displacement- A Possible Reason That Republicans Are Venting So Hard Against Democrats

In the Intelligence Committee and then the Judiciary Committee we saw some very angry Republicans.  People like Doug Collins, Jim Jordan, Matthew Gaetz,  and Louie Gohmert.

I think it key to try to understand anger and the reasons people are angry.  It's usually for a valid reason, but it's often not the incident at hand.  It's often an anger that has been repressed because the real target of the anger is someone the angry people feel they cannot confront.  So they lash out at someone 'safer' to attack.

In this case, like the Democrats and the witnesses.

Projection and Displacement are two psychological terms used to describe this type.


From Good Therapy

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism in which individuals attribute characteristics they find unacceptable in themselves to another person. For example, a husband who has a hostile nature might attribute this hostility to his wife and say she has an anger management problem.

In some cases projection can result in false accusations. For example, someone with adulterous feelings might accuse their partner of infidelity.

TYPES OF PROJECTION

Like other defense mechanisms, projection is typically unconscious and can distort, transform, or somehow affect reality. A classic example of the defense mechanism is when an individual says “She hates me” instead of expressing what is actually felt, which is “I hate her.”

There are three generally accepted types of projection:

1. Neurotic projection is the most common variety of projection and most clearly meets the definition of defense mechanism. In this type of projection, people may attribute feelings, motives, or attitudes they find unacceptable in themselves to someone else. 
2. Complementary projection occurs when individuals assume others feel the same way they do. For example, a person with a particular political persuasion might take it for granted that friends and family members share those beliefs.
3. Complimentary projection is the assumption other people can do the same things as well as oneself. For example, an accomplished pianist might take it for granted that other piano students can play the piano equally well.

Closely related is Displacement.  Taking your anger at someone you are afraid to attack and instead attacking someone less powerful.  From VeryWellMind:

"Displaced aggression is one of the classic examples of this defense. When people feel angry but cannot direct that anger toward the source of their frustration, they transfer those feelings to someone or something else. A person who becomes angry at her professor, for example, may come home and take her anger out on her spouse. The spouse may, in turn, displace this anger towards their children, who then take out their frustrations on each other."

If we look at the key arguments being made by the Republicans, we can see that they really are things that Trump himself does or the Republican Members of Congress and the Senate do.  For example:

1. Republicans argue:  There is not one shred of evidence to impeach Trump
1. They're saying this in defense of their President who's made, according to the Washington Post 13,435 false or misleading claims, which are simply claims without a credible evidence
2. Republicans argue:  The proceedings are simply partisan attacks on the President
1. We can look at the US Senate where Majority Leader McConnell has blatantly blocked Democratic judges - most notoriously Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland.  President Trump's attacks are not as much partisan as personal attacks against anyone who doesn't do as he wants
3. Republicans argue: The Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since day one
1. That merely echoes McConnell's vow that his number one priority was to deny Obama a second term
4. Republicans argue:  The President was legitimately looking at the corruption of Hunter Biden
1. Trump is unquestionably the most corrupt president we've had in modern times, and quite possibly ever.  He's only concerned about corruption that isn't working in his favor
2. Calling out Hunter Biden for taking advantage of his father's name and position is a rich claim when defending the father of Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr, and son-in-law Jerod Kushner, all of whom are taking advantage of their father's name and position to enrich themselves.
5. Republicans argue:  Impeachment is an illegal overturning of the will of the people in the 2016 election.  Democrats are just angry about losing
1. The 'will of the people' is best measured by what the majority wants.  In the 2016 election nearly 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton.  The electoral college's arcane rules could be said to have usurped the will of the people.
2. In the 2018 Congressional election, the people voted out of Congress, many Republicans who supported Trump and voted in Democrats, giving them a significant majority in the House, therefore one can argue easily that the will of the people was for the Democrats in the House to impeach the president
3. And we can say that the Republicans are just angry for having lost their majority in the House

All these angry attacks on the Democrats reflect things that Republicans themselves are guilty of.  But Republicans feel that their political careers are in danger if they oppose Trump.  Funds will be withheld from them when the run for reelection.  Their Republican opponents in the primaries will get those funds.  And the rabid - really, that's not an exaggeration for many Republicans - Trump supporters will defeat them in the primaries.

But they also know that many of them will be vulnerable in the general election.  And even if they don't lose in their gerrymandered districts, they won't win back the House Majority and may even lose the House and the Presidency.

And so, they are angry.  But they can't rant against the President.  So they rant against the Democrats.  Transference.  Displacement.

A Man Called Ove Didn't Impress Me

I'm finishing up A Man Called Ove, a Swedish book that has apparently been pretty popular.  There's even a movie I'm told.  It's for my book club.  I wasn't overwhelmed.  I don't think I've

gotten any great insights.  The writing isn't particularly interesting - short sentences and short words. Sort of like an adult children's book.   It does help people to understand (for those who don't) that inside gruff, introverted, rule following nitpickers (at least inside Ove) there's a decent person whose back story makes his behavior less objectionable.

I guess I also realized that I had a stereotype of Swedes being more rational and polite than the people of most other countries.  If this book is representative, I was wrong about that.

Here's a bit on death and judging from near the very end.

Chapter 39 begins

"Death is a strange thing.  People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living.  Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury.  Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis.  Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.  We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves.  For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by.  And leave us there alone.
People always said that Ove was "bitter."  But he wasn't bloody bitter.  He just didn't go around grinning the whole time.  Did that mean one had to be treated like a criminal?  Ove hardly thought so.  Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him.  There is no time to heal that sort of wound."

[UPDATE Sept 10, 2019:  I found a NYT review that focused on the author.  Fredrik Backman does say that he is somewhat the model for Ove.

"A colleague . . . wrote a bog post . . .about seeing a man named Ove explode with rage while buying tickets at an art museum, until his wife intervened.
"My wife read the blog post and said, "This is what life is like with you,"  Mr. Backman said, 'I'm not very socially competent.  I'm not great at talking to people.  My wife tends to say, your volume is always at 1 or 11, never in between." 

So that makes a lot of sense, and I guess it means that there are lots of women out there married to Oves.  I'd guess the Sonjas (Ove's wife in the book) recognize this much faster than the Oves.]

Trump's Second Nobel Prize Attempt Blows Up

First, the background - Attempt One - Denuclearizing Korea

In July of this year, Newsweek wrote this about Donald Trump's Nobel Prize hopes:

"Kellyanne Conway has claimed that President Donald Trump is on his way to a Nobel Peace Prize thanks to his diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un."

A year earlier, the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) wrote:

"South Korean President Moon Jae-in said US President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme, a South Korean official said on Monday." 

Think Trump may have suggested that he say that?

The Telegraph, in February 2019 reported that North Korea is pushing Kim Jun Un for a Nobel Prize.

A number of sources reported Trump saying that Japanese Prime Minister Abe had nominated him for a Nobel Prize and The Guardian says that Abe won't deny that.

"The Japanese prime minister has declined to say if he had nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize, though he emphasised he did not deny doing so.
Trump’s assertion on Friday that Shinzō Abe had nominated him for the honour and sent him a copy of the letter has raised criticism in Japan.

The Guardian goes on to report unidentified Japanese sources claiming  that Abe's nomination of Trump, if there was one, was suggested by Trump himself.

"Citing unidentified government sources, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on Sunday that Abe had nominated Trump at the US president’s behest."

And they hint that it might be part of a competition with Obama:

"Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2009, his first year in office, for laying out a US commitment to 'seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons'.
Trump complained on Friday that his predecessor was there “for about 15 seconds” before he was awarded the prize."

Attempt 2:  Camp David Accord Revisited 

So when I heard today that there'd been a planned peace talks at Camp David with the president of Afghanistan and the head of the Taliban, I couldn't help but think that this was attempt number two for a Nobel Prize.  After all the 1978 Camp David Accord garnered two Nobel Prizes.

But not for the president - Jimmy Carter - who'd arranged the meeting.  No it was Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli prime minister who got those Nobel prizes.

But not for President Jimmy Carter, who didn't get his Nobel prize until 2002.  If there had been a successful peace talks at Camp David this weekend, Trump might have had to wait 24 years, during which he would have had to do a number of other peace seeking actions.  He'd be 98 by then.  Not impossible.  His dad lived to age 93.  But it's unlikely that Trump will spend his post-presidential years brokering peace deals around the world like Carter has.

Obama didn't seek out the Nobel prize - and the committee really should have waited.  He got it on expectations, not actual deeds.  I'd guess the Nobel Committee is unlikely to rush to hand Trump a peace price.

When Good Things Devolve Into Spin Contests

College admissions boards use grades and test scores and extra curricular activities to evaluate applicants.  At first these were what seemed like good things to look into to separate those admitted from those rejected.

But, as the criteria became known (as they should be) and competition got stiffer, students no longer volunteered because it was their passion or it was the right thing to do, but because it would look good on their application.  They put teachers under great pressure to give them high grades (and we got grade inflation), and if they could afford it, they take exam prep courses and even hire ringers to take the exam for them.

The Academy Awards may once have been sincere efforts to reward great performances. (I suspect that if that's true it didn't last long.)  Now studios spend millions advertising how deserving their films are for awards.

It's also true in some (many?) beauty contests.

As a former owner of the Miss Universe contest, Trump knows that such awards are open to 'purchase.'  I can't find my copy of Proof of Collusion, so I'm quoting here from an earlier blog post where I covered Chapter 1 of Proof of Collusion which included the Miss Universe contest held in Moscow:

"Eleven pages of specific history, that covers Trump's failed attempts to do business in Russia, how his US businesses were funded by Russian mobsters when banks would no longer take the risk, and how things got better for Trump in Moscow after the Miss Universe contest in 2002 where the Trump picked winner was the girlfriend of a 'Russian gangster' and the object of Putin's 'secret admiration.'"

I'm increasingly getting the impression that in Trump's world, being 'good' for the sake of being good, is for sissies.  For Trump, being good is a means to an end.  But like the third grade bully, his lack of understanding of good for good's sake, means that his heavy handed attempts to prove he's good make things that much worse for him.

Deep down, he's craving for approval.  His dad was stingy with approval and parental approval plays a giant role in a person's self-confidence.  A person who was comfortable with himself wouldn't need to constantly Tweet about how great he is.

The Nobel prize would be proof of the world's admiration of him.  Even if he has to purposely try to create prize-worthy events and rig the system so he gets it.

In this case, Trump says he canceled the meeting because the Taliban keep blowing people up.  And I suspect maybe advisors have convinced him that any peace agreement would be short lived once American troops were gone.  See this Guardian article.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan is proving to be a quagmire for the US.  We knew that the Afghans had kicked out the British in 1842, and with our help kicked out the Soviets in 1988-89, and now  are close to wearing out the US.

 I think trying to bring peace to Afghanistan is a worthy cause, but getting out and staying in both have huge problems. This requires a much larger global shift in how people  think about peace and war.  And a confrontation with the arms industry that piles up money by selling ever more deadly and expensive weapons to all sides.  Sometimes I wonder if this isn't nature's natural selection at work, countering the rise in human population due to human brain power by using that same brain power to reduce the population.

Conclusion

This cancelled Camp David secret peace talks suggests to me that this was just one more attempt, following North Korea, to create something to look good on his Nobel Peace Prize application.

For him, I strongly suspect, going to North Korea and inviting Taliban to Camp David, were less about world peace and more about garnering a prize for Trump.  He's already become president with a massive disinformation campaign and now he wants to garnish his brand with a Nobel Prize.

And here's, something I ran across after getting this post mostly done, Adam Schiff's take:

Negotiations to end America’s longest war are not a reality show, and an ill-prepared summit — as with North Korea — was not the answer. Let the diplomats do their work.

Any peace deal must meaningfully ensure Afghanistan is never again a platform for terrorists who threaten us. https://t.co/sKbMUIvYJI

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 8, 2019

The US Department of Compassion Announced A Growing Shortage Of Thoughts And Prayers

That was my reaction to the Odessa shooting.  The rest of this is me thinking out loud while my nieta* is off with her mom for a bit.

But I've also been thinking about what we're going to need globally as climate change forces people out of their traditional homes through floods, droughts, disease bearing mosquitos and other critters expanding their range.  Normal crops in areas will fail as conditions change.  Refugees will be on the move for more hospital climates.  Well, for food and water and relief.

That's already happening in places.  Alaska native villages are being forced to move from their coastal locations because heavy waves are eroding the shoreline.  The waves are there because normally sea ice prevents the formation of waves most of the year.  No longer.

The Syrian civil war was caused in part by a years long drought that led farmers to move to the cities.  That led to many refugees trying to get to safe countries.  That's a taste of the future.

Even those who profess to not believe climate change is real talk about mitigation rather than prevention.  They think that we should take steps to adapt.  Yes, of course.  Where we can.  Are you listening South Pacific nations?  Are you listening  South Florida?  I guess people in Manhattan can make the third floor of buildings the new entrances and work with Venetians on gondolas.

Of course, there will need to be technical fixes.  People are creating floating cities in the South Pacific for nations that will be underwater soon.

But one thing I haven't heard people talk about is lessons in civilization and community.  There are organizations working with indigenous peoples around the world to help sustain their languages and cultures.  Others working with poor farmers and others.  But their stories don't generate clicks for new media they way violence and fear-mongering do.  But we do hear after many disasters that communities pull together and help each other.  After fires, floods, mass shootings, there are outpourings of volunteers and of money to help the victims.  But what happens when everyone is the victim?

Tapping Into People's Natural Goodness

We need to learn how to tap into that love we see in times of crisis. The love parents have for their children.  The camaraderie we're told soldiers feel during war.  What is that and how do we grow it? We need to study it and find out how it works, who does it, and how to nurture those kinds of reactions in the hearts and minds of everyone.  What is the difference between those who come after disasters to loot and those who come to help?

Disaster movies are a very popular genre, but how many teach people community survival behaviors?  (That's a sincere question, because those aren't my top choice of entertainment.)

We have a Department of Defense (which should more truthfully be called the Department of War as it once was.)  And we also need a Department of Compassion, or, if you prefer, a Department of Peace.  Humans are capable of both good and bad.  Under the right conditions - child rearing, schooling, national values, and role models - more people will be peaceful, caring, and happy.  Under the wrong conditions, more divided and violent.

This week research was announced that attempted to find a homosexual gene.  It's more complicated than that.  Genetic disposition for sexuality, they say, is all over the genome, and environment plays a role as well.  I suspect the same is true for sainthood as well as sociopathy.

The Netflix series Mindhunter, which added new episodes recently, follows two FBI agents, helped by a university professor, who decide that interviewing imprisoned serial killers to find out why they do what they do.  That start out doing this secretly and are chastised when they're found out.  But they already have enough insights for catching other serial killers that the Bureau lets them continue.  In a basement office.  The most persuasive argument is something like "who knows why serial killers do what they do better than serial killers?"

We should be doing the same thing with mass shooters (and I'm sure there are people who are already doing this.)(I looked.  Didn't find much, but here's a 2018 article about a project tthat was going to start interviewing mass shooters.)  (And here's Dr. Jillian Peterson, the head of that study doing a Ted Talk May 2019.)

And I suspect they will find out the same thing that the Mindhunters learned (this is based on a true story):  that they all had serious self image problems due to absent and/or abusive parents.

This trail leads to lots of different areas - rights of parents, education of parents, birth control, abortion, foster care issues . .  just as starters.  The Department of Compassion - as I write this I realize we need both the Departments of Compassion and Peace - one more on the individual scale and one on the national scale.  But they overlap, because ultimately, 'nations' don't make war, the individual people in control of the military make war.

That sentence took an abrupt turn and never got finished.  The Department of Compassion would work on all these micro and macro environmental factors that impact how kids learn to feel good about themselves and how they learn to work with and for others instead of against them.

That's enough for today.  Remember that every human you encounter is, surprise, a human, with a whole history trailing them.  And a mind, and feelings, and a sense of self.  Imagine what that person doesn't know about you, and there's just as much you don't know about them.  Try to connect to all those people in a way that makes them feel better for having interacted with you.  Just a genuine smile as you pass someone on the street.  And I guarantee you'll discover the people around you have rich and interesting lives that will make you feel better too.  99.9% of the people you pass are NOT people you need to fear.  (I just made up that number.  I don't know if it's true.  I suspect it's definitely not if you are a person of color or a woman.  But even the people who might do someone harm, probably won't do harm most of the time or to most of the people they encounter.)


Glossary
*nieta is Spanish for granddaughter

In Addition To The Water . . .

Showed pictures mostly of water going down hill yesterday and the day before at Iguazú.  So now let’s look at some other distractions.

 Figs.

 

Those critters begging at the table are coatimundi   They’ve become a pest in the park.  My wife saw jump on the table and swipe an ice  cream from a woman eating at a table like this.

 There are lots of signs telling people not to feed the coatis.  Like the one below that warns about both monkeys and coatis.    In the middle of the sign is a picture of puncture holes on someone’s hand.    Yet despite the warning, people crowd around the sign to  get pictures of the capuchin monkeys, sitting on the sign.  And below on the left a woman with kids is feeding the monkeys bread.

 I

 

More later.  [Here are a couple more.]

   

Consequences For Unruly Airline Passengers

I was reading a twitter thread about a journalist who got harangued by her Trump supporting seat mate on a plane ride.  She had the window seat and felt trapped as he ranted about how the media lied and wrote fake news and were the enemy of America.  Fortunately, the flight attendants responded quickly when she rang the alarm button and got her another seat.

But as I thought about it, why she should she have to move?  He's the one who should be inconvenienced for his bad behavior, not her.  He should be moved.  Maybe there should be some 'time-out' seats for such passengers like there is for kids who can't behave.

OK, I understand that airlines aren't going to leave seats unused in this seat-squeezing era.  And often trying to make the belligerent passengers on the plane move can cause them to become more hostile and dangerous.

BUT, such passengers should be guaranteed that they'll get off the plane with a 'no-fly' penalty.  It's something the FAA should enforce across all airlines and the length of the penalty should be appropriate to the disturbance and the passenger's record.  And refusing to move when asked to would surely increase the length on one's ban.  And important people shouldn't be able to get their penalties waived, though if they're wealthy enough they can probably hire private planes.

Are there due process and other legal questions involved here?  Due process surely.  We don't want passengers arbitrarily punished.  Passengers witnessing such a situation should get their phones out and record the incident because sometimes the victim can't while it's happening.

I would guess that being banned from planes is something that doesn't have to go to the courts, but I'm not sure. Not being able to fly might jeopardize some people's jobs, but that seems to be a good  incentive.  But they wouldn't be deprived of 'life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness" as they would with a jail sentence.  Well, maybe it would hinder their pursuit of happiness a bit.  But it seems that people who harass others probably are already having difficulties in their pursuit of happiness.

I'm sure some attorney would find a way to sue on behalf of such a client, but attorneys for the airlines and FAA should be able to  draft a workable policy.  It would include some descriptions of unacceptable behaviors.

The basic violation would be:
Physically or verbally disturb another passenger or passengers after being told to stop.

Then examples of what that looks like and levels of severity would be listed along with the consequences.

Other passengers would be encouraged to record such incidents and to alert flight attendants before it escalates.

These problem passengers would then be added to the no-fly list (probably more reasonably than others have been put on that list.)

After writing this I checked online whether such consequences already exist.  A 2010 NBC article cites a woman who was banned from a flight for using her phone after being told not to (she says was turning it off) :

“The airlines keep their own lists,” Bresson added. And those multiple no-fly lists create “a lot of confusion.”

That uncertainty is shared by officials at the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a labor union representing more than 50,000 flight attendants at 22 airlines.
“Our (internal) air safety people aren’t even sure if those who have been charged with flight crew interference are even on the list,” said Corey Caldwell, spokeswoman for the AFA. “We would be interested to find out if people who have been charged — not found guilty but just initially charged with flight crew interference — even get on an airline (no-fly) list.”

A 2014 ABC  report says:

"American Airlines spokesperson Josh Freed said the airline has its own no-fly list -- separate from the government's -- that unruly passengers could potentially be added to.
'When we handle cases of disruptive passengers, one option is denying future travel,' Freed said. He stressed that that rarely happens. .  .
Delta Airlines and United Airlines, two other airlines involved in recent flight diversions, did not respond to ABC News' request for comment."

[I'd note that declining to comment sometimes happens because people weren't given enough time before the story aired.  That said, I emailed the media folks at Alaska Airlines on Wednesday May 1, and held up this post hoping I could add their policy on this, but I've heard nothing back.  If I do, I'll add it here or in a new post.]

Chimp On Smart Phone

I've been amazed at how quickly young - under 5 for example - kids learn how to use an iPod or iPhone.

But this chimp's use is eerie.  I don't know what it means, but it's worth thinking about.    Just because primates can use a technology doesn't mean they understand what they're doing.  They could probably be taught to use a voting machine too.

I don't often put up other people's videos, but this one is challenging what I think I know.

this monkey is like. properly browsing insta and it's messing with me pic.twitter.com/9hFIQWEJsN

— danny (@dsemumi) April 25, 2019

Is Trump A Genius?

First there was the IQ test and Mensa, the club for people who scored over 130-32 (top 2%) on the IQ test.

Yet Priceonomics in a piece called "The Psychology of Self Appointed Genius"  tells us that 49% of men who filled out OKCupid applications marked yes when asked if they were a genius.

So, in thinking he's a genius, Trump is pretty much an average man.

Except, the Priceonomics article goes on to say:

"when you’re bad at something, it’s likely that the deficits that prevent you from improving also prevent you from realizing how bad you are."

Citing a paper by Dunning, Heath, and Suls, the article continues:

"70% of one million high school seniors surveyed said they had “above average” leadership skills (only 2% said their skills were “below average.”) 60% rated themselves as in the top 10% in “their ability to get along with others”, 25% rated themselves in the top 1%. This is not quite, but almost as extraordinary as the 39% of OKCupid users who thought they were at least in the top 2%.
In a 1970s study, 94% of college professors rated themselves as doing “above average” work (and 2/3rds rated their performance in the top quarter).
Other examples include motorcyclists, who think they’re less accident-prone than the typical biker, and business leaders, who think their firm is more likely to succeed than the industry average."

So Trump, again, is not in the exceptional 2% range in overestimating his abilities.

Another observation from this article:

"People with low IQ tend to overestimate their intelligence, (people with high IQ tend to underestimate their intelligence)."

So, this would predict a genius would not say she was a genius.


Let's think about this a different way.  We began with Mensa requiring being in the top 2% of the IQ test.  But IQ tests don't exactly measure IQ.

 From a Gizmodo article on Mensa and Trump:

"psychology currently recognizes IQ tests as not measuring actual intelligence, a concept which is incredibly hard to define, and which is inevitably linked to both social and individual conceptions. IQ tests primarily measure a range of skills, academic achievements and acquired knowledge—things that tend to have to do with social standing, not innate intelligence."

So people born to an economically higher class, with access to cultural and educational advantages, will naturally score higher on an IQ test than those from a lower economic class.  A good example for me is thinking about and IQ test where all the examples would come from the skills needed to survive in Alaska Native village culture - knowledge of the stories of the particular language group, knowledge about subsistence hunting and fishing, about Arctic astronomy and weather.  Not only do you need to know the logic, but you'd have to understand all the examples.  Say, "A chum salmon is to a silver salmon as a caribou is to a __________."  Your logic might be fine, but if you don't know these particular fish or the caribou, you can't even apply the logic.  But IQ tests and SAT's are written by and for people with a certain cultural background and knowledge.  And it isn't from a Yup'ik or African-American culture and knowledge.

But beyond that IQ tests measure fluency in a particular cultural kind of knowledge.  Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner came up with list of multiple kinds of intelligence.  The Northern Illinois University faculty development site lists them as:

 Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences  

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence (well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words)
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence (ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns)
3. Spatial-visual intelligence (capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly)
4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully)
5. Musical intelligences (ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber)
6. Interpersonal intelligence (capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others)
7. Intrapersonal (capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes)
8. Naturalist intelligence (ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature)
9. Existential intelligence (sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?)
(Source: Thirteen ed online, 2004)

The traditional IQ tests focused on the first three of Gardner's intelligences.

Let's look at these one by one:

1.  "well-developed verbal skills and sensitivity to the sounds, meanings and rhythms of words - his speeches to his base showed a certain sensitivity to sounds and rhythms"  - "Lock her up, Lock her up," "Build that wall, build that wall."  But these are first or second grade level vocabulary and rhythms.

2.  "ability to think conceptually and abstractly, and capacity to discern logical and numerical patterns" - Haven't seen much of this.  Logic and numerical patterns do not seem to be part of his way of thinking.  Tends to be much more of a concrete than abstract thinker.

3.  "capacity to think in images and pictures, to visualize accurately and abstractly" - could well be that he thinks in images and pictures, but I don't see much abstraction.

4.  "ability to control one’s body movements and to handle objects skillfully" - I haven't seen him play golf, but I've heard he's reasonably good.  On his famous grabbing tape, he claimed to be able to handle some objects skillfully.

5.  "ability to produce and appreciate rhythm, pitch and timber" - he's pretty good, again with a supportive audience, at saying things that arouse their emotion and loyalty.

6.  "capacity to detect and respond appropriately to the moods, motivations and desires of others" - again, he's figured out what moves his base, and if he has genius in anything, it would be in pushing people's buttons.

7.  "capacity to be self-aware and in tune with inner feelings, values, beliefs and thinking processes" -  the part of his brain that processes self-awareness seems not to be functioning much at all.

8.  "ability to recognize and categorize plants, animals and other objects in nature" - one of my daughter's college roommates was from Manhattan, like Trump, and she needed to get back to the city on weekends because she couldn't handle all the green of the campus.  She needed her fix of concrete.  Trump's climate change denial, shrinking of national monuments, off-shore drilling all suggest that nature is near the bottom of his list of important things.

9.  "sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence such as, What is the meaning of life? Why do we die? How did we get here?" - No evidence shown of this.

So the only glimmer of genius I see from this list is, as I mentioned in #6 - ability to push other people's buttons.  He pushed his supporters' buttons to positive effect and he skillfully enrages everyone else on a regular basis.

But let's look a little deeper.

Daniel Goleman came up with different kinds of emotional intelligence.  From a Concordia University site:

Emotional self-awareness — knowing what one is feeling at any given time and understanding the impact those moods have on others
Self-regulation — controlling or redirecting one’s emotions; anticipating consequences before acting on impulse
Motivation — utilizing emotional factors to achieve goals, enjoy the learning process and persevere in the face of obstacles
Empathy — sensing the emotions of others
Social skills — managing relationships, inspiring others and inducing desired responses from them

Of these five, I'd say Trump does well on Motivation and, to a certain extent, Social Skills.  He clearly is motivated, though I suspect a lot of this comes from his father who was driven and whose disappointment in his oldest son seems to have motivated Trump not to disappoint his father.
I'd give him high marks for social skills for inspiring others (his base) and inducing desired responses (from the media and from liberals.)  One could debate this.  He'd prefer the media to praise him, but he certainly knows how to get them riled up.  But perhaps that isn't really his intention.  Managing relationships?  He's on this third marriage.  His staff seems to be busy with internal warfare, his most trusted now becoming his avowed enemies.

This is really a quick and dirty assessment.  I haven't given detailed examples to back up my assessments.  I think what I'm mainly offering here is a measuring stick that others can use to measure his self-reported genius against.  And I'm waiting to see readers think I've missed.

I'll end with one other characteristic of geniuses, that  James Fallows, among others, has pointed out: most geniuses don't call attention to their gifts.

AIFF 2017: Short Docs In Competition - Old Harbor, The Collection, Ten Meter Tower, Ghosts of the Arctic,He Who Dances On Wood, Family Rewritten, Perception, and Wildland

'Short Docs' are non-fiction films under 55 minutes. At least that was the rule in the past.  I mention that because one film in this category is 57 minutes.
'In Competition' means the programmers picked it to be in the running for an award.

The shorts (narrative and docs), because they're short, are grouped into programs.  To see all the short docs in competition you have to see three different programs, plus one more showing where the 15 minute short in competition plays with the 57 minute short doc.

To make it easier to find the times and locations of the films you want to see, I've grouped them and color coded them by program.

Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp Theater Large, 3pm Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm	Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain Sat Dec 2, E Street Theater, 12:00pm Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater Small  3pm Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small, 12:30pm
Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater Large 3:00pm Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm	Unnamed Program (Old Harbor, New Hope)  Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater,  3pm

Short Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Wildland	Daniel Steiner	USA	25 min
Perception: From Prison to Purpose	Garret Guinn	USA	40 min
Family Rewritten	Yasmin Mistry	USA	13 min
He Who Dances on Wood	Jessica Beshir	USA	6 min
Ghosts of The Arctic	Abraham Joffe	Australia	7 min
Ten Meter Tower	Maximilien V an Aertryck	Sweden	16 min
The Collection	Adam Roffman	USA	11 min
Old Harbor, New Hope	Joshua Branstetter	USA	15 min

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption

Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp TheaterLarge, 3pm

Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm

***************************

Perceptions:  From Prison to Purpose
Garret Guinn
USA
40 min
Perception was selected as the Best Oregon Film at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival in November 2017.  Here's what their website says about the film:

"On April 14th, 2009, Noah Schultz was arrested for attempted murder in Portland, Oregon. This is the story of his transformation. During his seven years of incarceration, Noah took advantage of every program, workshop and educational service provided. He pushed himself not only to be better, but to challenge our perceptions of what it means to be an inmate."

Perception: From Prison To Purpose | Trailer from Perception Doc on Vimeo.

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Wildland
Daniel Steiner
USA
25 min

This is the kind of film Americans need to see regularly to better understand who the people behind bars are.  This film shows inmates at a juvenile work camp program that give them fire fighting skills and experience to make it outside the prison.

Here's a brief bio from Daniel Steiner's website:

"Dan Steiner has worked on impactful documentary programming around the globe for VICE, the National Geographic Channel, and Current TV (RIP). In addition, he has held numerous post-production positions at ad agencies like Wieden + Kennedy, JWT, and Venables Bell & Partners.
He received a Master’s degree in Journalism from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2016."

I couldn't find a trailer for this film, so here's the whole film, from his website:

WIldland from Daniel Steiner on Vimeo.


***************************
***************************

Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain

Sat Dec 2,  E Street Theater, , 12:00pm

Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater  Small  3pm

Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small  12:30pm

******************************

Family Rewritten
Yasmin Mistry
USA
13 min

A film about one person's experience with foster care.




“Family Rewritten” Trailer from Foster Care Film on Vimeo.



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He Who Dances On Wood
Jessica Beshir
USA
6 min,

This is an exquisite film.  The camera writes poetry in light and patterns.  Fred Nelson modestly but confidently voices wisdom.

"When the right thing comes along, something happens inside of us. . . There's a need to speak to God, but I think that everybody has their way of doing it. . .  I know I found my joy in, not Jesus, not Allah, it's a piece of wood."

He Who Dances on Wood (TRAILER) from BRIC TV on Vimeo.

The whole six minute film is here.


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Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters

Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater. Large 3:00pm

Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm

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Ghosts of the Arctic
Abraham Joffe
Australia
7 min,

The photography, the landscapes, the caribou and polar bear shots are all incredibly beautiful.  But this film is more about how brave the film makers were under harsh conditions than it is about polar bears - the presumed title characters of this film.  I checked the amount of time that the filmmaker is in the image.  I got 3 minutes and 21 seconds out of a six minute movie.  There's also landscape.  And a small amount of time with caribou and bears.  Just read their own description of the movie at Untitled Film Works:

"Ghosts of the Arctic is the result of a passion project gone wild. Our goal was to venture out into the beautiful frozen expanse of Svalbard, in winter, to search and document polar bears. During the shoot we experienced temperatures that were never warmer than -20ºC and frequently plummeted down as low as -30ºC + wind chill factor.
Most days involved two hundred kilometres on snow mobile in very difficult terrain and conditions. We experienced three cases of first and second degree frostbite during the filming as well as several equipment failures as a result of the extreme cold. Each day involved 14-16 hours in the field.
The film was released with great reviews and write-ups on notable film blogs. The piece also received a converted [did yet mean coveted?] Video Staff pick of the Month."

In a movie about polar bears, the word 'bear' appears once in the description.  It's mostly about how they braved the elements under terrible  conditions.  As an Alaskan, I'd say that -30˚C (-22˚F) is cold, but not terrible, if you're dressed right.

It would be fine to make a film about how hard it is to film polar bears in the wild, but that's not what they say their goal is and it's not what the title suggests.

But the footage is spectacular.  You can judge for yourself.  I could only find the whole video online, not a trailer.







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Ten Meter Tower
Maximilien Van Aertryck
Sweden
16 min,
**Also Plays In Martini Matinee, Fri. Dec 8, Bear Tooth, 2pm

From the film makers in a NYTimes piece:

"Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario."

After my comments about the previous film, I appreciated this comment very much:

"In our films, which we often call studies, we want to portray human behavior, rather than tell our own stories about it." (emphasis added)

Here's the trailer:

Trailer: TEN METER TOWER by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck from Plattform Produktion on Vimeo.

Here's a link to the whole film.

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The Collection
Adam Roffman
USA
11 min

From Adam Roffman's The Collection website:

"The Collection is a short documentary about two friends, DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner, and their discovery of an astonishing and unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for virtually every movie released in the United States from the silent period through 1984, when newspapers stopped using the letterpress format." 

This film should be shown before the full length documentary, Saving Brinton (it's the last movie in this post on the docs in competition.)

Here's the trailer:



THE COLLECTION - Official Trailer from Adam Roffman on Vimeo.
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Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater, *, 3pm 

(Note: There's a 57 minute film (Journeys to Adaka) before it)

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Old Harbor, New Hope
Joshua Branstetter
USA/Alaska
15 Min

The pre-opeining night showing is about preserving a language that is only spoken fluently by about thirty people.  This film is about resurrecting native dances among the Alutiiq people in the village of Old Harbor.  I'd note the Old Harbor Village Corporation was contracted by Shell  Shell to assist with its rescue operations in nearby Kiliuda Baywhen the oil drill  Kulluk broke loose from the tug in 2013.




If you can't wait, you can see the whole film here.