Elephants Cooperate, So Do People, Which Is Why I Couldn't Tell You About This Experiment Six Years Ago

From the new* Scientific American (I can only read the intro without paying):

"At the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, tucked away in the trees near Chiang Mai, a pair of Asian elephants gazes at two bowls of corn on the other side of a net. The corn is attached to a sliding platform, through which researchers have threaded a rope. The rope's ends lie on the elephants' side of the net. If only one elephant pulls an end, the rope slides out of the contraption. To bring the food within trunk's reach, the elephants have to do something only humans and other primates were thought to do: they must cooperate. Working in synchrony, each elephant grabs its end of the rope in its trunk and pulls, drawing the platform and the treats within reach."

photo from my April 2009 post

We met Josh Plotnick, the experimenter, in Chiangmai, in 2008.  We went to visit the elephant conservation center in 2009 where we saw his elephants and the experiment he was doing.  But I could only hint back then.  Here's from my first post on the elephant sanctuary in Lampang then:

"JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published."

Here's a link to the second post on the sanctuary which focused on the hospital and nursery.


*It's hard figuring out online what the date of this Scientific American is.  It says, "

Nine Percent of the US House Think Everyone Should Obey Them

According to the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, there are 247 Republicans, 188 Democrats, and 0 Independents, for a total of 435 Members of the House.  

Of these, "35-40" have been dubbed 'hard-liners' of the Freedom Caucus.  That makes them about 16% of the Republican members and about 9% of the Congress as a whole.  

Sixteen percent of Republicans and only 9% of the whole House think the other 84% of Republicans, the other 91% of the House, should drop what they believe and cater to this small minority's demands.  

In some ways it's reassuring that a small percent of a group can get people's attention if they feel really strongly about something and if they are willing to simply refuse to cooperate.  It's why dictatorships can be overthrown despite their power.  But that assumes the dictator is not as ruthlessly stubborn as the rebels are recalcitrant.  And that the rebels have something better to offer. 

Since I'm currently visiting my granddaughter, I can't help thinking about how familiar this behavior seems.  Here's a description of 2-3 year old social skills from Child Development Information:

Talks, uses “I” “me” “you.”  Copies parents’ actions.  Dependent, clinging, possessive about toys, enjoys playing alongside another child.  Negativism (2 ½ yrs).  Resists parental demands.  Gives orders.  Rigid insistence on sameness of routine.  Inability to make decisions.

Their sense of entitlement (a phrase they like to throw around) is staggering.   As the world changes, they are clinging and possessive about their toys.  And they're resisting parental (Speaker of the House?) demands they share a bit.  Instead they are giving orders.  And they rigidly insist on no taxes, cutting the budget, and getting rid of immigrants.

Which toys do they miss the most?   From Bloomberg News: 

“'We have emasculated ourselves because we have pretty much conceded that we don’t have the power of the purse,' said Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, which continues to support Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., for speaker." (emphasis added)

They no longer have the power they used to have.  As laws change to take down the barriers that blocked women and other ethnicities from power, white males are having to compete with less advantage than they used to have.  As women gain access to better jobs and control over when they give birth, they are less dependent on men.  Men are losing the power to control their wives.  Is it surprising that this group makes abortion a key issue?

OK, after making that generalization I realized I'd better check who is in this Freedom Caucus.  Wikipedia lists 36 members.  All but one are white males. (Mo and Jody look like men to me.)  The one female is Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. I wonder if she feels emasculated. Here's the list from Wikipedia:

Known members

• Jim Jordan of Ohio, Chair^[14]
• Justin Amash of Michigan^[14]
• Brian Babin of Texas^[15]
• Rod Blum of Iowa^[15]
• Dave Brat of Virginia^[16]
• Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma^[17]
• Mo Brooks of Alabama^[18][19]
• Ken Buck of Colorado^[20]
• Curt Clawson of Florida^[21]
• Ron DeSantis of Florida^[14]
• Scott Desjarlais of Tennessee^[22]
• Jeff Duncan of South Carolina^[23]
• John Fleming of Louisiana^[14]
• Trent Franks of Arizona^[20]
• Scott Garrett of New Jersey^[14]
• Paul Gosar of Arizona^[24]
• Morgan Griffith of Virginia^[2]
• Andy Harris of Maryland^[15]
• Jody Hice of Georgia^[25]
• Tim Huelskamp of Kansas^[26]
• Raúl Labrador of Idaho^[14]
• Barry Loudermilk of Georgia^[25]
• Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming^[20]
• Mark Meadows of North Carolina^[14]
• Alex Mooney of West Virginia^[15]
• Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina^[14]
• Gary Palmer of Alabama^[17]
• Steve Pearce of New Mexico^[20]
• Scott Perry of Pennsylvania^[15]
• Ted Poe of Texas^[15]
• Bill Posey of Florida^[15]
• Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania^[15]
• Matt Salmon of Arizona^[14]
• Mark Sanford of South Carolina^[15]
• David Schweikert of Arizona^[20]
• Marlin Stutzman of Indiana^[15]

Humans Versus Robots Answering Phones - LADWP Human The Worst

This past week I've been going through my mom's mail and calling different government agencies, insurance companies, utilities, etc.

I'm totally fed up.

I'm tired of machines asking for account numbers.  Or giving me five choices.  Then three more, then two more, none of which fits. 

Even though they are getting more sophisticated ("If you need more time to find the number, just say 'need more time'), most of the time I really need to talk to a human because I have issues the computers aren't programmed to handle.   And sometimes they don't even work - "When you're ready, say 'ready.'" just kept playing the music even though I said "ready" several times with increasing volume.

If it were simple, I'd just do it online in most cases, simply to avoid the machines answering the phones.  I'm calling because my issue needs a human.

Most of the humans I eventually talk to are really good.  To give you a sense of my . . .  well frustration isn't quite right because my expectations are so low now.  Exhaustion is probably closer.

The LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP)- There was a bill that was due Tuesday.  Since we only got here Tuesday, I hadn't seen it or paid it. 

I just called to see if they had a grace period of a few days.   When I finally got to the human, I told her my mom's name.  Well, the account was in my step-dad's initials (just the middle initial was different from my mom's).

Steve:  Well, it's my mom's account.  She just died.   The name you have has been dead for thirty years.   I'm just trying to find out the grace period or if there's a place near by where I can pay this.
LADWP:  If the account holder is dead we have to close the account and open a new account.
Steve;  That's fine, but for now I just want to pay the bill right now and I'll change it later.
LADWP:  If the account holder is dead we have to cut off the service in three days unless there is a new account and it will cost $19 to change it.
Steve:  The account holder has been dead for over 30 years, I don't see how another week or month is going to matter.
LADWP:  Once we've been notified we shut off services after three days unless it's changed.

You can imagine how I'm feeling now.

Steve:  Look, I just called so I could pay this bill on time and now you're threatening to shut off the water and power?
LADWP:  I'm sorry that is the policy.  Please give me your social security number.

When I hesitated, she repeated the turn off the service threat.  "We need it to check your credit."  OK, I can understand, and credit checking is one of the reasons one has to give a social security number, but it doesn't mean, in this identity theft era, that I like it.

She put me on hold.  When she came back I had collected myself and voiced my dissatisfaction in a mostly calm, but impatient voice.

Steve:  Look, I've been calling lots of organizations since my mom died.  You are the first person I've talked to who hasn't had the decency to say something like, "I'm sorry for your loss."  And all the other places have been understanding and offered me extra time if I needed it.   You, in contrast,  are threatening to shut off the water and power in three days if I don't do everything you say.  I might as well be talking to a robot who isn't programmed to understand human beings and have some discretion or decency.  

At that point she changed her tone.  She apologized, gave her condolences, but also said they deal with thousands of people every day and don't know what the circumstances are.  In the end, she said I could mail it in and not go to the office and stand in line to pay that day.

My assumption is that LADWP is putting lots of pressure on employees who answer phones, and that is reflected in how this woman responded.  I'm sure there are lots of people who skip out on unpaid bills, but that's no reason to treat me like they did.  In the end she acknowledged this was a long time account (my family moved into this house in 1956) and that the bills were always paid on time.

I'm inclined to think the problem really rests on LADWP.  They're known for scandals about hig employee salaries and  their billing as well as over expenditures and secrecy.

I don't think they should get any rewards for customer service either.

And let me say that every other person I've talked to over the phone since my mom died has immediately stopped and offered condolences and been extra nice and accommodating in handling the issues.  It hasn't always been quick and there have sometimes been problems down the line (although Verizon lowered the rate to $96 a month - tv on vacation hold - the new bill was for $335), but when I've called back they've been gracious and helpful.

NOTE:  I started this several days ago.  Saturday this letter arrived from LADWP addressed to [initials] Deceased [last name].  Maybe I should put it on my mom's ashes until she decides what to do with it. (I've already sent them a check.)  Except it's not to my mom, but my step-dad whose been dead over 30 years.  I could take it to the cemetery and tape it to his memorial. 

I've smudged the initials, last name, address, etc.

We've had letters addressed to my mom, and to her estate, but not with 'deceased' as part of her name.  More reason to believe this is an insensitive organization and it wasn't simply the operator I got. 

Oil Addiction Prevents Alaskan Politicians From Making Good Decisions

Image Screenshot from Video In 2010 Post

Most people don't change their habits unless they have to.

Alaska politicians (and the people who elect them) have been addicted to easy oil money for the past forty years.  The cozy relationship between some of our politicians (i.e.  ex-governor Parnell was a Conoco-Phillips lobbyist (literally, not just figuratively) and two sitting senators are also oil company employees and others get lots of support and advice from the industry) doesn't hurt either.

So our Republican dominated state government (for the last ten years or so) has spent that money like giddy lottery winners.  They didn't listen to warnings of eventual declines in oil revenues from ISER over the years.  It's true, though, that new technologies allowed for oil extraction longer than originally expected and increasing oil prices kept the revenues up even when production started dipping, letting politicians ignore the economists' warnings.

But the politicians in power positions made no serious plans to find alternative revenues or cut spending.  And because oil so dominated the economy, other traditional sources such as timber or tourism would never come close to what oil has brought in.  And as Republicans, they kept new taxes off the table.  And since none of them have the vision,  the guts, or the charisma to inspire the public to new thinking,  they've avoided the idea of tapping the Alaska Permanent Fund for what it was originally intended to do:  supplement the budget when the oil money runs out.  Nor have they been willing to broach reestablishing a state income tax.

And now the oil is hitting the fan.  The oil price decline plus Republican led tax giveaways to the oil companies have put our state budget into crisis.  Instead of planning for the day when oil revenues would no longer pay all the bills like rational, intelligent people do, they've continued to spend until their fingers come up empty when they stick their hands into the state coffers, at least the ones that don't have special locks on them like the Permanent Fund and budget reserve funds. 

OK, some will complain I'm being partisan here picking on Republicans and letting Democrats off the hook.  Democrats certainly have challenged the big tax breaks the Republican majority gave oil companies, but after redistricting, they no longer had the votes to block them.  And even the public was there, losing a ballot initiative to restore the tax by only 4% despite huge oil company spending on the election. And the Democrats have challenged big capital projects like the Susitna Dam and the Knik Arm bridge.  I don't know that Democrats have been particularly better about leading the way to use the Permanent Fund as a trust fund to help support our budget.

But the fact is that Republicans have been in power - both in the legislature and the governorship - and thus we got to our current dilemma on their watch.  So naming Republicans isn't partisanship, it's factual.

All these thoughts came pouring out of my head after reading an AP piece on the impacts of the low cost of energy  in today's ADN.  Oil and coal and natural gas company stock is down, down, down.  And Alaskan's have known for the last year or so that our stock is way down too.  But it didn't have to be if we had looked beyond the short term and prepared.  But we were drunk on oil money and we weren't forced to.


And just the other day we learned that Sen. Murkowski worked to get Alaska exempted from new EPA rules on energy companies that would require them to lower their carbon emissions. 

I get the short term impacts this will have on rural Alaska.  But the actions they would be forced to take would help wean them off the expensive fuels they've continually been using.  And there are Alaskan locations - like Kodiak and villages around the state - who are already breaking their addiction and finding alternative energy sources. Instead, most places, especially in the Capitol building in Juneau, have continued feeding their and our addiction. 

Some addicts just spiral down into self destruction.  Others break from their destructive ways and learn new, healthier habits.  It's what Alaskans need to do.  And we need politicians who have vision and can inspire Alaskans to break from the unsustainable easy way, to the harder but ultimately necessary path.

We are a state of welfare recipients, getting our state budget funded by oil taxes and the federal government, not to mention the actual individual cash Permanent Fund dividend payouts.  We need to think like the wealthy people we still are -  our Permanent Fund has $52 billion and the constitutional budget reserves has another $10 billion - and use the income of our wealth in a responsible way as others have proposed.  We need to supplement that with some sort of taxes - yes, pay our own way, not rely on others to subsidize our schools, state parks, roads, police, health care.  Let's start being healthy, responsible adults. 

Is Terrorism A Hate Crime?

The shooting in Charleston, South Carolina is one of many instances in the news this year already where people's stereotypes about race has led to black Americans dying.  Rather than write yet another post on this topic, here are a selected few that look at the topic of racism from different perspectives.  The first one has gotten a lot of hits from google the last couple of days. 


Is Terrorism A Hate Crime?  -  This post examines the contradiction of those politicians and citizens who oppose the idea of 'hate crime'  when it adds to the severity of the penalty, yet strongly support the idea of 'terrorism' charges increasing the penalty.  This is a detailed look at the meaning of both terms and I quote the tortured logic of some of the folks who support or oppose them



Why Is It Hard To Talk About Racism? - This post outlines an approach I've used in workshops on racism to approach the topic in a way that is a little easier to get people talking.  Even so, some people will say it's not hard to talk about it and they have nothing more to say.



Michele Norris Talks About Race At UAA  - This post reports on NPR's Michele Norris' talk at UAA about her Race Card Project, getting people to write and post short cards online about what race means to them.  There's also a bit of video of Norris that evening in January 2014. 

"Like termites, they undermine the structure of any neighborhood in which they creep."  - This post reviews the book Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby, who went to Central High in Birmingham, after 'integration.'   His experience there causes him to first review how desegregation resulted in widespread loss of teaching jobs for black teachers and a resegregation in the schools.

He then goes on to look at how neighborhoods were segregated using federal home loan laws and restrictive covenants.  Here's a short quote from the post (and the book) about a real estate developer who destroyed neighborhoods by scaring white folks out of their city neighborhoods and into buying his suburban white by covenant housing developments. 

"But Nichols's most important contribution to the way we live wasn't something he invented himself.  He just perfected it.  And the thing he perfected was the all-white neighborhood, hardwired with restrictive covenants that dictated not only the size and shape of the house but the color of the people who could live inside.  This idea, the racialization of space, would take root deep in the nation's consciousness, for both whites and blacks alike, becoming so entrenched that all the moral might of the civil right crusade was powerless to dislodge it.  In the South, Jim Crow was just the law.  In Kansas City, J.C. Nichols turned it into a product.  Then he packaged it, commodified it, and sold it.  Whiteness was no longer just an inflated social status.  Now it was worth cash money." [p.82]

And to connect back to the title of this post, here's another quote from the post.

Colby then discusses Nichols' friends, a group of prominent developers from around the country who were the 'brain trust' of National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB). 

"Not by coincidence in 1924 NAREB made racial discrimination official policy, updating its code of ethics to say, 'A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood members of any race or nationality . . . whose presence will clearly be detrimental to the property values of that neighborhood.  Like termites, they undermine the structure of any neighborhood in which they creep."

[Reposted because of Feedburner problems.]

Reasons Why Alaska Legislature Republican Majority Leaders Hate Governor Walker

Alaska's Republican majority leaders have done their best to show their disdain for Governor Walker.  They refused to meet in Juneau despite his calling for the special session to be there.  They've said no to most of what he wants to do.  Why all this antipathy?  

I'm sure readers will think of a lot more reasons, but here are a few I can think of:

1.   He left the Republicans and became an Independent
2.   This let him by-pass the Republican primary
3.   He joined with the Democratic gubernatorial candidate as his Lt. Gov partner
4.   He won the election beating their oil company loyalist sitting governor Parnell
5.   He's acts like an adult
6.   He knows how to think for himself
7.   He understands the economics of Medicaid expansion and thus supports it rather than stick to Republican ideological anti-Obamaism

But I think the most important issue for the Republicans is the fact that

8.  the next governor will be able to appoint two members to the 2020 Alaska Redistricting Board. 

They're doing everything they can to make him look bad, hoping he won't get reelected.  If the letters to the editor are any indication, they're making themselves look bad instead.  And Walker, as I mentioned above, is the one who looks like an adult in all this. 

Speaking of redistricting, it's not too early to start thinking about the next Board and how it will work.  By leaving all the decisions about technology to the Board, things get rather late to do the best job of surveying the technology available.  Mapping technology is getting much more sophisticated and much easier to use.  By the 2020 round there should be better technology to create the initial maps and the public should have access to play with the maps and come up with better alternatives.  Just something to think about. 

Self Identity And How Your Life Would Change If Key Characteristics Changed

What aspects about yourself do you take for granted and which ones would have the biggest impact on your life if it changed?  Let's look at some key ways we categorize people.

Sex - If you're male, how would your life be different if you were female?  And if you're female, if you were male? 

Race - Pick a different set of physical characteristic that we tend to call race.

Nationality - Here's a world map.  Close your eyes and let the mouse find you a new nationality.

Map from Geology.com   Click to enlarge and focus

Religion - Here's a list of 79 spiritual options.  Note Christianity is lumped pretty much into one category

Job/Profession - Here's a list of 1183 job titles.  Or no job at all.  Have fun.

Health Status -  This would be some sort of identified illness or physical characteristic from healthy and fit  to some labeled condition that identifies you as not completely healthy and fit.  Names of diseases and/or loss of abilities that most people take for granted.  I'll include mental illnesses here too.  You don't need a list of things that could go wrong.  For some, the change might just be moving to healthy. 

Sexuality -  Who are you sexually attracted to?  What things turn you on? 

Educational Status - How much schooling do you have?  Pick something several levels different from yours. 

Economic Status -  From homeless to billionaire.  This could also include what economic class you were born into, not just where you ended up. 

Questions to ask yourself and others:

• So, which of these are most significant to your self identity and are they different from what others think are important about you? 
• How would suddenly becoming a different economic class, sexuality, gender, health status most affect your life and your self identity?  And how others see you?  
• Which things are obvious to others when you walk down the street, which are not?
• Which of these changes would be difficult because of your own self identity and which because of how others expect you to be?  
• Which are easier and which harder to change?

I'm going somewhere with this, but I'd like to let folks play with these questions first. I'll pick up this theme in a future post.  In the meantime, ponder the questions when you're in bed and can't sleep.  Talk to your family and house mates about them.  Use them as ice-breakers at a party or reception or waiting at the post office or the airport. 

Be honest with yourself.  Try on a few identities and imagine going about your daily routine that way.  How would things be different?  Why? Would some make your life better and others worse?  Which ones? 

Is this hard?  Why?  

Did I miss one of your important identifiers? 

The Imitation Game Versus American Sniper

We just saw The Imitation Game.   And I haven't seen American Sniper, so I'm taking a bit of a leap, but play along a bit. 

The Movie

The Imitation Game  is about a mathematical genius, Alan Turing, whose mind brilliantly unravels codes, but misses human non-verbal, even verbal, cues.  He's also sexually attracted to men.

The movie, while telling the story of the secret British team led by Turing that cracked the German Enigma machine, also shows us, in the background, bits of Turing's life.  Being bullied as a school kid, because of his differences from the other students, his total lack of empathy for the other decoders working with him during the war, and to how the British courts treated him (prison or take hormonal treatments to stop his homosexuality.)


Thought One:  Abstract Ideas vs. Concrete Action

The movie portrays Turing's superiors as constantly trying to shut down his program.  He had lots of qualities that made him  unpleasant to others.  Mostly a total lack of any empathy for other people - he didn't listen to them, he didn't hear them, he had no regard for their feelings.  My sense was he just was physiologically deaf to all that.

Was he just some crank who was spending lots of money and time on some impossible dream or was he a genius who had to be nurtured and tolerated for what he could do?  It's easy to see in hindsight, but I'm sure at the time it was not.

The point I'm coming to is this:  His weapon, if you will, to win the war, was an idea, a concept.  Something that could not be proven until it was completed, and even then it was difficult to explain, though eventually, the results - the ability to decode the German messages - would be very tangible.  But even then, the fact that they could decode the messages, had to be kept secret so the Germans wouldn't simply find a new way to encode their messages.

Turing's contribution, as depicted in the movie, was to end the war two years faster and to save million lives.  But he had an even more profound contribution to our lives:  the computer.

Jack Copeland, the author Turing:  Pioneer of the Information Age in a videotaped lecture  at Stanford , tells us:

In 1936, in his very early twenties, he completely unexpectedly invented the fundamental principle of the modern computer.  Turing was working on an abstract problem in the foundation of mathematics - the Hilbert decision problem.  No one could have guessed   such abstruse arcane work could have led to anything of of any practical value whatsoever, let alone to a machine that would change all our lives, but it did.  [link added.]

Which leads to

Thought Two: The Importance and Productivity of Pure Science

We don't know how knowledge will accumulate and result in great contributions to human kind.  Politicians like to cite titles of obscure research projects funded by government money, to ridicule scientists and government spending.  Much research by scientists will not lead directly to world altering discoveries.  Yet the published articles of scientists are available to all, and we never really understand all the ways that one idea sets off another idea.  But I'm convinced that the many so called unproductive ideas are more than repaid for by the fewer highly productive ideas.  And many of the unproductive ideas actually close off dead ends so that the others need not wander down them.

Of course this film is also an example of how people work to fulfill their own internal inspiration.  No one could get an idea out of a person like Turing simply by paying him lots of money or threatening to punish.  Rather, you have to find the right people and just give them an environment where they can just do their thing.


Thought Three:  Our Cultural Divide Encapsulated In Two Films

I haven't seen American Sniper, but it's clear that it's about someone who shoots individual enemy targets.  Something really tangible and easy to understand.  We hear all this rhetoric about the sniper being a great hero.  (And my understanding is that the film does raise issues that make him a more complex human being.)

I think these two films represent much of the cultural conflict in the US today - the intellectual, possibly a peculiar and awkward person who works with ideas that have powerful effects versus the simplistic good guy/bad guy hero who uses violence to win.

Thought Four:  How Humans Attack Those Who Are Different

The film also raises the issue of how human groups treat people who are different, in odd ways, from others.  We tend not to be very accepting of them.   Turing was persecuted for his oddness as a kid by his peers, disliked and disdained as an employee by his colleagues and bosses, and persecuted agains, as a citizen, by his government.  I would add that it isn't a trait of all human beings, but enough to make it a serious human problem.

Thought Five:  Our Strange Combinations of Gifts And Gaps

Finally, it raises the issue, not unrelated to Thought Four above,  of how humans who have great gifts in one area may also be lacking in talents that average people have.  And how they get judged on what they don't have rather than on their amazing gift.

NOW, ON THE POSITIVE SIDE

Of the eight academy award nominated films for best picture, TWO were about intellectual geniuses - people whose ideas are way beyond what most people are capable of.  The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything.   A third nominated film - Selma - was about yet another genius whose power was built on an abstract idea - overcoming oppression through non-violence.

This illustrates, in my mind, progress of a sort.  Yet even the movies that focus on intellectual heroes use emotion and distort the facts to tell the story.  And this too may be an important lesson about how humans learn lessons through good stories.

Here's a  review of the movie   by a self-proclaimed Turing expert on what's accurate (not much apparently) and what's inaccurate in the movie. His conclusion is that while the facts might not be accurate, it is, nevertheless, a good movie.  And while many of the specific incidents in the movie may have been fabricated to make the film more dramatic, the lessons are no less valid. 

Digital Cameras As Mirrors

My little angel, not even two yet, is fully aware of what a camera is.  She even poses and wants to see the picture right away.  She knows it's her.  But she was also eager to see the crow pictures.  And she likes how you can zoom in and see details.

I'm a little creeped out about this.  She also thinks nothing of Skype.  It's natural to her.  Totally normal.  But then so were phones for me.  Though my mother took a long time to get over her childhood lessons that long distance calls were expensive, even when they became  inexpensive.

It got me to wondering how people reacted when mirrors first started being available.  Did they worry about how kids used them?  How adults used them?  Was there concern about vanity?  I suspect it's like digital cameras today.  Some people love them and don't think about the kinds of questions I'm raising.  Others wonder how much time kids should be playing with these things.  Others use them as babysitters - just handing the devices to tiny kids so kid won't fuss while they do other things.  I understand the temptation as I spend long time periods with my angel.  I'm 'the device' my daughter is using to distract her child with.

I'm not terribly worried about moderate use.  My parents didn't think mirrors were any big deal and I'm sure they delighted in my first encounters with them and recognizing myself.  In some way the popularity of selfies suggests that many people aren't self conscious of how they look.  But I suspect that there is a sizable part of the teenage population that dreads friends with cameras on their phones.

I was going to leave it like this - just some notes in reaction to what I'm seeing.  But I did take a quick look at what the internet has to offer on this topic.  It's depressing how many websites there are now that hire people to write short facile answers to every conceivable question, like "What is the history of mirrors?"  And they show up right at the top of searches.  From my early blogging experiences,  I know there's a market for people willing to write such breezy answers to get people to look at the ads that surround the posts.  Finding the meat is getting harder.  But they all say that mirrors go back thousands of years.

I did find one longer post at SIRC (Social Issues Research Centre) that looked at the impact of mirrors from a lot of different perspectives - age, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.  This snippet has relevance to my interest in this:

"Age
Children: Female dissatisfaction with appearance – poor body-image – begins at a very early age. Human infants begin to recognise themselves in mirrors at about two years old. Female humans begin to dislike what they see only a few years later. The latest surveys show very young girls are going on diets because they think they are fat and unattractive. In one American survey, 81% of ten-year-old girls had already dieted at least once. A recent Swedish study found that 25% of 7 year old girls had dieted to lose weight – they were already suffering from 'body-image distortion', estimating themselves to be larger than they really were. Similar studies in Japan have found that 41% of elementary school girls (some as young as 6) thought they were too fat. Even normal-weight and underweight girls want to lose weight."

". . . mere birdsong in the bushes of things"

They’re looking at the name on a portrait in an old book,  and she wonders to herself, who was he? 

“Who was he, who was he?  Did he labour under the whip of his father, or was he treated with gentleness and respect?  Names, names, all passed away, forgotten, mere birdsong in the bushes of things.”

What an image to characterize the ephemeral existence of a human being - "mere birdsong in the bushes of things."   Such word magic caused me to sit up in bed and wonder in awe - both at the meaning of the image and at the mind of the writer.   

Roseanne McNulty lives in an Irish asylum.  She thinks she may be 100.  Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture paints her portrait using peripheral vision,  with shadows and reflections, with the movement of curtains in the wind, with the ripples on the water.   

Barry sees Roseanne and the people around her in ultra slow motion capturing the signals, invisible to most people observing at normal speeds, that, like pieces of bone to archeologists, reveal their souls.  It’s so slow.  So powerful.  So unlike the superficial flash we’re used to. 

Writing, through the eyes of Roseanne, about Dr. Greene, who looks after the patients in the asylum . . .

Then he sat there in his own version of silence for a long while.  He sat so long he was almost an inmate of the room!  As if he lived there himself, as if he had nowhere to go to, nothing to do, no one to attend. 

He sat in the chill light.  The river, drowned in its own water, and drowned a second time in the rains of February, was not in a position to throw its light.  The window-glass was severely itself.  Only the still grass of winter lent it a slight besmirch of green.  His eyes, now much clearer somehow and more distinct without the beard, were looking forwards as if at an object about a yard away, that stare that faces have in portraits.  I sat on the bed and without the slightest embarrassment watched him, because he wasn’t watching me at all.  He was looking into that strange place, the middle distance, the most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances.  And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them.  River, window and eyes.

Wow!  "[T]hat stare that faces have in portraits."  "[T]he most mysterious, human, and rich of all distances."  Barry sees the invisible. How much of life am I missing?

Over and over again he daubs images onto the page and I think, where did that come from and what’s it doing here?  And then he pulls it all together - “River, window and eyes.”

Here's another one. Roseanne reflects about her husband who fished for salmon.

Most of the time, he stood by the lake, watching the dark waters.  If he saw a salmon jumping, he went home.  If you see a salmon, you will never catch one that day.  But the art of not seeing a salmon is very dark too, you must stare and stare at the known sections where salmon are sometimes got, and imagine them down there, feel them there, sense them with some seventh sense.  My husband Tom fished for ten years for salmon in that way.  As a matter of record he never caught a salmon.  So if you saw a salmon it seems you would not catch one, and if you did not see a salmon you would not catch one.  So how would you catch one?  By some third mystery of luck and instinct, that Tom did not have.

Dark waters.  Barry paints with dark waters.  With "some third mystery of luck and instinct."  Where is this going, I’m thinking, and then I read on:

But that was how Dr. Greene struck me today, as he sat in silence in my little quarters, his neat form stretched out on the chair, saying nothing, not exactly watching me with his eyes, but watching me with his luck and instincts, like a fisherman beside dark water. 

Oh, yes, like a salmon I felt, right enough, and stilled myself in the deep water, very conscious of him, and his rod, and his fly, and his hook. 

The patient's view of the doctor!  It’s with these tiny brush strokes that Barry paints his portraits.  I’m not reading a book as much as watching a painter starting with a blank canvas.  He mixes his paints, he draws some lines on the canvas.  Slowly daubs marks here and there.  Slowly, slowly the thin pencil lines gain dark color and richness and the souls of people are revealed. 

This isn’t a book for everybody.  It's too slow.  We aren't use to paying painfully slow attention to amorphous signs.  To looking without looking.  I’d once recommended Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country  to a good friend.  He couldn’t finish the short novel.  His verdict, “Nothing happens.”  It’s inside that nothing that everything happens.  The same in The Secret Scriptures.

Which is Safer? Ten Foot Or Twelve Foot Lanes?

From CityLab:  

"When lanes are built too wide, many bad things happen. In a sentence: pedestrians are forced to walk further across streets on which cars are moving too fast and bikes don't fit."

. . . A number of studies have been completed that blame wider lanes for an epidemic of vehicular carnage. One of them, presented by Rutgers professor Robert Noland at the 80th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, determined that increased lane widths could be blamed for approximately 900 additional traffic fatalities per year."

This is a long article, that, among other things blames engineers' biases for not accepting this premise as well as state laws which mandate wider streets.  

I haven't had time to do more research on it.  I did find a few other sources that supported the basic premise including this 2007 DOT Study.

On high speed highways they argue for wider lanes which they say reduce lane departure crashes.  But . . .

In a reduced-speed urban environment, the effects of reduced lane width are different.  On such facilities, the risk of lane-departure crashes is less. The design objective is often how to best distribute limited cross-sectional width to maximize safety for a wide variety of roadway users.  Narrower lane widths may be chosen to manage or reduce speed and shorten crossing distances for pedestrians.  Lane widths may be adjusted to incorporate other cross-sectional elements, such as medians for access control, bike lanes, on-street parking, transit stops, and landscaping.  The adopted ranges for lane width in the urban, low-speed environment normally provide adequate flexibility to achieve a desirable urban cross section without a design exception."

Read it yourself.  The author is passionate about this subject and has done a lot of homework.  Then ask the next traffic engineers you meet what they think.

Thanks LL for the link.

Title IX Training Suggests Big Changes On Campus: Being A Jerk No Longer Acceptable At UAA

I used to have to tell faculty, when I was a faculty union grievance rep, that simply being a jerk was not a grievable offense.  A supervisor had to violate a specific provision of the contract, the university policies and procedures, or the law before an action could be grieved.  The rules against harassment were very vague.

But if yesteday's Title IX training at UAA is serious (and I have no reason to question it), then being a jerk, if it manifests itself as bullying or other harassing behaviors, is now grievable.  This is big.  (Other jerk behaviors that are irritating, but not mean or intimidating are probably still ok.) And, of course, unwanted sexual advances have been taboo for a while now, but victims have a lot more with which to fight back.


This was mandatory training for faculty.  As people walked in, they had to sign the list of names that they were there.  If your name wasn't on the list - mine wasn't since I'm retired and not teaching this semester - you signed another elsewhere.  I don't know what happens to faculty that didn't get the training yesterday or earlier in the summer.  But the auditorium was pretty much full.




What I Thought Was Significant

1.  This is serious.  

• It was mandatory.
• Chancellor Tom Case opened it and supported the idea of treating everyone with respect, but also said there were significant consequences for universities that are not in compliance.
• The United Academics (the faculty union) president Abel Bult-Ito was down from Fairbanks to say the union was co-sponsoring the event, emphasizing protections are in place not only for students, but for faculty and staff as well.
• Faculty Senate President Diane Hirschberg then briefly discussed national and local cases.  She said that Jerry Sandusky had cost Penn State, just in fees and fines, $69 million.  Hirschberg's own alma mater Berkeley had its own recent case, and UAA's women's volley ball coach was our own recent incident.  She also talked about a New York Times story about how badly a new student's rape by football team members was handled by campus authorities
• This training was happening because UAA is on a list of school being investigated on their Title IX implementation.
• And she told the faculty that new legislation has been introduced that includes fines up to 1% of a school's budget and $150,000 per incident.

• And the Clery Act.  From the Clery Center:

"Originally known as the Campus Security Act, the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (20 USC § 1092(f)) is the landmark federal law that requires colleges and universities across the United States to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses. The law is tied to an institution's participation in federal student financial aid programs and it applies to most institutions of higher education both public and private. The Clery Act is enforced by the United States Department of Education."

2.  There are people to back this up and these folks appear to be good

Whaley, Micek, and Trew

The three main presenters - Stephanie Whaley, Jerry Trew, and Mandee Micek - are key people in the team of investigators and support staff for faculty and students.  Jerry and Mandee are both former police officers and are attorneys.  The presentation was straightforward, the content was to the point, and I got the sense that these people knew what they were doing and did it well.

And there are others on campus.  There is a web of different offices and as I look at my notes and pictures and what's on the web, I'm a little confused.  This needs to be more straightforward.  I know they talked about a Care Team yesterday and there's a Title IX team, and there are others doing overlapping work in different parts of the campus.  Stephanie Whaley came to the Title IX team form Residence Life which handles things in the dorms.



The sense I got was that there now are people on campus whose job it is to:
1.  investigate complaints
2.  advocate for victims
3.  help faculty and staff and students report problems
4.  help potential offenders get help to modify their behavior

And there are requirements to report violations.  It doesn't have to include a name, but if someone finds out about a sexual assault or about harassment, they have a mandatory duty to report.

I had a chance to talk to Jerry and Stephanie afterward.  I came in with some skepticism based on over 30 years at UAA.  But I'm impressed with these folks.  They could disappoint me down the line, but I suspect that will only happen if they don't get the support they need from the administration. It's encouraging to learn that two colleges rescheduled major functions so faculty could attend this training yesterday. 

3.  It includes various forms of harassment including bullying.  

Faculty and supervisors and students who bully, who intimidate, who create a hostile environment are no longer just jerks, they are in violation of university policy and (if I understood this right) federal law.  They can be complained against and there are people who are there to advocate for the victims.

This is big.  I can tell lots of stories I've experienced, witnessed, and heard over the years at UAA.  Bullying had plenty of practitioners. There is now an avenue for correcting these folks who make working and student life miserable for others.  Administration is no longer looking the other way, no longer saying "he's just that way, don't let it bother you."  This is big.


4. If You Can't Remember What All Was Covered (highly likely) Call  The Office of Campus Diversity And Compliance 786 4680

There was too much information, much of it was general and putting it into practice is a lot easier said then done.  People need to do role-playing to develop scripts for responding to students who are in trouble or to confront harassers.  You can't just tell people to not be emotional.  If it were that easy, we'd all get along fine.  But I talked to Jerry and Stephanie afterward and they understand this.

There's still a lot of conversation to be had.  During the break, three different people touched me when the talked to me.  This was right after a discussion about touching others.  There was nothing wrong with the pats on the arm, but I suspect discussions on welcome and unwelcome touching would be useful, because there's a big gray area here where people could conceivably get into trouble for what they thought were innocent touches.  (And I want people to be able to continue touching.)

The reporting requirements need more explanation - like what to report, when to report, how to report, and to whom to report.  All that was discussed, but people need to walk through this.  It's all new territory for many.

But that's why I say, a key point I took out of the meeting was just to call.  And there will be other options to get more specific behavioral training on all this.

All in all, this was an auspicious start.


My Conclusion 

This is BIG!  This is bigger than the end to smoking in classrooms and then in buildings completely.  And that was huge.  This sets in place people who are trained to deal with sexual assault victims.  This makes campuses accountable to the federal government with large potential fines for violations.  It sets in place more training and education for potential victims and potential perpetrators.

But within the package here, yelling and bullying are no longer acceptable behaviors.  I'd suggest buying stock in anger management training, because people in authority who have been used to bullying their staff will now be sent to anger management classes and if they don't learn, they'll be out.

Of course, this all requires enough resources and follow through.  And some of the worst offenders are those in positions of authority.  There will be resistance.  And smoking was a much more tangible behavior - it was clearly visible and the odor lingered long after.

But with everyone carrying around a audio and video recorder in their phone these days, and with text messages recorded as well, I don't think there will be any lack of evidence.

When I think of the oppressive environment I moved into here in 1977, this is huge. I can think of a number of women faculty who suffered from the arrogance and power of male colleagues and supervisors.   Power is still power though, even if it is more polite.  But life should become a lot more pleasant on campus.  And as people learn to see their own behavior as unacceptable, they may even grow as human beings.

One final note.  It will take time for folks to work out the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.  When is something legitimate disagreement and when does it become intimidation?  When is touching a means of communication and when is it just creepy or menacing?  Those who see things in black and white will want clear-cut descriptions of what is and isn't ok.  And that won't be possible.  These folks who have trouble reading non-verbal communication will need to err on the side of very conservative interpretation.  If they aren't sure, they shouldn't do it. 

More Playground Gender Thoughts

I'm wandering off into unfamiliar territory here, but humor me.  I'm just exploring thoughts that arose from some playground time this past weekend.  

Saturday I was at a playground in an upscale area of San Francisco with my granddaughter.  She was wearing pants and a t-shirt.  Invariably, other parents, told their kids things like, "Be careful of the little boy."

I started looking around.  My granddaughter is barely 17 months old and already her clothes mark her as a boy or a girl.  Her hair is still mostly fuzzy.  Her face doesn't give her away.  But everyone assumed she was a boy.  Just because she had on pants and a T shirt - nothing frilly, no flowers, a little baseball cap with a frog. 

The next day we were at the same playground, but she was wearing clothes that identified her as a girl - the pants were more like tights and didn't go below the calf.  Her shirt had a pattern and was more like a smock than a t-shirt.  Yet one four year old girl who started talking to her in a big sisterly oh-how-cute way, suddenly pulled back and said, "She's wearing boys' shoes."  Boys' shoes?  I looked around.  The girls had more colorful shoes, with patterns and designs on them.  My granddaughter had sturdy walking shoes. 

I started looking around more carefully.  I'm not sure there's boys' clothes as much as there are girls' clothes.  By that I mean, the clothes the boys wore would be perfectly ok on a girl, but the girls' clothes wouldn't be perfectly ok on a boy.  So, if you aren't wearing 'girl' clothes, you are by default wearing boys' clothes.  It seems boys' clothes are more practical and girls' clothes are more colorful and showy. 


My daughter consciously dresses her daughter in non-gender specific clothes because she's read studies that say girls and boys are treated differently by strangers as soon as they have any identifiable gender marker - say pink or blue clothing.  People, she says, tend to comment on what girls look like  and on what boys are doing. 

Finding those studies is proving hard on google.  The blogger at A Haircut and a Shave
after having similar reactions to her daughter, pondered whether people could tell the difference between girl and boy infants by their faces.  She found studies of adult faces (adults can tell most of the time) and older kids' faces (adults can tell 75% of the time, though little kids were less successful.)  But she couldn't find such a study of infant faces. 

She also found a study

which asked mothers to estimate their 11-month-old son's or daughter's crawling skills and predict how their child would perform in a new crawling task up and down some sloped surfaces.

Interestingly, the mothers of baby girls significantly under-estimated their daughter's skills and future performance, while the mothers of baby boys significantly over-estimated their son's skills and future performance on the crawling task.  When the researchers actually measured the baby's skills and performance on a crawling task, there was absolutely no difference between the boys and girls.  The mothers were wrong; and not just wrong, but systematically wrong on the basis of their baby's gender.

She also supports my comments about clothing:

Meantime, I can say that I think the super-gendered baby clothes that dominate stores are just silly.  It can be so difficult to find clothes that aren't blue or pink, especially for very young babies.  

 Clearly, the big difference between girls and boys has to do with different parts in their pants.  But do those anatomical parts really define everything else in their lives?  Based just on this clothing review, it seems to me that our society (and probably most others)

• makes a big deal about the differences between boys and girls 
• expects different things from them
• treats boys more as doers and girls more as objects of display

The environmental impacts surely play as big a role and the genetic impacts.  

Bike Trail Slasher

Just last fall I wrote about the opening of the Campbell Creek bike trail under the Seward Highway.

Today, when I went to see Chong Kim, the Department of Transportation Project Engineer who was in charge of that project so I could ask questions about the three final options for 36th and Seward Highway, he was very upset because someone, over the winter, slashed the screens that are used to protect bikers and pedestrians from debris falling off the highway.  Other places these are also to keep snow plowed on the road above from hitting people on the trail.  Here, along Campbell Creek, they aren't allowed to plow snow into the creek, but I'm sure it happens once in a while.  Chong had worked hard to get screens that were both functional and decorative.   He's clearly upset about this.





Here are some pictures of what's happened.

It was a little hard taking pictures because the screens are see-through to a certain extent.  But on the near left side you can see a big rectangle cut out. 

This project goes under four different roads - two frontage roads and then the north and south parts of the highway.  So there are a bunch of screens and parts of most of them have been damaged.

Here's Chong Kim, the project manager on video.  I've talked to him about a number of projects over the last few years and he's always been very candid and passionate about the projects.  The kind of public administrator who gives this member of the public confidence.

These aren't cheap screens.  He said the fabric for all these screens cost $10,000.  The material, with the images of a skier, runner, and biker were specially ordered.

Chong was truly upset and trying to figure out how to fix these in a way that will still be attractive, but harder to destroy.

Another.



















Here they just slashed it.

And here they made a long narrow peek hole.

There's more, but I figure that's enough to get the idea across.




Of course, I wish I could talk with the person(s) who did this.  What was he thinking?  (Research seems to indicate it's almost always a male.)  I looked for interviews with vandals on google, but that got me to a talk with a rock group. 

A brief google search for research sort of confirmed this, but the research was old. It suggested that the need for

• love and security
• new experiences
• praise and recognition
• responsibility

were the basic causes for vandalism and violence.  From The Roots Of Vandalism and Violence:

Anger, hate and lack of concern for others are common reactions to being unloved and rejected.  Vandalism and violence are an expression of these feelings. 

I tend to believe this is the case, but while it said the findings were based on research, it didn't show the sources.

It's not a simple problem.  It's about getting parents training on how to raise their kids.  It's about schools making sure all kids' strengths can find expression and be rewarded.  It's about funding good pre-school programs and good day care.

It's about governments that put money into the education of young kids.  Our current legislature isn't going to decrease vandalism.  

Twofer: Racist Rant and Consequences of Leaving Kid Alone In Car

Two posts I saw the other day are still stuck in my head.  They also help illuminate the Bergdahl Rohrschach post I did the other day that suggested that many news events are like Rohrschach tests:  what people see in the event - particularly when details are scarce - reflects more about the commenter than about the event.

Here are two more events.

1.    From Salon.

 The day I left my son in the car

I made a split-second decision to run into the store. I had no idea it would consume the next years of my life

Author Kim Brooks recounts in great detail how a series of events  resulted in her running into the store to get one item while her four year old son waited in the car with an iPad.  She cracked the windows, it was 50˚F (10˚C) outside, and she put on the car alarm.  Unbeknownst (that is a strange word, isn't it?) to her, a stranger videotaped her and the kid and her return and called the police to report her.  Kim left before the cops arrived and flew home to another city, but when her husband picked her up at the airport he told her to call her mom, whom she'd been visiting and whose car she was in.

It's a long, long, long piece, but pretty gripping.  It raised a lot of issues, but to me (my Rohrschach) it was about common sense, child danger and independence, and about people judging others.  What I really wanted to know about and what wasn't covered, was the person who reported her.  What was that person's back story?  What caused that person to do what she did?  As one of the commenters at Salon wrote - a true good Samaritan would have stayed by the car and made sure the kid was ok.  Is this a person who is fixated on rules to the extent that she can't discriminate between child neglect and a quick and reasonable dash into the store?  Does she have her own tales of childhood neglect and abuse that justify this in her mind?  We only hear what happened from the view of the writer.  Perhaps there was more incriminating behavior she left out.  The whole Salon piece is here.

A gripping read for anyone, particularly a parent in today's overprotected world. (I write that as someone who walked about a mile to school alone starting in first grade.)  This also reminds me of a story of a close friend who was charged with shoplifting at Whole Foods and spent a year and a big chunk of money to get it dismissed.  This should have never happened; there were some cross-cultural miscues, but common sense did not prevail until the judge finally tossed it.  That's a story I haven't written about here.  Maybe one day I will.  It seems security guards at Whole Foods have done this more than once, for example here, 


2.  Black guy video tapes racist rant from his car.

I don't even feel like putting up the video, but here's the link.  It already has 9 million hits and 35,000 comments.  I bet someone could do a doctoral thesis just on the comments.  Two people see each other out of context of their whole lives.  I'm more interested in what was going on in her head. 

In a follow up on USA Today, she says she's working with her doctor and was changing medications and she apologized, though it seemed more something she was doing as therapy or on advice of an attorney than from her heart.  The guy who posted the video wrote:

"This happened to me last Friday May 30th 2014.  I'm more upset that it was done in front of her children.  They will have hate and have no idea where it came from."

I think the number of hits and comments speaks to how unusual it is to actually capture something like this on camera.   I think the man handled things pretty calmly, all things considered.  The woman was way out of normal range of behavior and I'd be inclined, at this point, to accept her explanation that she was off her meds.  Is this more about racism or more about mental health?  When someone is in her condition and really out of control, I suspect they use whatever they think will push the other person's buttons.  But I'd like to think that even if my brain's normal constraints stopped working, I wouldn't throw 'nigger' at anyone.  But those of us who are products of US culture have that word stashed away in our brains.  Who's to say it wouldn't slip out of any of our lips in a time of stress and mental unbalance?  We only know when we're tested.

Only the people who know her well know whether this was exceptional behavior. 

Lots to think about. 

The Bergdahl Rorhschach Test

[Lots of  people leave a movie before the credits are over.  And sometimes the director saves some great stuff for the end of the credits.  This is a post that has some related, but only in a very tangential way, content at the end.  But I think it's worth waiting for.]

[UPDATE June 9, 2014 Anchorage Daily News reporter Rich Mauer offers more detail to the Bergdahl Rohrschach with his interview with four Anchorage soldier's in Bergdahl's unit today.]

Original Rohrschach image from here, but see notes below*

The commentary on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reminds me a lot of a Rohrshach test.  In a Rorschach:

[t]he underlying assumption is that an individual will class external stimuli based on person-specific perceptual sets, and including needs, base motives, conflicts, and that this clustering process is representative of the process used in real-life situations.^[33] [From Wikipedia]

And we see all sorts of folks 'seeing' in Bergdahl (the external stimulus) radically different things, based, I'm assuming, on those  "person-specific perceptual sets, and including needs, base motives, conflicts."


Some of the things people see in the Bergdahl Rohrschach:

• Traitor
• Confused Young Man
• Sane Young Man Who Reacted To The Insanity Of War
• Means To Trash The President
• Republicans Acting Bad Once More
• Chance To Empty Guantanamo
• US Commitment To Recover all POWs
• Negotiating With Terrorists
• Innocent Until Proven Guilty
• All Our Soldiers Are Hereos

The traditional Rohrschach Test has very specific techniques for interpreting people's responses.  There are different methods:  The Exner method and the Rohrschach Performance Assessment System seem to be the two major ones.   Wikipedia goes through the basic inkblots and standard interpretations.  And there's even a section on conflicts among the testers over interpretation.

Frustrated with people's seemingly mindless interpretation of current events?  Think of the current event as a sort of Rohrschach test. 

In looking at Rohrschahs,  psychologists looks at more than just what the testers 'see' in the inkblots.  They also look at how they approach the task - for instance, do they take it as given to them or do they ask if they can turn the cards around?  They listen to how the person forms the interpretation.

And we should do the same too.

Everyone's response will be a combination of the respondent's preconceived notions of how the world works and the evidence presented.  The less connected to the facts of the case, the more the response tells us about the respondent than about the case, the more the respondents are projecting their world views, their values, their biases onto the case. 

But none of this is new to most of you reading this. Perhaps for some it's a different metaphor for thinking about this.

The real questions we have to find ways to answer are:

1.   How do we form our 'judgment habits'?  (Yes, they're habits.)  How do we learn to go from evidence to conclusion?   To what extent is this affected by genetics and to what extent by environment? 
2.  How do we learn to balance feelings and rational thinking to improve the likelihood of coming to more accurate assessments?
3.  What causes some of us to short circuit and shut down one side or the other - rationality without any feeling or feeling without any rationality?

I know you can all think of examples of people rationally going through the evidence before they make their conclusions known.   And you know people whose instant conclusion pops out of their mouths as soon as the first tiny bit of (possibly false) evidence is presented.

But sometimes the people that mouth off quickly, loudly, and arrogantly without waiting for all the evidence are right.  And the people who deliberately exam every detail sometimes turn out to be wrong.  A lot goes into 'getting it right' than just these two dimensions. 

There are lots of directions this post could go.  I really wanted to just raise the idea of current events being like Rohrschach inkblots, we learn more about the people talking than about the issue. 

But as I did that, I also started thinking about the wide array of factors that affect good and bad interpretations.  And after barely touching that, I'm already thinking about how we deal with people who aren't rational or who ignore feelings.   But I'm not ready to put all those ingredients together into a satisfying post yet. 
 
So let me conclude this post with a little seriousness and a little silliness.

*Images (the serious part)

I spent a more time on the images (there's one below too) than I did on actually writing.  Like the two here, most images I use here are originals I create.  But if I use someone else's images (even if I alter them as in this post), I like to give credit.  I found the Rohrschach image using google image search.  But my source clearly wasn't the original, but that site didn't cite its source.  Google reverse image search gave me over 500 locations for the image.  I passed on finding the real original site. I  really don't want to link to a site that used an image without giving credit - and I'm not that impressed with the post the image was in. 

Hermann Rohrshach (the silly part) 

When I was looking up the Rohrschach test, I found a picture of Hermann Rohrschach on Wikipedia.  I was surprised at how young and contemporary - and cool - he looked.  According to Wikipedia,

  "in 1921 he wrote his book Psychodiagnostik, which was to form the basis of the inkblot test."

He was was born in November 1888, so he was probably 38 when the book came out.  In April 1922, again according to Wikipedia:

"he died of  peritonitis, probably resulting from a ruptured appendix.^[9]"

He left a wife and two children, ages five and three.  Below is his picture and the actor it made me think (another Rohrschach like test?) should play him in the movie of his life.

Hermann and Matt

Hermann's picture is the way I found it.  It took a little time to find a picture of Matt Damon in a reasonably similar pose.  Then I changed it to black and white, got rid of the background, shrank it, and added the mustache.   I think they'd seem more alike  if you didn't see the pictures side-by-side.  As I look at the two now, I know that readers will think of other actors who look much more like Hermann.