Why Partisans Reject Facts

How can so many people believe Barack Obama is a Muslim for instance? A key concern of this blog - What Do I Know? - is understanding how people determine what is true.   Television broadcasters can say outright lies and not worry about their listeners finding out.  Why? 

It has become clear to me that we are often dealing with emotional issues and unless we get to the heart of those, the rational discussion cannot take place.  The emotional issues, whether  fear or anger or some other powerful emotion, need to be addressed first.  Until the emotional response is lowered, all the logic in the world will fail.  (I long ago learned to not discuss a student's bad grade right after they got the paper back, if he had a strong emotional reaction.  I'd ask him to read my comments carefully, get a night's sleep, read them again, and then I'd be happy to discuss it.)

Well, a few days ago  Wickersham's Conscience had a post which liberally cited Eric Hoffer's 1950s book, True Believer, addressing this issue of fact-proof beliefs.  Here's one quote:

All mass movements strive to impose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. And, that faith becomes the things the fanatic declines to see. He avers how startling it is to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible, and that faith manifests itself not in moving mountains, but in not seeing mountains move. In the context of mass movements faith should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity, or truth, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from himself and the world as it is.

And this morning on NPR, I heard WBUR's impressive Here and Now,  as scholars Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler discussed a recent paper showing that not only does presentation of facts sometimes NOT change people's beliefs, it can even strengthen them.    I strongly recommend listening to this discussion here.

I found the discussion riveting.  And again recommend you listen.  (I couldn't see a way to embed it here so you have to go to the link.)  I don't have much time today, but I did want to note this important discussion and line of research.  

Here are some key points excerpted from the conclusions of their paper, When Corrections Fail: The persistence of political misperceptions.  Remember, this is less than a page worth of their 46 page paper. (Well, only 22 is text, the rest is bibliography and charts.)  It's only to whet your curiosity.  And the paper answers some questions I had which weren't addressed in the interview - such as whether respondents didn't believe the facts or the sources of the facts.  I think you'll find the conclusions consistent with the Hoffer quote above. 

We find that responses to corrections in mock news articles differ significantly according to subjects’ ideological views. As a result, the corrections fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants. Even worse, they actually strengthen misperceptions among ideological subgroups in several cases. Additional results suggest that these conclusions are not specific to the Iraq war; not related to the salience of death; and not a reaction to the source of the correction.

(The audio discussion is MUCH easier to listen to than this is to read.)

Specific findings were:

• First, we provide a direct test of corrections on factual beliefs about politics and show that responses to corrections about controversial political issues vary systematically by ideology. 

• Second, we show that corrective information in news reports may fail to reduce misperceptions and can sometimes increase them for the ideological group most likely to hold those misperceptions. 

• Finally, we establish these findings in the context of contemporary political issues that are salient to ordinary voters.

They acknowledge that this is preliminary work in a field that hasn't often asked these questions and suggest directions for future research:

Future work should seek to use experiments to determine the conditions under which corrections reduce misperceptions from those under which they fail or backfire.  Many citizens seem or unwilling to revise their beliefs in the face of corrective information, and attempts to correct those mistaken beliefs may only make matters worse. Determining the best way to provide corrective information will advance understanding of how citizens process information and help to strengthen democratic debate and public understanding of the political process.

Non-Profit Behind the Scenes Work: HRA Preparing For Tim Wise Visit

Sometimes I am amazed at how much work something is.  Healing Racism in Anchorage is a small non-profit without a paid staff.  The steering committee members, including myself, do the work.  Next week we're bringing one of the most active anti-racists to Anchorage for several days.  I've spent part of today just tying up loose ends - posting publicity on various websites, getting a parking waiver for people coming to the Tuesday night talk at UAA, and little things like that.  But they add up. 

I'm also pretty amazed at how much can be done by a group like this.  We've been meeting almost weekly (we have potluck dinners) for the last month or so, reporting who has done what, what still needs to be done, finding out what plans have come through, what new money has come in, etc.  Everyone is pitching in working on different events, coordinating volunteers, working with partners, getting transportation from event to event settled, and on and on.

The major public events include:

Monday, Sept. 13:  A workshop for up to 35 people at the new community room at Credit Union 1 in Mountain View.  This is essentially for folks who want to improve their skills for interrupting racism in their organizational or personal lives.  It's from 5:15pm-8:30.  Costs $50 ($40 for Healing Racism in Anchorage members) and includes a light dinner.

Tuesday, Sept. 14:  Tim Wise will talk at Wendy Williamson auditorium at UAA beginning at 7:30.  That's the parking fee waiver I was working on today.  This is a free event for the public.

Thursday, Sept. 16:  The UAA debate team, which regularly wins National level debates, will take on the topic,  “The time has come to abandon race-based preferences in university admissions,” UAA Library Room 307, 7 - 9 p.m.  (Tim will not be at this event.)

Listen on the Radio

In addition Tim will be on the radio a lot:
Monday, Sept. 13:  Native America Calling (KNBA 90.3 FM), 8:50 to 10 a.m.  This is broadcast nationally, so people outside of Anchorage can check how to listen in.

Tuesday, Sept. 14:  Talk of Alaska (KSKA 91.1 FM) with Steve Heimel, 10 a.m.  This will be broadcast statewide on the Alaska Public Radio Network.  Listeners can call in.  Click here for a list of stations statewide.
Wednesday, Sept. 15:  Bob and Mark (KWHL, 106.5 FM), 9:30 and Dave Stieren (KFQD, 750 AM), 10:00 a.m.

Other Activities
Tim Wise will also been doing short presentations with some federal agencies, a state agency, a private sector company, and the Anchorage School District.  I'm tired just thinking about his busy schedule.

What particularly impresses me is that quite a few organizations and individuals are going to benefit from Wise's visit.  If any one group brought him up just to work with them, the cost of transportation and hotels would make it really costly.  But by a lot of organizations working together, they all get time with Wise at a very reasonable price.

The administrative costs are being born by the steering committee of Healing Racism in Anchorage through our volunteer work on this, plus the help from volunteers.  And a long list of individuals and organizations that have made donations from $8 to several thousand dollars.

There are a couple more events later the follow up on Tim Wise's visit.



Wednesdays, September 22 – October 27, 2010:
HRA class, 5:45 to 8:30, Anchorage School District (ASD) Red Room on Northern Lights. $75/$65 for members plus optional fee to UAA for graduate-level credit. Includes the cost of books. Sign up through the ASD My Learning Plan for credits or Email healingracism@gmail.com to secure a spot.  This is a chance to have an in depth exploration of racism in our lives in a safe small group setting.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010:
FREE “Anchorage Is Our Home” video screening and panel discussion, Wilda Marston Auditorium at the Loussac Library, 6 to 7:30 p.m. 



You can find out more at Healing Racism in Anchorage's website.

Joe Miller's "Judicial" Record Reviewed

In my last post, I cited information from Joe Miller's website* about his legal positions in Alaska.  I had questions about being a magistrate and his language that he "stepped down from the bench" to run for office.    [* I also had stuff from McAdams website]

I emailed my questions to an attorney friend who did not want to be quoted but wrote back, "it is so puffed up that I would puke if it had been written about myself." 

I normally wouldn't post unsupported opinion like this (he did have support in the email), but it seems the vehemence that's expressed is as important as the facts.  There is a VERY STRONG personal reaction to Miller's candidacy by many as mentioned in the previous post.

And besides, more detailed factual information came from another source.

akbrite left a comment on the previous post with a link to Wickersham's Conscience where the same questions were raised AND answered:

Joe Miller has never been a judge; he has been a magistrate. A state judge is appointed by the Governor from candidates proposed by the Alaska Judicial Council. Joe Miller has been a candidate for a judgeship: the superior court in 2005, the seat Judge Robert Downes now holds. He withdrew his name just before the bar poll results came out: that’s usually an indication he was panned by his peers. A magistrate is appointed by the court to do ministerial tasks. A federal magistrate is much the same.

In his bio, Miller says, “In 2004, Miller stepped down from the bench to run for State Representative.” He was never on the bench; he was never a judge. He ran for the superior court, although he quit before he got fairly started.
He says in his campaign website he has lived in Alaska for 16 years. He told the Judicial Council in March 2005 he had “been an Alaska resident for 10 years, and has practiced law for 9 years. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1995.” So if he graduated from Yale in May or June of 1995, in March of 2005 he had lived in Alaska for something less than ten years. And in 2010 he’s lived in Alaska 15 years, not 16 years. Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut, not Alaska.
Miller also says in his bio, “He has represented clients in a wide variety of cases, a number of which have gone all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court.” As it turns out, “a number” is two reported Alaska Supreme Court decisions, one when he was part-timing at the Borough Attorneys’ Office and one domestic relations case.

 The rest of the Wickersham's Conscience post does a similar analysis of Miller's statements on offshore drilling, the Constitution, the Alaska economy, and a few other issues. 

Big Clouds? Blue Skies? Time to Reflect and Get Grounded

This big cloud appeared over the Chugach range Wednesday night last week, but there was also lots of blue sky. Our primary election has changed the political climate in Alaska and  garnered national attention. What do we do now? 

Alaskan voters are faced with two candidates for the US Senate most know nothing about. (If Lisa Murkowski does find a way to get back in this race, it really doesn't change the gist of what I'm writing here.) I suspect that's true about most elections - but usually voters  have  candidates who'd been in the public eye for a while and the voters think they know who they are voting for.

But with 'unknowns' we end up grabbing labels - 'attorney,' 'mayor,' 'ivy league,' 'Alaskan,' 'hunter,' 'fisherman' - and we take them out of context and to create caricatures that have more to do with our projections than with the candidates.

We have less than two months to start collecting facts and filling in the holes so that our images of each candidate are reasonably close to who they really are. 


Joe Miller

From his website we're told he was born to a working class family and raised in Kansas. He went to West Point, was in the First Gulf war, got a law degree from Yale,  and came to Alaska. He's practiced law, been a magistrate. His wife's a teacher and serves on the Judicial Council which helps select judges.

He's been branded an extremist for calling for an end to 1) Social Security, 2) Obama's new health care program,  and 3) the Department of Education, for starters. But he's also qualified the social security claim in a letter to seniors in which he wrote, "I will not vote to cut your Social Security or Medicare benefits!" He just wouldn't allow new people in.  Is he saying one thing to one audience and something else to another?  Or is he being taken out of context?  We have to do our homework to find out. 

I've never met the man and I'm only just starting to look through his positions.  Do the Republicans who oppose him (people from Andrew Halcro to Paul Jenkins) know him well and have good reason for their fears?  Are they concerned that the Republican Party power structure, as they know it, is threatened?  It could be one, the other, both, and something else altogether.

But let's take the time to get to know the man.  Let's, of course, listen to those who already know him (Democrat David Guttenberg who defeated him in his race for the state house in 2004 was pretty strong in his opinions.)  But let's not fly off like one blogger did and make up Miller's record without doing our homework.

The unusual agreement  among people from both the Democratic and Republican parties suggests that Mr. Miller's positions really are extreme.


McAdams

Let's also get to know Scott McAdams, the mayor of Sitka who was seen as a Democratic placeholder so that Sen. Murkowski wouldn't be running unopposed.  With her losing the election, he's suddenly become as a serious contender.   I did get to talk to McAdams in Juneau last January and again just after he won the nomination.  I felt that he was genuine, bright, and knows quite a bit about how government works.   McAdams' website says he spent his elementary years in Petersburg, has commercial fished, graduated from Sheldon Jackson College, and has been chair of the Sitka School Board which got him involved in national school associations.

I haven't seen or heard the kind of strong negative talk about McAdams that Miller has generated.


Let's treat this like hiring our personal financial and legal adviser

It's time Alaska voters treat these elections for what they are:  job selections.  If this were a personal decision, it would be like hiring someone to handle our personal legal, financial, and family affairs.  Would you choose such a person based on 30 second ads made by a public relations firm?  Or would you study his resume carefully and consult people who know him and can tell you about his past performance? 

(Let's also hope that the public television/radio show "Running" will have a lot more depth for the general election than it did for the primary.  There was so little time for candidates that even Charles Manson could have come through the effort looking good.) 

This is probably the election that offers Alaskan voters the greatest degree of difference between the two candidates that we've ever had.  Let's not settle for facile slogans and solutions.  Let's carefully examine what both candidates say.  Let's look at the feasibility of their proposals, let's look at the likely direct consequences of their proposals, and the likely long term consequences.


Assignment

Go to the Miller website and the McAdams website.
1.   What are the issues that each highlight as important?
2.   What are the values they say are important?
3.   What do you see in their records that supports their claims?  Are their lives consistent with their values and stands on the issues?
4.   What more do you need, what evidence, to assure you that their claims are true?

This is step one.  You can learn a lot in an hour.  And doing it yourself, taking notes, will make it yours.  You'll understand and be ready for the next steps.

Next we're going to have to find:

• real - not quick and dirty - analyses of what they claim.  (This Mudflats piece digs past the superficial rhetoric, for example, though the title let's us know this is a partisan piece and an author's name would be helpful.)
   
• people who have seen these people working, people who can tell us whether they are what they say. 

The future of your state depends on you doing your homework, getting other voters to do theirs, and then everyone sharing what they've found out.

September First Friday Art Anchorage

Living downtown has its advantages.  In Juneau we could walk to enough First Friday events to keep us filled with new ideas.  But we don't live in downtown Anchorage and there are more venues besides.

But we walked Friday to Modern Cave Dwellers at the mall at 36th and Old Seward where we met friends and Biana Tapia who had an interesting collection of charcoal and sepia drawings.  I don't pretend to be an art expert so these are just my own impressions.

A lot of art has a common look - a style, theme, a subject - that is often more decorative than interesting.  These pieces seemed to be Tapia's visions of the world without reference to other work or to being sold.  








We drove with our friends to Dos Manos - at the Valhalla Mall on Northern Lights - because it was on the way downtown.  I'd never been to this crowded shop before.

Since I've been posting close ups of flowers, I couldn't resist this )

close up picture called French Kiss done on a map of France.  (The photo is just a part of it.






You could buy the VW Van for $130.

The submarine fish picture (an excerpt) in the lower right by Lance Lekander - whose Raven was the logo for the Anchorage International Film Festival last December - can be had for $250. 

Next we parked on the parkstrip and walked downtown.  The newspaper mentioned a place on K Street with photos of insects and flowers, which regulars here know I wanted to see.





We passed the Voyager Hotel and stopped to see the Hope Studio exhibit. 

These pieces raise again the question of what makes art?  All of these pieces could easily find a place in someone's house, and for a very low price.  Particularly if I were looking for something for a kid's room, I'd check this out, but many of them would fit in the adult spaces as well.  

These two large paper mache pieces were very tempting.


The bug and flower exhibit was already closed when we got there, so we wandered down 4th to the Katie Sevigny Studio.

There were lots of large, colorful paintings and other interesting things.

The artist was serving wine in little paper cups. 




This is a closeup of a painting called Octopus which you can see in the background behind the guy's head in the first picture of this gallery. $1800.

Then, around the corner onto G Street, and upstairs.  This isn't a place you would find without looking.  The Upstairs Studio has about a half a  dozen little studios for resident artists.

And there were some guests exhibited as well. 

I think my favorite pieces of the evening were four encaustics on birch by Darla Myers.  What's encaustics?  I'd made a poster for an encaustics workshop in my computer art class and the post about it has some good links.

Anyway, here are two of Darla's great, small pieces.

The prices were below reasonable. (Around $110)  But we're in declutter mode, so we can only buy consumables.









So I bought some cards of hers.

















And then we dropped into Suzi's Woolies next door where there was Irish music. 

It was a fun evening.  There's lots going on in Anchorage.

Boraas Applies "Symbolic Violence" to Beck Rally

In "Occam's Razor" on this week's This American Life  two young high school students in the 1970's were forced to get married by her Italian-American parents because she was pregnant.  There was one little twist though.  The woman wasn't sure who the father of the baby was.  Was it her white boyfriend or the black basketball player she'd also had sex with?  

The baby was born, much to the mother's relief, looking very white.  But come summer, the kid got pretty dark when out in the sun.    Despite incidents such as a woman coming up to them in a store wanting to know about interracial adoption, the family used complicated genetic theory to maintain the story of their family.  Obviously there were some old recessive Sicilian genes, perhaps a Moor in the family tree somewhere. Despite growing evidence to the contrary, the child's paternity was not to be questioned.  They were family.  Any questioning of the paternity of the son threatened everything they had.

What people "know" isn't always consistent with the data - the theme of this week's show - yet despite the contrary evidence, they stick to their narrative of events.  We do this all the time.   And one of the key goals of this blog - it's called "What Do I Know?" for a reason - is to reexamine what we take for granted, what we 'know,' from different perspectives.

But probing people's stories of how the world works is difficult.  Even when there is obvious evidence as in the son's increasingly 'black' features, this is hard.  When the evidence is less tangible, it can be almost impossible. 

Terms like 'symbolic violence' are attempts to articulate this tricky territory.  They're difficult because they're so abstract and require a certain amount of investment of time and thought to truly grasp.  When they are used, they sound stuffy and they ask people to see a truth - like this kid's blackness - that the people don't want to see.

I can't find any easy definitions of 'symbolic violence.'  A website called Knol, which seems to be Google's version of Wikipedia,  had this:  [I dare you to read the whole definition and do so in a way that you get it at the end.]

The notion of "symbolic violence" comes from the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This notion represents an extension of the term "violence" to include various modes of social/cultural domination. Symbolic violence is the unnoticed (partly unconscious) domination that every-day social habits maintain over the conscious subject. Symbolic violence should not be confused with media violence. It is not the acts of murder and mayhem portrayed on television. Actually, symbolic violence is not normally even recognized as violence. For example, gender domination, and gender itself (say, in the construction of sexuality) represents one prominent arena of symbolic violence.

[See I told you this pushes us beyond how much work we are normally willing to put into new ideas.]

So, here's  what I think the examples at the end mean: we have grown up absorbing cultural and/or religious narratives (stories, concepts, beliefs)  that justify male dominance over women and the superiority of heterosexuality over any alternative.


Wikipedia's definition has a sentence that I think is critical:

Symbolic violence is in some senses much more powerful than physical violence in that it is embedded in the very modes of action and structures of cognition of individuals, and imposes the specter of legitimacy of the social order.

All this is preface to Alan Boraas' interesting Comment piece in today's Anchorage Daily News.  Boraas consistently takes emotional current events and examines them rationally attempting to peel back a couple of layers to get people to see what is really happening below the apparent facade.  In today's piece he looks at Glen Beck's DC rally through the lens of symbolic violence.  Boraas dismisses Beck's claim that the date of the rally was mere coincidence.

Glenn Beck's assertion that it was mere coincidence the "Restore America" rally fell on the 47th anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is pure fabrication. In fact, the Restore America event is a textbook case of symbolic violence. 

Symbolic violence is a technique of dominance. Sometimes it is unintentional, but increasingly it is part of a concerted effort to manipulate public opinion. Karl Rove-style political operatives are expert at this type of manipulation. Symbolic violence is not simply attacking another group's symbols like defacing a church or mosque. Symbolic violence is much more subtle and occurs when one faction adopts the symbols of another faction, recontextualizes them, makes them their own and therefore robs them of their original meaning marginalizing the original owners for their own gain.  [Read the rest here.]

He then goes on to give detailed examples of how Beck and Palin, in their speeches try to appropriate the symbols of Dr. King and the "I Have a Dream" speech to make it their own and literally steal its symbolism as a powerful symbol of the left and make it a symbol of the right.  

The conservatives have been incredibly successful at manipulating symbols, systematically making every major word used to describe liberals and liberal ideas into pejoratives, starting with the word 'liberal' itself, which many 'liberal' politicians are reluctant to use to describe themselves today.  People like Rush Limbaugh have worked tirelessly to make words like feminist and environmentalist into epithets, so that there are no positive words, no positive symbols, for liberals to call themselves.  This is I believe an example of 'symbolic violence.'  

After giving detailed comparisons of King's words and Beck's and Palin's manipulation of King's words, Boraas concludes:

The Beck/Palin Restore America rally was a classic act of symbolic violence capturing the spirit and rhetoric of King at the very place he spoke and recontextualizing the civil rights movement in a tea party framework trying to give the latter the same legitimacy as the former.

Now the Tea Party folks will probably reject Boraas' interpretation totally and probably call the term 'symbolic violence' elitist nonsense.  (The term 'elitist' also has been subject to symbolic violence by both the left and the right.)

However, if Boraas had written about how U.S.  history books characterize the civil war as about slavery rather than about states' rights, surely many Tea Party folk would understand the concept and agree that symbolic violence has occurred.  

I can't help but come up with additional questions.  Does symbolic appropriation always need to be violent?  I'm sure philosophers have debated this.  Was the creation of Martin Luther King's birthday an instance of symbolic violence?  Clearly it was a conscious attempt to put King - and the issues of equality - into a national status that had been reserved for only Lincoln and Washington previously. (And now their birthdays have been combined into Presidents' Day.)  Is there a term for non-violent symbol creation?  Or is any attempt to change the power structure necessarily 'violent'?

What about how many African-Americans have reclaimed the word "nigger"? By using it themselves about themselves, they're deflating the previous symbolic meaning of the term.  They're appropriating a word that dehumanized them and are reconstructing its symbolic meaning.  Is this a form of 'symbolic violence' or something else?
  

Such extra questions as these are the reason why posts that I think are going to be quick and easy, turn into  longer and more complicated ones.  I'm NOT going to pause and research the literature of symbolic violence, though I suspect these questions have been addressed.  Perhaps some philosopher might get here by accident and help out. 

Halcro Tells Moore He's Voting for McAdams

I finally made it, Thursday, to see a taping of Shannyn Moore's Moore Up North show at Bernie's Bungalow.  It was a delightful afternoon and people were sitting outside at Bernie's.

Shannyn Moore is one of the Alaska bloggers who got a nod for their work in the new Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin.

"The Anchorage Daily News no longer has a beat reporter assigned to Palin. Owing to newsroom cuts, the paper has no staff to spare, and editors reportedly see Palin as “a nonentity” in Alaska now—a phenomenon primarily of concern to the rest of the country (collectively referred to as “outside”). The blogs that keep closest tabs on Palin include Palingates, Mudflats, the Immoral Minority, and Shannyn Moore: Just a Girl from Homer. Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish and Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post serve as the main conduits of information from the blogs to the mainstream media. . .


All attend to Palin’s every move with a focus that could be called obsessive, and all are given, in varying degrees of intensity, to juvenile outbursts that can rival C4P at its worst. . . Still, without these blogs, the world would have much less information about Palin’s life right now.

Of the group, only Shannyn Moore, an Anchorage radio and TV personality, has any experience as a journalist."

Anyway, I found the 'studio' upstairs and walked in as Moore was interviewing Andrew Halcro, former Republican state legislator and gubernatorial candidate. 

They were talking about the recent US Senate election.  Halcro discussed issues he had with the Republican primary winner Joe Miller.  They talked about the possibility of Murkowski running, but given that people have to spell the name right, he thought a write-in campaign would be impossible to win.  Moore asked him who he's going to vote for if it's between Miller and McAdams.  He paused briefly and then said, "Scott McAdams."  Then he added something like, "With all due respect to McAdams, I'll vote for the lesser of two evils."  [UPDATE Sept 6:  You can watch the video now here.]

When Halcro's segment was over, three pilots from the union representing UPS pilots whose positions are being cut, spoke with Moore about the economic impact of these cuts on Anchorage. 

This really is one of those special little home town events - a local television news show filmed in a restaurant/bar and played on KYES, quite possibly the only independent family owned television channel left in the US. 

You can keep tabs on when to see the filming at Moore's blog:  Just a Girl from Homer.

Former Anchorage Boy Blogs in NY About Vanity Fair's Palin Story

Marty Beckerman grew up in Anchorage and now lives and works in New York.  Among other things he blogs.  His short piece on The Awl  begins with comments on the Michael Joseph Gross piece in the new VF, then goes on to talk about what it's like to be from Alaska.  [Disclosure:  I knew Marty when he was a kid here in Anchorage, but haven't seen him for a long while. He had a bizarre sense of humor back then and even wrote a book in college and seems to have found someone to pay him to keep writing. The bio says he's written two more books and he's the online features editor at Esquire.]

The new Vanity Fair Sarah Palin profile is enthralling: rage-fueled breakdowns, domestic violence (is there a battered spouse center for First Dudes?) and Madoff-worthy financial manipulation. Equally fascinating is the climate of fear and confusion that Michael Joseph Gross discovered in Wasilla, where townspeople are terrified of discussing their former mayor/governor, and deeply uncomfortable with the world-famous media creation that she has become. "To appreciate how alien Palin has become in Wasilla, how inscrutable to her own people, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that Sarah Palin is more famous than any other Alaskan, ever," Gross writes. "It still does not quite seem real to most Alaskans that there are all these thousands of people in the Lower 48 turning out for … Sarah."

Echoing the fear theme, someone mentioned that Joe McGuiness said that he was surprised at the level of Palinphobia in Wasilla.  Fear seems to be a characteristic of the Republican party in Alaska.  Someone else mentioned good friends who wouldn't contribute to non-partisan candidates because the party would punish them for straying from the fold. 

Below is a paragraph from the actual Vanity Fair article about Palin's tipping habits. 

Palin does not always treat those ordinary people well, however—it depends on who is watching. Of the many famous people who have stayed at the Hyatt in Wichita (Cher, Reba McEntire, Neil Young), Sarah Palin ranks as the all-time worst tipper: $5 for seven bags. But the bellhops had it good in Kansas, compared with the bellman at another midwestern hotel who waited up until past midnight for Palin and her entourage to check in—and then got no tip at all for 10 bags. He was stiffed again at checkout time. The same went for the maids who cleaned Palin’s rooms in both places—no tip whatsoever. The only time I heard of Palin giving a generous tip was in St. Joseph, Michigan, after the owner of Kilwin’s chocolate shop, on State Street, sent a CARE package to Palin’s suite, and Palin walked to the store to say thank you. She also wanted to buy more boxes of candy to take home. When the owner would not accept her money, Palin, encircled by the crowd that had jammed the store to get a glimpse of her, pressed a hundred-dollar bill into the woman’s hand, saying, “This is for the staff.” That Ben Franklin was the talk of State Street the whole rest of the day. 

The whole VF article is here.

How Exit Glacier Connected Me to El Limpiador de Tejados

I got a comment about a week ago on a post last year about Exit Glacier.  Tomás Serrano left a comment, "I was there today. It´s a wonderful place, but ask your knees... It worths!!!!"  (I don't look at old posts for comments, they come to me by email.)  I linked on his profile and checked out his blogs.  He's from Spain and wrote a children's book called Salfón:  El limpiador de tejados.  His blog also mentioned that he was leaving copies of the book for Alaskans to find.  So I emailed him about clues where we might find the book.  (If you're in Valdez, he left one in the library there.)  He seemed like an interesting guy. 








 



It turned out he would be in Anchorage on Saturday and Sunday so I invited him over for breakfast.  Sunday he came over with his wife and two children and we had a great time together - including a trip to the botanical garden and Glen Alps.  










We had a great time Sunday, thanks to the blog and Exit Glacier.  They should all be back in Spain now.  They stopped in Chicago for six or seven hours and I just got an email from our friends there who picked them up and showed them around on their stopover.  


There are so many interesting people in the world and it's fun to have this sort of opportunity to show Anchorage off to people who so enjoyed seeing it. 


Oh yes, he left an autographed copy of Salfón with us.  And if you want to know what

El limpiador de tejados

means, you can copy it here, then paste it into the window at translate.reference.com (make sure it is set to Spanish to English) and you can find out. 

I should add a note about another blogger friend, Ropi, who studied Spanish as well as English.  He's been accepted to study applied economics at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.  He did mention that he is going to drop Spanish and study Russian.  But wait Ropi, and first read Tomás' book. 

Minimum Daily Requirement of Truth and Acceptable Daily Levels of Lies

I first remember being aware of blatant false advertisement as a kid - maybe I was ten, but I'm really not sure - when I ordered the 'fresh strawberries' for dessert in a restaurant.

They brought me very recently thawed frozen strawberries.  I was indignant. "These aren't fresh!" I said to the waitress.  Without blinking an eye, she replied, "Yes, they're fresh frozen."  I couldn't believe it then, and I still can't believe that people can so blatantly twist the truth.

This all comes up as today I looked at this cereal package and  thought, "What does this have to do with Grapes or Nuts?"




So I checked out the ingredients:

Do you see anything related to grapes or nuts?





That reminded me of a photo I'd taken earlier this summer thinking there'd be a time it would fit into a blog post.

"good food for the fun of it"

We see this sort of thing so often that we forget to react, "Why is this 'good' food?"   "Good" for what?  Frito-Lay company?  (Owned by Pepsi, another healthy food company) Good for diabetes?   Hey, I like crispy food and potato chips are among the crispiest.  

But most of us know that more than a couple really aren't that healthy.  

Actually, when I went to the FritoLay website, I realized that things aren't quite as bad as they used to be when chips were made with trans fats.   The ingredients (from their website) are to the left.   This doesn't look all that bad.

This is for a two ounce container of chips, a serving size is one ounce.  15 chips = one ounce = 150 calories, 90 from fat.

Ingredients:  Potatoes,  Sunflower or Corn oil, and salt.  

It is clear that they are VERY conscious of consumer interest in health. They have a number of webpages dedicated to answering questions about nutrition and health.  There's no more trans fats.

But let's remember that these are ultimately written by marketing folks, not doctors.  And they are not all that easy to deconstruct.  Let's just look at a couple of their FAQ's on their "Straight Talk on Snacking" page.

"Q:  Aren’t all fried foods unhealthy?

A:  Actually, no. Frying itself isn’t unhealthy—it’s the type of oil in which the frying is done that  matters. Certain oils, such as tropical and partially hydrogenated oils have saturated fats or trans fats, which are considered “bad fats.” But Frito-Lay chips are fried in healthier oils like corn and sunflower oils, which contain 80% or more of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat—the “good fats.”"

• "Frying itself isn't unhealthy" - when I looked up "Is frying unhealthy?"  just about all the links on the first three pages said yes.  Here's one from a doctor's website explaining why.  I'm not saying it is, but I'm pointing out that a lot of people would disagree with Fritolay's statement. 

• OK, they talk about the trans fats - partially hydrogenated oils and saturated fats - as the bad fats.  (Large food companies only changed from trans fats when they feared they would be banned, now they don't even mention they used those fats and didn't so voluntarily drop them.) 

In their next FAQ - "But aren't your chips high in fat?" their answer contains this explanation:

. . . The good news about all our chips is that we make them with “good fats”—polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which have heart health benefits because they can actually lower bad cholesterol, so long as the total calories consumed do not increase.

"Good fats' is relative.  Webmd says,

when eaten in moderation and used to replace saturated or trans fats, can help lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of heart disease. (emphasis added)

OK, this suggests eating 'good fats' doesn't by itself lower your risk. The risk is lowered because you substitute them for the 'bad fats' and thus you have less harm than if you had the 'bad fats' instead.  The bad fats they used to use until the government leaned on them to stop.  But that's not all.  Webmd continues:

Polyunsaturated fats, found mostly in vegetable oils, help lower both blood cholesterol levels and triglyceride levels -- especially when you substitute them for saturated fats. One type of polyunsaturated fat is omega-3 fatty acids, whose potential heart-health benefits have gotten a lot of attention.

But it turns out the 'good fats' that really do the work of lowering risk of heart disease are the fats with Omega 3 that are found in some fish and SOME oils.

Omega-3s are found in fatty fish (salmon, trout, catfish, mackerel), as well as flaxseed and walnuts. And it's fish that contains the most effective, "long-chain" type of omega-3s. The American Heart Association recommends eating 2 servings of fatty fish each week.

"Plant sources are a good substitute for saturated or trans fats, but they are not as effective as fatty fish in decreasing cardiovascular disease," notes Lichtenstein. Do keep in mind that your twice-weekly fish should not be deep-fat fried!

We can also get some lowering of heart disease risk from monounsaturated fats, but when they list the best sources, Fritolays'  corn and sunflower oils are not among those listed.  

The other "good guy" unsaturated fats are monounsaturated fats, thought to reduce the risk of heart disease. Mediterranean countries consume lots of these -- primarily in the form of olive oil -- and this dietary component is credited with the low levels of heart disease in those countries.

Monounsaturated fats are typically liquid at room temperature but solidify if refrigerated. These heart-healthy fats are typically a good source of the antioxidant vitamin E, a nutrient often lacking in American diets. They can be found in olives; avocados; hazelnuts; almonds; Brazil nuts; cashews; sesame seeds; pumpkin seeds; and olive, canola, and peanut oils.

So, while corn and sunflower oils are among the group of oils that can lower heart disease risk, they aren't among the oils that really do the most.  So their answer that their potato chips help lower the risk of heart disease, is, at best, misleading.  At worst, dishonest.  

Let's look carefully at one more of their FAQs about health.  

Q:  Won’t eating chips make me fat?A:  Weight and weight gain always goes back to calories in, calories out. Frito Lay chips (and any food, in fact) can be a part of a healthy lifestyle but moderation is important. Frito-Lay offers a number of options to help with portion control, including our multipacks and variety packs, which are an easy way to ensure the right portion, and fresh-tasting chips every time. And our 100 Calorie Mini Bites offer 100 calorie portions of some of our most popular brands including DORITOS® and CHEETOS®. 

So, what they are saying is that if you just eat a few potato chips as a snack, you won't get fat.  They are suggesting here that if you buy their one ounce bag, you will have a reasonable amount and then stop.  

Before I go on, let me remind you that this is the company that had one of the most successful advertising slogans of all times:  "Betcha can't eat just one..."   Now they are saying, "Sure they are healthy.  If you only eat 15 chips a day."

I'd also note that if you  go to thefind.com you can compare prices of buying Fritolay products in different packaging options.   You can buy 104 one ounce packages for $42 and you can buy one 12 ounce package for $3.99.  That comes out to:

one  ounce package = $.40 per ounce

12 ounce package   =  $.25 per ounce

Healthy packages are a lot more expensive.  And these appear to be wholesale prices.  I'm sure that the retail markup on a single one ounce bag is a lot more than the markup on a single 12 ounce bag.

I guess the most telling part here is the where they say, "Fritolays (and any food, in fact) can be part of a healthy life style, but moderation is important."  ANY food, no matter how unhealthy, as long as you just take a bite or two, can be part of a healthy diet.  I don't disagree with that. 

This has turned out to be a much longer post than I ever anticipated when I took the picture of the Fritolay truck. 

Back to Truth and Lies

But let's close by reminding you that the point was not so much how healthy potato chips are, but how our sensitivity to TRUTH has been eroded by the marketing of products that is a fundamental part of a capitalist society.  (I realize that some people will start calling me a communist because I've used "capitalist" in a way that is not completely positive.  But the key is whether my comment is accurate or not.  And marketing is a fundamental part of capitalism.)  Marketing has become a high science, and truth and ethics are not a major part of  marketing curricula.  

That same science today is applied to political candidates and political movements.  All parties use it, some more skillfully and less ethically than others.  So we need to awaken our thinking skills.  One in particularly, that Brain Power author Karl Albrecht called "crap detection" is critically important in this effort.  It involves seeing through the bullshit to get closer to, if not that elusive entity 'truth,' then at least to reasonable accuracy. 

The Private Sector, Without Government Oversight, Isn't Going to Tell Us

Now I also need to point out, that if it weren't for government regulation, we would have absolutely no idea what ingredients are in the foods we eat.  We'd have no way of getting even partial honesty from these companies.  Without government agencies monitoring health, we'd have no reliable data on the impacts of food and the food industry on health. (And even government data is often shaky given the influence of business on government.) The private sector wouldn't take up the cause because their reason for being is to make a profit and thus to make whatever food  people will buy as cheap as possible.  And, in our ignorance of what is in the food we buy, we would have no way of evaluating whether the food was healthy or not.  Our basic choices would be based solely on how it tastes, how it is marketed, how much it costs.  

Even with all the information we do have available, many, many people either do not read the labels or choose to make decisions about what they eat emotionally rather than rationally.  Obviously, emotion - in the form of "I really want some chocolate" - is always going to be an important and legitimate factor in choosing food.  But that needs to be balanced by understanding how much salt, how much fat, etc. is in a product. 

From Food to Politics

And  so when we move to other areas of our lives, besides food, we are so used to 'truthiness' that we easily fall into believing those things that support what we want to believe.  We discount the problems with foods we really love.  We discount the problems with politicians who says things we approve.

What if political ads had to come with percent of daily  requirements of Truth and acceptable daily levels of Lies? 

EXTRA:  Some other snack options

Remember, 15 potato chips have 150 calories, or about 10 calories per chip.

From the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute:

Fruits contain 15 grams of carbohydrate and 60 calories. One serving equals:

1 small	Apple, banana, orange, nectarine
1 med.	Fresh peach
1	Kiwi
½	Grapefruit
½	Mango
1 C	Fresh berries (strawberries, raspberries, or blueberries)
1 C	Fresh melon cubes
1⁄8th	Honeydew melon

Vegetables contain 25 calories and 5 grams of carbohydrate. One serving equals:

½ C	Cooked vegetables (carrots, broccoli, zucchini, cabbage, etc.)
1 C	Raw vegetables or salad greens
½ C	Vegetable juice
If you’re hungry, eat more fresh or steamed vegetables.

So when it comes to calories:

One apple + one banana + 1/2 cup of fresh berries   =   15 potato chips

or

Six cups of salad with raw vegetables (you could put on some lemon oil) = 15 potato chips


Betcha can't eat just 15 though.