Athenaeum Electronica

Why Reporters Have a Bad Name

2012-02-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there is arguably a stereotype about reporters being dirty, underhanded people who are only interested in the story and are willing to the skew the reality of the situation to make sure that it’s an interesting story. Naively, I didn’t believe this stereotype. And that mistake is the reason for the rant in today’s post.

As many of the friends and readers know, I am almost finished with my Bachelors of Psychology program over at Grand Canyon University. Also, those of you know who know me know that it has not been an easy journey.

I had some serious issues with my financial aid crop up late last year and among the resources that I uncovered was a reporter who works at the Arizona Republic who was writing a story about the “woes of online schooling”. Naturally, I reached out to her. I know that my issues were not an isolated incident and my hope was that by holding GCU accountable for the mistakes that they are making, they might institute better policies and prevent this from happening to other students.

I spent about 3 months talking with this reporter, telling her my story, sending her emails and ensuring that she had access to my records at GCU. The article broke in yesterday’s paper in the business section (the electronic version is here: http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2012/02/09/20120209arizona-board-hears-complaints-vs-for-profit-schools.html#comments)

The article does mention me and my plight by name. However, that’s about where the accuracy stops. The school, as I suspected they would, lied to cover up their mistakes. The Vice President told the reporter that he “never knew anything about my issue”. Well of course not, the Student Resolution Team specifically blocked that from happening. I asked to meet with a Dean or a President of the school and I was told, and I quote “as far as meeting with a Dean or a President, they will not be able to assist you with financial issues.” It is therefore no surprise that the school told the reporter that they didn’t know anything about my plight.

However, that’s about where the school’s credibility ends. In the article Chris Linderson, the VP for Finance and Compliance is quoted as saying that I have had four Finance Counselors since I started at GCU. That’s a lie. I’ve had at least six. They are; James Mitchell, January Harrison, Jasmine Taylor, Sarah Crouse, Chrissy MacDonald and David Jacobson.

Going back to my issue with Financial Aid, on July 14th, 2011 I received an email from FAFSA saying that my aid had been processed and that I would be getting the full amount. The following day I received another email from FAFSA saying that my aid had been processed and was available.

Then, on July 18^th, 2011 I got an email from GCU saying that I have been selected for “verification” and that I needed to redo my FAFSA and turn it in, and that’s when the trouble began. On August 9^th, 2011 I got another email from FAFSA saying that my student loan had been changed; it had been cut in half.

I immediately contacted GCU about this and was met with nonchalance. They literally told me “nothing’s wrong”. Apparently getting your financial aid cut in half inexplicably and being told that you had to pay for half of your schooling out of pocket is “not wrong”.

Continued efforts to contact the school were met with increasing hostility. The school blamed the government for the error saying, and I quote; “The decision to give you less money for the academic year is not GCU’s decision, it is the Federal government. You need to call the FAFSA representatives if you have concerns about how much money you will receive. I will have the Office of Financial Aid review your account regardless, just to make sure everything is correct. Keep in mind, if you are reaching your aggregate limit, there will be no more funds for your education.” Are you kidding me? What kind of bullshit answer is that? Reaching my aggregate limit? I’m not even halfway there yet, I have plenty of aid remaining. And the Federal Government awarded me full financial aid, then GCU “corrected something”, then I have half the aid and I’m just supposed to believe that the government changed their minds?

Next, at the behest of GCU themselves, I called FAFSA directly on August 10^th. I spoke with someone named Crystal. She told me, and I quote “the Federal Aid Administrator at GCU is the person who is completely and solely responsible for this. FAFSA has no reason to deny additional aid based on your income and the change in your award was the direct result of the correction made by GCU.” Hmmm…so GCU says that they aren’t responsible, but FAFSA says they are. Call me crazy, but I’m inclined to believe FAFSA on this one.

I contacted GCU again via email that same day. The response I got was, and I quote “everything is in order on your account.” Really? My financial aid is cut in half, FAFSA says that you changed it, and my academic counselor is telling me that I have to pay half of my costs, and everything is in order? There haven’t been any changes to the laws or regulations about how financial aid is awarded. There haven’t been any changes to the number of classes I’ve been taking, my number of dependents and my income has dropped and yet my award is reduced.

It wasn’t until several weeks later after I involved the Department of Education that Finance counselor miraculously discovered the error; the Verification Packet that GCU submitted to FAFSA had me marked down as a half-time student. FAFSA recalculated my aid based on that information. Once they corrected it, my aid was restored to normal.

In the article the VP at GCU is quoted as saying: “In this case, Clayborn's financial-aid calculation changed last summer, in part, because the number of class credits he was taking increased and there were changes in his household income. It took a few months -- until early December -- for all of the federal loan and grant payments to show up on his account, she added. That may have led Clayborn to conclude that he would have to pay expenses out of pocket, Linderson said.” What a crock of shit. This school and this spokesperson obviously do not know the innate detail of the records of which I keep. My first semester at GCU was 12 credits (UNV103, CWV101 & EDU 310). My second semester was also 12 credits (EDU230, EDU 215 & EDU 225). My third semester was 16 credits (ENG260, PHI103, MAT134 & ENG350). My fourth semester was also 16 credits (ENG450, ENG358, EDU313N & ENG460). This financial aid incident happened during my 5^th semester, during which I took 12 credits. So, if I went from two semesters of 16 credits and full financial aid, I ask you, dear readers, how the hell dropping to 12 credits constitutes and “increase in the number of credits”?

What does all of this have to do with why reporters have a bad name? Because I gave all of this information to the reporter at the AZ Republic and she didn’t do anything with it. Instead she wrote an article that painted me to be unassuming imbecile who can’t calculate student loans. By the time this happened let’s not forget that I was starting my third academic year with this school so It’s not like I was new to the process. This reporter was armed with enough information to call the school out on their lies and hold them accountable and get answers, and she blew it. The whole reason that I cooperated in the first place was so that she could make people more aware and keep this kind of thing from happening to others. I was naïve to think that a reporter had the civic duty to spread the truth and inform the people who read the paper about what happens. This will certainly be the last time that I cooperate with a reporter on a story like this one. I’m just offended that after all of the conversations that we had and the mountain of evidence that I sent her that would even imply that I just didn’t know what was going on.

Deafening silence

2012-02-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I’m long overdue for a new post. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. Busy with work and school and recovering from the flu. I’ve got a few deeper, more political topics I want to write about, but they will have to wait until the weekend.

For now, I’ll tackle a more light-hearted philosophical quote. One of my favorite quotes is; “If you don’t understand my silence, you will never understand my words”. Admittedly, I have absolutely no idea where this quote originated and all of my attempts to uncover the etymology of this expression have turned up nothing.

What is interesting is the huge amount of people who simply do not understand this expression. Some of the websites I came across had comments like; “flawed logic is flawed”, “this is hands down one of the dumbest sayings I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading”, and “this is retarded”. Obviously, these people aren’t capable of grasping the meaning of this expression and, ironically, it is people like this that the quote is most applicable to.

Some of the websites had answers that were partially true. Many of the websites understood one facet of this expression; it is often associated with anger. However, anger in and of itself is not the only explanation or use where this quote applies.

Yahoo! Answers featured a response that reads thus:
“Here's an example. When I am upset at someone for something that I believe they have done that has wronged me, I may give that person the silent treatment. If that person doesn't pick up on these non-verbal cues, and he/she has no idea why I would be upset about what he/she did because his/her ethical/moral perspectives are different than mine because we have two different sets formed from two different sets of life experiences-- well then, that person will not understand why I am upset even if I tell him/her why I am upset using words.”

This poster definitely hit on part of the situation. However, the essence of this quote is more than just about being angry. It’s about having a communicative disconnect so deep that it is without measure and words, no matter how intelligent or eloquent, will never be able to bridge that gap.

Another site, Bookmunch, had a review about some completely unrelated book, but the top of the article was a paraphrase of this quote which read “If you can’t understand it without an explanation, then you can’t understand it with an explanation.” This too, is only part of it. There are many topics that I can think of that I do not understand without an explanation, but with an explanation everything becomes clear. After all, that is the entire model of our education system. However, if you substitute “it” with “my behavior” , “my thoughts”, or “my feelings”, then it takes on a different meaning altogether and one that is far closer to the point.

I also came across another website, a blog called e-stranged, about families who are estranged from one another. This post makes many interesting statements that are also in line with this as well. For example, in the image on the wall is written “silence is speech”. This, I think, more than any of the other explanations is closer to the truth of the matter. Silence is also speech. If you don’t understand my non-verbal speech, you won’t understand my verbal speech.

There are a few other paraphrases of this quote as well. One of them reads “if you don’t understand my silence, then you don’t deserve my words”. This one I’m not so sure that I necessarily agree with, although I do understand the point that they are making. I think that there may be quite a few exceptions to the above quote. Also, my words are mine to give to whom I will. I may decide that someone is worthy of them, even if they don’t understand my silence. Failure to comprehend the meaning of my non-verbal speech is not an automatically disqualifying condition of my verbal speech.

The e-stranged blog also features a quote by Leonard Peltier; “Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act.” This too is very appropriate.

I often use silence in many facets of my life. Yes, the most obvious is when I am angry with someone. If the anger is fresh I often get very quiet until I’ve had a chance to reflect upon my thoughts and feelings because I don’t want to say something that I don’t mean and that I’ll regret and have the message I’m conveying be lost in the tone with which I am saying it (see Art of Arguing). If the anger is older it could just be that I have nothing to say because I’m too hurt or in disbelief about what happened.

Sometimes, as I just alluded, I am silent when I’m in a state of shock. “Congratulations, your son’s mother is pregnant and the father is a registered sex offender!” What do you say to something like that? Do you speak words that are hollow fillers of thoughts that you haven’t even fully formed yet? Or do you remain silent and reflect on this information.

Sometimes I am silent because I have nothing to say. As one poster put it, the silence can sometimes mean that you are comfortable enough with a person that you don’t feel as though you have to say something every minute of the day. Sometimes silence is a comfortable silence.

And yet, other times silence is a tool. Sometimes the silence says “I know. I know your secrets. I know that every word coming out of your mouth right now is a lie, but I’m not going to call you out on it simply to have you lie more and tell me that I’m wrong when I know the truth. It’s easier to let you believe that you’re getting away with these lies for now than it is to start a fight every time this comes up.”

And still other times it is a shield; like when you meet new people for the first time. Do you just run into a party full of strange people that you don’t know “guns blazing” spouting off to every person that you see? Or do you sit quietly and observe the room and try to ascertain who the fool is, and who is the intellect? When you are the new person on the job it’s sometimes disrespectful to be offering up all kinds of solutions when you don’t even know the situation. It’s entirely plausible that someone already thought of that. It’s possible that someone equally intelligent as you are has shown them this already and there’s a reason that they aren’t using it. To avoid coming across as arrogant, you can sit quietly until you make that determination.

Silence can also be a conveyance of emotions; I’m sad, I’m hurt, I’m lonely, I don’t feel well. When people are sick or in pain they don’t want to talk much (especially if their throat is what hurts). If they are depressed they might not feel like talking about it.

Far too often the deeper statement of what we mean is lost within the more superficial context of what we say. This is a far too common problem with oral communication that leads to fights and arguments, and one that is intensified when trying to ascertain meaning through electronic communication like text messages. People have a tendency to latch onto specific words and phrases, which really might not mean much in the overall context of the message, and inject their own meaning upon them. Case in point, look at Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Princess Leia says “Why you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerf-herder!” Han Solo’s only response is “Who’s scruffy looking?” Clearly, the meaning of Leia’s message is lost on Han.

Granted, those of you who know me know that I am a self-professed logophile (lover of words) and I obviously feel that verbal and communication plays a huge part in understanding one another. However, that being said I also believe that a lot of us need to spend far less time speaking and jumping to conclusions and more time listening and understanding.

The e-stranged blog has some more apt feedback. Admittedly, their take on the quote is rather the opposite viewpoint of mine, however, that’s not to say that aren’t some things that we can agree on. For example, they state that “silence is not a simple statement. It is a highly complex form of communication.” Quite so.

They believe that no one should have to interpret the silence. And to that point, I agree also. However, until they ready to actually listen to my words, it’s not worth wasting my breath on. This other blog is of the opinion that you should speak simply because you are worth speaking about. And I don’t disagree with that. However, you must consider that communication is a two –way street. Sometimes the person with whom you are conversing is emotionally or intellectually incapable of comprehending what you say. How long will you continue talking before you give up? Sometimes the person to whom you are speaking is so self-centered and opinionated that whatever you say is automatically wrong, simply because you said it. In cases like that my silence may mean “I’m not even going to engage in your antics because I have better, more productive things to do with my time”. That’s certainly no slight to myself, in fact, I could argue the opposite; I’m smart enough to know that this conversation would be futile.

Sometimes, you can communicate more with silence than you can with words. Sometimes, a simple look can speak volumes in seconds where words would take minutes and not accomplish the same task. Silence is often misunderstood, and because of that we often misconstrue all silence to mean that the other person is angry or upset, even if that’s not the case. Instead of assuming that they are mad, try approaching the situation with an open mind and inquiring about their silence, then you will be in a better state of mind to hear what they are trying to say.

Sources:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110117074826AASrpST

http://sayingimages.com/if-you-dont-understand-my-silence/

http://bookmunch.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/%E2%80%9Cif-you-can%E2%80%99t-understand-it-without-an-explanation-you-can%E2%80%99t-understand-it-with-an-explanation%E2%80%9D-iq84-book-3-by-haruki-murakami/

http://estrangedfamilies.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/silence-means-goodbye/

The Art of Arguing

2012-01-27T10:11:00.001-07:00

This post took me a lot longer to write than I was hoping. I had been extra-busy these last two weeks with a lot of "life stuff". But I digress, this article was intended to complete the trifecta of “Art of” articles complimenting the ones I already wrote on communication and listening.

Arguments, unfortunately, are one of those things that you will inevitably experience at some point in your life. Some arguments are small and mild with people politely agreeing to disagree, whereas other arguments are much more intense and violent with people screaming and yelling at each other and things getting thrown across the room.

While, admittedly, some arguments are sudden and seem to occur for no good reason, those of us with practice usually will be able to tell when an argument is just around the corner. Before the argument is going full swing there’s one question that you need to ask yourself: am I going to argue to be right, or am I going to argue to make a change?

This might seem like a strange question to ask; after all, what’s the point of arguing if not to win? But, these are very different approaches with very different results. Let’s talk about the first point, arguing to win for a moment. If you want to argue to win there are certain tactics and techniques that work better in this type of argument. First, be evasive and refuse to answer direct questions. Argue in circles and repeat your earlier statements a lot. This tends to really frustrate your opponents. Second; draw correlations where none exist and cite that as fact. For example; “you like red blue is clearly better so therefore you’re wrong about your understanding of that law”. This is one sure-fire way to throw your opponents off-track. Another good tactic is personal insults. Many times when you deploy these little strategic gems in the middle of your heated argument the other person just gets so pissed off that the stop arguing altogether. There’s a very good chance that you’ll win the argument instantly. Lastly, use vague, non-specific, non-descript evidence to support your argument. For example, if someone asks you why you believe something, say “because” or if they ask you how you arrived at a particular conclusion you can say “well, it’s true”. And, if they ask you to walk them through your thought process you can deflect them by saying things like “what? You can’t use Google?” or “How are you supposed to figure it out for yourself if I teach you?” To top off this argument style, you can always claim that they’re using these tactics against you.

As you have probably guessed, that preceding paragraph was tongue-in-cheek deliberately. If you have ever been in an argument against someone who is using those strategies against you then you know full well how frustrating they can be. And if you haven’t been in that type of argument, give it time, it’ll happen sooner or later. The only upside to the approach listed above is that it’s guaranteed to make you win. It’s pretty much impossible to beat that style of argument. The down side; it’s cheap and dirty, you will probably lose friends over it, and people will want to avoid any conversations that have the potential for argument with you. There’s also the chance that you’ll be labeled as “pigheaded”, “stubborn”, “unrealistic” or any number of other similar names. So, if that’s not the best way to argue, what is?

Even though it’s difficult at times, you have to remember that the person that you’re arguing with has feelings too. The ultimate goal of any argument is to try to get the other person to see your point of view. In order for this to happen you need to keep them thinking objectively (or as objectively as possible). In order to keep them objective there are certain cardinal rules that you should never break in this type of argument.

Rule 1: NEVER question a person’s intelligence in an argument. Granted, you will sometimes be perplexed at how your opponent arrived at a conclusion that was so far off-base from yours. However, the second that you begin to question their intelligence they get angry and defensive. They also immediately discredit everything you say because you’re not smart enough to realize how smart they are. And, let’s not forget that the main point of the argument is that you want them to see your point of view. The only way that they can accomplish this is if they have enough reasoning power in their brain to follow your steps of logic. If you honestly believe them unintelligent then this process is not likely to happen and any argument would be a complete and utter exercise in futility.

Rule 2: NEVER resort to personal attacks or name-calling. Calling people nasty names like “right-winger” or “leftist” or “Republican” or “Democrat” will not serve your purpose. Yes, it’s entirely true that your opponent may be one of those things, but they don’t need you reminding them of that fact. Your goal in the argument is to change their thought process, not to belittle or demean their associations. Any attempts that you make to undermine their position by resorting to name calling will put them on the defensive and they will automatically discredit anything you say because you’re not smart enough to see how wrong you are. See how that works?

Rule 3: NEVER use the words “always” or “never” in an argument. No matter how well intentioned you may mean them to be, they typically come across as attacks, which puts the other person on the defensive. Not, not only are they discrediting everything you say because you’re not smart enough to perceive reality, but they’re not even listening to you because they trying to prove that you’re wrong. For example; “you never help me clean around the house!” …”that’s not true, I did the dishes on Saturday and I did the laundry on Thursday, and I cleaned a bathroom on Tuesday”. Now, instead of arguing about what’s important; that you feel that you need more help around the house, you’re going to spend the next 45-60 minutes arguing over the finer nuances of how often who does what, which is really kind of trivial in the long run.

Rule 4: NEVER approach the situation with the viewpoint that your opinion is superior to theirs, especially just because it’s your opinion. To do so would anger them and they would automatically discredit you because you’re too stupid to see how right they are.

Rule 5: Stay focused on your point and stick to the facts. Okay, you hate Obama, I get it. But why? “because he’s an evil President who wants to destroy the American People” is not a valid argument. That’s an example of the first type of argument. I don’t bear Obama any great love, but, like most things in like I realize that he’s not completely evil. But, unlike some of the other people who argue the point, I can cite the reasons why I don’t particularly care for Obama. I can cite dates, legislative bills, policies, and so on. My arguments are vague or ambiguous, they’re specific and to the point. Some of my friends love Obama and we agree to disagree, but I have great respect for their ability to back up their argument with facts. It’s entirely possible that when presented with exactly the same data people will draw different interpretations from that same data. Part of this is because as people we have vastly different moral and ethical values and different principals and ideologies that we hold dear. We tend to latch onto those things that matter to us and ignore the rest. A perfect example of this is a phenomenon that I call “Holy Text Syndrome”. (I’m sure that there’s an actual scientific name for it, and I guess you could classify it as confirmation bias, but this tends to prove the point rather markedly). To demonstrate HTS in action gather a group of people in a room together. Read them a passage from the Bible without any further explanation, connotation or voice inflection. Then, ask the people individually what the passage was about. I can pretty much guarantee that you will get more than one answer. In fact, depending on the size of the group you may get as many as 10 different answers. It’s part of human nature to inject our own thoughts and feelings and opinions into what we read (which is part of the problem with people misunderstanding text messages and emails so often). The key to these arguments isn’t so much the fact that you’re right and they’re wrong so much as it is that you want to reframe how they think about the topic. Their perception of the issue is what’s driving their opinion, their belief and everything else behind their logic. This is true even for the most pragmatic, factual people too.

Rule 6: If you are trying arguing to make a change for the better you have to walk into the argument embracing the possibility that you may be wrong and you have to be open-minded enough to realize that. I will readily admit that although I have utterly destroyed the arguments of several people on certain topics, there are other topics where I have presented my opinions based on the facts as I interpret them and then someone else has presented me with information or an idea that I have not considered before and I ended up conceding my argument. If you’re not prepared to concede your point if you know that the other person may be right, then you probably shouldn’t even bother as it will simply devolve into a shouting match.

Tip: In general there is kind of a scale for how risky arguments can be. When discussing topics like what color to paint the walls, or what to eat for dinner the risks are generally fairly low. Most people don’t have a whole lot invested in that type of decision. However, as you move up the ladder and talk about topics like religion, politics, childrearing or treatment of animals, things tend to get very heated, very quickly. It’s difficult to separate out your emotions from your opinions, but it’s a necessary point of making a good argument. If you can’t do it then the argument will devolve into a shouting match and it isn’t worth arguing in the first place.

Well, dear readers, I hope that I have sufficiently entertained you with my thoughts on arguments. My strongest piece of advice on arguing, especially when arguing with close friends or family members; if you feel yourself about to go over the brink and lose your cool, it’s better to just walk away. Even though you may say things out of anger and you may not mean them, and you may forget what you have said in a few days, I promise you, the other person will remember. I can recall every nasty, no-good name or statement that has ever been said to me in an argument, especially when they were said by people who cared about me. Good luck and happy arguing! …well, as much fun as you can have arguing anyway.

The Art of Listening

2012-01-17T13:24:00.006-07:00

As a follow-up article to my post about communication, I elected to continue that line of thought and focus today’s article on listening. As with talking, listening is at the crux of every communication issue, and I’ll explain why.

First, let me start out by making two statements; 1) there is a difference between listening and hearing, and 2) selective hearing is no joke. The latter of those statements is the most absurd to most people so I’ll start there.

Many people often joke about people having “selective hearing” when dealing with communication issues, especially when dealing with; family members, parents and children, spouses, etc. This is absolutely true and is something that afflicts everyone. Yes, some people can learn techniques to minimize this effect and listen better; however, everyone has selective hearing.

Now, before you write me off as a complete crackpot, allow me to explain. Buried deep in our brain is a biological process that psychologists call a “schema”. A schema is a process that your brain utilizes automatically to sort out the various input signals and decide what information is useful and what’s not. Without this process our brains would become overloaded trying to process every single stimulus and we would drive ourselves insane. Schemas (combined with binocular rivalry) are what are responsible for those fad 3-D image posters. Unfortunately, that example is also the hardest to comprehend. Instead let’s just focus on auditory schemas. We’ve all been in someplace crowded, like a restaurant, or a shopping mall at Christmas time. Almost everyone else in the restaurant or the mall is speaking the same language that we are. They’re all carrying on conversations that we should be able to understand. But yet, to our ears all we hear is incomprehensible chatter while the conversation of your dinner partners is perfectly understandable.

How can this be? Why does your mind separate out what your dinner partners are saying into comprehensible speech whereas everyone else comes across as something more like white noise? This is an example of a schema at work. Your brain is subconsciously sorting out the important signals (your dinner-mates) from the unimportant signals (everyone else). And yet, even while this is going on your brain isn’t completely shutting off the other signals. It’s actively scanning them, looking for “buzzwords”. Buzzwords could be words that represent danger; kill, die, bomb, gun, shoot, etc. A baby’s cry is also not dumped into the useless category due to evolution. However, sometimes, especially if you have something on your mind, your brain will pick up other “buzzwords” that have some meaning to you; Linkin Park, motorcycles, Star Wars, etc. The more value or association that you have with the word, the more likely your brain is to sort it into the useful pile. That’s part of the reason that we hear bits and pieces of other conversations sporadically.

As if that wasn’t bad enough we have other factors working against us too. As humans we have this innate ability in our brains to fill in the missing pieces automatically. It’s a semi-conscious cognitive process. One example of this is the famous Rorschach Tests, known in common vernacular as the “inkblot” tests. In those tests we see a visual pattern and we identify it with something else that is often not what it truly is. There are other types of similar tests where psychologists remove random bits from photographs and ask subjects to identify what is in the picture. Our brains are capable of filling in those missing gaps and coming to the correct answer. And still, yet one more example is the computer-geek language of “leet”. Most of us can read leet without too much issue: 4s d3m0nstr4t3d by th1s 3x4mpl3 0f l33t t3xt h3r3.

The fascinating thing to me is that while many of these ocular anomalies are understood (at least in passing) by the average person, their auditory counterparts are completely lost or ignored. As humans we have this innate ability to “fill in the gaps” in our hearing as well, especially when our full cognitive resources are not devoted to listening or we are otherwise unable to interpret what is being said. The proof of this comes from the plethora of websites devoted to the most common “misheard lyrics” such as; www.kissthisguy.com, www.amiright.com/misheard, and www.misheardlyrics.net.

To share some of my own rather humorous examples; the first time I was watching Star Wars there was a scene in Episode IV: A New Hope where Darth Vader says “There will be no understoppers this time”….or at least that’s what I heard. I promptly searched the dictionary for “understoppers” and came up blank. It wasn’t until many views later I realized that he actually said “there will be no one to stop us this time!” Well, that’s a big difference, especially because that actually makes sense. And yet, sometimes even today I still hear understoppers despite knowing that he really says.

There’s a song by the late Isreal Kamakawiwo (aka: Brother Iz) called “somewhere over the rainbow”. The first time that I heard that song I heard “K is for spaghetti”. In truth he says “Okay, this one is for Gabby”.

There’s also a song by the singer Kelly Clarkson called “Breakaway”. In that song I heard “I want to go to Walgreens”. In truth she said “I want to feel the warm breeze”…although, in my defense I was thinking about Walgreens as I was having some very serious tooth path and my prescriptions were ready. My first thought was; “wow, she must needs meds too”.

Other people that I know have heard things like “a bowl in a china closet”, or in the scene in City Slickers they heard “I crap in your new” instead of “I crap bigger than you”. I’ve also heard people talk about “we have a flight to Japan” instead of “We have a change of plans”. Other people have taken misheard quotes and applied them out of context. For example, one person I know kept referring to the enemy ships in Star Wars as Century Ships instead of TIE Fighters. The TIE component is really an acronym meaning “Twin Ion Engine” describing how the ship is propelled. However, this person was watching A New Hope and Han Solo makes reference to the TIE Fighters as being sentry ships…although that’s not what they heard. It took us a while to convince him of the truth.

As humorous as these anecdotes are, they are not localized to just one person or even one group of people. There are numerous examples of this type of selective hearing that occurs every day. All of us have done this before, and all of us will do this again. It’s the result of a physiological function of our brains. Sometimes we realize that we’ve misheard something (although we usually blame the other person) and we say to ourselves “what did they say?” But a lot of the time these misinterpretations are so subtle that we don’t even realize that they’ve occurred (even if the singer must have been high when they wrote those lyrics…).

The worst part of all of this is that when you add our brain’s cognitive abilities back into the mix on top of all of these other psychological factors that are already happening it makes listening even much more difficult. And what’s even more interesting is that there’s an indirect relationship between how close we are to a person emotionally versus how well we listen to that person. It sounds crazy, I know, but bear with me.

Our brains are constantly scanning input from our environments, scanning for danger, looking for things that may harm us or may be dangerous in some way. All of us tend to have a skeptical approach to dealing with strangers and people that we don’t know. As a result we also tend to analyze their actions and their speech a little more closely, looking for some subtle clue that can tip us off to their nature. However, with people that we know we tend to be much more relaxed in our cognitive analysis of their behavior. Because of this our brains don’t pay attention as much to what they say and we’re left free to interpret and “fill in the gaps” more in conversations with them.

Admittedly, sometimes this behavior can be as hilarious as the iPhone’s auto-correct feature; generally this behavior can have potentially disastrous results. This is especially true in cases where you may believe that friends or loved ones may have slighted you in some way. When we feel that we’ve been slighted our bodies begin to initiate that “fight or flight” response. This can often lead to couples breaking up, friends or family not speaking for months or years at a time, or spouses engaging in ugly, nasty arguments (which we’ll discuss in more depth in tomorrow’s article, The Art of Arguing).

Now that we are aware that this process and the fact that this behavior is occurring we can take steps to correct it. The first step in correcting behaviors is awareness, which we’ve achieved just by reading this article. We now have an understanding of what is happening within our heads and why it’s so hard for us to listen. The next step is to take active steps to calm ourselves and clarify. Admittedly this is a little harder and it takes practice, but the payoff is immense as you realize that half of the arguments that you’ve had are really about nothing more than selective hearing.

The crucial part of that step, really, is the calm part. If you are not calm before you try to clarify then you run the risk of engaging in confirmation bias as your emotions cloud your judgment. The clarity part is much easier. Clarity can best be achieved by one simple phrase “can you explain what you mean by that, I don’t understand?” With this phrase the wording of the phrase is the key to its use. If you simply say “What do you mean?” or “explain yourself” then your request could be taken the wrong way and the other person may feel as though you are attacking them. By phrasing it this way you’re delivering the message for clarity in a more neutral tone that is much more likely to get an explanation.

Another technique for clarity that you can use is simply rephrasing their statement into a different perspective. Say something like “I just want to understand what you mean. Are you saying….?” Again, the key to this is to deliver this message with a non-aggressive tone or language.

Ponder this information and this advice next time you find yourself in these types of situations. Ask yourself if you are really hearing what the other person means to say, or are you allowing your selective hearing to take over? Always ask for clarity and try to understand what the other person means and focus less on what they say. Sometimes people exercise poor judgment when choosing their words. And I’ll be expanding on this series tomorrow with another article covering the art of arguments, and how to win and lose them.

Both Ends Against the Middle

2012-01-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know that two posts in the same day is a rare treat, but hey, I have the day off and my homework isn’t due for 6 more days, so why not. I was reading a very well-written article by a journalist, Chris Hedges. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_im_suing_barack_obama_20120116/ I recommend that everyone read it, but in case you can’t I’ll summarize. Hedges has filed his lawsuit in an effort to overturn the recent legislation that was passed granted the US military the power to police and detain US citizens without trial and for an indefinite period of time. He postulates that many of the bills terms and definition are not defined or delineated in any official capacity and as such they are too vague to make the bill useful or just.

Now, this bill has a lot of people up in arms. There are many who are upset about this bill, and rightfully so. We’re taking freedoms that US citizens have been accustomed to for a few hundred years and flushing it down the drain. But, there are right ways to bring about change, and wrong ways to do it. The wrong way would be to advocate or organize violence in an effort to change the laws. While this technique may be a catalyst for change, historically it has not brought about the changes that people have hoped for. The right way to bring about change is to speak publicly (and peacefully) about it. The right way is to start petitions to repeal the law, or to file court proceedings to block it, or to run for office yourself and attempt to get the bill overturned from the inside.

Normally, at least in politics, I tend to be kind of “middle of the road”. Don’t get me wrong, on some topics I’m very conservative, but then on other issues I’m quite liberal. With everything else I tend of fall into the middle of the road. I’m not a Democrat or a Republican. I’m not a conservative or a liberal. And yet, interestingly, I’ve been called a Democrat, a Republican, a Conservative, and a Liberal depending on who I have pissed off that week and how much they try to undermine or dismiss my viewpoints.

Now, a lot of people go through life completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. And that’s their choice. However, it’s a dangerous choice to be sure. Those of you who know me well know that I’m an advocate for self-defense and survival. I believe in being prepared. As such, I often visit the FEMA website and take many of their online trainings (http://training.fema.gov/). FEMA, contrary to popular conspiracy theorists, is not the end-of-the-world doom-bringer that many suspect. They’re a real-world, pragmatic organization that at least tries to help out in disasters. Admittedly, like many other organizations FEMA isn’t perfect. They’ve made some serious mistakes, but their aim seems genuine enough.

Now, this comes into play because most “Survivalists” advocate that people should keep about 2 weeks supply of food and water on hand at all times. This is a view point that FEMA itself supports and recommends (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf). But, this is bad because, because according to new legislation that’s been passed having more than 7 days of food “stockpiled” can brand you a suspected terrorist in the eyes of the government (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1T61oTrR8).

This isn’t really all that surprising, sadly. The government has a long history of having one organization say something that completely contradicts another one. Although I can’t seem to find the exact documentation at the tip of my fingers like usual, I do recall there being a law passed in 2009 that branded anyone who had zip-ties, duct tape and rope together you could be arrested by police for having an “assault kit”. These are common household items that are found in probably every other garage in America. As with everything else, I encourage you all to pay attention to what’s going on around you. It’s very easy to find yourself breaking the law even on accident. And, as any judge will tell you, ignorance is no excuse.

Reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD1T61oTrR8

The Art of Saying Nothing

2012-01-16T09:54:00.002-07:00

Communication is one of life’s great essential skills. Without communication it would be impossible for you to get your thoughts and ideas across to others. You can use communication to educate, persuade, and relate to other people. However, you can also use communication to deceive, mislead, and attack others.

We have a lot of metaphors to describe the way that people communicate: long-winded, blunt, to-the-point, embellished, flowery, full of hot air, direct, and so on. All of these different traits can be useful in certain circumstances. For example, if you are speaking with the military it may be best to use a direct, blunt approach and just “shoot from the hip” and say what you need to say. On the other hand, if you need to speak with the academic or scientific world or a politician…especially a politician, a long-winded, embellished, flowery approach may be better.

We all know people who really have nothing to say. Sometimes they quite literally sit there silent saying nothing. Other times they speak, but their thoughts are disjointed and do not make sense. Still other times they “talk in circles” providing no further explanation or going back to an original argument that didn’t make sense to begin with. We like to compare the speech of these people to fecal matter by saying that they’re full of it.

There are some people who make a living off of saying nothing. Politicians are one group. They routinely bedazzle us with their speeches and spew a lot of emptiness and nothing from their mouths and we buy into it. It’s a deliberate attempt to appease us to get more votes. Take President Obama for example. He is definitely mastered the art of saying nothing and making it believable. Either that, or he needs a grammar lesson on the definition of specific words. Whatever else the president may be, I think that it would be a mistake to call him uneducated. As such, any misuse of specific words on his part should be taken as deliberate. So let’s look at some specific words of his, notably “top priority”.

To the rest of the world a “top priority” is something that is being given the utmost consideration, ahead of all other projects. The dictionaries and thesauruses of the world largely agree. According to the thesaurus it’s a synonym for urgent, paramount, vital, immediate and many other “get this done right now” type of words. The dictionaries define top priority as “something being given merit or attention prior to completing other alternatives or tasks”, “item of the highest importance”, and “to be done before anything else”. To President Obama “top priority” means “something to say to the voters to keep them happy.

Now, of course, those of you who know me know that I don’t go around making such claims without objective proof backing it up. Let’s take a look at some of Obama’s speeches from when he took office. On February 11^th, 2009 Obama said that Consumer Protection was “a top priority”. Then, on May 1^st he said that H1N1 Vaccinations were a top priority. Then, on May 28^th it was Hurricane Preparedness. The very next day is was support for military families. On August 17^th it was ending homelessness for veterans. Almost exactly two months later it was strengthening ties with Canada and Mexico. On November 5^th it was Environmental Protection. On December 3^rd it was increasing exports by small businesses. On February 1^st, 2010 it was Student Loan reform. Then, two days later it was health assistance to 9/11 First Responders. Exactly three weeks after that it was education reform. On April 17^th he said that Free Trade Agreements were a top priority. And then the very next day Energy Security was a top priority. Clearly, these words are meant to mislead and deceive. Now, to be fair, Obama is not the first president to have done this, and unless the crackpots are right about the world ending this year, he won’t be the last. He’s just the President that’s in office and he’s happened to provided us with a convenient tagline to follow his statements with.

But, others besides politicians have mastered the art of saying nothing. Marketing and Advertising Reps have also mastered this art quite well. In fact, their product sales depend on misdirection and “cloak and dagger” communication. Let’s examine some of my favorite examples for a moment.

AT&T is guilty of saying nothing. Their tagline for the last few years has been “more bars in more places”. Okay, that’s great. But what, exactly, do they mean by that. Do they mean that they have more bars in more places than the other guys have bars in places, or do they mean that they have more bars in more places than they had bars in places at this time last year? It’s deliberately vague for a reason.

Listerine and a large number of other dental care products claim to “fight plaque”, “fight gum disease” or “fight gingivitis”. However, none of these products claim to “prevent” these things. None of them claim to “reverse” these things, or cure them. They only claim to “fight” them. What I picture here is mental image that runs through my mind of a Listerine bottle climbing into a ring with this enormous plaque monster. The Listerine bottle hits it once, and then the plaque monster kills it. Technically, it did live up to the company’s claim; it did fight the plaque. But fighting and wining are two completely different things.

There’s a taxi cab company around here that has the words “fast radio dispatch” emblazoned on their bumpers. What, exactly, does this mean? Does it mean that the dispatch is done whenever the heck the dispatcher gets around to it, but it’s done using a radio that’s fast? Or does it mean that the dispatcher quickly dispatches the call on a normal speed radio?

And then there’s a car stereo chain out here called Audio Express. They say “no one installs more car stereos for $1 than Audio Express”. A bold claim, but let’s take a look at what they’re really saying. Are they saying that they install the most car stereos? No. Are they saying that they install the best car stereos? No. All they’re saying is that no one installs more of them for $1. That’s probably true. Most other stores around here either do it for free, or they charge more than a $1. But those are automatically excluded in their statement because it’s designed to be misleading.

Most of the cell phone companies claim to have “the largest network”. I’ve always been curious, by what definition is their network the largest? They can’t all be the largest…or can they? Perhaps, the network with the most users is the largest? Or maybe it’s the network with the most towers? Or perhaps it’s the network that physically covers the largest geographic area?

I’ve also heard the tagline “the better choice” before in several ad campaigns. Instantly I think, “okay, great. Do you mind telling me what the best choice is?”

A third type of person who uses the art of saying nothing is the argument seeker. We all know a few of these people, whether we realize that they are one or not. Some of these people are truly narcissistic, whereas others just dislike being wrong. I have many friends who discuss politics. Many of them are quite capable of keeping the discussions calm, peaceable, and objective. However, every now and then there are those who say nothing and do so repeatedly and aggressively. Instead of proving their point with fact or opinion, they simply restate their original argument. When you ask them about the claims that they level, they say things “well, of course I know where to find that data, but if I just tell you where to find it I’ll be doing you a disservice” or “how are you going to learn if I keep giving you the answers?” , etc. It seems a little peculiar, especially when those people are protesting for other parties to explain their data but yet they refuse to disclose their own data.

I implore you, dear readers, as you communicate with others, ask yourselves, am I actually saying something, or I am simply saying nothing loudly?

And, as a closing thought, because it’s related to today’s topic; Taylor Mali on Communication: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKyIw9fs8T4

Reference:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20013622-503544.html

http://prevarication.net/2010/08/cbs-news-counts-obamas-13-top-issue/

http://thesaurus.com/browse/urgent

http://www.allwords.com/word-top+priority.html

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/priority

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/priority

http://prevarication.net/2010/08/cbs-news-counts-obamas-13-top-issue/

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20013622-503544.html

Not Knowing What to Look For

2012-01-13T13:10:00.001-07:00

For those of you who did not already know this about me, I am an avid genealogist. I really do enjoy this pursuit immensely. It allows me an excellent avenue to utilize my analytical thinking, and, as the running joke among genealogists goes; it’s the gift that keeps giving.

There have been several major advancements in genealogy over the last few decades. 30 or 40 years ago you had to go to a specific library and browse through census records on microfilm. You had to search each and every page by hand, and you had to already have some pretty good idea of what you were looking for (not to mention you had to be pretty adept at reading old-fashioned handwriting). Today’s genealogist can do a large amount of research right from their home computer without leaving the house.

There are some people who believe that those interested in genealogy are only interested in it because of their attempts to unearth “moneyed forebears”. However, this opinion seems to be one that has originated outside of the genealogical circles. Almost every single genealogist that I’ve ever corresponded with (and there have been quite a few) is interested in this pursuit to answer one simple, yet burning question: where do I come from? They get as excited about finding an ancestor who was a poor farmer as they do in finding someone who was an important figure of society. Being a genealogist myself I can understand why people may have that perception. The pragmatism of genealogical research is that more influential people tend to leave behind more records, thus making them easier to find. However, that doesn’t mean that we’re not interested in the non-influential people. I’m personally saddened with part of my research. One of my ancestors was a Cherokee Indian who wandered onto a farm at age 3. He didn’t speak English and no one could locate his family. The farmers adopted him and raised him as their own. I have copies of the newspaper articles that talk about the situation, however, I will never know anything more about my Cherokee ancestors or their deeds. They certainly aren’t “moneyed forebears”, but they are quite interesting to me all the same as they make up some small part of who I am.

One of the groups that I follow is the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation (SMGF). I’ll explain more about them in a few minutes. However, in their recent newsletter they included a link to Greta’s Genealogy Blog. Greta had an article that I found quite interesting as she was talking about the perception that genealogy has received from the mainstream public. The popular website Ancestry.com came up during this discussion.

Now, on the one hand, I do like the Ancestry services. Their Family Tree Maker software is my personal favorite genealogy program, and if you are looking for generic records, their site is pretty good. A subscription to their vital records is well worth the money. However, on the other hand I’m very disappointed and kind of upset at them. Their recent ad campaigns are actually somewhat insulting and definitely deceptive. Their current tagline is “You don’t have to know what you’re looking for, you just have to start looking”.

What a crock. Really? Ancestry, you should know better. For one thing, as noble a pursuit as genealogy is, it’s not something that you can just pick up and start by poking about a website randomly. There’s a lot of stuff that you need to know before you start looking. For example; why should you start looking in 1930? What type of records are you looking for? What types of pitfalls should I avoid? What resources should I avoid? What if I get stuck?

As any long-time genealogist knows the Privacy Act keeps all vital records locked away and privatized for 73 years. As such the records from 1930 are the most current records that are readily available to the mainstream public. Next year, 2013, the records from 1940 will be revealed and unlocked and then you will be able to search those as well. If you are new to genealogy are you just going to know this? Probably not. Would that make it hard to find your father? Or your grandfather? Probably, depending on your age.

Next, what types of records are you looking for? Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Military Records, Tax Rolls, Voter Lists, Deeds, Wills, Census Records. As a “noob” to the field of genealogy would you understand the differences? Would you know about the inherent and expected inconsistencies between them? Probably not. Back in the day the Census Takers used to visit each house in person. They often would guess at the age of the people that they were recording, especially small children. So, it’s entirely possible for the same person to have different ages on different census records. Also, prior to WWII, most people in the US did not know how to read or write. Because of that the census takers would record your name how they thought it should be spelled. I have one ancestor on the census who’s name Clyborn, Clybourn, Clayburn, Claybourne, and finally Clayborn. This is completely normal for the census records, but new people probably wouldn’t know that. This is also the very same reason that the Soundex was invented. It uses a complex mathematical algorithm to display search results that sound alike phonetically, regardless of spelling.

And then there’s the SSDI, the Social Security Death Index. This is a great place to start when researching family members. It’s often easiest to start from the end and work toward the beginning. If you know when they died, you can get their vital information, including their SSN, from the SSDI and that greatly helps you ensure that you’ve got the right person. But sometimes people aren’t included in the SSDI. For example, people who are murdered are not included on the list.

Ancestry.com has some novelty “resources” that are actually, quite flawed and laughable. Their records database is excellent. The private user trees can be helpful at times. But their “One World Tree” program is a joke. One World Tree (OWT) is an automated bot program that Ancestry developed. It scours the data of every single tree that users have uploaded onto the website and attempts to stitch them all together to map out the family history of the entire world. It’s an ambitious project to be sure. However, the bot program is highly unreliable. It regularly attaches people that don’t have any relationship at all. It also has other flaws where, for example, if people are missing birthdates in their data, it will create a “loop”. It will have five or six people strung together, but then it will have the father of the oldest person in the string be the first person that you started with. Due to that I only very rarely use it, and then it’s just to see if someone has listed other resources as part of their file.

Many genealogists go to the Mormon Church to search genealogical records. As part of their religion the Mormons research their deceased ancestors in an effort to convert them over to Mormonism so that they can be saved. Many people agree that the Mormon Church has one of the largest privately-funded genealogical databases in the world. Many researchers will take a trip over to the Mormon Libraries to glean data from their records. Even if you are not Mormon, they will still permit you to dig through their archives. Other people prefer to access their records remotely through their website; www.familysearch.org. No disrespect to the Mormons, but while this may be one of the largest resources, it’s not exactly one of the most accurate. I have personally found several egregious errors in their data. As with many other large projects, they rely heavily on volunteer work and the data on their site is only as accurate as the volunteers who uploaded it. As such I would advise anyone using their information to take it with a grain of salt.

Another key thing that every new genealogist should know is this: document everything. Okay, really that should be said for all aspects of your life, but especially for genealogy work. Sometimes you come across conflicting data and you need to compare your sources, or sometimes you find that little gem of data that’s super-hard to find and then you lose your files and you don’t remember where you saw it again. It’s just easier if you write it all down. Keep records; who told you? When? Where did you find it? Title of the book? Publication date? Author's name? ISBN? Page Number? Can you make copies or include a link? etc. Sometimes, especially with websites, the page moves or just disappears. If it's not recorded then you may never find it again.

If you get stuck, there’s always a technique called “cluster genealogy” that most new people don’t know about. It basically plays off of the principle that “no one is an island”. The idea is that if you can no longer find records about your direct ancestor, try searching the records of your ancestor’s siblings. In many cases the siblings had the same parents and it can lead you to the answer.

The most recent breakthrough in genealogy is “genetic genealogy”. Scientists can now track your biological ancestry through mitochondrial DNA (female side) or through Y-DNA (male side). This is quite a fascinating technique. Through its use I discovered that my family was adopted in the 1850’s and my genetic roots are not that of Clayborn. But now I’m stuck and I have no idea who I am. Even with all of the years of practice and the skills that I’ve developed I can’t seem to unravel this mystery. I’ve found a document here and a document there, but some are hard to read and most yield no clues. This is where the SMGF comes in. There are websites like Y-Search (the new home of the now-defunct Ybase.com) and SMGF that contain databases of people’s genetic codes. If I can find a match through there it would prove who I am genetically related to. This, in turn, would give me another angle to look at the records where the trail goes cold and possibly find the right answer. It’s kind of a longshot, but my DNA has two extremely rare markers in it so when I do find a match there will no doubting it. One marker happens in 1% of the population in my haplogroup (genetic cousins for lack of a better term), and the other marker happens in 0.5% of the population. The odds of someone else having those exact same mutations that’s not related to me is a statistical impossibility. But, if the Ancestry.com commercials would have you believe, genealogy is a snap and you can do it blindfolded. And you probably can if you don’t care at all about making sure that your data is accurate or correct.

Confirmation Bias

2012-01-11T12:58:00.005-07:00

Confirmation Bias is decidedly one of the more fascinating and infuriating components of the human psyche. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this concept it can be explained as “the power to deny” or if you had to explain how it works you could sum it up as “the power to continue believing what I believe is right because it’s what I believe, no matter what”.

To some extent, all of us are afflicted by confirmation bias to some degree or another. Most of us have at least one topic that we feel so strongly about that we run into the danger of confirmation bias. Many people simply are not aware that they suffer from confirmation bias. Those of us who at least understand what it is have an easier time realizing that what we’re experiencing is confirmation bias, even if we are unable to change it in ourselves. The one interesting thing however, is that it’s immediately apparent when someone’s logic or debate is being influenced by confirmation bias.

Examples of confirmation bias can be found in pretty much every subject. The more controversial the subject is, the more prominent that confirmation bias exists and manifests itself in a direct relationship (↑ ↑). The more knowledgeable you are about the subject and the more understand confirmation bias, the less likely you are to be afflicted by it (↑ ↓). But, this isn’t always true, it’s just a generality. Some people continue to be afflicted by confirmation bias regardless of how aware they are of it or not.

Where can one find examples of confirmation bias? The easy examples are things like: religion, the existence of aliens, conspiracy theories, politics, childrearing, etc. Part of the nuances of confirmation bias is that people will take information and then twist that information in their mind in order to either further support their own beliefs or discredit the beliefs of others. Take religion for example. Many people take the fact that we cannot prove that God exists as concrete proof that God does not exist. Other people however take that very same piece of fact and use it as proof that he does exists (after all, if we could detect his presence what kind of God would he be?). In this example both of these viewpoints exhibit signs of confirmation bias. All that the data suggests is that we cannot prove his existence. The data itself lends no evidence to support or deny the existence of God one way or the other.

Part of the reason that I’m writing about confirmation bias today is to vent. You see, as I’ve mentioned before, I have this compulsion to stamp out incorrect data where ever I see it. I admit that I have my opinions, but I think that I do a pretty good job of allowing my analytical brain to consider all of the factors before I make up my opinion. And I’ve certainly had my mind changed through debate with several of my friends on numerous occasions. A few of my friends are excellent debaters. There are certain topics that we don’t always agree on, and more than once they’ve been able to persuade me into seeing things from their point of view. Had I been afflicted by confirmation bias this would not be possible.

A perfect example of this came up in my ethics class last week. The teacher posed a question to us;

What does Postman mean when he says the media is eroding our intelligence? Give an example.

I responded thusly: This is a prime example of an opinion that I have long-held myself. Socially, it seems as though people (collectively) are sheep. Individually people are smart, intelligent, and thoughtful. However, if you put those people in the stands of a hockey or soccer game after their favorite team losses (or wins) there's the potential that these smart individuals will become part of a very stupid mob responsible for vandalism and assault. It might be that I'm becoming more and more cynical, but it seems as though people are becoming more and more comfortable with just believing whatever they are told without any further investigation or thought. With the advent of digital media, particularly the internet, misconceptions and misinformation can be spread easily from one place to another rather quickly. It's entirely possible for something that's not at all true to be spread as fact by surrounding it with plausible sounding explanations. For example, take these common (but untrue) myths: pirates wore eye patches because it gave them a tactical advantage in battle (false), consumption of sugar causes a "high" (false), Suicide rates go up during Thanksgiving and Christmas (false), people abuse and murder black cats around Halloween (false), etc. Not only do these myths perpetuate, but they are taken as common knowledge and fact when the truth is that they are completely and totally wrong. Genealogical records are also another case where this runs rampant as well. TV certainly infects our psyche and our way of thinking. There have been countless news articles where the judge has had to dismiss jurors or declare a mistrial because the jury has watched too much "CSI" and doesn't understand how forensics really works in application. They watch this make-believe (and often quite erroneous) portrayals of forensics and have a skewed perception of how it works. (This is now known as "the CSI Effect".) However, this isn't necessarily a recent invention. Take this map, from Prof. Ferguson published in 1893. http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2011/06/squareearth1.jpg. It postulates that the word is, in fact, square, not round. Many people bought his book and bought into his crazy ideals simply because he was a "professor" and the information seemed credible enough on the surface. The news hasn't always been known for their objective reporting so even things that are seen on the "news channels" are often questioned and scrutinized. In some circles Fox News has the odious moniker of "Faux News", despite being a national agency.

Now, as if on cue one of my classmates whom I’ll refer to simply as SB replied to my posting with this; I don't know that I agree with all of your untrue myths. I have experinced [sic] the pirate myth. Having one or both eyes can help when trying to move around in a dark place. I have experinced [sic] a sugar "high", it might be a real high be it can make you act out of character. I don't know if suicides go up around Christmas and Thanksgiving but I can see why they might. I wouldn't be at all surprised if people do abuse and murder black cats around Halloween. There are alot [sic] of cults and religions that would encourage that. I've never heard of the "CSI effect", but I would probably be removed from a jury for it. I know a person who worked in SVU in my state and she said they do a reasonable job of showing the process.

Now, as followers of my blog will know, I’ve already addressed all of these issues before in prior posts. But, this classmate doesn’t read my blog so I responded with this: You see, no disrespect intended, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. What is the basis for your "disbelief" of my facts? I'm not stating my opinion here, I'm stating irrefutable fact. I've personally researched these topics, and these are all myths that do not hold any shred of truth whatsoever. They're all baseless claims made by media and perpetuated by media and society by people who believe everything without checking facts for themselves.

I explained the facts surrounding the pirate eye patch (found here). I explained the facts surrounding the sugar high myth (found here). I explained why suicides don’t go up during the holidays (here). And I explained the misconception about black cats (found here).

I also explained the CSI effect; If you do a Google search on the term CSI Effect you'll find hundreds of newspaper articles explaining the principle and talking about cases where it has ruined or delayed the case. The show "CSI" makes the science of forensics seems not only easier than it really is, but also more trivial. As such, jurors’ opinions are skewed by the TV series. They want to see more evidence, they want faster evidence, and when they do get evidence presented they don't realize the true consequence of that evidence and brush it off.

My classmate, SB, responded right back: I have never heard of pirates wearing eye patches to protect against injuries to the eye. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. I can see them wearing them because they lost an eye or had an injury to an eye. But I don't see how a piece of fabic [sic] or plastic could protect their eyes during battle. I really don't care about what "research" you have done. I could find "proof" to support my ideas too. Just because someone researched it doesn't make their word law. They may have skewed the results to get the data they wanted. Their test might have been too small. Take your Humane Society president as an example. Where did she have her taskforce get this information. Unless she talked to every cult and religious leader, ever humane society and animal activest [sic] expert in the world just because she didn't find any evidence to support that black cats are killed or abused more around Halloween then any other time of the year doesn't make it true. Research and statics are unreliable. You can find just as many studys [sic] for something as you can against something.

By this point it’s becoming abundantly clear that she’s suffering from confirmation bias. Not only is she attacking my response, she’s not even reading what I actually wrote to begin with. She’s misinterpreting the data as automatically wrong. But, be that as it may here’s what I wrote back to her: I'm not saying that the eye patches were a preventative measure, I'm saying that they wore the eye patches AFTER the eye was injured to keep the wound clean, like a band-aid, to prevent further infection. And as far as the rest of your response goes, I have two simple words for you: confirmation bias. You're so wrapped up in your own belief system that it doesn't matter what evidence anyone presents to you, they're automatically wrong. That's fine. It's nice to know that we have people in this world who are smarter than all of the doctors and researchers that give us our cutting edge science, that's awesome. Maybe they should just ask you how to solve world hunger and cure cancer, because I'm sure you already know the answer to that too. Any "proof" that you could find supporting your "ideas" has been refuted by more recent research, by professional researchers and scientists. The old "proof" is, quite simply, wrong. I find absolutely absurd that you can so easily dismiss the results of the tests and studies that I mention without knowing anything about them. The Humane Society President, Dr. Leslie Sinclair, personally oversaw her taskforce. They examined newspaper articles from every major newspaper in the largest 250 cities in the United States during the month of October. They also contacted every police department in those cities and inquired about persons being charged with animal abuse charges. Despite their massive undertaking, which took two years to complete, they found no credible evidence to support the idea that black cats are sacrificed on Halloween. The few "reports" that they did find turned out to be hoaxes. And we're not talking about world-wide, I'm talking about the United States, where we live. But sitting here spouting that doctors and researchers are idiots and morons doesn't further your position. As I said before, find me CREDIBLE EVIDINCE to support your claims. Which cults say that Black Cats should be killed, specifically? Where do they say this? When did they say this? Why? How many cases have been reported? Where? By whom?

Admittedly, this was a little harsh, but this is one of my pet peeves. This lady is not debating, she’s arguing. A debate would involve her responding to my posts with facts and or other data that I could then go and independently verify. She didn’t do this. She just stuck to her own narrow-minded opinion and continued to disregard all of the evidence that I presented to her. I implore you all, as you argue your viewpoints with others ask yourself; am I automatically refuting evidence because I don’t want to believe it’s true, or are my ideas supported by fact?

Armchair Hypocrisy

2012-01-09T10:45:00.001-07:00

Author’s Note: This particular posting may offend some people, especially those people who are not able to be honest with themselves.

About a month ago I was a discussion with one of classmates from school about the so-called moral tests. Many people have heard of these tests. The test has questions that go something like this;

you work in a trolley terminal as an engineer. You notice a runaway trolley careening down the track at more than 50 miles per hour. If you do nothing and the trolley continues on its course it will run into a group of five construction workers who are repairing the track and they will all die. They’re too far away to shout to, but you could save their lives. The track has a switch in the middle. If you throw the lever in front of you it will change the switch and make the trolley go down the other track. The only problem there is that there is an inspector walking along the track that will be caught unaware and will probably die as a result of your actions. What do you do?

Now, this classmate of mine was very upset by this question. I pointed out that a major university had just conducted a survey of several thousand people and more than 90% of them said they would throw the lever. My classmate said that these types of studies “annoy her”. She said “Sure there is a third choice. Your choice doesn't have to be the man or construction workers. There are several things that you might be able to do depending on the situation. I would need more information before I would be willing to give my choice. I can almost guarantee that I can come up with a third solution that would save everyone.” Really? You have about 3 seconds before the trolley smashes into everyone and kills them. You’re telling me that you can come up with a third choice in less than three seconds but you’re not even able to articulate what that other choice would be in a response to the question? Interesting. ..

I tried explaining that these tests have a very important purpose as they measure our “moral reflex” as a society. When faced with an impossible choice, what would most people choose and why? Sure, there may be alternative options available, but not always. These studies are designed to be hard, emotionally and mentally challenging questions. They’re designed to test our animalistic instincts. In this particular study 90% of people threw the switch. However, when they altered the scenario and they made it so that you physically had to push the other man onto the truck to save the others, then only 50% of people would do it. And then, back in the control room if the person on the other end of the switch was their child or other family member then only 33% of people would pull the lever. This isn’t at all surprising if you’ve ever studying social or evolutionary psychology. But, by understanding how people react in these impossible situations, we can develop trainings that will be better tailored to achieving the most desirable outcome when these unfortunate situations do occur.

My classmate’s response was classic. “I understand the point of these studies, I just think that they’re pointless”. She also said “Most of them don’t take reality into consideration. Who can say what choice a person might make? If the man was a crimal [sic] or someone the person hated they would most likely push him into the bus to save the unknow [sic] construction workers. However if the construction workers were tearing into a beloved building, the person might choose to save the single man. By not taking into considerations all the different solutions that might be available no one can truely [sic] say how they would react. There are never just the few choices the survey offers. Human minds are limitless. No one can predict what solution the person might come up with to save everyone or they may choose to save no one. I have to disagree that these surveys can gives an idea of how people can react, it just isn't possible to know.”

My response to her was thus; “I respect that your opinion is what it is. I can understand how you have reached your conclusion. It is true that humans will react differently in different situations and that there may be many different people who can think of alternative solutions, but that's not the point of these exercises. While you may view these exercises as pointless, I actually find a lot of value in them. I can think of numerous situations where I can apply this type of study in a pragmatic fashion to "the real world". I think that you may be overanalyzing these surveys. It's not designed to force you into picking one of these two options when other options exist, it's designed to test people's emotional and psychological reflex in situation where there are only two obvious solutions. There may be other ideas or other solutions, but the problem is that you don’t have the time to think about the situation and arrive at those conclusions. Take the portrayal of the movie Captain America for example. They picked who would be Captain America by one test. They called the unit to attention and then threw a dummy hand grenade on the ground in front of them. You don’t have time to think. Most people run away, but one person threw himself on top of the grenade to save their squad. That's how they picked him. The military and police departments of the world have been known to use tests similar to that in real life. Furthermore, psychologists can use these tests to predict human behavior. There are plenty of situations where there are people who are face with fast-paced, dangerous situations and they have 2 seconds to make a decision like that. Take the SWAT team for instance. They are thrust into these types of situations every day and they don’t have hours and hours to mull over their choices. These tests can help people predict how people will react when faced with situations like that.” (more on that last sentence in a second).

Her final response before I gave up arguing with her: “I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I don't see how you can apply these studies to any "real world" experience or to predict how people might react. I agree that in a situation of life and death you don't have time for logic. Even in those situations there (are) thousands of options in every situation. There is no way a survey of only two choices can predict how people might react.”

Okay, now for the potentially offensive part. Suppose you are a police officer. You get called to respond to a call. The suspect has a handgun. He’s fired shots into the air already. Other witnesses have reported that he’s going to kill everyone. This information comes from one of the senior administrators at the building where the incident is taking place, so you have every reason to believe it’s accurate. You see the suspect and tell him to put the weapon down, but he refuses. He’s waving it around at you. He turns and runs away from you, but then suddenly stops and turns back around to face you like he’s about to fire. Do you let him shoot you, or do you pull the trigger? I would argue that most of us would pull the trigger.

And yet the fascinating part is that society is condemning the very people who were faced with this very same situation last week in Texas. “But, he was only 15!” And? A 15 is just as capable of pulling the trigger as a 30 year old. Twelve years ago it was perfectly just for police to shoot and kill the “monsters of Columbine”, a 17 year old and an 18 year old. Or has society already forgotten that teenagers are just as capable of committing atrocities as adults? “But he was the drum major and danced in his church!” Again, I say, and? What’s your point? He took a gun to school and threatened the lives of the students. Don’t let his past behavior cloud your judgment for what he did on the day of his unfortunate death.

Let’s review the facts:

1. Police received a call from the Assistant Principal of the school saying that the student had a gun, had fired the gun, and was threatening people with the gun.

2. Officers arrived on scene to find people scared and hiding and other eyewitnesses corroborated the information the police had; the student had a gun, said he was going to kill everyone, and had shot the gun.

3. The officers confronted the kid and told him to put the weapon down, he refused. He pointed the weapon at the cops and threatened them. He then ran away, but turned abruptly and acted as if he was going to shoot the officers.

Nothing else is relevant to that. It doesn’t matter what race he was. It doesn’t matter what religion he was, or how much good he did, or what he had for breakfast. The facts remain that he threatened the officers and they responded as they would in any given situation. “But he only had a pellet gun you bastard!” Okay, true. But let’s talk about that pellet gun, shall we?

Pictured here is the actual pellet gun used in the Brownsville incident.

And this is a Springfield XD handgun.

Quick! The crazy gunman who’s threatening to shoot people is waving one of these around pointing it at you. Hurry up and tell them apart! Oh, by the way, he’s flailing his arms and screaming at you so it’s hard to get a really good look at what he has anyway. Better to err on the side of niceness and hope that’s just a “harmless toy”, right? For Christ’s sake, I think that anyone who had seen a person waving around a gun like what the student had would easily mistake it as being a real weapon. The officers involved certainly aren’t to blame for that. For all the police knew they were preventing another massacre and protecting their lives from an armed attacker. (And let’s not even get into the legal can of worms that although this type of pellet gun is usually sold at Wal-Marts and is legal to shoot in the city it also meets the legal definition of a firearm and from a legislative standpoint can be treated as such).

I think people need to wake up and really re-evaluate what happened here and who are the real victims here. Sure, the family of the boy is grieving and dealing with their loss. And so are the boy’s friends, and his community and his church. But what about the officers? They never asked to be put in this situation. They were thrust in it because it’s their job. I have no doubt that no one wanted to shoot that boy. One person I know of on Facebook said that she hopes the officers lose sleep over this. Well, unfortunately, she’s right, they will, I’m sure. That decision will probably follow them for a long time to come, long after all of these armchair hypocrites have forgotten about this incident, those officers will still be reliving that day in their heads.

A lot of people give the police crap. A lot of them fear the police, hate on the police, etc. But let’s be real for a minute, the police are just people, just like you and I. They’ve sworn an oath to protect their fellow citizens. When we’re too afraid to handle a situation, like an armed gunman in a store or a school, we ask them to go and take care of it for us. If the police hadn’t shot the boy and he killed other students, then the police would be wrong. But they did kill the boy involved, and they’re still wrong. If you ask me the police deserve a little respect and consideration too. This certainly isn’t an easy situation for them. They have 2 seconds to make a decision and society has hours and days and years to scrutinize that choice and rip it apart.

Sources:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/12/05/would-you-kill-one-person-to-save-five-new-research-on-a-classic-debate/

The Blame Game

2012-01-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

Today on my way into work I heard an article on the news report that made me shake my head. The Article said that Facebook was to blame for 33% of all divorces in the United States and that rate was up from 20% a few years ago. Say what? I readily disagree with the news article. Facebook is not to blame for the divorce. The bad behavior of the other spouse is to blame. Facebook is merely the vessel by which the other spouse uncovered the truth.

Case in point, there was a 99 year old man who filed for divorce from his 96 year old wife a few days ago. The reason? She cheated on him….60 years ago. The man obviously has strong feelings about it and once he found her secret stash of love-letters to her boyfriend he filed for divorce. Sure, in some cases the truth remains hidden, shrouded in lies and divorce never materializes. However, all Facebook does is allow people to find out the truth much sooner. Had this couple had Facebook back then they probably would have been divorced long ago. Is that Facebook’s fault? No, of course not. It’s the cheating wife’s fault in this case.

If anything, the only thing that Facebook is guilty of is providing people with an easy way to see what’s really going on with people. In the old days people still cheated. In fact, according to some lawyers infidelity has been a leading cause for 25% of all divorces over the last 50 years. That number hasn’t fluctuated much. What has fluctuated is the manner in which the evidence is gathered. Private Investigators to follow your spouse to their illicit rendezvous are no longer needed as Facebook often provides the means, especially when people have it on their phones and they auto-enable features like “check-in”. Susan Smith is at Motel 6 - with Bob Thompson. …Hmmm…that could be slightly incriminating. But, even if Facebook doesn’t report that transgression, that doesn’t mean that it’s not happening or that the truth won’t come out some other way.

So, if Facebook isn’t to blame, who is? Obviously, it’s the lying, cheating spouses. It kind of makes me stop and wonder how many people lie, and how often. I would say that most people tell small on a regular basis. No, Greg, we’re not having a surprise party for you… or how about the lies to your friends when you tell them that their outfits look good? But these aren’t the lies that I’m talking about. I’m talking about serious lies, giant whoppers of the “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” proportions. I mean, everyone knows that politicians, even Presidents like Clinton, lie. They definitely have a reputation for that. But what about everyone else? What about the average Joe?

According to television, lies are far too commonplace. Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs of my favorite crime-solving series certainly believes this. He routinely says that “there’s no such thing as coincidence”. He’s not alone either. Famous TV doctor of ill-repute, Gregory House, MD, concurs. He’s often been known to say that “everyone lies, the question is about what”. Can this really be true? I used to think that these viewpoints were the exception and that most people were genuinely honest and forthcoming. However, after one bad divorce from a lying, cheating spouse I have begun to question my view as possibly being somewhat naive.

It popular media is to be believed, lying and cheating are all perfectly normal behaviors that should be embraced and accepted by the American people. When most people tune into a “family TV station” they expect to find shows that support good moral character traits; honesty, compassion, chivalry, etc. However, ABC family seems to have taken a much different approach to family TV.

They have one show called Pretty Little Liars. This show features four pretty teenage girls who are united in their lie. The show makes light of the lying behavior and portrays it as the hip thing to do. Rather than come clean about their actions, they tell more lies to cover up the other lies. Here’s an excerpt from the show’s website:

Rosewood is a perfect little town. So quiet and pristine, you'd never guess it holds so many secrets. Some of the ugliest ones belong to the prettiest girls in town -- Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily, four estranged friends whose darkest secrets are about to unravel. One year ago, Alison, the Queen Bee of their group, disappeared and the girls swore they'd never tell what really happened that night. They thought their secrets would bond them together, but just the opposite is true. Then again, who's to say what the truth is in Rosewood. It seems everyone in town is lying about something. Now, as the mystery surrounding Alison's disappearance resurfaces, the girls begin getting messages from "A," saying – and threatening – things only Alison would know. But it couldn't be Alison. Could it? Whoever it is, they seem to know all the girls' secrets, and seem to be watching their every move. The girls are friends again, but will they be there for each other if their dark secrets come to light?

But that’s not all. Literally, right after that show there’s another show called the Lying Game. Really, ABC Family? As if one full of hour of making lying seem fun, exciting and hip wasn’t enough, they put their audiences right through another hour of the same rhetoric. Here’s the description of this show:

Inspired by the Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars) book series of the same name, The Lying Game follows long-lost twins Emma and Sutton. Separated under mysterious circumstances, Sutton was adopted by the wealthy Mercer family in Phoenix, while Emma grew up in the foster system. When the twins reunite as teenagers, they keep it a secret. While Sutton goes in search of the truth, Emma takes over her life and discovers more secrets and lies than she could have imagined.It's a season of secrets, seduction and life-and-death stakes as the twins continue to expose the skeletons in their family closet. Emma and Ethan's love is stronger than ever, but their relationship is tested by questionable motives and accusations. With Sutton's disappeance, Emma and Ethan don't know whether Sutton is missing or dead. Meanwhile, Char's aunt Annie has returned to town after many years, bringing back old memories and secrets that Alec and Ted would like to keep in the past.

And then let’s not forget about Secret Life of the American Teenager. One more show spouting the same rhetoric as the others.

The teens at Grant High are living life in the fast lane. Between their love triangles, secrets, drama, accusations, gossip, confusion, and scandalous rumors, there's never a dull moment. The he-said, she-said gets intense! Their parents' lives are just as complicated. From paternity questions to happy reunions and unexpected romances (past and present), there's always something going on. You can't stop watching, because you've just gotta know what'll happen next.

I mean, sure, everyone knows that an espionage thriller is full of lies. But those lies are sold under the guise of national security, life and death, King and Country, millions of people will die if we tell the truth kinds of lies. And, from a pragmatic viewpoint I understand the need for those lies. Oh, what’s that you say Mr. Terrorist? You’d like to know the exact position of our US troops? Sure. Here you go… There’s certain information that you just shouldn’t divulge.

My problem with these shows is that there’s no underlying justification for these lies other than they’re fun, or they keep people from facing the consequences of their actions. Is this really the message that we want to be sending to our youth? And yes, I can hear the critics now; well, if you don’t like the shows then find something else to watch. I get that, but that’s not my point. I make it a point not to watch the shows in question.

My point is the fact that these show even exist in the first place. In the last 60 years TV has gone from Leave it to Beaver, I love Lucy, Dragnet and Perry Mason to shows about lying, cheating, murder and theft. I understand that society has changed drastically over the last 50 years too and that TV has naturally changed along with it. However, I think that as a society and a culture we need to stop playing games and passing the blame and take accountability for our collective actions. Lying is not fun, and being lied to is even worse. If we want people to stop lying as a behavior, then we need to stop idolizing it with TV and other media. But, I do realize that there’s always the possibility that I’m becoming somewhat cynical too.

Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597804576194563288753204.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2080398/Facebook-cited-THIRD-divorces.html

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/12/italy-divorce-marriage-antonio-rosa

http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/pretty-little-liars/

http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/secret-life-american-teenager

http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/lying-game

Deep Thoughts: Human Consciousness

2012-01-03T09:47:00.005-07:00

Greetings, dear readers, and welcome to 2012. As many of us undertake the tradition of New Year’s resolutions and reflect back on our lives over the past year and contemplate our lives during the next 12 months I couldn’t help but be inspired to write an article about that very topic. No, I’m not talking about resolutions, I’m talking about contemplation, reflection, thought; I’m talking about consciousness.

As some of you may know already, I am a voracious reader. I read everything from Gamestop’s Game Informer Magazine to my subscription of Psychology Today to fictional novels by authors like George R. R. Martin, Tom Clancy, and dozens of others. But I also thoroughly enjoy non-fictional works such as Guns, Germs & Steel, and Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages, and How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Usually I’m reading two or three books at a time. I keep them in different places and I read different ones depending on where I’m at. Currently I’m reading A Storm of Swords, my ethics textbook, and a Time Magazine special, Your Brain: A User’s Guide.

This particular book, which is a mere 127 pages in length, has already provided many hours of thought provoking musings. The book is broken down into categories and each category contains a number of related articles. I typically enjoying reading one article at a time and then putting the book down and really contemplating the information for several days before reading the next one. One of the articles I read earlier dealt with the problem of consciousness. Or rather, to be more specific it dealt with two problems relating to consciousness. Neurologists, psychologists and other brain specialists refer to these questions as “the easy problem” and “the hard problem”, but don’t let their names fool you today these two questions would be better named “the hard problem” and “the impossible problem”. That’s not to say that they will never be solved, mind you, just that if we had to provide an answer today based on everything that know right this minute, it would be impossible to do.

So, before we begin about that part, let me explain some background information. The “easy problem” revolves around the biological processes within the brain itself; the “how” and the “where” of brain activity. Over the last few decades there have been astounding medical advancements that have been able to shed some light on this subject; CT Scans, MRI, DOT scans, f-MRI, PET scans, and the newer SPECT scans. These different technologies have allowed us to see inside our heads in a manner that would have been inconceivable 100 years ago, and considered implausible 50 years ago. Yet today not only can we literally map the surface of a specific person’s brain without cutting open their skull, we can also see which areas of the brain light up in different situations. Scientists can tell by a brain scan whether people are thinking about a person’s face, or a place that they’ve been. They can tell if they’re thinking about a bottle or a shoe. They can even tell if a person has specific mental illnesses. Some neurologists can even pick out the brains of serial killers randomly out of a pile of f-MRI scans. As a society we’re closer now to answering “the easy question” than we have ever been at any point in our history.

So far, during the last few decades, we’ve dispelled many myths along the way. The right and left half of the brain do not control “analysis” and “creativity” as we were once taught in school. We now know that these processes are controlled in different, equilateral parts throughout the brain. Some things, like spatial orientation or language, are found solely on one side or the other, but, studies show, this doesn’t always mean that they stay there. There have been many cases where a patient has suffered traumatic brain injury and specific parts of their functions have been lost because the portion of the brain controlling that behavior or process was destroyed. What happens in some cases is that these tasks are re-routed to other parts of the brain. The patient will, in some cases, regain a basic level of functioning as other parts of the brain take on these tasks. They may never be as good as they once were, but they are arguably better than nothing. Sometimes these "migrations" even occur naturally. In one case study neurologists studied the brain of Scott Flansburg, the so-called "human calculator". He can compute any mathematical equation faster than a calculator. He gets his super-human calculation speed from the fact that his mathematical processes aren't controlled by the same part of the brain that our methematical processes are calculated (the frontal cortex). In Scott's case, this process has migrated into his motor cortex. As such, the theory is that the part of his brain responsible for making quick-second reflexes has taken over his mathematical problem solving ability. Also, setting ethical and moral discussions aside for a moment, scientists have discovered that Alzheimer’s is caused by the degradation of brain tissue and that a direct injection of stem cells into the brain can correct and even reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Despite all of our successes in the medical sciences and our increased understanding of the brain there are still many questions with the “easy question” that elude scientists today. One of them is: which part of the brain controls consciousness? We are no closer to answering that question than we were a decade ago, although not for lack of trying. There are many more theories today than there were then, but theories without proof remain just that; a theory.

Modern science has even proven some neurologist’s worst nightmares to be true. Brain scans of patients who are in a comatose state often show that the brain hears and in processing the information that is being spoken around them, even though the body is unable to respond and remains in a vegetative state. Thus the term “brain dead” has quickly become outdated in it’s nomenclature and now only refers to a specific type of vegetative state. The question that they’ve been unable to answer now is: does the brain activity of the comatose person equate literal consciousness, or is it an automatic reflex of the brain?

Now, before we get into tackling the “hard question”, I invite you all to stop for a moment and watch this brief Youtube video. It’s about a boy named Ben Breedlove who wrote about his near-death experiences and captured that on film shortly before he succumbed to a fatal heart disease. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QePNEirk5H4

The message that Ben speaks of is profound; God’s love is eternal and it will save you when you die. This is a view that is shared by millions of people all around the world of many different faiths. However, it is a view that many neuroscientists disbelieve. According to science, consciousness is a mechanical process that happens within the brain. It’s not a magical, unexplainable force. Many scientists claim that the “white light” experienced by so many is actually a by-product of a process called binocular rivalry and occurs when the flow of blood to your eyes and your brain has stopped. Scientists also believe that the ethereal images that are seen as you die are also due to a lack of blood. They argue that everything is white because as your body begins to shut down your brain begins to lose processing power and is unable to envision vast details and colors, etc; which is why many survivors of near death experiences tell very similar stories. Is it because there truly is a God and he works in mysterious ways as the churches would have you believe, or is it because our brains function the same way by design and when it shuts down it experiences the same or similar processes because of its design?

Welcome to the “hard question”. The hard question centers around the question of whether or not our consciousness is an unexplainable gift, or merely the by-product of our own neural processing. There was one particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987: The Measure of a Man) in which this topic is discussed. The episode centers on a self-conscious robot who is part of the crew, Lt. Cmdr. Data. Starfleet deems that since he is not human he is property of Starfleet and therefore they have the right to forcibly dismantle him for study (especially since he is the only one in existence in the known universe). However, Cpt. Picard argues on Data’s behalf saying that just because he doesn’t have a brain made up of brain tissue and he’s not made of any blood or skin doesn’t mean that he’s not alive and that he has his own free will and choice. This is the very question at the center of the “hard problem”; is our consciousness the byproduct of our invisible, immeasurable soul, or is our consciousness the byproduct of naturally occurring physiological processes?

The “hard problem” doesn’t just stop there either, it gets far more complex. For example; what if our conscious thought is a byproduct of biological processes? And what if “happiness” is the result of specific parts of the brain getting signals from different body parts saying that everything is working normally? Now, what if you hacked into a person’s brain and began replacing the actual signals from their nervous system with fake computer generated signals. And suppose that this made the person happy or sad depending on what changed. Would this mean that the person’s consciousness could be reprogrammed as well? And do we think that we’re happy simply because we’re supposed to think that we’re happy due to some biological process, or do we actually have a choice over it?

Now, what I wonder is this: we learn from biology that similar genes yield similar creatures. The Punnett square provides a fairly good example of this. Within a given familial group you will find a plethora of different traits that are the same or similar; shape of the ears or nose, color of the eyes or hair, overall height or even some general genetic defects. Now, if this is true, and we know that it is, then certainly this same logic should hold true to brain size, shape and structure as well. Consequently, if human consciousness is in fact a byproduct of biological or physiological processes, then why don’t more people of the same family have the same personality? Why is there such a difference in personality? Even in so-called identical twins, personalities can be starkly contrasted. I don’t profess to know the answer to this one, and men and women much smarter than I have already tried to answer this one. However, that doesn’t keep me from pondering this mystery. How is it, exactly, that we are aware? And, once our bodies die are our conscious thoughts lost forever?

Sources:

Time, Inc (2009) Your Brain: A User’s Guide. Time Home Entertainment Group. ASIN: B002PSKCLM

Kenneth M. Jaffe, Nayak Lincoln Polissar, Gayle C. Fay, Shiquan Liao, Recovery trends over three years following pediatric traumatic brain injury, Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Volume 76, Issue 1, January 1995, Pages 17-26, ISSN 0003-9993, 10.1016/S0003-9993(95)80037-9.

William M. Jenkins, Michael M. Merzenich, Chapter 21 Reorganization of neocortical representations after brain injury: a neurophysiological model of the bases of recovery from stroke, In: F.J. Seil, E. Herbert and B.M. Carlson, Editor(s), Progress in Brain Research, Elsevier, 1987, Volume 71, Pages 249-266, ISSN 0079-6123, ISBN 9780444808141, 10.1016/S0079-6123(08)61829-4.

http://www.headinjury.com/rehabcognitive.html

http://www.getrealresults.com/tenmyths.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720190726.htm

M.P Mattson, Emerging neuroprotective strategies for Alzheimer's disease: dietary restriction, telomerase activation, and stem cell therapy, Experimental Gerontology, Volume 35, Issue 4, 1 July 2000, Pages 489-502, ISSN 0531-5565, 10.1016/S0531-5565(00)00115-7.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090701160557.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29561-2004Jun9.html

PJ Whitehouse, DL Price, RG Struble, AW Clark, JT Coyle and MR Delon (Mar 5, 1982) Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia: loss of neurons in the basal forebrain. Journal of Science. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. 215 no. 4537 pp. 1237-1239 DOI: 10.1126/science.7058341

http://art113.blogspot.com/2008/02/easy-and-hard-questions-about.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

http://www.iep.utm.edu/consciou/

http://consc.net/online

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html (ß this article is particular good at breaking down the “easy” and “hard” problems into everyday language).

Free Advice

2011-12-23T22:11:00.005-07:00

Okay, so this particular posting is part informational, and part rant. If you can stand it through the rant part there may be some useful information for you.

As some of you may know, my ex -girlfriend and I have a son together. For privacy’s sake I’m not going to mention either of their names, but I will tell you that we have split custody of him. Although our parenting time is split 50/50 right down the middle final educational and medical decision making authority rests with me. This particular part of my custody situation has been an ongoing battle for the last three years and I finally got tired of it, so I started asking around to get some legal advice as what I had been doing up until this point had obviously been ineffective.

I should probably pause here for a moment and explain some background. I’m not wealthy. Hell, I’m not even “well off”. I make enough money to cover my expenses and, on occasion see a movie or go out to dinner and that’s about it. Hiring a lawyer to represent me isn’t exactly feasible. It’s something that would take a lot of thought, consideration, planning, and shopping around to find the right lawyer for the right price. It is due to this situation that I decided to poke around the internet and try to find some answers. I can usually get the gist of the situation if I understand what the rules and limitations are. So, I decided to ask for some free advice. There are many websites out there where you can ask for free advice. There are sites like www.askthedoctor.com if you have medical questions, there’s www.lawyers.com, www.askalawyer.com, www.avvo.com and others. I saw one particular page on Google called www.freeadvice.com and the caption said “post your legal question on ask a lawyer to receive a reply from an attorney or a legal professional”. It sounded like just what I needed. But, I forgot the old adage about “free advice”. And no, this didn’t cost me any money, but it sure cost me some time.

Somehow, I’m not even sure how, instead of posting my question to an attorney on this site my question was posted to a community forum. I asked my question and I had the first few responses within hours. The responses that I was receiving however started to raise flags as they were highly unprofessional. The nature of my question was how do I go about getting my son’s mother stop her shenanigans and obey the court order and stop authorizing medical treatments without my knowledge or consent. The first reply was logical and polite; the response was asking me to state, word for word, what the custody agreement said. But the next few comments were something along the lines of “oh, this is going to be good” and “I’m so glad I woke up for this”. At this point I was thinking to myself, “wow, pretty rude for professional lawyers to talk like this”, but I could really use the advice so I pressed on with my conversation.

The main premise of the conversation centered on the fact that my son’s mother has been secretly taking him to a counselor’s office for the last 4 months without saying a word about it to me. Now, some background here; we had been taking him to a psychologist earlier in the year and after a few months he improved and we agreed that a counselor was no longer needed. And yet, about a month later, she started taking him on her own without saying a thing about it. The people offering advice didn’t ask about that. His mother told the first therapist that she wanted him seen because he did things like bang his head on the floor, acts all wild and crazy and she can’t control him, and just generally runs amok. He doesn’t exhibit this behavior at my house. His teacher at school says that he sometimes has trouble with talking out of turn and staying in his seat, but I’m really not all that surprised by that. But I digress, once I found out that his mother has been secretly taking him to these appointments I wrote a letter to the clinic telling them to cease and desist all treatment. They ignored my letter and continued treatment anyway. This is not the first time that my son’s mother has pulled this stunt either. In 2009 she did exactly the same thing with the exact same clinic. I met with the counselor then, we chatted and then I told them to stop seeing my child. When I posted that I was trying to get the clinic to stop seeing my child and I wrote a cease and desist letter to the clinic I got some very interesting responses. One user said that it seemed “fishy” that I would want to stop treatment. Another user asked who told me that a cease and desist letter would work and that I should “hit that person with a clue by four”.

Now, at this point, I think that I should pause for a moment and explain further. I work in the Behavioral Health field. I work for one of the largest Behavioral Health organizations in the state of Arizona. We employ more than 800 people spread out across over 75 offices throughout the state. When we get a cease and desist letter, we’re compelled by law to follow it. I explained all of this to the forum. They tried telling me that my company was operating illegally and that they didn’t have the right to do that; that we didn’t understand the law. Really? Well, that’s good to know. I’m sure that the lawyers who sit on Board of Directors probably aren’t aware of that. Thanks for clarifying, I’ll be sure to point that out to them. I was beginning to get a little flustered at this point because I know how the situation works here. We’ve been served with these letters countless times before at work. If we have truly been operating illegally as this user suggested then surely the parents involved would have sued us or enacted legal action against us by now. I tried to brush the comment off and stay focused on my main question: what do I do now? What’s the best next step?

Instead of just answering my question, the people on this forum felt compelled to judge and condemn me. They don’t understand the entire four year case history. They don’t understand the personalities or motivations of the parents involved in this case. All they understood is that the mother was taking my son to a counselor and I wanted to stop it. Gosh darn it I’m such an evil person who is overreacting. One person even went to so far as to say that I’m going to “cause more harm than the mother will by interfering”. Excuse me? What makes you qualified to make that statement? How much do you know about me or the mother? How much do you know about her general level of medical ineptitude? How much do you know about me for that matter? How much do you know about my son and his medical needs? I was offended that someone who knew very little about the overall case would make such a statement.

Rather than just answering the legal matter at hand the users continued to judge my decision to try to cancel treatment. I tried informing them that the mother is feeding incorrect information to the counselors and therapists and that their decisions and information is only as good as what they are being told. To demonstrate this point let’s do an exercise. Suppose that you are a clinician. A child comes in to see you brought in by his mother. The mother says that the child is unruly. The child displays unruly behavior in your office. The mother states that the child is unruly in school. The mother also alleges that the father has ADHD so the child is at a high risk for being predisposed to having it. As a professional therapist, what is the most logical conclusion that you can draw on based on these facts and these facts alone? That the child probably has ADHD, right? Of course you would; that’s what the data is suggesting. However, now consider these new factors; the child does not display unruly behavior while in the father’s care (and other family members besides just the father and step-mother can vouch for that, so it’s not an issue of confirmation bias), the father does not have ADHD as the mother suggests, but instead suffered from emotional abuse (whose symptoms can mirror those of bi-polar and ADHD) and he produce medical records from two different psychologists that corroborate this story. Now, understanding that one of the classic signs of ADHD is that it will manifest itself across the board in all situations and environments if it is truly present what conclusions would you draw? Are you as likely to be convinced that the child has ADHD? Or could it be possible that the child’s unruly behavior is the result of poor parenting skills? Further, take into consideration that the child has an atypical environmental situation going back and forth between two households every week, and that he was ripped out of one school and placed into another part way through the school year, and that he attended Kindergarten without any formal “preschool” experience. Is it really unusual that his behavior in school is atypical? Would you still automatically assume that his atypical behavior is caused by a neurobiological condition, or could it be the result of his environment?

Instead of focusing on my legal question at hand I was forced to get into a long drawn out debate with these “experts” about the reasons behind my decision and defend myself to them. I had to explain to them that I was qualified and knowledgeable enough to make the decision that I felt was in my child’s best interests. But, from here, the argument turned into one about ADHD and its prospective treatments. The comments then became about how much harm I’ll be doing by pulling my child out of therapy. I’m curious how they know so much about my child’s particular therapeutic needs when they’ve never met him. One user said, and I quote “There's absolutely no reason to think that the professional is incompetent or has made an incorrect diagnosis, nor that he will prescribe unnecessary medication. OP (Original Poster) really needs to chill out a bit. He's going to do more harm with his frantic action than Mom is doing.” Excuse me? It’s obvious that this idiot doesn’t understand a thing about behavioral health nor how diagnoses are formulated. It’s not as objective as regular medicine, and there is, admittedly, some guesswork involved. With regular medicine you can see that a person’s arm is broken and treat it. With behavioral health things are not quite so black and white. You can identify a record a patient’s objective behavior, such as “patient is exhibiting signs of trichotillomania”, however, you can only guess at what’s causing that behavior. Are they hallucinating? Do they have a chemical imbalance? Do they suffer from anxiety, or paranoia? Etc. There are far more “behind the scenes” factors that come into play here. And, for those of you who do not know, up until the age of 12 a child’s brain is still in a high state of development. Introducing a brain in that state to a Class II narcotic can have permanent damaging effects. For instance, one side effect of Ritalin and Dextroamphetamine, especially when used in young children, is that it can lead the patient to develop adult-onset insomnia in a high number of cases. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, I’m wrong about this too, apparently.

One of the advantages of working in Behavioral Health like I do is that I get to take all kinds of training classes on all kinds of topics. I’ve taken no less than three different training courses on different kinds of abuse, including a free course offered through the CDC on preventing abuse. I’ve also taken several different courses on psychopharmacology, apothecary, medications, and common behavioral conditions, including specific courses all about ADHD. Another advantage is that I have a few friends who are doctors in the field. One of them is an MD who prescribes medications to behavioral health patients, and another is dual-doctorate holder who has a PhD and an EdD. This is where I get my information from; professionals who work in the field. I’m also on speaking terms and have easy access to about a dozen different doctors who work in my building. And you know what they all say? They all pretty much agree with each other; meds for ADHD children under 12 is a bad idea.

So, after trying to explain all of this to these people they begin attacking my credibility. One of them says “oh, okay, so you’ve taken a few classes and you think you know something about psychology. Good for you.” After I explained that I was a fully licensed Behavioral Health Technician he says “oh, so you cannot diagnose illnesses or write up treatment plans, thanks for clarifying that.” At this point it became obvious that this person had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. The Behavioral Health Technicians, or BHTs as they’re called in the field, are the work horses of the behavioral health field. They do write service plans (they’re not called treatment plans in behavioral health), they read and interpret the Service Plans, they dole out medications, the write progress notes, they perform all kinds of similar functions. Service Plans are required to be signed off by a higher-level professional, but the BHTs are well-versed in how they work, what they mean, and how to write them. But, they’re also well-qualified in medication reactions, side effects, uses and the identification of common behavioral issues and conditions.

It was at this point that I seriously began to question some of the advice that I had been given. I asked them, pointedly, how much experience and training they’ve had with behavioral health. I also asked them what makes them qualified to give advice on behavioral health issues when their specialty is law. The answers to these questions were shocking. One user said that “legal experience is more important than psychological training”. Really? That’s good to know. If I ever think that I’m having a breakdown I’ll run to my lawyer’s office, because, according to this guy, lawyers are better at psychological issues due to their vast legal experience. Several of the users posted very vague, evasive answers like “you might be surprised” and “enough to know what I’m talking about”. But the kicker was the person who clarified everything; “at what point did anyone on here say that their specialty was law?” I checked their profiles most of them don’t have their professions listed. One person said “What do you think my job is???” and under his interests he listed “smacking stupid people”. One of them was a business professional and another was a stay at home mom. And they’re giving out legal advice? It was at this point I realized this whole thing had been an exercise in futility and deleted the thread.

My friend Lee pointed out the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which explains the situation I just experienced perfectly. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a paradoxical situation in which people either overestimate or underestimate themselves in relation to a particular area of expertise (the IQ counter-part for this is called the Downing Effect). But, without fail the D-K effect is quite fascinating and fairly reliable. Generally the more incompetent a person is the more they tend to overestimate their own skill, fail to recognize the skill of others, and fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. The scholars behind this theory won the Nobel Prize for their work in 2000. I’ve certainly seen this in action firsthand before too, although I didn’t know what to call it. I’ve talked to people who lacked the capacity to understand what I was talking about so, naturally, I was the stupid one because I wasn’t making any sense to them.

Another interesting thing that I ran into is that a few of these people, several of them in fact, exhibited clear signs of narcissist behavior. For example, in his “about me” box one user has just one quote from another user; “It is our unanimous opinion that you are damn right and it should be obvious to any moron that your (ex) (SO’s ex) (boss) (landlord) (local police) should be immediately (jailed) (fired) (reprimanded) (arrested) (demoted) (shot) (evicted). In fact, you are so astonishingly correct in this matter, it will not surprise us one bit if you are offered a generous settlement, because, by golly, that’s just how it should be.” Not only is this on this person’s profile page, it’s also on their signature…for every single post. They took a compliment about one particular situation and adapted it to mean that they were right about everything all of the time. There’s no worse thing you could do for a narcissist.

The moral of this whole story is this; just because the advice is free doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good. Be sure that your sources are credible before acting on any advice that you’ve been given. As an example; I did get in a touch with a bona-fide lawyer and asked the same question. She says that my cease and desist order should be enough and that medical practitioners are required to comply with that. After all, that’s the whole point of denoting which one parent has the right to decide. If your child was on life support and was never going to wake up and one parent said pull the plug and the other said no, how do you know who to listen to? The court order tells you. But, according to these crackpots on this page, it’s just all meaningless drivel.

I hope that you’ve learned as much from this experience as I did and that you take “free advice” with a grain of salt and always get to know where the information is coming from.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism

Santa: To Tell or Not To Tell

2011-12-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

Today’s entry is by special request. One of my friends and readers wrote in requesting that I do an article about the ethical implications involved with lying to your children, even if it is about Santa Claus. I could tell where he stood on the issue by the tone of his message; he thinks that telling children that the big, red-man exists is bad and creates an ethical dilemma. After all, you are lying to children, so how do you get them to trust you after that? I have been telling my own kids about Santa, but I do see his point. It made me wonder if there were any studies conducted on the subject and what the “court of public opinion” believes. And, with any luck, we’ll be able to put that debate at the family get-togethers to rest.

I will start off by saying that after reading his message it induced a moment of nostalgia. I vividly remembered when I first learned the truth. It was second grade. Like my friend, my 2^nd grade teacher felt that it was ethically reprehensible to lie for any reason. Because of her beliefs she informed our entire second grade class that there was no such thing as Santa Claus. To say that she had a classroom full of very upset little children would be an understatement. Interestingly, I remember being angry with my teacher for breaking “the spell” of Santa, and I remember wondering why my parents would tell me about Santa if he wasn’t real. Was it some joke that I wasn’t part of? What was the point? Despite the unfortunate manner in which I learned the truth I just came to accept that it was just something that adults did.

It is with these thoughts and experiences as a backdrop that I began my research. I wanted to keep an open mind about this topic and gather the information as objectively as possible. Human history is full of make-believe beings; leprechauns, fairies, gnomes, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and all manner of monsters and demons. There are Jedi and Sith lords, time-travelling robots, and even aliens from outer space. The most obvious and most common form of creating these lies is for entertainment purposes. They are used in story telling sometimes as a metaphor, or a symbol, or as an archetypal character to represent a particular type of person. The difference here is that in literature and movies these other stories are understood to be make believe right from the start. So, the question really becomes; is lying to your children about Santa harmful to their emotional well-being? Is it unethical?

Interestingly enough, the question of Santa came up in the ethics class that I am currently taking. There were essentially two schools of thought on this topic. The first group, a very small margin, felt that it was ethically improper to tell their children lies about Santa Claus. Of course, I should also add that this person’s reasoning was that “Jesus would be mad that you’re assisting your children in worshipping a false idol”. They seemed to have the ethical quandary of lying about Santa confused with a moral dilemma of whether hyping up Santa at Christmas constitutes worship.

The second group felt that it was okay to lie to your children about Santa. However, this group was also divided into two camps as well. Half of this group felt that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it whatsoever. They wrote things like “it encourages young children’s imaginations” and that it “served as a vessel for passing along traditions and values”. The other group, which I admittedly was part of, felt that it did constitute a breach of ethics in the strictest sense of the definition, but that the end justified the means. Sure, a lie is ethically improper, however in most cases ethics and morals are not resolute, concrete ideologies that are unyielding in principal. I’m willing to bet that I can pose several scenarios in which you would likely violate your own moral or ethical code in some way or another.

Having exhausted my search of materials in class relating to this topic, I turned my search to other resources. My first bid was to go to the all-knowing, all-powerful internet. While information gleaned off of the internet should always be taken with a grain of salt I do find it a good starting point for some of my other resources. In my search on the internet I Googled the phrase Santa Claus Ethics. The results of this search immediately convinced me that my friend is not alone in his view of Santa.

One interesting site that I found is a blog called Pea Soup. The blog itself is a huge site with dozens of contributors and focuses exclusively on ethics, philosophy and academia. While this particular entry by Heath White was rather short, it sparked an internet debate when it first appeared 2 years ago. Dozens upon dozens of further articles popped up all over the internet in response to White’s post, and dozens more popped up in response to those responses. White opposed the proliferation of the Santa Claus myth. He argues that it’s immoral (which it may be to him, but the question is whether or not it’s ethical, and yes, there is a difference). White argues that the Santa myth has, at least, three strikes against it.

1. It involves a lot of lying and deception practiced on credulous people.

2. It tends to foster greed in children and contributes to the notion that happiness equates to the material wealth that you possess.

3. By telling children that the gifts that Santa brings them are tied to their behavior it further undermines their personal growth. Especially since the gifts that a child receives are not the result of the child’s behavior, but rather are the result of the family’s socio-economic standing and parental temperament. This tends to breed moral complacency in well-off children and false feelings of moral inferiority in less well-off children.

One of the more prominent and immediate responses appeared on the blog Love of All Wisdom. The author here counter’s White’s points Vis-à-vis. The author here, Amod Lele, raises some interesting counter-points to White’s claims. He argues that White’s first point should be invalidated because it paints a bleak picture of humanity if children only know the truth and never pretend or make believe. He says “One can tell children stories they will understand, long before they understand the difference between myth and reality. Is this a lie? Perhaps, but one shudders before the implications of an account of truth so unflinching and demanding that it requires all children’s stories be clearly marked as false and fictional.” He further goes on to describe such an existence as cold. As a parent, I’ll admit that there are certain things that I’ve told my child that weren’t entirely true. For example; there’s some kind of chemical processing plant near our house. On the premises of this plant are two tall silver spires of pipe of different heights. They look to be some kind of giant pressure valves or boilers, or something of that nature. In truth, I have no idea what these things are. I’m not even sure what chemical is processed there. So, when my son asked me what they are I told him that I didn’t know. And then he told me that they were rocket ships. To this day they’re still rocket ships. He’s 5 and he can get a lot of concepts, but explaining that it’s some kind of equipment that has to do with pressurized processing of a chemical is not likely something that he’s going to understand at his age. So, I let it go until he’s older and can understand such concepts.

Lele’s agrees with White’s second point. He’s also indifferent on White’s third point as well. The one thing that he does admit is that in order for the Santa-Behavior myth to carry any real weight behind it parents would actually have to follow through on their threats on not give gifts to children who genuinely are naughty. However, as he points out, most parents lack the capacity for this or are so blinded by their love for their children that they overlook their transgressions and misdeeds.

Some argue that the Santa-behavior myth teaches children to be good by providing rewards for desired behavior, a-la B. F. Skinner. However, as any good psychologist will tell you, providing one gift annually based an abstract average of overall behavior is not consistent or frequent enough to have any lasting effect on a child’s long-term development. Some psychologists argue that one reward per week might be too long of a delay, particularly in very young children.

One thing that also seemed to come up in all of the discussions that I found was the concept or notion of tradition. Most people know that Santa Claus as we know him today has existed for quite a while. In my earlier post on some holiday myths I pointed out some of the different tales and traditions which make up the modern Santa. The question that is hotly debated here is “how do you separate out the traditions from the lies?”

Many people, myself included, are on the fence about it. It is technically a lie, yes, but it seems as though it’s a culturally accepted one and one that has good arguments from both sides of the issue. Many more people don’t even give the issue a second thought.

One interesting side-question as I press on. I did come across one blog where the author was writing about a response to a NY Times article. The commenter asked “if you’re a child and you figure out that there’s no such thing as Santa, is it unethical to continue to play along in the hopes of getting more presents?” An interesting question, to be sure. Certainly, that would support the argument that belief in Santa promotes greed. But, could they also not say something to their parents as a means of retaliating? ie: You lied to me that he existed in the first place, so I’m going to lie to you by saying that I still believe. Is that ethical for either party?

One blogger over at Philosophy, etc. argued that the proliferation of the Santa Claus myth isn’t really a lie because children are able to discern the difference. They cite a few cognitive psychologists who suggest that children know all along and they’re just playing the game with us. I vociferously disagree. Over time they may figure it out and elect to play along, however, if you are a small child and you are suddenly told that there is not a Santa after years of believing it can be quite a traumatic experience. And it’s not as though this is just a few harmless tales that are easy to disbelieve in, it’s a world-wide conspiracy. You have department stores telling your children that Santa is real, internet websites where you can video-chat with Santa, major newspapers writing stories about Santa’s exploits. I mean, if it’s in the news it has to be true, right? And let’s not forget the US Government helps perpetuate this myth. What I am talking about? The US Military’s NORAD tracks Santa website, of course. They even have a page called “Is Santa Real?” where they neither confirm nor deny his existence. However, they also provide a video and an interactive map that shows Santa’s progress across the globe on Christmas Eve. This isn’t just some small white lie that you tell your friends “no man, that shirt doesn’t make you look stupid”, this is a large, elaborate lie that goes on for weeks and months and years by almost everyone.

Another interesting blog that I read was called Philosophy Dad in which the author counters six points in favor of lying to your children about Santa. Here are the six points in favor of lying, according to Steven Law:

1. It makes them Happy

2. Educational Fibbing

3. Gives them something to believe in

4. Fun for adults

5. Useful for controlling behavior

6. Protects children from upsetting or damaging truths

Now, I could write out Philosophy Dad’s responses to these, but you can read them on his blog (that’s why I put the links below…) So, instead I’ll post my opinions on these points.

Yes, it does make children happy, at least in the short term. And, I think that this is the reason that most people convince themselves that this lie is okay. I know that’s certainly true in my case. The one thing that I would be willing to bet is never considered; does this belief in Santa make them happier at Christmas time than they would be if they didn’t believe?

Steven Law suggests that lying to them deliberately about things like this can teach them to become better “truth detectors”. He further goes on to quantify that “educational fibbing” isn’t quite lying, that it’s more of a practical joke. I disagree with him here. First, to me, educational fibbing would be a lie to explain a naturally made situation. For example: Where do babies come from? The storks bring them. That is an educational fib. It’s a lie that’s told to children about a real-life situation because they’re too young to understand the answer. However, in the case of Santa, he’s entirely fictitious. As such, telling lies about Santa does not, in my mind constitute an “educational fib”. And, as I pointed out a moment ago, this is one world-wide conspiracy that’s embedded into every facet of our culture. It’s way deeper than a joke…unless you count what the robots were doing to the humans in the movie the Matrix as a joke (completely replacing their reality with a made up one), in which case it’s hilarious. A “fun joke” would be the government taking your Social Security Money, and make you believe that there is a Social Security fund, only to tell you when you really need it that there’s no such thing as Social Security. That’s fun, and totally harmless right? No one gets angry over that. Why should kids be any different?

Yes, everyone needs something to believe in and hope is a powerful thing. However, why must all of these beliefs and hopes be extrinsic? Why can’t we teach children to believe in themselves for a change?

Okay, yes. It is fun for adults. However, just because it’s fun does that make it ethically correct? I’m sure that President Clinton found his rendezvous with Ms. Lewinski to be “fun”, but that certainly wasn’t ethical.

Number 5 just baffles me. It’s useful for controlling behavior? Granted, I’m not arguing that children shouldn’t behave themselves, we live in a civilized world. However, there are many tools for controlling their behavior. The most effective is: teach them to control their own behavior. It’s a novel concept, I know, it is years ahead of its time. All joking aside, this is like rationalizing that it’s okay to lie to people so that we can get them to act how we want them to act or to do what we want them to do. It’s a good thing the government hasn’t adopted that philosophy.

The last point seems the weakest to me. Sure, telling someone that there is a Santa and getting them to believe in it and then telling them later that there is no Santa is potentially damaging. However, not telling them about Santa at all isn’t damaging in any way. If they’ve never been told that there is a Santa, then the truth won’t be damaging at all because they’ve never been deceived. It's the deception that is damaging, the act of finding out that you've been betrayed, not the truth in and of itself.

Some blog-readers comment that it’s basically okay to lie to children since they don’t understand it anyway. If that’s the case my question back is “at what point do you tell them truth?” If you’ve been lying to them because they don’t understand and you can get away with it, do you automatically own-up as soon as they do understand, or do you keep the lie going?

Some other readers suggest that explaining the myth of Santa is fine, however, actively engaging in the Santa pretense is a different matter altogether. Another reader points out that a child psychologist says that it’s a rite of passage for children to learn the truth about Santa after believing in him. His argument is that this helps children understand that the world can be a place full of lies and misinformation and that they shouldn’t take everything at face value. It introduces them to the concept of the lie in the first place. While I see his point, I’m not entirely convinced that this is the most effective way of accomplishing that task.

One angry reader on Pea Soup wrote “Are you kidding me?? Santa is just a fun part of Christmas. No, he is not the essence of Christmas. That would be Jesus Christ as we celebrate His coming as the true reason of Christmas.” He goes on to say that the author is on the wrong soapbox and that they should be preaching against TV and Radio. But I digress, this is news to me. I had always thought that the “true meaning of Christmas” was for the Roman Catholic Church to make an official holiday coincide with the pagan Winter Solstice festival so that it was easier to convert them. Weird. Also, to this person I would pose this question; if the essence of Christmas is about Christ, then why do many Christmas traditions pre-date Christianity? And what about non-Christians who celebrate Christmas? To say that the responses to these articles are varied from the sane and polite to the downright rude and facetious is a bit of an understatement. For example; one reader responded by saying that we should just ban all fictional works of all types. Clearly, he is missing the point entirely.

As I read through these things I am reminded of a topic for a future discussion, but one that I’ll touch on here. Is it right or ethical for us as adults to force our worldview and our beliefs onto our children because we think it’s in their best interests? There are some adults that I know that absolutely will not believe certain things no matter how much evidence that you throw at them. And they will get literally upset with you if you shatter some of their other illusions (such the fact that humans are genetically descended from common ancestors with apes). What if kids are the same way? What if they really want to believe and we rob them of that? Is that just as much of a disservice to their well-being as lying and then telling the truth later?

I tried researching actual bona fide research journals to see what the “experts” had to say on the matter. There were some arguments that pointed out that parents who act out the roles of Santa have parallels to fetishism, ambivalence and narcissism. There was also an article that used the term “Santa Claus” in reference to make-believe political bills whose concepts are so unrealistic that they will never work. The one thing that I did not find was any kind of empirical evidence to support this debate one way or the other. There are absolutely no studies that offer up concrete proof that this is or isn’t healthy for our children. For now, this debate seems destined to remain in the realm of the theoretical.

Note: There are quite a lot of interesting responses both for and against this on the various blogs that I posted below. If this is one that interests you then I encourage you to read through them.

References:

Grand Canyon University: Philosophy 305 – Ethical Thinking in the Liberal Arts. Module 2. Prof. Scott Douglas.

http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2009/12/the-ethics-of-santa.html

http://loveofallwisdom.com/2009/12/reflections-on-the-ethics-of-santa/

http://www.portfolio-remix.com/avalon_moore/2011/12/the-questionable-ethics-of-santa-claus.html

http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2009/12/santa_claus_and_ethics.php

http://www.philosophyetc.net/2007/05/is-santa-lie.html

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/real.html

http://philosophydad.blogspot.com/2008/11/santa-is-tool.html

http://philosophydad.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-lying.html

Cluley, Robert (2011) The organization of Santa: fetishism, ambivalence and narcissism. The Journal of Organization. Nov, 18, 2011. Vol 18. No. 6 Pgs. 779-794. Retrieved from Sage Online.

Education, Legislation & Insanity

2011-12-16T14:41:00.006-07:00

I was planning on writing about this particular topic last week however I put it off a few times as I wanted to gather some more information before writing it out. I think I’m ready now, or at least I’ve delayed long enough.

There are some issues that occur that make we wonder if all logic and reason has completely dissipated from world leaving a sad, empty shell of humanity bereft of common sense and intellectually bankrupt. It’s a bleak outlook, I know. One of those issues is sexual harassment in the schools. Now, before you get all belligerent and self-righteous let me be clear; I’m not advocating that honest-to-goodness sexual harassment cases be ignored simply because they’re in a school setting. However, what I am suggesting is that some of social, political and legislative views on what constitutes and defines sexual harassment may need some serious revision.

Presently, I work as an Information Systems Analyst in a Human Resources department while I finish my college education. In my role here and at several previous jobs I’ve had to sit through countless hours of sexual harassment trainings and seminars. From what I know about the subject and I what I see reported on the news, there is a sad absence of reason and a proliferation of preposterous litigation surrounding this issue in our public schools.

To understand my frustration, allow me to bring to your attention a few noteworthy news articles from recent years.

As anyone who’s been around little kids for any length of time will tell you, little kids like to hug. They’re little huggers. That’s what they do. Not all kids, mind you, but enough. My own son is certainly no exception to this. Being a parent and being around small children regularly I can’t possibly imagine any child doing this with deliberate intent to harm someone physically or emotionally, and yet, there are those who would have you believe exactly that.

The first story that I remember really bringing this topic into the forefront of my consciousness was in December of 2006, December 8th to be exact. The story happened in Hagerstown, Maryland. A 5 year old Kindergartener was suspended from school. He was suspended on the grounds that committed sexual harassment against a fellow classmate at Lincolnshire Elementary. The nature of his crime, in case you were wondering, was that he pinched a female classmate on the buttocks. School officials said “fits the state Department of Education's definition of sexual harassment as "unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors and/or other inappropriate verbal, written or physical conduct of a sexual nature directed toward others."” The boy’s father was outraged at the school saying that his son was unaware of the seriousness of this allegation and only knew it as playing around.

Surely this was an isolated incident, right? A momentary lapse of judgment on the part of the administration? No, sadly, it wasn’t. Las Vegas, Texas. Four days later… December 12, 2006. A 4 year old boy attending La Vega Primary School was sentenced into in-house suspension. This student is a pre-kindergarten student. What did he do to earn himself in-house suspension? According to the school, he committed sexual harassment. Allegedly he inappropriately rubbed his face into the bosom of a teacher’s aide.

Two years later another incident; 2008, Greer, Greenville County, South Carolina. A six year old child was sent home with allegations of sexual harassment because he told his teacher that one of his follow students liked looking at her behind. Mind you, the student who’s being accused of this wasn’t looking, he was ratting out the looker. Maybe the boy’s classmate had good taste, maybe the teacher sat on some tape, or had a hole in her pants, or maybe the informant was mistaken about what he thought was happening. Whatever the story was, the boy was suspended for sexual harassment because he insinuated that a classmate would look at their teacher like that.

But the insanity doesn’t stop there. Four days later it happened again. Apr 8, 2008. The Washington Post ran another story about sexual harassment. The alleged abuser in this case was another 6 year old boy. This boy (whose alleged crime actually transpired in the preceding November) was that he smacked a fellow classmate’s bottom. The girl told the teacher who took him to the principal and they wrote him up with “Sexual Touching Against A Student, Offensive” and put it in his permanent file. And then, as if to drive the message home, they called the police.

Fast forward to Feb 12, 2010. In 2006 a 6 year old boy from Brockton, MA was suspended for Sexual harassment against another student. The family sued. The case was finally settled in court four years later. The ruling? After paying out more than $50,000 in legal fees the court ordered the city to pay out $160,000 in damages to the boy and $20,000 in damages to the parents. They also had to pay the boy’s attorney $60,000 for his legal fees.

While this kind of rampant accusatory behavior is amplified in schools, it is not entirely an element found solely within public schools. Just a few short weeks ago, Nov 25, a news story broke about a family that was suing a 6-year old boy for first degree sexual assault. The basis of their allegations centers around the fact that this boy was “playing doctor” with their 5-year old girl. Curiously, the girls brother, who was also playing doctor with them is not being cited or charged with anything even though he is the same age and committed the same acts. Developmental Psychologists are in an uproar over this case in particular as they cite that playing doctor is a normal part of the exploratory developmental stage of the human psyche. They say that it often makes parents feel uncomfortable to know that their children are comparing privates with one another, but it’s how children learn what is different and the same between other people. They further go on to say that “so long as all of the parties are participating willingly, there isn’t any harm in this”.

Even more outrageous, On December 5th there were two separate and distinct cases of “sexual harassment” charged against children. First, on December 5^th, a first grader was charged with sexual harassment after he kicked a bully in the groin (again, another topic for a separate post). Here’s a summary of what happened. The 7-year old boarded the bus. The bully approached and demanded his gloves. The first grader refused. The bully began to choke him, so in response, the first grader kicked the bully in groin. The first grader was sentenced to suspension on grounds of sexual harassment. The bully was not cited or charged with anything.

Elsewhere in the country that very same day another first grader was suspended for sexual harassment for calling his teacher “cute”. The school’s administration claimed the language violated the sexual harassment policy of the district. After an intense deluge of national media coverage the school district quickly performed an investigation and found that “no sexual harassment had occurred” and the following day the principal resigned over the incident.

I could have produced many more examples, but I felt that these were sufficient in number and nature to demonstrate my point. If you don’t believe me try Googling “sexual harassment” and “kindergartner” together. The craze isn’t just with very young elementary student’s either. There are many cases of sexual harassment or sexual abuse charges that may or may not be justified against older children (ages 6-17) as well. Some are outlined here.

And sexual harassment claims also exist in the college campuses as well. But we would expect that given the types of activities that sometimes happen at college. But even at the college level some of these claims are unreasonable, such as a claim filed against Western Nevada College because she had to write an expose on her masturbation routine and draw an illustrated interpretation of her orgasm. Why is this a little unreasonable? Because the class was “Human Sexuality”, and it was an elective course that she willingly signed up for. And it’s not as though this is some young, naive college student either, this particular student is 60 years old.

So where did the system go wrong? As far as I’ve been able to discover, it seems as though the sexual harassment craze went haywire in the early 1990’s. By the late 1990’s this sexual harassment push was in a frenzied stage. In fact, it was so popular and out of control that the Comedy Central adult cartoon series, South Park, poked fun at the issue (and the results of the issue) with their portrayal of the character, Petey the Sexual Harassment Panda in 1999.

A whole series of new policies and directives were passed and aimed at schools turning them into a zero-tolerance zone for many things (more on that later too), sexual harassment among them. The entire system has been spiraling out of control since then.

Ted Feinberg, assistant director of the National Association of School Psychologists in Bethesda, said he had never come across a case of sexual harassment in elementary school in his three decades in the schools. To label somebody a sexual harasser at 6 “doesn't make sense to me”, he said. “Kids can be exploratory in behavior. They can mimic what they see on TV.'"

Proponents of the new policies will cite any number of studies like this one or this one or this one or this one or this one. One study says 1/3 of middle and high school students feel that they’ve been sexually harassed. Others say that “48% of female high school students feel that they’ve been sexually harassed”. These are obvious concerns and these statistics are what is driving the blind push to enact a proliferation of new policies to stem the flow of insanity. However, I can’t help but wonder if they’re looking at this the right way.

As a result of these new policies, the Virginia Department of Education reported that 255 elementary students were suspended in 2007 for offensive sexual touching, or 'improper physical contact against a student.' In Maryland, 166 elementary school children were suspended during 2007 for sexual harassment, including three preschoolers, 16 kindergartners and 22 first-graders, according to the State Department of Education. 33.6% of all of their suspensions and allegations were aimed at children 7 years old or younger.

At least there are few champions of reason and logic. David Davis was the executive director of an Advocacy Center in Waco in 2006. He thinks that it’s absurd to charge children this small with sexual harassment allegations. He says assuming the boy has not had sexual encounters, or been inappropriately exposed to pornography, most four-year-olds are sexually innocent.

Another book, Promoting Social Justice for Young Children also heralds logic and reason as key elements when dealing with children and charging them with crimes of a sexual nature.

So what’s changed? Well, for one thing, with the intensity of sexual harassment awareness that’s been occurring in the last four decades our culture is more aware of sexual harassment as an issue than we have at any other point in our history. So, it’s not unreasonable to assume that higher number of cases of sexual harassment are being reported simply as a result of this awareness. Does that mean that we should allow it? Of course not. However, some reason has to be administered in the application and distribution of these policies.

Why is this such an issue? Well, for one thing, depending on the county or the state that this is happening in, many of these charges are a felony. In some states they are a Class B felony, in other states they are a Class 2 felony. In some of these cases state laws will require that, if convicted, these children will be registered on a sex offender watch list once they turn 18. This is completely ridiculous, in my opinion.

There’s an official guide to “sexual harassment” published for use by schools. This guide was written by the US Department of education (http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/shguide.pdf ). It’s rather long so I’ll spare all of the details, but I will quote page V of the preface. Under the “definition of sexual harassment” the guidebook states; “one commenter urged OCR to provide distinct definitions from criteria used to maintain private actions for monetary damages. We disagree.” They refuse to spell out and delineate exactly what constitutes harassment leaving it open to the interpretation of the individual schools. They cite a prior guidance in 1997 and a court case (Davis) that if “conduct of a sexual nature is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to limit a student’s ability to participate or benefit from the education program, or to or to create a hostile or abusive educational environment” it constitutes “sexual harassment”.

The problem with these laws is that even the EEOC and other federal government branches are vague about what constitutes sexual harassment and what doesn’t. However, most of us assume that “harassment” as a broad definition defines an action which has been repeated more than once. For example, going back to the first grader who called his teacher “cute”, that same behavior in the workplace would hardly constitute sexual harassment. If I walked down the hallway and said to one of my co-workers “you look very cute today”, that wouldn’t really constitute anything. However, if that statement made her uncomfortable and she said as much and I persisted in that behavior, then it clearly moves into the grounds of harassment.

The other serious issue that’s raising red flags for me is the complete and total breakdown of our judicial system. There is also a proliferation of court cases involving teachers or other faculty who have had sexual relations with their students. In some of these cases absolutely nothing happens to these teachers. For example, in 2002, 43-year old teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore was tried in a New Jersey court for sleeping with a 13-year old boy, a student who had just completed her 7^th grade class. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce A. Gaeta was assigned to the case. When delivering the sentence he said "I really don't see the harm that was done here, and certainly society doesn't need to be worried. I do not believe she is a sexual predator. It's just something between two people that clicked beyond the teacher-student relationship. Maybe it was a way for him, once this happened, to satisfy his sexual needs, people mature at different rates." The initial sentence was five years of probation with no jail time. Two months later after an appeals court heard the case her sentence was changed to 3 years in prison.

On the one hand, we have judges who are being extremely lenient with teachers who sleep with their students, but then on the other hand we have lawyers and school administrators who are charging students with sexual harassment? When did we cross into the Twilight Zone, exactly?

Many of the litigators claim that their charges against 1^st and 2^nd graders are completely justified as the law does not impose an age restriction or definition. In my mind this is a grave travesty; to charge a child with a crime like sexual harassment when they don’t even understand the concept of sex and are physically incapable of even having sex is completely absurd. But it doesn’t end there. To me, charging kindergartners and preschoolers with these crimes is the worst travesty that a school can do to their students. In many cases it is the first time that these kids have been to school. It’s the first time that they’ve been exposed to so many other kids their age; it’s their first exposure to a school environment, etc. We teach them how to add and subtract and say their shapes and colors, but we can’t teach them how to be a student? At what point is a child supposed to learn that these behaviors are wrong? Sure, some people will say that it’s the parent’s job to teach their children, and I’m not arguing that point. But, the parents aren’t always going to have their children in the same situational context as the teachers will. Ultimately, the teachers should be teaching the students what to do and how to act in school. To punish the students for things that they don’t even understand is a grave injustice.

I ask you, dear readers, to ponder this the next time that you hear about plans discussing “education reform”. Many, many people are clamoring for education reform, and rightly so. However, almost all of the new proposals focus solely on academic reform. None of the address issues like this, or the violence in the schools that I addressed earlier in the month. I vociferously believe that in order for any kind of educational reformation to be truly effective it has to be a holistic plan that addresses all of the failings of the system. To use an analogy, it doesn’t make sense to me to replace one tire when the other three are still flat.

Sources:

http://www.wbaltv.com/r/10573391/detail.html

http://www.kxxv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5785699&nav=menu509_3

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1997279/posts

http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_4_8_08.htm

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/sexual-harassment-at-school/

http://hummingbunny.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/teenage-sex/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460687,00.html

http://www.conductdisorders.com/forum/f6/elijah-suspended-kindergarten-again-sexual-harassment-21734/

http://www.enterprisenews.com/answerbook/brockton/x1328936162/Brockton-reaches-settlement-with-family-in-sexual-harassment-case

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/11/07/what_s_the_boundary_between_bullying_and_sexual_harassment_.html

http://www.losangelessexualharassmentlawyerblog.com/2011/11/survey-finds-that-half-of-stud.html

http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/128643/students_sexual_harassment_claim_is

http://jonathanturley.org/2011/11/25/family-sues-wisconsin-prosecutor-after-she-charges-6-year-old-boy-with-first-degree-sexual-assault-after-playing-doctor/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_doctor

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Five-Students-Sue-Howard-University-in-Sexual-Harassment-Case-134865623.html

http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/commentary/first-grader-kicks-bully-in-groin-and-gets-sexual-harassment-complaint

http://www.wsoctv.com/news/29927381/detail.html

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/12/07/2832859/gaston-principal-resigns-over.html

http://www.ndtv.com/article/cities/army-school-sex-scandal-has-justice-been-denied-155933

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Harassment_Panda

http://books.google.com/books?id=wn2-GlTTZucC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=sexual+harassment+kindergarten+2008&source=bl&ots=0Dm4lQY_gC&sig=Q4FsxLrzev-VmZvnyXiBCeNKdZo&hl=en&ei=lr3fTomJGYjhiALGrqjSCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CGgQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=sexual%20harassment%20kindergarten%202008&f=false

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49389

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2011/11/4-in-10-students-have-been-sexually-harassed.html

http://dese.mo.gov/schoollaw/freqaskques/studentsh.htm

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/shguide.pdf

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49389

Myths & Misinformation: Holiday Myths: True or False

2011-12-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been a few days between posts, dear readers. Things have been busy of late. I post-poned the post that I've been working on yet again in favor of something a little more light-hearted and fun. In this post I thought it would be fun to tackle some common Christmas and Winter myths. Enjoy!

Poinsettias are poisonous. Or, at least that’s what the word on the street is. I’ve been hearing this story from various people for at least the last decade. The truth of the matter is that poinsettias are not toxic. The Poison Control Center reported 22,793 calls about poinsettia poisoning in 2007. Of all of these cases no one died and 96% did not require hospitalization. Of those that were hospitalized none resulted in considerable poisoning. Let’s do some quick calculations here. In 2007 the US population was 302.2 Million people. But only 22,793 cases of poisoning were reported to poison control. . This is less than one-tenth of one percent of the population. (in fact, it’s 0.0075424% to be exact). Of the 22,793 people who reported being poisoned only 912 were hospitalized. That’s 0.0003018% of the total US population. To put this into perspective for you, 18.9 million people suffer from peanut allergies. That’s 6.25% of the population. Also, there is an average of 9,537 peanut-related hospitalizations each year. This means that peanuts are 10 times more poisonous than poinsettias, and that’s something to chew on.

Winter/Christmas is the highest rate of suicide throughout the year. This is another common mythos that I hear reverberated throughout conversations during this time of year. I’m not really sure where this particular myth originated, or when. Most people cite a number of different reasons why suicide rates would be higher during the winter; family dysfunction drives them over the edge, loneliness during the holidays, psychological depression brought about by the cold and dark season, etc. The actual statistical data collected about suicide rates suggests exactly the opposite; more suicides are likely to occur during the summer months. This data is further supported by the 2010 report from the US Army where they state that June was the month with the record number of suicides. Why would this be true? Psychology may hold the answer. First, understand that the majority of suicide victims who have been autopsied have been discovered to have some form of mental disorder (whether they knew about it or not was a different story). Also, drugs or alcohol are also found in the victim’s bodies almost 75% of the time. Taking that into consideration consider that although people may be depressed during the winter months, many people expect to be depressed. They tell themselves that it’s due to the stress of the season, or the stress of the weather, etc. They tell themselves that they’re just in a lull and that things will get better when it warms up. However, during the summer months, people don’t expect to be depressed. There’s no environmental or situational explanation for their depression and they feel that life won’t ever get better. Also, while we’re talking about suicide, most people who have committed suicide have talked about it prior to doing it. So, if you know of someone who has mentioned it before, please, take them seriously.

Christmas is literally the day Jesus was born. This is yet another very common holiday sentiment that goes around during this time of year, especially by Christians. Here’s the truth of the matter; the only “accurate” (taken with a grain of salt) account of Jesus’ birth is the account as explained in the Bible. But not even the Bible provides us with an exact month or date of his birth. Matthew 2: 4,000: Oh yes, thoust nearly forgotest, let it by known that thine Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, of Bethlehem, was born onto this world on this 25^th Day of December. …I’m sure that verse was probably cut out during editing. Here’s a couple of things to consider.

1. It’s widely-established that the shepherds flocked to the manger where Jesus was born. It’s also widely known that shepherds only take their flocks to field between spring and autumn. During the winter they are penned up as it is too cold to be outside. As such, it’d be kind of hard for the shepherds to see the star in the first place.

2. Also consider that Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a distance of some 70 miles. Although the common story is that she rode on a donkey, the Bible does not definitively state that. It’s also possible that she walked. Assuming that she did ride a donkey, they have an average walking speed of 9 mph, which would mean that she would have been exposed to freezing temperatures for somewhere around 8 hours.

3. The date December, 25^th was specifically chosen by the Roman Catholic Church. The winter Solstice (the shortest day of the year) takes place on December 21^st. On or around December 25^th many of the ancient Celts, Druids & Pagans would celebrate the return of the sun by having a feast. It was easier for the Church to convert them to Christianity if that day was already a “holy day” in the Church as well.

4. Let’s not forget about the Calendar Change. In 1582 the Pope Gregory XIII declared the discontinuation of the Julian Calendar and the adoption of the Gregorian calendar (named after himself and the calendar that we still use today). When they changed the calendar over the days were out of alignment by about 10 days. Thus, December 25^th on our calendar would have been December 15^th in Ancient times.

Santa Claus was invented by stores to help sell toys. Well, you’ll certainly get no argument from me that Christmas has become overly-commercialized. However, it’s my duty to report that this myth is false. Santa Claus was not invented by the major mega-corporations, nor was he invented by the toy companies. Most people know that one of Santa’s many aliases is St. Nicholas. A good portion of the population operates on the assumption that Santa is a modernized version of St. Nick and that his life and the life of Santa are largely the same. This is true, but only partly so. The St. Nicholas connection is certainly the oldest of the myriad of pieces that make up the Santa that we know and love. St. Nicholas lived in 280 AD, making the story of Santa one that has roots going back 1800 years. Some historians have linked the American version of Santa Klass first originated with Dutch settlers around the time of the Revolution. The Dutch would get together every December to honor Sinter Klaas. His read suit seems to have originated in the 1800’s with George Irving’s popularization of St. Nick as the Patron Saint of New York. Supposedly in that time period he wore a blue tri-corn hat with a red waistcoat. Santa was proliferated by stores in the mid-1800’s in an effort to boost sales, and also by the Salvation Army during this time as a fund-raising tool. Santa acquired his magical reindeer in 1822 by a poem authored by an episcopal minister. (The poem was called An account of a visit from St. Nicholas). Rudolph made his appearance in 1939 and was further popularized by Gene Autry who sang a song by Johnny Marks from 1949. However, as I mentioned earlier, St. Nick is not the only historical figure to have influenced Santa as we know him. Some sources indicate that Santa gets his long beard from the Norse God, Odin, who is also associated with the Yule Season. The same sources indicate that Santa’s now famous hat is also borrowed from Odin, as is the tradition of leaving carrots for Santa’s reindeer. ..only in Odin’s case it wasn’t reindeer, it was an 8 legged horse named Sleipinir. Scandinavian folklore has also left its mark. In 1840 an elf named “Tomte” began delivering yule gifts in Denmark. This elf soon made his way into houses in Norway, Sweden and Finland. It is from this Scandinavian influence that Santa is recognized as the “King of the Elves” and where he gets his army of elven helpers.

Sugar makes children hyper. Yep, this age-old saying is extremely difficult to debunk. I’ve already done one extensive article on this topic alone back on October (http://athenaeumelectronica.blogspot.com/2011/10/myths-misinformation.html) . However, I’ll say it again: Sugar does not lead to hyperactivity in Children. BBC reports that at least 12 randomized studies have shown that sugar has no effect on a child’s behavior. No, not even children with ADD/ADHD are affected. The studies all point to the parents believing that their children are hyperactive when there is no data to support it.

You should wear a hat because 90% of your body heat escapes from your head. How many times have we heard this, or something like this? (admittedly the percentages vary, but the message is the same). The truth is that it’s all a bunch of bologna. The myth apparently originated from a US Army Training Manual when some scientists misconducted a test about artic survival conditions and failed to take into account all of the different variables involved. This myth has since been debunked by modern science in pretty much every country from the US to India. Take a look at some of the sources for more info if you don’t believe me.

Holiday diets will help me lose weight/I need to diet to keep from gaining 5 pounds. We’ve all heard this one before, right? We’ll, here’s the dirt on this myth; the average American only gains around 1 lb. of weight between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it’s not the 5 pounds that we’ve been lead to believe. But dieting can keep that pound off, right? Well, not as much as you would think. Dieting during the holiday season means that you only gain ½ lb. instead of a full pound. It hardly seems worth it to me.

Merry Christmas! Happy Chanukah! Happy Holidays! And Bah Humbug to you all! (I think that covers everyone….)

As always, don’t just take my word for it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7789302.stm

http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2007/2007WorldPopulationDataSheet.aspx

http://www.peanutallergy.com/statistics-and-facts.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-15/us/army.suicides_1_suicide-prevention-soldiers-suicide-rate?_s=PM:US

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/2013085-overview

http://www.lovelongears.com/faq

http://www.christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar

http://www.abetterhope.com/hope/birthday.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/17/medicalresearch-humanbehaviour

http://blisstree.com/move/fact-or-fiction-most-body-heat-lost-through-the-head/

http://wildernessmedicinenewsletter.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/heat-loss-through-the-head-and-hypothermia/

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2839/do-we-lose-most-of-our-body-heat-through-our-heads

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2004-10-26/science/27169466_1_heat-sessler-head

http://healthnews.ediets.com/diet-weight-loss/5-holiday-weight-gain-myths.html

http://www.history.com/topics/santa-claus

http://www.lone-star.net/mall/main-areas/santafaq.htm

http://www.the-north-pole.com/history/

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/origin-of-santa/

Ethics, Morals, Faith & Happiness

2011-12-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

The class I'm taking right now is Philosophy 305 - Ethics in the Liberal Arts. It's an interesting class, and yet, at the same time I get the feeling that it's going to be a very long class as well. The questions that were posed this week

Do you agree with Plato that eudaimonia is a direct result of living ethically? Why or why not? Support your claims with logical reasoning, examples, and evidence.

First, a definition: Eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare; however, "human flourishing" has been proposed as a more accurate translation. In Aristotle's works, eudaimonia was used as a term for the highest human good, and so it is the aim of practical philosophy, including ethics and political philosophy, to consider (and also experience) what it really is, and how it can be achieved.

So, the question is: can humans be happy, flourish and achieve their best good through the direct result of living ethically? Why or why not?

Me: In this particular case, no, I disagree with Plato's claim that eudaimonia is the result of living ethically. I do think that living ethically plays a role in our overall happiness, however I think that it is only one of many different facets to our happiness. Maybe it's because I'm a psych major, but I also think that Maslow's hierarchy of needs playing into our overall happiness as well. I mean, I can live ethically all I want, but if I my basic human needs are not met, then I would still be unhappy. Of course, if I lied, cheated and stole my way into meeting my basic human needs, I would be unhappy also. This is sort of in line with a conversation I had with a colleague a few weeks ago. We were discussing the old adage "money doesn't buy happiness". It turns out, according to research data, that it does...at least up to $75,000/year. After that money can't buy happiness. I saw the point the researchers were making, but my friend didn't. So I posed a hypothetical question to him; suppose that you are a low-income family. You fit the legal criteria of "working poor". You are the sole income provider. After paying your bills you barely have any money left and are living paycheck to paycheck. You don’t have much sick time left at work and your boss gets pissed off when people take time off of work. Now, suppose that your car breaks down and your son gets sick. You don’t have enough money to fix the car and take your boy to the hospital. You don’t have any friends or family who can loan you the money. As a result, you have to make a choice; do you put the needs of the entire family first and fix the car so that you can keep your job which pays for the house, the food, etc, or do you put the needs of your son over those of the entire family and get him seen by a doctor and risk loosing your job? It's a Kobayashi Maru and definitely not an easy choice. No matter which answer you choose, you will undoubtedly be unhappy. This is a situation that a person with more money wouldn't even have to contemplate, and yet, as a working-poor person you're not doubt going to face sleepless nights. And then, of course, there's the option of engaging in illegal activities in order to acquire the necessary funds to do both, but then you're violating your ethics and are also unhappy. Tying this all back to the original question; I don't think that Plato was ever faced with situations like these. I think he's got part of the answer, but overall I think he's wrong.

Now, at this point I am the only person in the class who disagrees with Plato. Everyone else is saying "yep!", or "sure can!", etc. I'm paraphrasing there, but it's the same rhetoric over and over. As a result my question response, as usual, quickly becomes a hot topic.

Here are some of the responses that I got: Mr. J.R. wrote: "I don’t agree that money buys happiness. God provides all of the food and health that we need. Money buys stuff. Stuff does not equal happiness. I have been around people from all walks of life and it certainly seems that those who live simple lives are happier then the wealthy. I myself live in a low income family an I have never lost a night of sleep over it. We have many trials in this life but God has always carried us through."

Really? Here was my response to him: "Respectfully, I disagree. Here's why:

1. It's been scientifically proven that up to $75,000/year an increase in money does also increase your happiness. This is not an avocation that we should be greedy. Nor it is a statement that money is the end-all, be-all of happiness, but it is evidence that money does play a factor.

2. God obviously wants people to have money. Church tithes are often between 10% - 20%. If money did not play a factor into happiness, then why wouldn't church tithes be 100%?

3. God does not provide food or health or shelter, money does. I cannot pay my landlord with prayer. I cannot buy groceries with prayer. God may lead me to a job which provides me with adequate income, but God does not miraculously cause this "stuff" to materialize magically in my home. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe in God. But I also take my faith in a pragmatic approach. The Bible states that God helps those who help themselves. There's even the parable about making money grow in Matthew and in Luke.

In answering the hypothetical situation I posed earlier there are no right answers. No matter which choice you make you will be sad or stressed out. You will not be happy. Why are you unhappy? Because you don’t have the money to pay for both items. If you could afford to pay for both, then you wouldn't be unhappy. Hence, money does play a role in your overall happiness. But, money does not equal happiness. Money without faith will not bring you happiness. The "stuff" that money buys will not bring you happiness. There's more to it than that; happiness is a complex thing affected by many different facets of life."

J.R. said “Sir you have a very well thought out opinion but I believe that it is a misguided one. First of all the bible does not say that God helps those who help themselves. This is not at all a core theme found in the bible. It is actually quite the opposite, God helps those who cannot help themselves. The bible does say that we should work and work as if we are working for the Lord, but by no means is any of our faith put into how much money we make. We do have practical decisions to make regarding money and how we use it, but the concept of the more money we make the happier we are just is not true. There is no scientific proof that those who make 75 thousand are happier than those who don’t because there is no way to measure happiness. Money is simply a tool that we use to keep track of our assets. It was not always like this though. In ancient times, assets were measured by livestock and land. Everything is a gift. The fact that some have the ability to earn more then others is a gift from God. So the core principle here is that God is the initial provider not money. Thank you again for your opinion, I enjoy reading your posts.”

I replied with this: “I appreciate that you recognize that I've given my opinion some thought. I think that this is going to be a topic where we are going to have to agree to disagree. I can cite many examples from the bible where the message that God helps those who help themselves is the prevailing message. There is also scientific proof that those who make more money are happier; they've conducted studies and they've asked people exactly "on a scale from 1 to 10, how happy are you". Sure, there is a measure of subjectivity to the test, but it can still be measured.”

And then there was Mr. C. N.: "Hey Johnathan, In my opinion happiness comes from appreciating what you have. The reason why people are unhappy with there financial situation is because they are comparing it to what others have. I believe that money is a facture in a persons comfort, but people who live very modestly and small are sometimes the happiest. The world pressures you to think that you need the big house, the big car and the beautiful spouse to be happy. Jesus taught us to live simply. Remember, in his ministry, Jesus had no home or income. He lived in God's spirit. He was truly happy and He wants us to follow in His footsteps. There is nothing wrong with living comfortably, but it should not determined the happiness of an individual if they are at peace with God."

First, I don’t see how the hypothetical situation that I posed above has anything to do with comparing what I have to my neighbors. The basic principle of the argument is that you can't afford to care for your own family and either choice you make will lead to mental suffering or unhappiness. What does that have to do with the Jones'? Nevertheless, my response was thus: "I hope that you didn't get the implication that I was agreeing that people should lead large, extravagant lives, not at all. There's nothing wrong with living modestly. However, I also look at the world much more pragmatically than most. Sure, Jesus didn't have income or a house, but he also had the ability to grow or catch his own food, something that most of us can't do today. And he really didn't suffer from sickness or injury (until his crucifixion anyway). So, you have a person who doesn't have to pay for food (let's not forget about the miracles that he performed with the loaves and the fish and turning water into wine...) and someone who never gets sick and has the ability to miraculously heal those around him. Of course, Jesus would have very little need for money indeed. However, since I'm not Jesus, I'm not able to multiply food, I have to buy it instead. And I certainly can't heal my family, so I have to pay a doctor to do that. I can follow the teachings of Jesus and love my fellow man all day long (and I do), but that act alone does not solve the very real problems of making sure that my family is fed, or that they are healthy, etc. And to that end, money can lead to happiness insomuch that I rest my worried mind. After all, didn't Jesus end up donating the money that he came into contact with those less fortunate? Could you imagine all of the happiness and health that could be spread around the world if churches themselves would tone the opulence down a touch and instead focused on feeding the sick and hungry and poor? I'm sure money would make them quite happy, and healthy. And what about monetary donations to children's hospitals who help destitute children with cancer or other serious ailments? Money in and of itself is not bad, and I certainly don’t think that's what Jesus was saying (after all, the tithe is only 10%, so he must want you to keep some of it...). It's not that money is bad, it's that greed is bad. After all, doesn't the books of Matthew and Luke use a parable about increasing your profits in a positive way? (Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-27). In a pragmatic sense, peace with God is wonderful, and it will certainly help you achieve overall happiness, but it wont provide you with medicine, food or clothing."

And then there was Mrs. C. L. Who lit the powder-keg with one simple line: "How does one's faith play into this?"

I told her: "I think that faith would fall into the category of needs as described by Maslow. Faith provides people with a purpose, with hope. I also think that faith has a direct correlation into the particular morality that a person follows, and as such, the actions that they are permitted and not permitted to do. For example; Jews are not permitted to eat certain foods, and neither are Muslims as their faith prohibits it. Does this make them unhappier? Or does their faith counteract that?"

Bewilderingly she wrote back with this: "That was my point, one's faith (ethics are, of coarse, included in faith) is really the only true happiness. That is the happiness that Plato speaks about...happiness in every aspect of life, the good and the bad. Is that kind of happiness possible without God and obedience to Him?"

Which garnered this reply from me: "I don't see ethics as included in a person's faith. In my opinion faith controls a person morals while society dictates ethics. Ethics are decided in the court of law and the court of public opinion whereas morals are influenced by faith. I do not think that we were making the same point. If you got the impression that I was saying that a person's faith was all they needed to be happy then I must apologize as I don’t think I phrased my explanation the right way. The problem with the type of logic that you pose is that God leads you to happiness, so therefore God must be the only path to happiness. What about Buddhists? Are they unhappy? They don't believe in God. What about Wiccans? Or Zoroastrians? Or Muslims? There are many different religions with different beliefs. Is it necessary for them to believe in God in order to be happy, or is it simply that belief in something is enough?"

There was only 1 person in class who responded intelligently to my post. We'll call her RF. She asked "So then would you agree that achieving a state of eudaimonia would depend on what you need (individually) to feel happy? Would you also agree that the morality therein depends on a personal level of values, ethics, and standards?". A fair and intelligent question, finally! My response was "Yes, and yes. Absolutely. Some people would be perfectly happy being alone or having very few social interactions. However, other people would be miserable by this experience and would only be happy by lots of social interaction. Clearly, happiness and the path to happiness is unique and individualized. And yes, I think that each person has a different moral and ethical standard. Some people never steal, some people only steal in certain circumstances. Some people never lie, others lie to protect people, others lie because they think it's fun. I think that personal experience, family tradition and faith all play a role in shaping a person's moral views."

Now, all of this ties into the question that posed earlier in the week: Identify unique characteristics of moral/ethical principles. How are they different or how are they similar to principles found in law, etiquette, and religious commands?

One of my classmates had this to say: "Morals and ethics touch each of us on a common ground as human beings. Whereas principles found in law, etiquette and religious command vary from cultures, countries and people. Moral/ethical principles are what separate us from that of being animals"

To which I responded with this: "Having studied ethics and morality in the past I find it fascinating that so many people who have the same religion and the same nationality can have such a wildly different outlook on ethical or moral behavior. It makes me wonder what other intangible elements are at work there and whether we can ever truly understand what causes some people to have one set of morals and ethics and their brother or their sister to have a different set." This statement got two separate replies and two completely different schools of thought.

The original author wrote back with this: "I have to wonder if sometimes if the difference is in level of guilt, shame or embarrassment a person feels for violating a moral/ethical standard that makes personal ethics waver from person to person in the same pew. Or even beyond that the amount of conviction a person ALLOWS themselves to feel." And my reply was: "I agree, guilt definitely plays a role in the limit that our ethical and moral considerations are bound. However, I think that there are probably certain situations where most people would go against their ethical beliefs, especially if they were coerced or blackmailed. But, since I personally view ethics and morals and slightly different, the question would be will everyone violate their morals? For example; I think that most people would steal in order to save someone they loved from being tortured (ethics), but would people kill someone in order to save a loved one (morals)?" No response was given to my question.

The other response to my post was quite interesting indeed, for lack of a better word. Mr. J. R. again with this: "I guess the big question remains...Is there an objective moral law or are morals just a matter of opinion?"

I said: "It's been my experience that morality and theology go hand in hand. That being the case, there are almost certainly cases where morality will differ from culture to culture. As an example; today it is morally reprehensible in American culture to kill a child. However, in Ancient Greece the Spartans used to commit infanticide for children that they deemed "unworthy". The practice of infanticide still occurs in some parts of Asia where over-population is a serious issue. Here in the states we view it as an immoral act; in those countries they view it as an everyday part of life. Most Americans are self-righteous enough to say that, of course, our morality is right, and theirs is wrong. But who's to say for certain? We know how to do what's right because it's explained in the Bible. What about people who worship a different God? Are they right also? It's a slippery slope sometimes."

J.R.: "We call it abortion but it is the same thing. I think all people have one thing in common. That is the fact that for the most part we all adhere to some common moral principles. For example-it is wrong to kill and steal. Now sometimes people rationalize but just about all people agree on these core principles. The reason for this- is the existence of objective moral law, truth, and one law giver."

Me: "Well, I can certainly agree with the sentiment that infanticide and abortion can be classified as loosely the same concept. And I do think that you are correct about there being a common core set of moral codes, and interestingly I also agree that it's because there is one moral code giver. The questions I would pose back are these: 1. If the common moral code is not to take human life and to be kind to your fellow human, how do serial killers and mass murderers fit into this philosophy? Are they merely "defective" in some way? Or do they follow a different set of morals? 2. If everyone more or less has the same moral code and the reason for this is that there is one law giver (God), then would that suggest that underneath all of the ceremony many of the world's religions actually praise the same God? Or is there a different explanation?"

J.R: “Good questions. Serial killers are a product of a sick, sinful, and fallen world. Most serial killers were severely harmed as children which caused catastrophic psychological harm which is why they act the way that they do. This is why raising children the right way is absolutely crucial. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our decisions no matter how we were raised. As far as other religions go, a common misconception is that we are all worshiping the same God in a different way or refer to God by a different name. This is not true. All religions are fundamentally different. They differ in their theology, and in regards to sin, salvation, and the afterlife. There is only one God so we cant all be right about who this God is because all religions have a completely different opinion of who he is. The bible says that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and that nobody gets to the father except through him.”

Me: “Great conversation, Jeff. Two more questions: 1. If serial killers are the product of their environment as you propose, how do you explain the fact that all serial killers have a brain that is physically different from ours, so much so that it can be visibly detected by MRIs? 2. How do you know for certain that the other faiths are wrong? In the book of Genesis God destroyed the tower of Babel. He scattered mankind to the corners of the earth and confounded their languages. If God is omniscient surely he would have known that such an action would have resulted in the degeneration of Mankind into different sub-cultures with their own values and opinions. Surely he would have realized that a one-size fits all religion would no longer work for the world ad provided each religion with a suitable way to worship him. If God is as powerful and complex and religion posits him to be, then how we can we as mere mortals ever claim to truly understand him for certain?”

There was no further response.

But, this does open some interesting concepts to ponder. Can eudaimonia be achieved merely through ethics as Plato suggests? I say no. Eudaimonia was a concept first posed by Aristotle, not Plato. Aristotle takes virtue and its exercise to be the most important constituent in eudaimonia but does acknowledge the importance of external goods such as health, wealth, and beauty. By contrast, the Stoics make virtue necessary and sufficient for eudaimonia and thus deny the necessity of external goods. By this reasoning alone, eudaimonia is more than just a blind belief that living ethically will bring about happiness.

The second interesting concept is this: are ethics and morals truly the same and interchangeable as many would suggest? In my mind, no. There are many different types of ethics. There are personal ethics and there are business ethics. There are ethics for particular groups (usually called "codes of conduct). Every group, culture and society in the world has a set of ethical parameters that they follow. However, every person in the world also has a different and unique set of ethical codes as well. some people consider it ethically inappropriate to steal from the company they work for, however, they think that it's ethically acceptable to defraud a different company to get free things. To me, as I'm sure that you probably picked up from my responses, ethics are rules to which we adhere to help us navigate successfully through society and other interactions with our fellow humans. And people's ethical codes are wildly different. Morals are on a whole different level altogether. Morality is the set of codes by which you live to reconcile your own mind and your own consciousness. Typically, we feel at peace in our consciousness through the instruction of a supernatural deity (ie: God), however, even Atheists have a moral code. Morals tend to have a deeper meaning and significance, they are how you hold yourself accountable for your actions.

My response to the that second question reiterates this point: "In my experience moral and ethical decisions are choices and guidelines that are intensely personal. In legislative mandates the courts dictate how you should act or not act in a given situation. In etiquette, the "rule of the land" and the social expectations rule the day. With religious mandates the choices come from God (or at least on his behalf). But moral or ethical implications tend to be more vague, and far more personal. No one really sets these rules for you, they are yours to figure out on your own. And, often enough, these guidelines intersect and overlap the principles of law, religion, and etiquette. In many cases law, etiquette and religion dont always agree anyway, and yet your "moral compass" is supposed to help you navigate these discrepancies."

I find it interesting that so many people blindly say that you have to believe, not just in God, but in their God in order to be happy. Faith is enough, but faith isn't necessarily religious. The basic tenant of faith, any faith is the belief that we are something more than the sum of our parts.

At least my professor has some reason. He said “Good post - I heard that once and it was followed with "not even a million dollars could make you happy" to which I said "yeah, but it sure would be nice to try!"So if happiness in that sense isn't the right motivation, what is?”

I closed this week’s discussion with this final thought: Thanks Professor, I try to be very pragmatic in my approach to the world. I try to balance religion and science. I find it interesting that although Plato says that all you need is ethics, Aristotle says that wealth, health and ethics are all facets to achieving happiness.

In my own personal view I think that happiness is a combination of the following areas:

1. Following your own ethical and moral code.

2. A sense of purpose, and/or the feeling that you are wanted or appreciated.

3. having your basic physical needs met: (food, shelter, clothing, etc).

4. Having affectionate relationships (friends, spouse, etc).

5. A sense of legacy. (children, grandchildren, knowing that you will be remembered after you die).

6. Faith. This is not the same as religion, but it could be. It could be faith in God, or it could be faith that humanity is good and just, etc.

These things may not be important to other people, but those factors directly contribute to my own happiness.

I leave you, dear readers, with these closing thoughts: what things truly make you happy? Is your faith alone enough, or is happiness a complex state that encompasses many different parts of your life?

Problems with Public Education and Discipline

2011-11-30T12:52:00.002-07:00

In my pursuit studying educational psychology and I have studied the modern public school system at length. There is a lot of focus right now on grievous problems within the academics of the school system itself. However, there is one area that is consistently overlooked; the area of discipline. Sure, there are the occasional school shootings that occur. And when these events happen they receive widespread media coverage across the nation. Fortunately, these events are rare. However, there is a whole different side to the discipline problem in our schools that is far more rampant and widespread than you might think.

We’ll talk about how deep the rabbit-hole goes in a minute, however, first let’s touch on some of the reasons why the issues exist. First; students are out of control. They feel entitled by today’s society. They, in many cases, have little or no structure at home, and little to no parental involvement. The parents also fail to properly discipline their children (many of whom could use a good spanking and a serious grounding in my opinion). The teachers aren’t blameless either. They are often so fed up with the child’s antics that they just snap. In some cases the teachers are just irresponsible and what starts out as horseplay gets out of hand…but teachers shouldn’t be engaging in horseplay with their students anyway.

So, how serious is this issue? First, at any point that you’re bored pop over to youtube and do a search for “student attacks teacher” or vice versa. There are a plethora of videos. Some these videos involve teachers who are physically wrestling with their students, apparently in fun. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqB8Ot4JmsE&feature=related or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGb5VUuqGh4&feature=related or this substitute teacher who is teaching his class self-defense moves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F2hijMwMrY. Now, I’m a big proponent of self-defense and I think it’s a vital skill that everyone should know, but there’s a time and place for everything and in the middle of Algebra is not the appropriate time or place for this kind of discussion. There are much more disturbing videos, like this one, where it’s unclear who started the altercation but the teacher and the student have physically gone to blows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ-M2DPr_ek&feature=related.

In many cases the children are clearly in the wrong. In one case reported on by MSNBC’s Today show from 2008 a Baltimore art teacher was assaulted by a student who invaded her “personal space”. The school administration says that ultimately the blame falls on the teacher for telling the student that she would defend herself after the student threatened to hit her. This same school, Lewis High School, was put on probation by Maryland school authorizes due to a high number of violent fights. In 2002 Baltimore school officials completely disbanded Northern High School due to its high violence level and created several smaller schools, including this one. Both of the smaller schools have been labeled as persistently dangerous which ultimately rendered the school district’s decision to break the violent school up as ineffective. This is not surprising to me. Simply moving a problem from one school to another doesn’t actually resolve the problem. So now instead of having one school with a violence issue, this district has two. But that’s exactly the type of thinking that’s plaguing our education system at the moment.

In another incident reported on ABC in 2009 in Colorado a teacher at Hinkley High School was beaten up by a student after the teacher took away the student’s cell phone. Apparently the teacher had already told the student to put away the cell phone once. After the student was caught with it a second time the teacher took it away and the student charged the teacher and physically assaulted her.

There was also another article, allegedly originally reported in the Eureka Reporter (although this website seems to be defunct now). This issue was reported in May of 2006. In this case a 15 or 16 year old student assaulted his teacher over a pot-leaf necklace. The student was arrested and charged with felony assault. Apparently the teacher confiscated the necklace after telling the student numerous times not to have it visible in the classroom.

Earlier this year a teacher in Plainville High School in Connecticut was assault by a student, according to NBC news. There was no comment on why the teacher was assaulted by the student, however the article did state that the student was arrested and charged with assault on an elderly person and 2^nd degree breach of peace.

And then another story from just a few days ago as reported in the Huffington Post; a 10 year old girl physically assaulted her teacher after the teacher confiscated her Halloween Candy. This incident occurred in Zellwood Elementary School in Florida. In this case the student was arrested and charged with felony battery. The local news asked the girl’s mother if she thought her daughter should have been arrested and the mother responded with “no, no, no. I was shocked, devastated.” In this particular case, according to the police report, the teacher had confiscated the candy and put in her desk. The student then retrieved the candy without asking and began throwing pieces at other students. The teacher confiscated the bag again, putting it on a shelf behind her desk. She told the student that the candy would be given to her mother at the end of the day. The student then began throwing items from the teacher’s desk, at which point the teacher called for assistance in having the girl removed. While waiting for the help to arrive the teacher tried to blockade access to the candy bag and was hit repeatedly by the student who threatened to kill the teacher and her family.

In another report from CBS out of Chicago this past February a teacher was attacked by a student after the teacher told the student that he could not go to the bathroom. The teacher told the student that they he would have detention if he stood up again. The student then ripped the detention paper out of the teacher’s hands and a scuffle ensued which result in the student pinning the teacher to the floor and punching and kicking him repeatedly. The 14 year old was released to his parents and the school declined to comment, but the police department stated that they would pressing charges of felony battery against the student at a later time.

There are literally dozens and dozens of similar stories, but for the sake I time I will omit summarizing all of them. But then there are the fights on the other side of the coin as well. Incidents where a teacher marked students down a test for saying “bless you” to a classmate who sneezed because it violated his no-talking rule. To me it seems a little harsh to punish students for extending a common courtesy. It’s not as though a simple “bless you” is going to catastrophically disrupt the concentration of the students, nor is it going to empower the students with the correct answers to the test questions.

There are also these teachers who, rather than taking the student’s cell phones, destroy them completely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYP50JyVxHI&feature=related and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLjgDYyR0m4&feature=related . This is potential legal issue for the school. Just because a student is in your classroom does not give you the right to destroy their belongings. There’s a word for that; vandalism. Or destruction of private property works too.

But, apparently violence by teachers against students is not just a problem in America as evidenced by this video of this teacher in Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYsHIsAZsbY&feature=related and this one in China: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x9nwAACBkY&feature=related and even this one from India: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Z6_klWMw0&feature=related. Some of the violence is senseless and is almost something that you would see in a cartoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7uWMlyGbSE&feature=related. And there are even the attempts at humor by students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmGPPVOWJz8&feature=related.

Some students deliberately antagonize the teachers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B4Yh2XDx_4&feature=related but other cases the teacher’s actions are inexplicable. The most disturbing report by far comes out of Fox Houston where a private school teacher assaults and beats a 6^th grade elementary school student. Apparently a mentally challenged student in the class was dancing and this student and several others thought it was funny. This touched a nerve with the teacher who beat the kid so hard that he had bruises for more than a week. The teacher was fired and taken into custody by the local sheriff’s office.

This situation, in my mind at least, plays no small role in why it is that teachers are rapidly leaving the education field. When I’ve had these discussions with others in the past some people have callously said that “teachers need to just suck it up and deal with it” or when I tried to argue that they weren’t getting paid enough to deal with these issues they said “if teachers aren’t teaching simply for the love of teaching children they need to find somewhere else to work”. To me this is an incredulous point of view. Sure, every teacher undoubtedly has a strong desire to teach children, but let’s be pragmatic about it for a moment. Teachers have lives and bills just the same as the rest of us. What if customers at your job were walking up and hitting you? Would you want a raise? Would you want to continue working there? I seriously doubt that there are many who would. I, for one, don’t blame the teachers for wanting to leave.

If you look into the epidemic of teachers leaving the field the statistics are alarming. 10% of all new teachers quit within the first year of employment. By the second year this number jumps to 40%. Within the first five years on the job half of all new teachers quit. No other job that I am aware of has such a high turnover rate; save maybe people who work in a telemarketing call center. But I digress, something is seriously wrong the system if those are the types of turnover rates that we are experiencing. Everyone is resolutely focused on bringing about academic reform, which I agree is a much-needed thing, however, none of the plans that I’ve seen yet have any elements incorporated into them addressing this issue.

In looking at the data here are some of the reasons why teachers quit. According to the National Center for School Statistics new teachers who worked with a mentor or teachers who made a starting salary of $40,000 annually were less likely to quit. This seems logical to me. With a mentor there is someone to guide you and show you the ropes, and with higher pay you’re more inclined to put with more headaches. (As a comparison, the average starting salary for a teacher in the Phoenix Metro area is $32,000).

Another study by the General Teaching Council was part of an effort to bring disillusioned teachers back into the profession. In their study the teachers cited unruly students, bureaucratic red tape, heavy work-loads and lack of family time as their main reasons for leaving. Almost 20% of these teachers cited both unruly pupils and lack of family time as their primary motivators for leaving the field. At to this a baby-boom in recent times and the education system is facing a crisis. Some education think-tanks estimate that schools need to recruit another 18,000 teachers over the next five years just to stem the tide. In my particular case I make more money with no degree training in the corporate world than I would as a teacher with a four year degree. That seems a little backwards to me.

A different study by the National Education Association cites the same reasons; low salary and poor working conditions. Today’s modern teachers are more educated than at any point in history. Almost 50% of all teachers now hold a Master’s Degree as compared to 23% of teachers in 1960. The teachers are citing that they are not receiving enough pay to pay back student loans and make a living as part of their reasons for leaving.

There are a number of people that feel that these are invalid reasons for people to quit, such as this blog here: http://www.soyouwanttoteach.com/why-do-teachers-quit-invalid-reasons . However, I’m with the teachers on this debate. Next time that guy wants to quit his job because his hours suck or his pay sucks or his customers are a jerk I’m tempted to tell him that he’s not allowed to feel that way and that those are not “valid” reasons for quitting. I don’t see where this guy gets off on passing judgment onto teachers in the first place, but I digress. While I disagree with the sentiment of his particular article, I do have to admit that he may have some valid points, which I’ll cover in a moment.

And there are certainly those who agree with the teachers as evidenced by these very similar political cartoons:

Whatever their reasons are, and whether we agree with their choices or not, the evidence is clear; teachers are leaving faster than ever before. The result of this behavior is adversely affecting our schools in the worst way. People are always talking about how much more funding the schools need. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education teachers quitting the field were costing the education system $4.9 billion each year in 2005. And the problem has only gotten worse since then. Instead of new money going to improving the system, it’s going to attrition costs.

The problem is clear enough, the question becomes; how do we go about fixing it? Paying teachers more money is one answer that has been proposed. In my opinion this solution will only be somewhat effective. I do think that teachers deserve more money however, providing a higher salary in and of itself is not going to magically resolve these issues.

Another suggested solution is to create alternate methods for teachers to become certified that do not require a bachelor’s degree and the associated cost. Again, this may help in some situations, but I do not think that this in and of itself will solve the issue. For those of you with good memory you may have noticed that my post started with classroom violence, and now we’re discussing teachers quitting. I believe these are interconnected problems and that the only real way to deal with these problems is to provide teachers with training courses. I can tell you first-hand how this will help. Until 2 months ago I was enrolled in the Secondary Education program at my college. There were a lot of requirements and a lot of practicum hours involved in getting the certification, including one full semester as a student teacher. However, there was little to no pragmatic training built into the program. And it’s not just my school it’s every program that I’ve looked at. There are no classes for teachers on how to avoid burnout (whereas in the behavioral health field that I currently work there are seminars each quarter). There are no classes on how to organize your classroom, manage your workload, or deal with unruly students. It’s very much a sink or swim attitude, and more and more teachers are sinking because they lack the skills and the training to resolve these conflicts.

Remember the blogger whom I disagreed with? This is the only point that he made that I concur with him on. Teachers, he suggests, are using the “too much workload” as simply another way of saying that they don’t have an effective system to handle the workload they’re expected to perform. To a point, I agree with this. However, when you factor in the impending teacher crisis, we’re facing a situation that is auto-catalytic; teachers are leaving because they have too much to do, which means that the remaining teachers have to do more, which causes them to leave, etc. New teachers who enter this cycle are not prepared and are shocked by the system. Even when working as the student intern you usually aren’t doing everything on your own, there is another experienced teacher helping you. But once you have your degree and your certification you’re just expected to magically know the missing pieces of information.

I stoutly believe that one thing that can benefit teachers greatly is a pragmatic conflict resolution training. Explain to teachers what they should and should not do. For example; putting tape over a student’s mouth is not an effective way of curbing the behavior of talking out of turn (which was another article I read about). Any basic psychology student can tell you that. And this proposed training goes for everyone who works in the school setting; nurses, school counselors, and even the police who visit the campus. I read an article about a 5-year old boy who was zip-tied and arrested, charged with felonious assault. The officer put his hands on the boy (a boy who had been diagnosed with mental disorders) and the boy responded by slapping the officer’s hand away. The officer then arrested him for assault. You don’t need to put your hands on the students to get them to cooperate.

My suggestion would be to increase the teacher’s pay, but also to stop giving them the summer off. They should use those summer months when school is out of session for implementing teacher skills development courses. Bring in business consultants who can teach the teachers who to streamline their processes and decrease their work load. Bring in counselors and psychologists who can teach them appropriate conflict resolution skills. Bring in legal professionals who can cover the ins and outs of the law, especially in dealing with harassment and abuse. The most ridiculous case I have heard of regarding this is a 5-year old kindergarten student who was expelled for “sexual harassment”. Excuse me? The child in this case pinched a fellow student on the butt, one time. Even in the corporate world a single act such as this hardly meets the definition of sexual harassment. And, in my opinion, you have to have some concept of what sex is in order for it to be considered sexual harassment. Granted, I’m not saying the boy should be allowed to go around pinching butts. However, this seems excessive on the part of the school. After all, isn’t our job as educators to teach students? Imagine if you were immediately arrested anythime you did something wrong, whether you knew it was wrong or not. You’d be scared to leave your house. This knee-jerk reaction in our schools has got to stop. It needs to be replaced with a level-headed system of handling these issues.

Now, keep in mind that I’m not advocating that teachers become fully trained behaviorists either. That would be absurd to expect them to do two full time jobs. And a “behavior manual” is also a ridiculous idea. As anyone who works in the behavioral field will tell you, while the behavior that a person is doing may be identical to that of another person, their reason for initiating that behavior may not be. For example; you have a student who’s talking in class. Great. You can’t use a cookie-cutter approach to dealing with this behavior. Maybe he’s talking because he’s bored and he’s under-stimulated. Maybe he’s talking because he’s overly kind and helping the student beside him. Maybe he’s talking because he doesn’t understand what’s going on but is too afraid to ask. Or, maybe he’s talking because he simply wants attention. There are numerous ways to curb this behavior, but if you took a blanket “one size fits all” approach to this then you would almost certainly make some situations better and other situations far worse. The teachers need to be able to leverage outside resources, such a school counselors or trained behavioral professionals who can observe the class either in person or via web-cam offsite and provide the teachers with specific techniques tailored to each child.

Whatever educational reforms lay ahead for the American Education System it seems clear that without provisions to include teacher training and skill development this problem will continue to get worse.

Sources:

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24047456/ns/today-today_people/t/teacher-petrified-after-being-attacked-student/

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/21298250/detail.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x5140388

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Student-Attacks-Teacher-at-Plainfield-High-Cops-133607783.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/ten-year-old-girl-attacks_n_1093201.html

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/02/26/student-attacks-teacher-in-valparaiso/

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/local/100510-video-of-teacher-beating-student-turned-over-to-sheriff's-office

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/10-percent-teachers-quit-first-125259538.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1034222/Four-new-teachers-quit-red-tape-unruly-pupils.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/08/AR2006050801344.html

http://www.soyouwanttoteach.com/why-do-teachers-quit-valid-reasons/

http://www.soyouwanttoteach.com/why-do-teachers-quit-invalid-reasons/

http://clclt.com/charlotte/why-new-teachers-quit/Content?oid=2351999

http://horizon.unc.edu/projects/issues/papers/Hampton.asp

http://www.all4ed.org/files/archive/publications/TeacherAttrition.pdf

http://www.republicmagazine.com/news/handcuffing-a-five-year-old-kindergarten-student-zip-tied-for-slapping-away-police-officers-hand.html

http://www.wbaltv.com/r/10573391/detail.html

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/zerotol/zero-tol.html

http://www.neoflux.com/content/horrible/

Choosing a Graduate School

2011-11-29T12:05:00.003-07:00

Now that I am in the home stretch for my undergraduate degree I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to which graduate school I would like to attend. The school that I am at currently does offer degrees in the field I wish to study, so I’ll consider them as a last resort, but I’m very fed up with the administration and support teams at the school, so it’s time to shop around. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to write about my methodology.

Choosing a graduate school is no simple task, and certainly not one that you should make impulsively. Graduate degrees can be lengthy programs and they can be quite expensive. You could easily buy a house (in some parts of the country) for what you will spend on schooling. And the last thing that you want is to end up with a degree that will be laughed at or disregarded by potential employers. So how does one go about choosing a school?

There are literally dozens and dozens of schools that offer Masters and Doctorate degrees. One of the first questions that I start with is “what is my schedule like?” Can I physically be present in a class on-campus? Or are the constraints of work and family life going to make that scenario an impossibility? Also, are you expecting any significant life-changes in the next few years? If you are moving, starting a new job, getting married or divorced, etc., then you may want to give consideration to your schooling. If you are in the job market it might not be a good idea to commit to a program that requires you to be present during the day, especially if you are trying to make a good impression on your new boss.

In this particular case, like so many millions of other working adults, I find that attending a ground campus is not a pragmatic choice at this point in my life. So, that narrows my search parameters to an online school. But there are still quite a few online schools to pick from. Now, searching and comparing all of those schools would not be a pragmatic way to spend your time, so you will need to narrow your search parameter even further. For me, this was by selecting only schools that offered a degree that specialized in my area of study. For example, there are quite literally dozens of schools that offer doctorate degrees in psychology, but there is only a handful that offers a specialized doctorate in educational psychology specifically. By focusing on my degree specialization this made my particular list of potential schools much more manageable.

So, for me the next step was probably one of the most obvious; Cost analysis. How much is it going to cost me for this degree? Pretty much everyone takes a look at the cost per credit hour, but for many graduate degrees there are other costs as well, especially at the doctoral level. There are often residencies, seminars, colloquia, or in some cases, certification testing that may be required. These costs are often not included in the tuition quote that you receive. Many of these require travel expenses on top of the fee to attend. Find out from the schools that you are interested in; how much they cost, where they are at, how many you are required to attend, and how often they occur. This will give you a much more realistic idea of cost as well preventing any unpleasant surprises.

Next, also consider the length of the program. How many credits do you need? What is the average time to complete the program? Knowing this information will give you a much more realistic sense of what you are in for in terms of length of time before your graduation.

Another thing to consider, start at the end and work backward. What I mean by that is this; plan to where you want to end up academically and work your where back to where you are now. For example; I plan on pursuing a doctorate of educational psychology. So, when deciding which grad school I wanted to attend I started by researching the doctoral programs. From there I knew which master’s level programs would feed into that doctoral program. In my particular case the school that I’m leaning towards also offers a specialized master’s degree in educational psychology as well. This can streamline your length of time in your graduate studies by keeping you from taking any unnecessary classes. Additionally if you can find a school that offers both the masters and the doctoral degree that you want, then it will make transitioning from one degree to another much easier.

By this point you still probably have about a half-dozen schools to consider. The next logical step is to check their accreditation. This is a very important step and will keep you from falling into the “degree mill” trap. Degree mills, for those of you who are not aware, operate much like the so-called “bucket-shops” in the genealogy field. With a degree mill you simply mail them a check, in some cases you’ll do some fictitious coursework and then a very short time later they mail you the degree that you want. The biggest problem with these degree mills are the fact that the degrees are not worth the paper that they are printed on. No employer will take them seriously and you will have wasted a considerable amount of money for the degree. If you find yourself saying “this seems too good to be true!” then it probably is.

So, how do you tell if a graduate school is accredited? First, check their website. See what institutions they list as being accredited by. Trust me, every college will have this. If you can’t find it on their web page, resort to Google. Type the school’s name and then accreditation. This will almost always pull up exactly what you are looking for. The trick here is not to take this information at face value. Some degree mills list accreditations that they do not actually have. Other degree mills are more ambitious and will make up a fake accreditation institution that sounds legitimate in order to trick you. If you want to know for sure if a school is accredited or not, check here: http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/Search.aspx If the school is not listed then I would strongly encourage you to look at another school, no matter how enticing they sound. After all, that’s kind of the point of a scam.

Okay, so now you have a half-dozen legitimate, accredited schools on your list. Another thing I like to do is take a look at the reviews. I typically start with www.ripoffreport.com . This is a website that people go to when they believe that they are being scammed by a business or institution. In my particular case, the school that I am currently going to had three dozen entries, all of them recent (which would explain why I’m fed up with them). The two graduate schools that I am considering, one of them had 12 entries, the other one had 4. This gives me an idea of the credibility of the school in the eyes of the public. But don’t stop there. If the school has a page on Facebook (or whatever social networking site you use) hit it up and ask people what they think of the school, good, bad, or otherwise. I also head over to http://www.studentsreview.com/ and see what other students have had to say. On this site students can rate the school in a number of areas. If you go here I strongly encourage you to go into the detailed reviews left by students for your degree level and take notes on some of the comments that people are complaining about. Jot these notes down and hold onto them.

After that, let’s see what the business world thinks of the schools. I like to evaluate where the school stands on certain rankings. There dozens of rankings out there, so pick carefully. One that is widely respected is the US News Ranking. The biggest drawback to this site is that they typically do not rank any of the “for-profit” colleges, so most of your online-based schools will not be listed by default. Another excellent source of information is the Online Education Database. (http://oedb.org) . This site is independently run and provides a fairly accurate portrayal of the overall school based on different areas. The “for-profit” colleges are listed and ranked on this site so it may give you a better idea of where they stack up when compared to each other. Follow that up with a trip over to the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/). This is a site run by the US Department of Education. This site does not rank the schools, but it does give you a general idea of some of the cold, hard facts about the school. You can see what the school’s acceptance rate is, what their graduation rate is, etc. You should note however that some of this data may be skewed. For example, if you are trying to see how many people graduate out of a specific program, this is not the place to do it. This just gives your overall information for the school as a whole.

With regards to business, also look into any professional organizations in the field that you are studying. Do they recommend any one school over the others? Do they have a list of schools that they endorse? etc. This can be a crucial piece of information for you.

One tip; something to avoid: do not search “top online colleges” or something like that in Google. You will get a plethora of sites that return matches, however these are decidedly less than useful. Some of these sites are false-fronts run by the parent corporations of the schools that they represent. Others are marketing sites that get paid by the schools each time a student fills out a “request more info” thing. They are not interested in providing you with actual, useful data, instead they just want to sell you the school. The Apollo Group is one large company that owns several online colleges including the University of Phoenix, Western International University and others. The Career Education Corporation is also a huge conglomerate company that operates more than 80 online schools. These companies both make use of sites like these to garner admissions for their schools.

Next, contact the Better Business Bureau of the state that these schools are headquartered in and see how many complaints have been filed against the school. After that, contact the accreditation agencies that the school is registered with and do the same. No school is perfect so expect to find some complaints. But, what you should be looking for is the overall number of claims as well as the time period of those claims. If they are recent it may be a sign that the school has some issues. If they are all older claims it’s possible that the school has resolved whatever issues were generating those claims in the first place.

Now, you’re probably down to two or three schools. Contact an enrollment advisor for each school, but do not give them your social security number! (Some over-zealous enrollment counselors will start signing you up and will being processing your FAFSA for their school. If you decide to go elsewhere it may create extra hoops to jump through in order to get this reversed). And certainly do not let them pressure you into enrolling right now. Ask them questions about the program, listen to their spiel. Bear this in mind however, 90% of these online schools are classified by the Department of Education as a “for-profit” school. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the degree is any less valid than a “public school” as the school is accredited, however it means that the school has one goal in mind: to make money. The bottom line for these schools is the bottom dollar, preferably your dollar. Understand that these “enrollment advisors” are also wearing another hat; “sales agent”. Their job is to convince you to enroll in their school. Remember that list of questions you jotted down earlier from Student Review? This is the perfect time to bring those up. Many of these sales reps are trained to go over specific information with you. When you start asking questions that they aren’t expecting it throws them off of their game and you are far more likely to get truthful answers (but still take them with a grain of salt nonetheless). Also be sure to ask about those extra costs, such as the seminars, residencies, etc. Ask about perks, too. One school that I talked to gives students a discount automatically if they are alumni of the school and taking additional classes or pursuing a higher degree.

Next, more and more colleges are offering a “free online course”. Take advantage of this. It’s usually some bullshit course about how to be good college student, or some other garbage, and they’ll usually apply it to your degree if you go to that school. But, it will give you an idea of how their online portal works, what bugs there may be, etc. Also, be sure to ask questions of the teacher in order to gauge teacher response time. Do this for each school that you are considering attending. It doesn’t cost you anything but time.

Finally, as a last step, go into the ProQuest database. If you are a current undergrad student you should have free access to this through your school library. If not, many public libraries have access to this. Select the Dissertations and Thesis Database. Find dissertations in your field of study (by entering the text into the “keyword search”) and then also filter those results to the specific school that you are interested in. Download some of these (they are .pdf files). Read through them. This will give you a very good idea of what is expected of you in order to complete your thesis or dissertation. And, since you searched for something that was relevant to your area of study, you may even be able to use that data in your own dissertation as well, so in essence you are killing two birds with one stone.

Is this a lot of work? Yes, of course. But it’s worth it in the end. Your choice of Graduate school will follow you for the rest of your life. If you are going to spend the time and money and energy to go that far with your education at least be sure that you are getting what you pay for and not ending up with a worthless degree. And, be sure that your school administration is competent enough to get you through the program without any academic or financial snafus. If you drop the program or get kicked out because you lose your funding the lenders will not care. You are still obligated to pay that loan pay (unless you can convince a judge to wipe it out in a bankruptcy. Despite popular misconception it is possible in theory it’s just extremely difficult to do). In the end you are the one who is responsible for your education. You will certainly have others to help you along the way, but if you rush into that kind of decision and it doesn’t turn out well, then ultimately the blame falls back on you for not doing your due diligence.

I hope that you have found this particular article useful. I felt compelled to write about this instead of my other topic I had planned because this was so fresh in my mind and I often get questions about this. There are also some other useful sites in the references as well. Enjoy!

Sources:

http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/InstAccrDetails.aspx?756e697469643d3130373034342663616d70757349643d30267264743d31312f32392f323031312031323a31393a313020504d

http://www.ripoffreport.com/

http://www.studentsreview.com/

http://www.usnews.com/rankings

http://oedb.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Education_Corporation

http://www.getreadyforcollege.org/gPg.cfm?pageID=879&1534-D83A_1933715A=bc8c40840e1dd385b77a538035994920763c444a

http://www.getreadyforcollege.org/gPg.cfm?pageID=907

http://www.chea.org/degreemills/frmStates.htm

Excess Commercialism II

2011-11-28T10:59:00.002-07:00

With Thanksgiving weekend just behind us I couldn’t help but take a moment to reflect on how driven by greed our society has become. Many years ago I used to work for Wal-Mart as an overnight stocker. I had the misfortune of working a Black Friday sale once, and that once was more than enough.

For those of you who are reading this internationally allow me to explain Black Friday; essentially it’s the one day of the year where every store has every item that you’ve ever wanted to buy marked down to ridiculously low prices for sale…the catch is that there is only about 50 or 100 of these items and there are thousands of shoppers who want them…thousands of shoppers who have completely devolved back into their most basic animal instincts.

When I worked that one Black Friday back in the early 2000’s, 2002 I believe it was, it was an experience I’ll never forget. There was pushing, there was shoving, There was a 78 year old woman ramming other shoppers with her cart when they wouldn’t get out of the way fast enough. And let’s not forget the fist fight that erupted in electronics. This was the year that the $50 Apex DVD player first entered the market and our store had 3,000 of them. Plenty to go around. And yet, a fist fight ensued. But, mind you, these customers were not fighting over whether or not they were going to get one, they were fighting over who was going to get them first.

Now, I love Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday (I blame my Irish roots for that). And I like Christmas Music (after Thanksgiving). But I hate, absolutely hate Christmas Shopping. While the Christmas season brings out some of the best traits of humanity; a giving spirit, kindness, charity, etc. , it tends to bring out the absolute worst in people as individuals. At any point during the Christmas season a trip to the local mall will include; people honking at each other and driving like jerks, cars jockeying for that last parking space, people being rude to one another, long lines and short patience, rude sales workers who have dealt with more than enough rude customers, and generally pushy people trying to make sure that they get everything on their list no matter the cost. Black Friday takes all of those things and amplifies it a million fold. It’s the one day of the year where people revert back to the psychology of primates and compassion or kindness toward fellow man is a foreign concept.

But again, don’t take my word for it. Let’s take a look at some of the headlines over the weekend:

The New York Times reported a story that happened in Los Angeles. A woman wanted a new X-Box to put under the Christmas tree. Right on. I like the X-Box console, it’s a very good choice. And at a half-price sale, who wouldn’t? But, when this particular woman felt that the crowd was threatening her grip on her X-Box how did she respond? With pepper spray, of course. In the end she sprayed about 20 people, including small children. And once all of the other customers were writhing in agony she went to the front, paid the clerk and went home. She did turn herself over to Police on Saturday, but they have not decided if they will be pressing charges. Also, according to one witness who talked to the press, this particular woman used this tactic over and over throughout the store to get “quick access” to her list of items.

But, that’s just one crazed lunatic, right? Sadly, no. In North Carolina another shopper, this one a former police officer himself, also released a puff of pepper spray into the crowd in order to “calm them down”. And elsewhere in California another shopper pepper sprayed other shoppers who tried to cut her in line. This woman injured 15 people with her pepper spraying and it is unknown if she will be facing charges.

And then, of course, there’s Kinston, North Carolina, where customers were fighting over cell phones that were marked down $165. An off-duty Kinston police officer ended up pepper spraying the fighting shoppers to subdue them.

Okay, so maybe you think that pepper spray is no big deal. I beg to differ. To get a good explanation of how it works and what you would go through, watch this video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHqK-hGuSMc

Now, keep in mind, these boys did this as part of a training exercise and they had professionals there to guide them through the process and to wash the pepper spray off. Now imagine that same thing happening in a closed store with no professionals and no water and little kids. It would be pretty unbearable. Imagine that you’re talking to your spouse and then suddenly you have a face full of pepper spray. That’s not my idea of a good time.

But, sadly, the pepper spray was just the beginning. In San Leandro, California a group of thieves thought that they would partake on the Black Friday deals by simply robbing the shoppers on their way out of the store with their wares. One man refused to give up his purchases so the thieves shot him for them. Fortunately, this man survived and even held down one of the thieves until police could apprehend him. Police are looking for the other thieves now and the man is recovering in the hospital.

The shootings didn’t end there either. A 55 year old woman, Tonia Robbins, was shot in the foot outside of a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Wal-Mart as thieves stole her purse. The suspects fled after Tonia’s sister, 58 year old Anne, pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and fired three warning shots into the air.

In Kissimmee, Florida two men had a fist fight over a jewelry sale. The police in this case were planning on just letting the men go with a warning, but one of the men resisted police when they tried to escort him out of the store so he was arrested instead.

And then there’s Rome, New York, where two men got into a fight just moments after the store opened. In this case the police didn’t have to get involved right away. The men beat each other up so badly that they were both hospitalized. And, remarkably, in a different part of the same store another fight erupted in a line of shoppers where the police arrested one man and charged him with disorderly conduct.

It’s not just the big cities that are effected either. Even in small towns like Fruitport Township, Michigan the violence and chaos ensues. Fruitport Township is a sleepy little town of 12,500 people. This is less than half the size of the sleepy little town that I reside in. And yet, this small town is not immune. In the local Wal-Mart a 15 year old girl was overcome by the crowd and pushed to the floor where she was trampled on by several people. She was hospitalized for her injuries. In the same town at the local mall an 86-year old woman was also pushed by the crowds in the Bed, Bath & Beyond. She fell and hit her head and was treated by paramedics at the scene. Authorities in the area say that no less than 8 stores received bomb threats on Friday.

When it comes to electronics customers get crazy. In Milford, Connecticut a shopper got into a fight with another customer. The shopper, Brian Shellnutt, allegedly punched the other shopper in the face over a video game at which point police tazered him and took him into custody.

And it seems that shoppers aren’t the only ones who are affected by the craze either, it also spills over onto those we expect to protect us. One of the more disturbing stories comes out of Buckeye, AZ, a suburb just south of my house. A 54-year old grandpa, Jared Allen Newman was assaulted by police and ended up with a broken face. Here’s what went down, according to eye witnesses on the scene; the crowd in electronics was getting crazy, and they knocked Jared’s grandson to the ground. Jared put a video game in the waist band of his pants so that he had both hands free to pick his grandson off the floor. The police interpreted this as intent to steal the game. He was being cuffed by one officer was cooperative and compliant. Then, out of nowhere, another officer tripped him and body-slammed him into the ground. His face broke his fall. He lost consciousness and began bleeding profusely from the nose. The particularly disturbing part of this story is one that’s often left out. Mr. Newman wasn’t just there for the game. He also had more than $600 of merchandise in his shopping cart. Why steal a $40 game when you’re about to pay for more than $600? The over-zealous police claim that Mr. Newman was resisting arrest and flailing his arms about screaming “I don’t want to go to jail!”. Of course not, neither would I, Mr. Newman. I could be wrong, but I’ve worked retail before, and I’ve worked in several different retail chains. It’s typically standard practice not to charge someone with shoplifting until they try to leave the store without paying for the item. This was even the case at the big-name electronics store that my ex-wife used to work for. Just because a customer puts something in their pocket or in their waistband doesn’t mean that they are going to steal it. They have to show intent to steal; by making for the exit. They could have pulled it out of their pocket and paid at the register, or they could have pulled it out of their pocket and set it down anywhere in the store prior to leaving the property. It’s not shoplifting if the item doesn’t leave the property. In this case, as a result of the police department’s over-zealous protection of the American Economy, not only did Mr. Newman receive a shattered face, but his grandson also got trampled anyway. As the local news reported; both are getting a personalized set of bloody towels for Christmas this year. If you watch the video of the aftermath (which is graphic due to the large amount of blood and can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIg1GemU99Y ) one bystander asks police “why did you have to throw him down so hard?” The worst part about it, once the police injured him they didn’t even know how to administer first aid for the wounds that they caused and a bystander with some medical training came forward to tend to the man. At least in this one example the crowd seemed to unite against the police and defend Mr. Newman, who was still arrested and charged with shoplifting and resisting arrest. To me, it just sounds like a lame excuse by the police department to cover up their own misconduct.

One article that makes my point perfectly, is also one of the saddest. 61 year old Walter Vance was shopping at Target in Logan County, West Virginia. He had a history of heart problems. He became ill while shopping for Christmas decorations for his store. He collapsed onto the ground and the rest of the shoppers ignored him and continued on with their shopping. When Walter was in their way they simply walked around him, or just simply stepped over him. Ultimately a nurse happened upon him and called him an ambulance, but he passed away shortly after arriving at the hospital. Walter’s co-workers asked reporters “Where is the good Samaritan side of people? How could you not notice that someone was in trouble? I just don’t understand if people didn’t help what their reason was, other than greed because of a good sale.”

I have to ask myself “is it really worth it?” I don’t think so; the extra stress, tension, the pushing and the shoving and the violence. Not to mention waiting around in line for hours and hours. I have better, more important things to do with my time. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like this crazed mentality will come to an end any time soon either, especially when typically respected sites like MSN Money are urging people to “plan their Black Friday assault”. In light of all of the violence that surrounds that day I can’t help but wonder if that’s really the best choice of headlines.

It may be just my perception of things, but it seems as though Thanksgiving has lost all real meaning anymore. It seems as though it is just there to serve as a reminder for when Black Friday happens. And the Christmas Spirit? Well, that’s just summed up by three little words. Peace on Earth? No. Very Merry Christmas? No. Goodwill to men? No. In these days it’s “Cold Hard Cash”. Christmas is becoming less and less about kindness and charity, peace or goodwill and more and more about how much money you can save and how many people you can trample or maim in the process.

Sources:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/on-black-friday-pepper-spray-carried-the-day/

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2011/11/woman-pepper-sprays-shoppers-at-l-a-walmart/

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/26/9035999-report-shoppers-unfazed-as-man-dies- at-target

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/11/black-friday-wal-mart-san-leandro-shooting.html

http://www.fruitporttownship-mi.gov/visitors/25-the-township/20-our-story.html

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/muskegon_county/girl-stepped-on-in-black-friday-rush

http://www.amny.com/urbanite-1.812039/roundup-violence-pepper-spray-abound-on-this-year-s-black-friday-1.3349983

http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/112620111

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/story/2011-11-25/black-friday-walmart/51399030/1

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/FindDealsOnline/PlanYourBlackFridayAssault.aspx

The Duality of Skinner

2011-11-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

In my Personality Psychology class this past week I had to write a book review. For my particular book I chose an early work of the famous psychologist B. F. Skinner, who is a noted behavioral psychologist in particular. In my work in the Behavioral Health field many of many colleagues refer to Skinner with a love-hate attitude and I never understood why…until I read one of his books. In my mind Skinner comes across as equal part genius and madman.

The particular work I read that lead me to this conclusion was originally published in 1971 and is entitled Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Upon completion of that book I was definitely left with mixed feelings about Skinner. On the one hand I had a new found respect for him, and on the other hand I found him to be completely absurd at times.

The thing that made me respect Skinner and appreciate his keen insight was laid out in the first chapter of the book. He basically points out that all of the major problems that humanity faces in the world today are caused by humans and human behavior. He suggests that biological and/or technological means alone are not enough to correct these issues. If we want to correct the problems of the world we need to alter our behavior. To me, this seems rather brilliant. I mean, if your dog takes a crap on your rug you don’t invent technology to clean it up, you train the dog to crap outside. Problem solved. Why should humanity’s problems be any different? If we can avoid the problems altogether by altering our behavior, then certainly this seems like the wiser, simpler, more cost-efficient option. In the last chapter of the book he also talks about how, despite our in-depth knowledge of everything else in the world around us, the human brain and human behavior is one subject about which we know relatively little by comparison.

But then there’s the entire middle section of the book. I’ll spare you the ludicrous details and summarize for you. Skinner believes in a principal called determinism. In this part of the book he outlines a concept not too dissimilar to the “divine right” notion that medieval monarchs used to solidify their claim to power. He asserts that the actions of people are pre-determined and beyond their control. He states that it is folly to reward people for their actions, since they didn’t have any choice in them anyway. He also says that punishing people for their actions is folly for the same reason. I cannot believe in this philosophy for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.

One thing that I found particularly interesting was that at points Skinner uses circular reasoning to support his claims. He suggests that ideas are not the cause of behavior, and then in the very next breath blames the “freedom literature” for people believing that they have a choice in their actions and the subsequent behaviors that follow as a result. But if choice and free will are only illusions, then certainly the existence of “freedom literature” would have no bearing on whether people develop behaviors that try to assert free will because we don’t have control over our behavior anyway, right? Also, as an alternative to punishment Skinner proposes that people should be rewarded for good behavior instead of being penalized for bad behavior as it is a more effective method for behavior modification. Excuse me? In the preceding chapters you just stated that people should not be rewarded for their behaviors because they can’t control them anyway. And it people truly cannot control their behavior, then attempting to modify their behavior is going to be beyond your control anyway.

In some ways I do buy into the determinism thing in some small measures. For example, I truly believe that I was put here on this earth to accomplish something. I have to believe that. Logically, I should not be alive. It’s a statistical impossibility, so it’s the only conclusion that I can draw. (More on that in a later posting). However, I do very much believe in the concept of Free Will.

If Free Will did not exist, then logic would dictate that, all things being equal, people who are put into the same situation would respond in the same fashion. However, history is full of examples where this is certainly not the case. Some slaves just gave up and accepted their fate, while others rose up and rebelled against their masters despite the obvious dangers. Some soldiers in conflict choose to run away from danger only interested in saving their own lives, while other soldiers will sacrifice their lives to protect the lives of their comrades. Some people remain addicted to drugs or alcohol while others make the decision to quit and do so successfully. I would wager that we have all been in situations at some point or another where we have been in conflict about what to decide and we have chosen to do one thing over another. The notion that everything that we do has already been predetermined and that we all are just mindless drones carrying out some set-in-stone-plan is one that the very fiber of my being tells me is wrong. That’s the very essence of humanity. We have the choice to make decisions about our future and our fates. And if we don’t like the future that stands before us we have the power and the ability to change it. I cannot believe that we are locked into a predetermined path and nothing we do or say will change that. Maybe I’m wrong about this. And no doubt some of you will disagree with me, and I respect that. But based on my personal experiences I cannot logically reconcile how it would be true. If we are predetermined to do something or act in a certain way, then I could theoretically just give up and stop doing everything and it wouldn’t matter because it would all end up the same anyway, so why bother trying? That part just doesn’t make sense to me and it flies in the face of every personal experience I’ve ever had. I have to believe that I have the power to make my own destiny, that we all do.

Opposite Extremes in American Thinking.

2011-11-09T10:46:00.002-07:00

I’m part of several different discussion groups about education and education reform. In one of the groups I saw an image today and it really irked me. It said, "In order to put students first, you have to put teachers last". To me, this is the exactly the sort of backwards thinking that has our education system in such a bad state in the first place.

More 700 people had “liked” this image of the button and thought it was great. In and amongst the comments associated with the button the vast majority of them said that they “love it” or that it’s “so true”, etc. Only a very small number of people actually disagreed with the statement. And even fewer understood my point.

I am just kind of flabbergasted that this kind of extremist thinking permeates our society so much. Why do teachers have to be last? Why can’t they be second? Or third? Why can’t they both be first? Teachers are a crucially important part of our education system.

In order to make good tea you need good water, in order to make a good plant you need a good seed, and in order to have a good education you need to have a good teacher. The fact of the matter is that almost half of new teachers are only staying in the field an average of 5 years before they leave to find other work.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not advocating that we just start pouring more and more money into the education system either, it’s obvious what we’re doing isn’t working and what need a complete change of strategy. However, that doesn’t mean that we need to put the teachers last in order to make the students first.

But, all of this opposition-based thinking seems to create more problems than it solves. Another classic example that comes to mind is the old adage “if you’re not with us, your against us”. It seems as though society in general is more interesting in creating divisions and laying blame than they are collaborating to develop effective solutions.

This is part of the reason that I’ve been registered as an independent voter for so many years. In the American Political System the popular conception is that either you are a Democrat, or you are a Republic. If you’re not either, then you’re a nut-job who’s just crazy. I agree with some of the Republican ideologies, but I also agree with some of the Democratic ideologies. I don’t’ agree with either party enough to align myself with either, but that’s exactly what our opposition-based thinking mandates that I should do. And with all of the recent Occupy protests that are currently on-going that share a similar mindset I can’t help but wonder when this “us vs. them”, black and white mentality will change.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/08/AR2006050801344.html
http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/almost-40-percent-metro-teachers-quit-within-first-five-years-job
http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-great-teachers-quit-and-how-we.html
http://www.nctaf.org/faqs/index.htm

Permanently Drawn Perceptions?

2011-11-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

This particular entry is part rant-part philosophical question. I had some other topics planned, but I wanted to write about this one and get it out of the way. At work, on Halloween, my company held their annual potluck and costume contest. Many of the departments decorated their whole area, and a few of them all dressed up in similar themes.

One particular costume struck a discord with me. Our Finance Department decorated their department as the “Trailer Park”. They turned their cubicle into a double-wide mobile home and the whole department dressed up as “trailer trash”. (For those foreign readers, “trailer trash” is the American slang term for people who generally low-income, low-education, and in poor-hygiene.)

The particular costume in question was the department director’s costume. Her “costume” consisted of a t-shirt and fake tattoo sleeves. Otherwise, she was in normal clothes. That kind of upset me. Do people still really think of tattoos as belonging to “trailer trash”? I have a tattoo. I’ll probably get more. Both of my siblings have tattoos. I remember my parents, my father especially, being upset that we got tattoos. Are people still so narrow-minded that they equate tattoos to the uneducated? A good number of my friends are tattooed; a few of them heavily tattooed. I’d say that I probably personally know about a good 3 dozen people with tattoos. These are people that I talk to or associate with on a regular basis. All of them are good people; smart, compassionate, hard-working, not at all what I would classify as “trailer trash”.

As I work in the HR department of my company I sometimes get to read different HR-related magazines. One in particular, Workforce Management, had an article relating to this very thing. The November, 2010 issue had a cover caption that asked “When your top candidate walks into the interview sporting tattoos or facial piercings, will you be ready?” Immediately I had to read the article. “Ready for what?” was the question that went through my mind. There’s nothing different to have to prepare for, it’s just a tattoo.

Despite the name of the article, it was actually quite good. The article pointed out that a lot of companies and organizations still have antiquated views on tattoos and piercings. The data presented in the article shows that tattoos and piercings are on the rise. Of people born between 1946-1964, 15% of them are tattooed. When you look at the “Gen X” generation (1965-1979), the number jumps to 32%. Of people born between 1980-2001 the number is 38%. That’s almost 4 out of every 10 people.

For piercings the amount of popularity has skyrocketed. For the “baby boomers” (’46-’64) only 1% are pierced. For the Gen X’ers the number is 9%. But for people born between ’80 –’01 (either called “Millennials” or “Generation Y” by some sources), the number jumps to 23%.

So who’s getting tattoos? Well, as I said, I have one, and I’ll probably have more. I’m professional trainer and an IT professional. I’m also studying educational psychology and pursuing 2 doctoral degrees. The article also cites a few other examples of prominent people; a New York attorney named Marisa Kakoulas, a Public Relations executive named Joe Chernov, and a New York physician named David Ores. All three of these professionals have tattoos that completely cover their arms (called “full sleeves” in the tattoo circles).

Justin Johnson is another tattooed professional. He is a marketing director of a company based out of Phoenix, Arizona. He’s started a national organization called the Alliance of Tattooed or Pierced Professionals (ATOPP) in a direct effort to change company policy and public perception about tattoos. And it’s not a moment too soon if you ask me. There are some employers (like the famous In ’n Out Burgers) that resolutely refuse to hire anyone with a tattoo. And there have been a lot of court cases over the last few years about tattoos and piercings. In one case the Red Robin restaurant chain paid out $150,000 in damages to settle a lawsuit. In the lawsuit a former employee claimed that he was fired because he had religious tattoos on his wrist and that the company was discriminating against him.

I guess the main question that I found myself thinking about was whether or not this one person’s association of tattoos with trailer trash was still a widespread thought process, or just her own personal narrow-mindedness. I really don’t care one way or the other; I’ll still get more ink once I decide what I want. But, the article does raise another interesting point; as most of the baby-boomers start retiring and the younger blood begins entering the workforce en-masse, it’s going to be harder and harder to find qualified candidates that are not sporting tats.

And as a closing note, I think that it’s just one more reason that I love the TV show NCIS. Their forensic specialist, Abby Sciuto has dozens of tattoos, and yet she is a highly trained professional who is more than capable of making important contributions to the team’s investigations.

NY Attorney, Marisa Kakoulas

NY Physician, David Ores

Sources:

Pyrillis, Rita (Nov, 2010). Body of Work. Workforce Management, Vol. 89, No. 11.

Excess Commercialization

2011-11-06T12:08:00.001-07:00

Most of my posts thus far have been more of an investigatory nature. This one however is just a pure rant. I was out and about a week before Halloween and some stores were already putting up Christmas items. It almost seems like the stores themselves are becoming schizophrenic. They had Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas items out for sale all at the same time!

I completely understand the fact that the end-goal of the store is to make money, but I think that they’re pushing it a little too far nowadays. In the few days since Halloween, the Halloween sections in the store have been completely removed and replaced with Christmas items.

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough one of the radio stations here in town is already starting to play Christmas music. But they aren’t even playing the full song. Halfway through the song that you’re listening to there’s a burst of static, a 30 second clip of a Christmas song, another burst of static and then you’re back listening to the original song again. And they’re doing this on purpose.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas as much as the next person. It’s my favorite holiday, in fact. And I like to start my Christmas shopping in October, but that doesn’t mean that I want to be bombarded with Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. At the rate the stores are going they might as well display Christmas decorations all year round and completely rob the holiday of all meaning and sentiment that it has left.

Dispelling Myths: The Pirate Eye Patch

2011-11-01T20:16:00.005-07:00

So, Halloween has ended. On the heels of this holiday I can't help but wonder about some of our social quirks and perceptions. This Halloween, as last year, I dressed up as a pirate, mostly because I was tight on cash and I had the costume handy from before. If I were to ask you to imagine a pirate chances are that most of you would imagine a scraggly, rough-around-the-edges man with eccentric clothes, several belts and bandoleers, large boots, a fancy hat, a sword, a pistol, a good tooth or two and an eye patch. Throughout the day I was asked several times "where's your eye-patch?" That got me thinking; did pirates really wear eye patches? Or is this just a myth?

I compiled and researched a listing of 281 real life pirates from the ancient Grecian-Roman times until the 21st century. Granted, some of the information is spotty, but what I found interesting was that only one of those pirates had been reported as wearing an eye patch. None of the more prominent ones, including the names that everyone knows; Calico Jack, Black Bart, Blackbeard, Red Beard, Captain Morgan, etc.

The only pirate being recorded as having worn an eye patch is Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, an Arab pirate who sailed in the 1800's. He mostly sailed in the Persian Gulf and was described by an English author as "the most successful and the most generally tolerated pirate, perhaps, that ever infest any sea."

Arguably, he was a very successful and famous pirate, especially in the Arabian lands, however, it seems unlikely that he is the reason that eye patches were associated with pirates. After all, the European countries had many equally notable and successful pirates to choose from. In reality, with 1 of 281 real life pirates wearing an eye patch the frequency of this happening is only 0.36%.

Next I examined a list of 194 fictional pirates from TV shows, movies, novels and cartoons. In this listing there are 8 such pirates who were eye patches or have one eye. while this is an increase of more than 11 times the number of actual pirates with eye patches, it's still only a low 4.12%. But, this has not included a close examination of the most successful pirate franchises yet; Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.

In the first movie, The Curse of the Black Pearl, there was no major character who sported an eye patch. In fact, a cursory glance at the extras and supporting actors did not reveal any pirates sporting eye patches, although one pirate does have a wooden eye. The second film, Dead Man's Chest, also does not reveal any pirates with an eye patch (although one of Davy Jones' crews does have an eye covered by a seaweed patch over his left eye. It seems as though this may have been intentional, but it's difficult to tell.) In fact, I did not notice any notable characters sporting an eye-patch in any of the four films. (although, admittedly there may have been the one crewman aboard the Dutchman, I haven't re-watched his transformation scene.)

So, why do we have this notion that pirates should wear eye patches? And with such a low percentage of pirates both real and fictional actually wearing eye patches, where did this association stem from? One common myth is that pirates frequently sustained "battle damage" that necessitated the wearing of an eye patch. Most versions of this theory cite flying splinters as the main cause of ocular trauma.

There is reported evidence of eye injuries occurring while at sea, however, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Most seafaring injuries were broken bones & fractures from falling, crushing injuries from loose cargo, and lacerations and amputations from broken sail lines. Disease and sickness was also a very common ailment.

Thinking about this pragmatically, if ocular injuries did exist they would likely be a hazard of the job. The life of pirates in the so-called Golden Age of Sail is not very well documented. However, they were not the only professional sailors who frequently engaged in battle aboard wooden ships. As such, any injuries sustained by pirates "in the line of looting" should also closely parallel the injuries sustained by the professional military sailors of the Old World whose accounts are more well documented. In examining the lives of over 400 notable naval officers of America, England, France & Spain I could not find any evidence that supports the notion that injuries to the eye were commonplace. And yes, there is a mountain of evidence to suggest that splinters were indeed very lethal aboard ships during combat, but usually the most common splinter injuries were to the torso, legs and arms. Most people use their hands and arms to shield their face in the case of flying debris, so injuries to the eye would have been somewhat mitigated by that action. (And for the record, those splinter injuries that weren't immediately fatal had a tendency to become gangrenous and infected resulting in fever, delirium and eventually death some days or weeks later).

Another common theory about the eye patches is that it is actually a tool utilized by sailors. The theory goes that some crewmen had to go above and below decks quite often. The ambient light levels of the decks was different. The story goes that sailors who went from the brightly-lit above decks down into the dimly-lit below decks would need a few moments for their eyes to adjust. The story goes that pirates could switch the eye-patch from one eye to the other and instantly have better vision. There are a couple of flaws with this story however.

First, consider this photograph: (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gs2vs7BmTXQ/TBQ0Uh5oloI/AAAAAAAAD-8/p9DbJrSLM5w/s1600/USS+Richmond+Gundeck.jpg). What you are looking at is the gun deck of the American Sloop-of-War, USS Richmond. This photo was taken about the year 1900, before widespread electricity was used in the ships and things were still very much as they did then "in the old days". This particular ship was already forty years old when the photo was taken. Notice that even without electricity the below deck compartments were still lit with an acceptable level of light.

Second, consider the paradox that whatever weapons you attempt to employ in battle to give you an upper hand, your enemy will also try to use against you. It stands to reason that if this were the real reason that pirates wore eye patches, then certainly the enemies of pirates would wear them for the same reason. However, widespread accounts of their use in the Royal Navies of the world at the time are all but absent, suggesting that no tactical advantage was gained from their employment. If anything it would have been more of hindrance. Our brains interpret the signals from both eyes simultaneously as humans are hard-wired with stereoscopic vision. As such, the loss of eyesight in one eye will reduce your ability to accurately judge distance and location (depth perception) making extremely delicate tasks (like shooting or fighting) much more difficult.

Third, the concept of switching eye patches like that is a physiological impossibility. Nerves in your body either transmit or they do not. There is no "step" progression in intensity. If you touch something hot your nerves will fire. If you touch something hotter, the nerves will fire faster (but not more intensely). When one is covered by an eye patch the eye receives no stimuli and as such does not fire at all, this allows the brain to digest the information from the "active" eye. If you immediately transition from intense light to very dim and you try changing eyes your eyes will not function as you think they will. If you don't believe me, try this experiment: go into a dimly lit room. Cover up one eye. Shine a bright light in the uncovered eye. Then, quickly turn off the light and uncover your eye. You will still see a residual "imprint" of the light in the eye that was exposed to the light (even if you cover it up) and the other eye will be momentarily blurry. Why does this happen? As we just discussed more intense sensations have nerves that fire extremely rapidly (as in the case with the eye that had the light in it). When you uncover the other eye the nerves do not fire very rapidly due to the low-light situation. As such the brain becomes confused about which nervous system signal to process and the "weaker eye" won't take over until the brain can sort it out.

So, the association with pirates and eye patches did not come from actual pirates, common battle injuries or a tactical tool, where did this association come from? The answer must be in the fictional pirates. Examining the 8 fictional pirates we find a plausible answer. In 1997 Captain Ishmael Squint appeared in the Jumanji cartoon series. The debut of the Star Fox video game in 1993 featured two different one-eyed pirates. 1991 also featured a one-eyed pirate in the James Bond, Jr. cartoon series. One fictional pirate that I'm readily familiar with is the infamous "One-Eyed Willie" from the 1985 cult classic movie, the Goonies. There was an Italian comic book called Zagor that featured a one-eyed pirate in 1961. Two of the pirates I was not able to find a year for; the "Buccaneer Beer" trademark of the Van Steenberge Brewery in Belgium, and "One-Eyed Jane" from a story called "the Wicked Travels of One-Eyed Jane." I've personally never heard of either of these two. However, there is still one pirate who remains...

1883 was the first year that the book Treasure Island was published. (before that it was a series of mini-stories published in a magazine between 1881-1882). It's been cited as one of the most frequently dramatized novels. Not only was it an extremely popular book in it's own right, it's also been made into movies or TV movies more than 50 times. As if that wasn't enough it's been adapted into a play or a radio play more than 24 times as well.

Based on all of this information it seems obvious that the all of the modern pirate stereotypes come not from actual pirates, but rather from one specific fictional story that managed to capture the hearts and minds of the people. It kind of makes me wonder what else I think I know...

Sources:

Ellis, N., Bloor, M., & Sampson, H. (2010). Patterns of seafarer injuries. Maritime Policy & Management, 37(2), 121-128. doi:10.1080/03088830903533742

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pirates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyepatch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahmah_ibn_Jabir_al-Jalahimah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_pirates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Richmond_(1860)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island
Gleitman, H., Fridlund, A., Reisburg, D. (2004) Psychology (6th ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN-13: 0-393-97767-6

Israels II, J. (1944). They Couldn't Call the Doctor. Saturday Evening Post, 216(50), 72.

Understanding Unemployment

2011-10-28T09:32:00.001-07:00

There are some things that I read, and then later I have one of those "hey, wait a minute" moments. A few weeks ago I read an article in the Arizona Republic newspaper and then I had one of those moments. In summary the article said that in terms of job loss over a 3 year span, Phoenix was the third highest ranked city in the country.

What caused me to have the “wait a minute” moment was that I had recalled reading a different article a few weeks prior to that stating that Phoenix was one of the fastest growing cities in the country during that same time frame. This got me thinking; did we actually really lose jobs, or did we just not create enough jobs to meet the demands of the increased population? Those are two very different situations. Naturally, I decided to find out for myself.

One of the first questions that I had was about the population they were measuring. The article said that Phoenix was the 3^rd highest ranked city in terms of Job loss. Did they mean Phoenix, only Phoenix and nothing but Phoenix, or did they mean the “Valley Metro Area” as it is known locally? The article wasn’t clear so I decided to investigate both.

The second question that I had was about the unemployment rate itself. The article gave no indication which unemployment rate they were going from, or where they had obtained that figure from.

First, I wanted to clarify “unemployment”. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are actually six different classifications of unemployment numbers. These are categorized as U-1 through U-6. When calculating employment and unemployment ratings they take the population and look at the people aged 16-65. This number constitutes the labor force, the total number of people who are of working age. For Arizona as a state for 2010 these numbers range from 6.3% unemployment (U1) up to 18.4% unemployment (U6).

There is a system that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has adapted to dividing and sorting people into each category. For the most part the “standard” unemployment number is the U3 category. One thing that I found very interesting between U3 and U4 is that if an employed person becomes discouraged and stops actively looking for work, then they are no longer counted as part of the U3 bracket. So, how does one qualify as a “discouraged worker” according to the BLS? They did not fill out a job application for four weeks. So, if someone is laid off, gets fired, etc. and does not fill out a job application for 4 weeks or longer, the BLS no longer includes them in their unemployment calculations.

In terms of population I decided to start with just Phoenix alone. I went back to 2000 and gathered population data until 2010. From 2000 to 2003 the population increased by at least 10,000 people every year. From 2003 to 2006 the population increased at least 20,000 people each year. In 2008 it only increased 9,000 people. 2009 saw an increase of roughly 150 people, and then in 2010 the population fell approximately 10,000 people.

There are a number of reasons why the population of Phoenix has stagnated and declined. Most experts attribute the largest bulk to the poor housing market. As so many people are finding themselves ridiculously upside down on their housing costs and owing two or three times what their home is now worth many are electing to walk away from their homes. One article in the Arizona Republic covered this very topic. As evidenced they offered the following facts; foreclosure numbers have skyrocketed, water hookups are down, trash collection has slowed, crime has dropped throughout the city, the number of calls to the police department has also declined. This is surely an indication that the people are gone, but does that mean that they have really left forever?

As any native knows, it’s not smart to do an analysis of Phoenix without also including the rest of the Valley in your figures as well. As a prime example, I work in Phoenix, but I live in El Mirage. Last year I lived in Glendale prior to moving out west. My primary motivation for moving? Economics. The housing was cheaper, and the crime rate was lower. Although Phoenix may be experiencing a slow in population, the West Valley certainly is not. A comparison of data from the 2000 census to the 2010 census shows that West Valley cities are booming. El Mirage, for example, exploded from a sleepy town of 7,600 people in 2000 to a busting town of 31,800. The population of Avondale more than doubled in that same time frame. The population of Goodyear more than tripled. The city of Peoria increased by 50%. And the small town of Surprise almost quadrupled in size. This seems to support evidence of a “reshuffling” of people in addition to general growth. Examinations of the population estimates from the Arizona Workforce Informer also seem to support that as well. Avondale showed a steady climb in population increase, but El Mirage did not. There were large spikes in 2001, 2002, and 2010. Peoria showed a spike in 2006. Surprise was another town that showed large population spikes from 2003-2007. To show that this phenomenon is not normal population expansion let us consider some of the other valley towns. During this same time frame the city if Tempe started at 158,600 in 2000 and reported 161,200 in 2010. Fountain Hills only showed a 2,000 person increase during the same time frame. Apache Junction only increased by 21 people. Cave Creek only increased by 1,287 people. The City of Glendale only reported a net growth of just shy of 8,000 people. Litchfield Park increased 1,666 people. Carefree increased only by 436 people.

Based on these numbers, clearly not every city within the valley was growing. Of towns sized between 2,500 people and 10,000 people only Buckeye, El Mirage and Queen Creek showed incredible growth. The town of Maricopa, which is officially in Pinal County, is another spot that people of Phoenix have flocked to. In 2000 that town was not even incorporated. By 2010 they had a population of 43,500. These towns are further away from the main city area and housing demand was low, so houses were inexpensive. They still are inexpensive by comparison today. Houses in my neighborhood have going rates of around $50 per square foot. Meanwhile houses in the neighbor around my work in downtown Phoenix are selling for around $120 per square foot.

Now that we understand a little more about the population situation, let’s go back to the original article again. The article says that the Phoenix area was one of the worst in a comparison of 50 metropolitan areas in terms of number of jobs from 2008 to 2010. By “Phoenix area” I can only assume that they mean the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as that the term used by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Looking at the entire area, yes, there does seem to be a hit. According to the U3 unemployment category, numbers for this MSA have jumped from 5.3% unemployment to 9.2% unemployment. There was physical loss of about 70,000 jobs. But that’s not the whole story. From 2008 to 2009 the loss of 70,000 jobs occurred, in that one year alone. The next year, despite creating almost 9,000 jobs, our unemployment rate still continued to climb and we had an additional 5,000 more that were unemployed. To me, this speaks that the problem is two-fold. 1) Some companies that are providing jobs for the valley are leaving, closing down, or outsourcing jobs. 2) Not enough new jobs are being created to meet the demand of the increase in population.

It seems as though most of the news articles we read about unemployment are only reporting part of the problem. They throw vague numbers and figures out there that people don’t understand in an effort to get people to watch the news. It’s something I see all of the time “Is your water hazardous to your health? We tested Valley water supplies for a harmful chemical and we have the results, tonight at ten!” And then, of course, that’s the last story they show you and it turns out that there’s nothing to be afraid of after all. Do yourselves a favor, double check the facts for yourself. You don’t have to take everything you read or hear or see at face value. Too many people read something online and pass it along as “truth”. Wild conspiracies get started, outright absurd ideas (like shape-shifting aliens that have taken over the governments of the world) and just out and out lies. Not to mention those annoying “pass this email on” messages. Just because the news reports something doesn’t make it accurate.

As always, don’t just take my word for it. Here are my sources:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/09/22/20110922phoenix-area-among-worst-unemployed.html http://data.workforce.az.gov/cgi/dataanalysis/cesReport.asp?menuchoice=ces
http://www.workforce.az.gov/unemployment-data.aspx
http://data.workforce.az.gov/cgi/dataanalysis/labForceReport.asp?menuchoice=LABFORCE
http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt10q4.htm
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/04/06/10-metro-areas-with-the-largest-population-growth
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/03/10/20110310census-arizona-new-2010-numbers-brk10-ON.html
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/01/12/20090112phxpopulation0107.html
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/03/13/20110313phoenix-6th-largest-city-philadelphia.html
http://www.zillow.com/homes/85012_rb/#/homes/for_sale/Alahambra-Phoenix-AZ-85012/94728_rid/33.548602