Sunday, July 27, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Silas the stupid cat
I've mentioned Silas, Susan's hyperactive cat, on a number of occasions. There are photos of him lurking throughout the blog.
One of the lovely features of our new house is that it has a half-rail on the second floor that looks down into the living room 12-15' below.
Last night, the Babe and I were sitting on the couch around 10pm. All of a sudden, we heard a loud splat. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Silas had fallen from the railing to the hardwood floor. He'd landed on his feet and then his feet spread out and he'd done a chinplant.
I leapt up to get him and he took off. I chased him through the house and he sprinted upstairs and into Susan's room and under the bed. I tried to fish him out from the bed, but it wasn't working. He was really scared and was yowling and not cooperating. I couldn't tell if he was
I got the Babe up there and we fished him out from under the bed... then a little while later, we got him from under the couch in the music room, then the couch in the living room, and finally under our bed. He was very panicky by this time as you can imagine. I'd gotten one of the cardboard folding cat carriers and we put him, semi-wrapped in a towel, into the cat carrier and closed it up. Hurrah! I picked up the cat carrier by its handle... and the bottom fell open. I hadn't folded the darned thing right and the flaps unlocked. Silas ran under the bed again. The Babe and I were laughing at this--poor guy, he was in great pain and scared, but DAMN, that was funny!
We fished him out again, put him in the more-sturdily-constructed cat carrier, and took him to the emergency vet. The Babe and I discussed what might be wrong with him on the way over--broken bones, sure, possibly internal injuries, I hoped not. The Babe said "Brain damage from the impact." I said what we were both thinking: "How could we tell?" Susan and her b/f met us at the vet.
They worked on him for a couple hours and determined he had a clean break of his right radius. His jaw wasn't broken, they figured, but it sure was gonna hurt. (The next day, I could see that Silas's chin was one massive bruise punctuated with a large cut. He may also have a hairline fracture, but it wouldn't be easy to spot and there's nothing we could do about it except not pry his jaw open to give him pills.)
They splinted his leg with bright green Koban and then added a neat little red Koban heart, which was very cute. I'd predicted it was going to cost us $500 for our little adventure. It turned out to be $514. (Gawd, I'm good....) Susan and b/f came home with us to get Silas settled in to Susan's room, then they took off for the coast near Portland to spend the week at her b/f's parents' place.
Even though whacked out on a painkiller cocktail of what the ER vet referred to as "kitty magic," Silas was still pretty hyper. Not surprising, I suppose, but I do say that I'd neuter him again if I thought it'd do any good. We finally got to bed at about 1:30am. Bleah. We'd been told we had to give Silas painkillers every eight hours, so the Babe got up at 6:00am to do so. She came back to bed and said "You have to take him to the vet today."
"Why?" I asked. We weren't supposed to need to do this for a week.
"Because he's pulled his cast off."
"Shit."
I phoned our regular vet that morning and got an appointment for 1:00pm. At the appointed time, I rounded up estúpido gato and put him in the cat carrier, and took him over to the vet.
They were very nice and gave him a new splint (this one in red Koban with white Koban letters applied down the side that said "O U C H"). They taped that one up around his armpit, so that'd keep him from getting it off this time. I also got an Elizabethan collar, the lack of which they figured was why he had gotten out of the other splint. You could see kitty teeth marks all the way down the splint. Not bad for someone with a mighty sore jaw, I must say. The vet also gave me some free pain pills for him, all for $81, which was a lot less than I expected to pay. And while I was there, I entered a contest with HomeAgain microchipping services that will give me Silas's 10 lb, 6oz weight in silver if I win. Good: maybe he'll earn his keep on this one.
I came home, gave him his 2:00pm pain meds and went back to work. Just because other creatures in the house were on pain meds and grumpy, somebody has to pay for it.
The Babe got home from work and I went upstairs to check on Silas. He was sitting in Susan's room, his Elizabethan collar on, pissed off... and I realized he didn't have his splint on, again. Sure enough, it was elsewhere in the room. Aw, shit, this was not fun.
The Babe took him to the vet this time. They did an incredible job for us: re-resplinted him, added a supporting network of bandages around his torso, built a t-shirt of Koban so he couldn't hook his hindlegs under the part on his chest, trimmed his toenails so he couldn't even get purchase on it, and charged us a mere $21. They're doing a lot for us, they are!
The Babe ran out and got moist food (it was painful just watching him try to eat the dry kibble he normally inhales like a furry vacuum cleaner) and later this evening he ate a bunch of it. We also fed him a powdered kitty trank hidden in a couple of balls of Greenies (which are pure kitty heroin if you haven't tried them on your cat). That worked and we got most of an acepromazine dose down him.
At this point, the young Houdini is in a large animal crate so he can't run around a lot. He's already bashed off his Elizabethan collar. I'm REALLY hoping he doesn't rip the splint off again, because this is getting seriously expensive. We'll see what he's like tomorrow.
One of the lovely features of our new house is that it has a half-rail on the second floor that looks down into the living room 12-15' below.
Last night, the Babe and I were sitting on the couch around 10pm. All of a sudden, we heard a loud splat. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Silas had fallen from the railing to the hardwood floor. He'd landed on his feet and then his feet spread out and he'd done a chinplant.
I leapt up to get him and he took off. I chased him through the house and he sprinted upstairs and into Susan's room and under the bed. I tried to fish him out from the bed, but it wasn't working. He was really scared and was yowling and not cooperating. I couldn't tell if he was
I got the Babe up there and we fished him out from under the bed... then a little while later, we got him from under the couch in the music room, then the couch in the living room, and finally under our bed. He was very panicky by this time as you can imagine. I'd gotten one of the cardboard folding cat carriers and we put him, semi-wrapped in a towel, into the cat carrier and closed it up. Hurrah! I picked up the cat carrier by its handle... and the bottom fell open. I hadn't folded the darned thing right and the flaps unlocked. Silas ran under the bed again. The Babe and I were laughing at this--poor guy, he was in great pain and scared, but DAMN, that was funny!
We fished him out again, put him in the more-sturdily-constructed cat carrier, and took him to the emergency vet. The Babe and I discussed what might be wrong with him on the way over--broken bones, sure, possibly internal injuries, I hoped not. The Babe said "Brain damage from the impact." I said what we were both thinking: "How could we tell?" Susan and her b/f met us at the vet.
They worked on him for a couple hours and determined he had a clean break of his right radius. His jaw wasn't broken, they figured, but it sure was gonna hurt. (The next day, I could see that Silas's chin was one massive bruise punctuated with a large cut. He may also have a hairline fracture, but it wouldn't be easy to spot and there's nothing we could do about it except not pry his jaw open to give him pills.)
They splinted his leg with bright green Koban and then added a neat little red Koban heart, which was very cute. I'd predicted it was going to cost us $500 for our little adventure. It turned out to be $514. (Gawd, I'm good....) Susan and b/f came home with us to get Silas settled in to Susan's room, then they took off for the coast near Portland to spend the week at her b/f's parents' place.
Even though whacked out on a painkiller cocktail of what the ER vet referred to as "kitty magic," Silas was still pretty hyper. Not surprising, I suppose, but I do say that I'd neuter him again if I thought it'd do any good. We finally got to bed at about 1:30am. Bleah. We'd been told we had to give Silas painkillers every eight hours, so the Babe got up at 6:00am to do so. She came back to bed and said "You have to take him to the vet today."
"Why?" I asked. We weren't supposed to need to do this for a week.
"Because he's pulled his cast off."
"Shit."
I phoned our regular vet that morning and got an appointment for 1:00pm. At the appointed time, I rounded up estúpido gato and put him in the cat carrier, and took him over to the vet.
They were very nice and gave him a new splint (this one in red Koban with white Koban letters applied down the side that said "O U C H"). They taped that one up around his armpit, so that'd keep him from getting it off this time. I also got an Elizabethan collar, the lack of which they figured was why he had gotten out of the other splint. You could see kitty teeth marks all the way down the splint. Not bad for someone with a mighty sore jaw, I must say. The vet also gave me some free pain pills for him, all for $81, which was a lot less than I expected to pay. And while I was there, I entered a contest with HomeAgain microchipping services that will give me Silas's 10 lb, 6oz weight in silver if I win. Good: maybe he'll earn his keep on this one.
I came home, gave him his 2:00pm pain meds and went back to work. Just because other creatures in the house were on pain meds and grumpy, somebody has to pay for it.
The Babe got home from work and I went upstairs to check on Silas. He was sitting in Susan's room, his Elizabethan collar on, pissed off... and I realized he didn't have his splint on, again. Sure enough, it was elsewhere in the room. Aw, shit, this was not fun.
The Babe took him to the vet this time. They did an incredible job for us: re-resplinted him, added a supporting network of bandages around his torso, built a t-shirt of Koban so he couldn't hook his hindlegs under the part on his chest, trimmed his toenails so he couldn't even get purchase on it, and charged us a mere $21. They're doing a lot for us, they are!
The Babe ran out and got moist food (it was painful just watching him try to eat the dry kibble he normally inhales like a furry vacuum cleaner) and later this evening he ate a bunch of it. We also fed him a powdered kitty trank hidden in a couple of balls of Greenies (which are pure kitty heroin if you haven't tried them on your cat). That worked and we got most of an acepromazine dose down him.
At this point, the young Houdini is in a large animal crate so he can't run around a lot. He's already bashed off his Elizabethan collar. I'm REALLY hoping he doesn't rip the splint off again, because this is getting seriously expensive. We'll see what he's like tomorrow.
Friday, June 20, 2008
How to deal with climate change skeptics
Someone posted this on a forum recently and there's been some good discussion about it. I wanted to post a few thoughts here on the subject.
I actually didn't think there was a lot you could do to get the people who don't think global warming is real/human-caused/really, really serious/more than a liberal or socialist plot other than wait 30 years, then slap the shit out of them, and say "Okay, now do you fucking believe me?"
The idea that humans have the power to dramatically alter the face of the earth and its climate shouldn't be a surprise. For example, look at Ireland: up until 2500 years ago, it was a completely different country. There were trees and topsoil. But after humans had logged off enough of the trees, there weren't enough left to support the topsoil and the ecosystem, and you now have huge chunks of Ireland that are nothing more than bleached limestone fields. Limestone doesn't break down into anything fertile, so it's really hard to do anything with it. In another 10,000-20,000 years, the slow accretion of dirts, bird droppings, dust, and what-not that work to create soil may ultimately provide a new layer of soils, but this is a "not in your lifetime and not even in the span of any civilization" kinda deal. As part of this, an entire group of birds and animals, a whole country-worth, was wiped out. As one example in thousands, there used to be Irish species of squirrels. Nope, dead, gone, extinct: no trees. You can probably guess at the thousands of animals, birds, insects, and fish that aren't there anymore. Similarly, the Sahara desert is largely man-made (though ~not~ exclusively, I want to add). The despoiling of oases through overuse and overgrazing has extended the Sahara hundreds of miles in every direction in recorded history.
However, epiphanies do seem to happen. I know a VP of Faux News who is (not surprisingly) a staunch conservative. (I'm waiting for his pictures and stories from his month in Baghdad in March, as a matter of fact.) His parents live in Des Moines, IA. It seems that he's woken up to the idea that Things Are Changing as a result of this recent round of floods. (I've a sister and b-in-law in Des Moines, myself, and it's really clear to the locals how much worse the floods are there.) Said VP has been making the sounds of a new convert about how awful this is and we've got to do something and so on. We're sympathetic to him, but there's a certain sense of "Welcome to the party, pal!!" along with some of this when we talk to him about it.
I think there are a number of people who will go so far as to give lip service--though they don't really believe it, I think--to the idea that this is 'normal' climate change and we're just seeing variations in the climate that (emphasis mine) human beings aren't responsible for. Okay, let's suppose that this is totally natural and that the incredible consumption of oil, deforestation of whole countries (Ecuador is a fine example, but there are many others), overfishing of most food fish, and just the pounding impact of too many people on the face of the planet doesn't mean anything at all. It's a big leap, but bear with me on this one; we're supposing: "Humans had nothing to do with this 'natural climate change' that seems to be occurring."
Okay, then, good to know.
But we're still gonna get fucked.
As the oceans rise (documentable) from the ice caps melting (documentable) and the Midwest dries out (documentable) and water supplies dry up (documentable) and all the other documentable problems that are on the list, I am sure that as we're dying in a dustbowl or watching Florida and parts of Texas submerge for the rest of human civilization under the sea (who said global warming was all bad?) and dehydrating to death that it wasn't our fucking fault.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that said "Imagine if global warming were real." That part's not really hard. I'll let yuh skate on the idea of what's causing it for right now, but just imagine it as real. Now imagine what it's going to mean to you. We don't know what a lot of that is going to be, because it's catastrophe mathematics and we just don't know enough about this to predict yet, but we're going to see it unfold.
We're running out of oil (documentable). Whether you believe in peak oil having past or peak oil now or peak oil soon, it's incontrovertible that we've got a finite amount of oil and we keep using it. We're going to die of thirst in the dark, but I'm sure we're all going to be saying "And thank you, Jesus, it wasn't our fault!" Yes, that will be a comfort, I'm sure.
I think global warming is real. I don't think we know much yet about how it's going to affect humans and the world we live in, but that it will is not in question. If you don't believe that it's real, I encourage you to go buy a house on the beach in Florida. Or the Texas gulf coast line. Sink all your money into it and make it look really, really nice. Take out a second mortgage if you like; property values are going to rise after this current bubble in the real estate market. Of course I'm fulla shit and couldn't possibly know anything about this because it's alllll junk science. So go prove me wrong. I fucking dare you.
Me? I'm living in an area that's not expected to warm up above the living point and I'm planting a lot of fruit trees that prosper in warmer weather.
I actually didn't think there was a lot you could do to get the people who don't think global warming is real/human-caused/really, really serious/more than a liberal or socialist plot other than wait 30 years, then slap the shit out of them, and say "Okay, now do you fucking believe me?"
The idea that humans have the power to dramatically alter the face of the earth and its climate shouldn't be a surprise. For example, look at Ireland: up until 2500 years ago, it was a completely different country. There were trees and topsoil. But after humans had logged off enough of the trees, there weren't enough left to support the topsoil and the ecosystem, and you now have huge chunks of Ireland that are nothing more than bleached limestone fields. Limestone doesn't break down into anything fertile, so it's really hard to do anything with it. In another 10,000-20,000 years, the slow accretion of dirts, bird droppings, dust, and what-not that work to create soil may ultimately provide a new layer of soils, but this is a "not in your lifetime and not even in the span of any civilization" kinda deal. As part of this, an entire group of birds and animals, a whole country-worth, was wiped out. As one example in thousands, there used to be Irish species of squirrels. Nope, dead, gone, extinct: no trees. You can probably guess at the thousands of animals, birds, insects, and fish that aren't there anymore. Similarly, the Sahara desert is largely man-made (though ~not~ exclusively, I want to add). The despoiling of oases through overuse and overgrazing has extended the Sahara hundreds of miles in every direction in recorded history.
However, epiphanies do seem to happen. I know a VP of Faux News who is (not surprisingly) a staunch conservative. (I'm waiting for his pictures and stories from his month in Baghdad in March, as a matter of fact.) His parents live in Des Moines, IA. It seems that he's woken up to the idea that Things Are Changing as a result of this recent round of floods. (I've a sister and b-in-law in Des Moines, myself, and it's really clear to the locals how much worse the floods are there.) Said VP has been making the sounds of a new convert about how awful this is and we've got to do something and so on. We're sympathetic to him, but there's a certain sense of "Welcome to the party, pal!!" along with some of this when we talk to him about it.
I think there are a number of people who will go so far as to give lip service--though they don't really believe it, I think--to the idea that this is 'normal' climate change and we're just seeing variations in the climate that (emphasis mine) human beings aren't responsible for. Okay, let's suppose that this is totally natural and that the incredible consumption of oil, deforestation of whole countries (Ecuador is a fine example, but there are many others), overfishing of most food fish, and just the pounding impact of too many people on the face of the planet doesn't mean anything at all. It's a big leap, but bear with me on this one; we're supposing: "Humans had nothing to do with this 'natural climate change' that seems to be occurring."
Okay, then, good to know.
But we're still gonna get fucked.
As the oceans rise (documentable) from the ice caps melting (documentable) and the Midwest dries out (documentable) and water supplies dry up (documentable) and all the other documentable problems that are on the list, I am sure that as we're dying in a dustbowl or watching Florida and parts of Texas submerge for the rest of human civilization under the sea (who said global warming was all bad?) and dehydrating to death that it wasn't our fucking fault.
I saw a bumper sticker recently that said "Imagine if global warming were real." That part's not really hard. I'll let yuh skate on the idea of what's causing it for right now, but just imagine it as real. Now imagine what it's going to mean to you. We don't know what a lot of that is going to be, because it's catastrophe mathematics and we just don't know enough about this to predict yet, but we're going to see it unfold.
We're running out of oil (documentable). Whether you believe in peak oil having past or peak oil now or peak oil soon, it's incontrovertible that we've got a finite amount of oil and we keep using it. We're going to die of thirst in the dark, but I'm sure we're all going to be saying "And thank you, Jesus, it wasn't our fault!" Yes, that will be a comfort, I'm sure.
I think global warming is real. I don't think we know much yet about how it's going to affect humans and the world we live in, but that it will is not in question. If you don't believe that it's real, I encourage you to go buy a house on the beach in Florida. Or the Texas gulf coast line. Sink all your money into it and make it look really, really nice. Take out a second mortgage if you like; property values are going to rise after this current bubble in the real estate market. Of course I'm fulla shit and couldn't possibly know anything about this because it's alllll junk science. So go prove me wrong. I fucking dare you.
Me? I'm living in an area that's not expected to warm up above the living point and I'm planting a lot of fruit trees that prosper in warmer weather.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
News story I really enjoyed
This is a very interesting news story.
PRILEP, Yugoslavia (AP) - Outside a small Macedonian village close to the border between Greece and strife-torn Yugoslavia, a lone Catholic nun keeps a quiet watch over a silent convent. She is the last caretaker of the site of significant historical developments spanning more than 2,000 years.
When Sister Maria Cyrilla of the Order of the Perpetual Watch dies, the convent of St. Elias will be closed by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Macedonia. However, that isn't likely to happen soon, as Sister Maria, 53, enjoys excellent health. By her own estimate, she walks 10 miles daily about the grounds of the convent, which once served as a base for the army of Attila the Hun.
In more ancient times, a Greek temple to Eros, the god of love, occupied the hilltop site. Historians say that Attila took over the old temple in 439 A.D. and used it as a base for his marauding army.
The Huns are believed to have first collected and then destroyed a large gathering of Greek legal writs at the site. It is believed that Attila wanted to study the Greek legal system, and had the writs and other documents brought to the temple. Scholars differ on why he had the valuable documents destroyed -- either because he was barely literate and couldn't read them, or because they provided evidence of democratic government that did not square with his own notion of rule by an all-powerful tyrant.
When the Greek church took over the site in the 15th Century and the convent was built, church leaders ordered the pagan statue of Eros destroyed, so another ancient Greek treasure was lost. Today, there is only the lone sister, watching over the old Hun base.
And that's how it ends: No Huns, no writs, no Eros, and nun left on base.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Reagan, the Great Communicator (and how he got that way)
You know, I cannot believe that I never wrote about this before, and yet, I can't find anything about this in my blog... so I must have never gotten to it for some reason. Reagan was already beginning to show signs of senility in his first term and in fact spent a good deal of time watching his movies in the White House screen room. (Hey, stop getting cranky at me about this; in 1984, his marketing people bragged about how he hadn't done anything his first term and wasn't King Log better for us all?) I often wonder why it is that people who have a dogmatic hatred for Hillary Clinton and keep claiming that she was running the White House--a laughable assumption on the face of it--don't have the same vehemence for Nancy Reagan, who was in much more of a position of power, as witness her battles with George Schultz about policy issues. But I digress....
Okay, so, Reagan's out to lunch. His speeches at the time showed increasing signs of this: sentences without verbs, things that didn't make sense, recollections of things that didn't happen, and so on. My favorite of the latter was at a lunch with a bunch of journalists when Ronnie made reference to how in WWII there were two crew members in a bomber that'd been shot up and was going down. One of the guys was seriously wounded and, IIRC, had no chute and encouraged his buddy to bail out and save himself. The buddy said that, no, he'd ride it down with him. Reagan then said "Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumous." A political journalist who was at this lunch looked up the stories of the CMOH winners and couldn't find anything that matched that. What it turned out Reagan was remembering was something from a war movie. Nice to have a president that's drifting in and out like that, but then, I never thought I'd miss Nixon, either. (Check it out: this was written up by Herblock in one of his last books.) But I digress, again....
Okay, so, Reagan's out to lunch. He couldn't articulate thoughts, he rambled, he was not all there... and yet in 1982, he got dubbed "The Great Communicator." How the hell could that have happened? Were the Republicans just that stupid that they could buy into this? As emotionally appealing an hypothesis as that is, the answer is "No." Here's what happened.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Milton H. Erickson. (Ed. note: this one's not a digression. Bear with me.) Milton Erickson was a fascinating man. He was crippled most of his life from childhood polio. One of the many amazing things he did was pioneering in the field of hypnosis. With the premise that inducing an hypnotic state is a function of confusing the mind a little so that it "stumbles" and then taking advantage of that stumble to keep it stumbling a little more and a little more, he was able to hypnotize people very quickly, even with a handshake.
How the heck do you hypnotize people with a handshake? We all know what to expect from a handshake in terms of timing, grip, sensation, and termination, so if you use random, slightly jerky, unexpected motions, additional finger touches, and odd timing of events, it throws people off.
You can also distract people by speaking word salad and throwing in unexpected carrot words that they aren't expecting. There's just a brief instant where your mind stumbles to process that unexpected word or phrase and then hurries to catch up. If you do this while making random, jerky body motions, you're assaulting someone's consciousness on the most two powerful levels: sight and sound. At that point, your mind's probably going to get completely confused and go off and sulk.
Ericksonian hypnosis techniques are teachable and, in fact, are taught by several schools. You can learn to do this. But some people are naturals at it (such as Milton Erickson himself). Hey, it happens.
What are the two things that Reagan impersonators copied most? His odd, random, jerky motions and his tendency to speak things that didn't always make sense. They SOUNDED like they made sense, but nope, they didn't reeeeeeally. Reagan wasn't trained in it and probably was totally unaware of it, but the boy was a natural Ericksonian hypnotist.
Okay, another point I need to raise. (I promise, we'll get where I'm trying to take you Real Soon Now.) Numerous studies have shown that when you get one side of the brain to do something, the other side, even without knowing about it, will come up with robust, articulate, even complex explanations for this behavior. This is easiest to show in studies with people who've been in accidents or had surgery where their brain hemispheres have been disconnected, but you can demonstrate part of this trait for yourself: put several unrelated items on a table, such as a lightbulb, a pineapple, a rubber duck, and a tea pot, then ask people "How are these things related?" They will bob and weave and wave their hands and they're going to come up with these really bizarre explanations. It's fun. And disturbing.
The point here is that people come up with explanations for the things they're perceiving and doing, even when there's no reason for those things whatsoever. Writers and tech support folks have to deal with this all the time, preventing opportunities for the users to embark on 'superstitious behavior' of some kind: "I won at Solitaire a lot over lunch and the accounting program didn't work right, so I never play Solitaire anytime before I'm going to run the accounting program." Humans are rationalizing animals. We just can't cope with things that aren't explained, even if they're TOTALLY random.
Okay, let's put this all together at long last: what's being in a hypnotic trance like? You feel warm, comfortable, and you are really, really, really focused on whatever the hypnotist is saying. Combined with another human trait of wanting to explain things, you have to come up with some explanation for what you were doing and you will leap through hoops that are on fire to rationalize all of this.
And lo! Reaganomics. "The Great Communicator." People running around going "Don't you hear the inspiring message?" ("No, what message?" "Well, uh... but it's really inspiring! I feel so GOOD! And America's wonderful!!")
The reason I didn't fall for this is that I wasn't glued to the TV slavishly sucking up Ronnie's words. (As I think back, I seem to recall hearing someone in the room saying "Die, you senile fuck!" for no particular reason.) Neither were a lot of other people who also thought that Ronnie was, in fact, a senile fuck. But it's only fair to say that this really and truly has nothing to do with party affiliation, although it's a shame for the world that it was someone who was as much of a social asshole as Reagan. But it could just as easily have been a Democrat, or a Socialist, or a Libertarian, or anyone. It's basic human programming that works right down around the brain stem level, so one's personal ideology has nothing to do with it.
Addendum, Jan 30, 2011: Great article on Reagan's legacy (oh, lucky, lucky, us!) here: http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/4782-ronald-reagans-30-year-time-bombs
Okay, so, Reagan's out to lunch. His speeches at the time showed increasing signs of this: sentences without verbs, things that didn't make sense, recollections of things that didn't happen, and so on. My favorite of the latter was at a lunch with a bunch of journalists when Ronnie made reference to how in WWII there were two crew members in a bomber that'd been shot up and was going down. One of the guys was seriously wounded and, IIRC, had no chute and encouraged his buddy to bail out and save himself. The buddy said that, no, he'd ride it down with him. Reagan then said "Congressional Medal of Honor, posthumous." A political journalist who was at this lunch looked up the stories of the CMOH winners and couldn't find anything that matched that. What it turned out Reagan was remembering was something from a war movie. Nice to have a president that's drifting in and out like that, but then, I never thought I'd miss Nixon, either. (Check it out: this was written up by Herblock in one of his last books.) But I digress, again....
Okay, so, Reagan's out to lunch. He couldn't articulate thoughts, he rambled, he was not all there... and yet in 1982, he got dubbed "The Great Communicator." How the hell could that have happened? Were the Republicans just that stupid that they could buy into this? As emotionally appealing an hypothesis as that is, the answer is "No." Here's what happened.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Milton H. Erickson. (Ed. note: this one's not a digression. Bear with me.) Milton Erickson was a fascinating man. He was crippled most of his life from childhood polio. One of the many amazing things he did was pioneering in the field of hypnosis. With the premise that inducing an hypnotic state is a function of confusing the mind a little so that it "stumbles" and then taking advantage of that stumble to keep it stumbling a little more and a little more, he was able to hypnotize people very quickly, even with a handshake.
How the heck do you hypnotize people with a handshake? We all know what to expect from a handshake in terms of timing, grip, sensation, and termination, so if you use random, slightly jerky, unexpected motions, additional finger touches, and odd timing of events, it throws people off.
You can also distract people by speaking word salad and throwing in unexpected carrot words that they aren't expecting. There's just a brief instant where your mind stumbles to process that unexpected word or phrase and then hurries to catch up. If you do this while making random, jerky body motions, you're assaulting someone's consciousness on the most two powerful levels: sight and sound. At that point, your mind's probably going to get completely confused and go off and sulk.
Ericksonian hypnosis techniques are teachable and, in fact, are taught by several schools. You can learn to do this. But some people are naturals at it (such as Milton Erickson himself). Hey, it happens.
What are the two things that Reagan impersonators copied most? His odd, random, jerky motions and his tendency to speak things that didn't always make sense. They SOUNDED like they made sense, but nope, they didn't reeeeeeally. Reagan wasn't trained in it and probably was totally unaware of it, but the boy was a natural Ericksonian hypnotist.
Okay, another point I need to raise. (I promise, we'll get where I'm trying to take you Real Soon Now.) Numerous studies have shown that when you get one side of the brain to do something, the other side, even without knowing about it, will come up with robust, articulate, even complex explanations for this behavior. This is easiest to show in studies with people who've been in accidents or had surgery where their brain hemispheres have been disconnected, but you can demonstrate part of this trait for yourself: put several unrelated items on a table, such as a lightbulb, a pineapple, a rubber duck, and a tea pot, then ask people "How are these things related?" They will bob and weave and wave their hands and they're going to come up with these really bizarre explanations. It's fun. And disturbing.
The point here is that people come up with explanations for the things they're perceiving and doing, even when there's no reason for those things whatsoever. Writers and tech support folks have to deal with this all the time, preventing opportunities for the users to embark on 'superstitious behavior' of some kind: "I won at Solitaire a lot over lunch and the accounting program didn't work right, so I never play Solitaire anytime before I'm going to run the accounting program." Humans are rationalizing animals. We just can't cope with things that aren't explained, even if they're TOTALLY random.
Okay, let's put this all together at long last: what's being in a hypnotic trance like? You feel warm, comfortable, and you are really, really, really focused on whatever the hypnotist is saying. Combined with another human trait of wanting to explain things, you have to come up with some explanation for what you were doing and you will leap through hoops that are on fire to rationalize all of this.
And lo! Reaganomics. "The Great Communicator." People running around going "Don't you hear the inspiring message?" ("No, what message?" "Well, uh... but it's really inspiring! I feel so GOOD! And America's wonderful!!")
The reason I didn't fall for this is that I wasn't glued to the TV slavishly sucking up Ronnie's words. (As I think back, I seem to recall hearing someone in the room saying "Die, you senile fuck!" for no particular reason.) Neither were a lot of other people who also thought that Ronnie was, in fact, a senile fuck. But it's only fair to say that this really and truly has nothing to do with party affiliation, although it's a shame for the world that it was someone who was as much of a social asshole as Reagan. But it could just as easily have been a Democrat, or a Socialist, or a Libertarian, or anyone. It's basic human programming that works right down around the brain stem level, so one's personal ideology has nothing to do with it.
Addendum, Jan 30, 2011: Great article on Reagan's legacy (oh, lucky, lucky, us!) here: http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/4782-ronald-reagans-30-year-time-bombs
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Almost through the month of April!
Let's see:
My biggest complaint this morning is that I pulled a muscle in my neck yesterday so I'm keeping my head very, very straight so I don't cause myself pain. I should get an ice pack from the freezer in a while and reduce the swelling.
All in all, I'd say "Not bad!"
- I got the taxes done (and got our refund).
- I wrote an article for an accounting magazine.
- I've been turning out lectures for the students every week (which has been about 8 hours/week just to do that).
- I'm being productive at my yob, getting foundational stuff written on this project I'm on.
- I've been hitting the gym pretty regularly. Even trying a new arm set that's doing pretty well and adding some bulk.
- I'm past that cold we've all been getting.
- My office is even reasonably clean.
My biggest complaint this morning is that I pulled a muscle in my neck yesterday so I'm keeping my head very, very straight so I don't cause myself pain. I should get an ice pack from the freezer in a while and reduce the swelling.
All in all, I'd say "Not bad!"
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
The fair island of San Seriffe
This little nugget showed up on April 1st some 30 years ago. It's a fantastic deep finesse. There are even ads from real advertisers.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Gym ratting
I've been working out fairly regularly for a month now and I'm having a great time. I'd had a cold for the week before my birthday and then I wasn't able to get in all last week, but I finally made it back in to the gym on Saturday and did a full body workout. Normally, I alternate upper and lower, but it'd been 2 weeks with the cold and just not having a couple hours to get away, so I did the whole set. I have been thinking constantly about getting back there and doing more. I'm really pleased with how it's going.
But even now, at 11:20pm, I'm thinking of popping over there and pumping iron. I could do it, you know; this Gold's Gym is open 24 hours during the week.
But even now, at 11:20pm, I'm thinking of popping over there and pumping iron. I could do it, you know; this Gold's Gym is open 24 hours during the week.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Fun trivia: James Whistler
Why was artist James A. McNeill Whistler kicked out of the West Point Military Academy as a young man?
Answer: For misconduct. Assigned to draw a bridge in an engineering class, he drew two little boys fishing from it. Ordered to remove them, he drew the boys fishing from the riverbank. Again ordered to remove them, he drew two little headstones near the river.
Answer: For misconduct. Assigned to draw a bridge in an engineering class, he drew two little boys fishing from it. Ordered to remove them, he drew the boys fishing from the riverbank. Again ordered to remove them, he drew two little headstones near the river.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Origami master
Brian Chan does origami. It's really quite amazing.
No, it's beyond amazing. A lot of these pieces you look at and are deeply impressed by, then you see that they're done out of a single sheet of paper and you wonder how he ever thought of this in the first place. It's truly dazzling.
No, it's beyond amazing. A lot of these pieces you look at and are deeply impressed by, then you see that they're done out of a single sheet of paper and you wonder how he ever thought of this in the first place. It's truly dazzling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
