A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Here it is days after the elections and I’m still wondering….why? Why do so many people want to take away a fundamental right from others? I’ve heard that allowing same-sex marriages takes away from the sanctity of marriage. I’ve truly pondered that one for a long, long time and I don’t get it. What does anyone else’s marriage have to do with mine? Sorry, but what other people do in their marriage hasn’t got anything to do with me. My marriage is strong enough to take the fact that half the marriages in the U.S. end in divorce — we’re still okay.

So, when I got a link to Keith Olbermann speaking about Prop 8 in California. I listened and I realized that he’s asking the same questions that I’ve been asking since the issue became a major one several years ago. Only Mr. Olbermann is far more eloquent than I’ve been.

Please listen and think about what he’s saying. And if anyone can tell me why gays marrying in any way can effect their marriage I’d like to know — because I still don’t get it.

A friend sent me a link to this NPR report on “Think You’re Multitasking? Think Again.” I was told at a previous job that it was not humanly possible to multitask, so we were to do one thing at a time. Of course that ignored the fact that we’d be fired if we actually waited to finish one task before beginning or working on another one.

I found it interesting in this report that they say humans don’t multitask, we switch quickly between tasks, focusing first on one thing then another. So, we don’t really multitask. Whoever thought that multitasking was anything other than rapidly switching attention from one task to another? Though I wonder, is folding laundry while watching a movie rapid switching between tasks or true multitasking.  I’d say knitting or spinning while watching a movie is rapidly switching focus because I do need to keep a minimal degree of concentration on the knitting or spinning so I don’t get lost, but it’s almost negligible to someone watching from the outside looking at me doing it.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that women are much better at switching attention from task to task so that they seem to truly multitask. I often will pick something up and move it to another point when going to do something so that the item gets closer to where it needs to be for a later task. I usually don’t even think about what I’m doing. It happens almost as if I didn’t plan it out at all. On the other hand, my son and husband can’t seem to get the hang of it. If they’re going upstairs for X, and Y needs to go up too, unless you stop them and ask them to take Y with them they don’t even think of it because their focus is on X. Women on the other hand would start out to do X and bring Y with them to save a trip.

Do women switch focus on tasks easier? If we think about stereotypical roles then women are certainly expected to do multiple tasks at the same time: cook a meal, watch the children, supervise homework, answer the phone, and talk to a spouse all at once. Granted it all happens over two hours or so but all the tasks overlap and that’s just picking one part of a day. Think of administrative assistants who answer phones, take notes, type letters/memo/etc, make reservations while talking to someone in the office, and so on. I think that’s a job with built in need for rapidly switching focus on tasks. Short order cooks aren’t the only ones. Waiters do the same: take orders, refresh coffee while moving to another table, clearing tables, watching the tables to see if anything is needed and delivering it while on the way to another table — and so it goes.

So, why do so many researchers feel it necessary to find or prove that multitasking is impossible? Is it because it’s a skill that’s mostly related to women rather than men? Or is it because if they can debunk it in favor of rapidly switching attention between tasks it sounds better? Why did they ever think it was anything more than rapidly switching attention between tasks? I think if you define something that doesn’t exist and no one claimed it did then perhaps you found what was actually happening. I wonder how many people can rapidly switch their attention between tasks and how often or how constantly they can do it without feeling like they’re overwhelmed.

Yo, it’s your friendly neighborhood lynx here, and I have a couple of comments on this topic.  First of all, if what they were saying were totally true, nobody would be able to walk and talk at the same time.  Humans do a lot of things all at the same time, in a way that can’t be called anything but multitasking; and by that, I mean at the exact same time.  But mostly those things are behaviors we’ve done so many times that we don’t have to consciously think of them anymore; some call it muscle memory.  When you’re learning to drive a car, you keep careful track of every little detail.  That’s why beginning drivers are so bad … they’re being swamped with input and they can’t process all the different parts fast enough to make proper decisions when things get hairy.   But after a while, large portions of the driving experience become second nature.  You don’t even notice that you’re doing them anymore (which is why I turn onto the road leading to work, when I’m suppose to be turning the other way towards the grocery store).  Portions of your brain are just imprinted with that function and you do it.   Note that when you get put in a crisis situation, you’re back to being a novice again: too many new things coming too quickly.

Now that doesn’t mean that you’re not limited in just how many things you can do.  Eventually you do get overwhelmed, but as things become second nature, you can do more and more of them without having to stop and think.

Now, from what I can see, what the report is really talking about is cognitive tasks.  These are highly complex things that require large amounts of your attention, especially when you’re new to them.  And what could be more new and complex than being stuck in an MRI machine and given arbitrary commands to perform when you see colors?  Of course the brain is going to stutter and pause.  And yet, aren’t these the same kind of things technicians are trained to do when they’re watching status boards?  If this turns red, do this, if that needle moves here, do this other thing.  But even here, after a while, they’re just twisting knobs and flicking switches, and discussing the big game with their friends.  Even these things can become second nature after a while, it just takes longer.

Anyway, I really think they need to define their terms better and actually get some better controls on what they’re actually trying to study.

Today, I got sent a link to a YouTube video with just the phrase “you got to listen to this”. I did. First, it’s a song that I really, really like and it means a lot to me. Second, I found the Bill Moyer’s interview with Mark Johnson who has spent years getting this project, Playing for Change, together, planned, recorded, and working.

There are so many phrases and saying about music. We use them all the time:

“They’re playing out song.” — just about everyone I’ve met and talked with.
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” ~ William Congreve
“All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!” ~Thomas Carlyle
“Music is what feelings sound like.” ~Author Unknown
“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” ~Leo Tolstoy
“When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.” ~ Edgar Watson Howe

I’m sure you get the idea that whether we think of it or not, music is a part of all of us. Music is everywhere in every culture — jazz, rock, chants, classical, R&B, blues, whatever. It’s part of the fabric of movies and TV shows — the music in films plays with our emotions and when well done, we never even notice.

Music has the power to lift us up or to bring us to tears. Reading about the Playing for Change project, I began to think that music could also be the glue that could pull the world’s people together. We share music. We share songs. The music speaks to us no matter who we are or where we come from — a song played in New Orleans, New York, Amsterdam, South Africa — it speaks to the people who hear it. We may differ in culture, economic status, education, and beliefs, but a song may still speak to our hearts equally. Maybe music will help to bring us together — to look at our commonalities and not our differences so that we can achieve peace.

What can I say, I’m a liberal/romantic/optimist. I have hope and I listen to the music.

I was perusing the news this morning and ran across an article about a walking house. Well, the article seemed so far-fetched and weird that I looked up the N55 Collective to find out more about it and found this manual about the walking house.

I’m flabbergasted by it. All I can think about is Howl’s Moving Castle. It was a very good anime film based on a YA novel by Diana Wynne Jones. But, watching the film I was entranced by the castle which moved about the landscape from country to city to lakeside — where ever it wanted to go. Imagine having a home that you could move about the countryside in. Suddenly you’ve not limited to one plot of land — you become nomadic.

The houses can move on their six pneumatic legs. But they’re built to have a very small environmental footprint. They have a water capturing system, solar panels, a small windmill, composting toilets, a energy-efficient wood stove, and there’s an option for a greenhouse so you can grow your own food. The living space is very small — kitchen area/living space with toilet and sleeping loft. You’d need to really, really, like the person you chose to live in the walking house with.

But think of the ability to move with the seasons or the sun — to get the most efficiency out of the solar panels, solar water heater and wind generators. Think of being able to move and take your house with you without being in a gazillion dollar RVTrailer. Nomads without tents — while now most are nomads with RVs.

However, living in small spaces takes a different mindset than most of us are comfortable with — though we could learn. For me, the hardest part of moving to a very small space such as this would be giving up my books. But the current technologies in ebooks and the Kindle could make that much easier than in years past. But still, I’ll be interested to see if this walking house takes off as more than an oddity, seaside vacation home, or hunting hut. It has potentially some very good uses and I wonder if they’ll be realized or this will just disappear as an interesting idea with no takers.

Today, I was going through my datebook and noticed that my blog had its one year birthday on September 24th. Somehow, I totally missed it. So, today I wish myself a Happy Belated Birthday.

Here’s where I stand at the 1 year and 1 month (-2 days):
244 posts in 36 categories.
10,433 total comments, 49 approved, 10,383 spam.

I’m pretty pleased that I’ve posted so regularly not quite once a day but better than the three times a week that I was aiming for when I started. I’m pretty excited to have some actual comments on some of my posts but also appalled at the amount of spam that the blog gets.

When I started, I hoped to use the blog to help me get in the habit of writing. Not just sitting and staring at the screen for hours at a time but to write something at least three times a week. I’ve used my blog to write book and movie reviews that don’t fit in the venues that I usually review in. I’ve written pieces that helped me flesh out an idea or thought. I’ve used the blog to write about some issues that I find interesting, appalling, hurtful, or astonishing — those things that just strike my fancy and I want to share.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed following along with me over the past year. I’m more than willing to hear about any ideas that could make my blog more interesting or helpful to those who read it. I know why I write my blog but why do you read it?

A few nights ago we watched Stargate Continuum and the night after we watched all the special features and then the movie with the commentary. I get a lot out of listening to the commentary by the director and whoever else they have. But they commented on the music and how important it was to have the right musical cues in the film. They also mentioned recutting one scene to remove the dialogue because the music was more important, at that point, than the dialogue.

Tonight we had Finding Nemo on as sort of background noise, but you know how that goes; something catches your eye and then you’re watching it. Paying more attention to the musical cues, I just loved the Psycho theme whenever the name Darla came up — it sets you up to know Darla is not going to be good for Nemo.

I’ve noticed that often in movies certain characters will have a theme song. In Pride & Prejudice, the A&E version, each of the major characters has a musical cue that lets you know that the character is now appearing. Lady Catherine de Bourge has her own theme that lets you know by the heaviness of the notes that she’s not a woman you want to cross.

In most movies, you don’t even notice the music, it just is there in the background and it plays with your emotions and your response to what you are seeing. Now that I listen for it I can tell that I’m being emotionally played with by the music in the movies. Most of us just watch the film and never really key into how the music adds to the reactions we have to the characters, the scene, or the overall story.

That got me to thinking about what soundtrack would my life have if it had a sound track. I’ve been kicking the idea around for a while and don’t really know what would fit. Sometimes I think blues or jazz would fit me as an enduring theme but then there are the times that Ode to Joy or just the sound of spoons falling down a stone well would work depending on whether I feel broken or really just overflowing with joy and happiness. Most of the time I think the sounds of nature fit me best — wind in leaves, birds chirping, waves washing up on a shore, gentle rain, thunderstorms, or hard rain — depending on my moods.

I haven’t decided on my soundtrack. Do you have a soundtrack you think would be the distillation of your life?

When I was reading CNN this morning, I saw a link to a science article called “Meltdown: A global warming travelog“. I’ve always heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. I believe in it mostly because there’s so many times that I just can’t express what I want but if I show it to someone they “get it” immediately.

Global warming is, next to the economy and health care, one of the most important problems facing our country and the world. Global warming effects the world — not just the US. Even more important, because it does effect the entire world (remember it’s global), it will effect us here in the US whether we believe in it or not — no matter how much our politicians pretend it’s not important.

Well, I went the CNN article which was basically a short paragraph description and a short narrated slide show of photos. I found the slide show to be so jaw-dropping in images. I’m talking about the before and after glacier photos:

The Pasterze Glacier in the Austrian Alps, in 1875 and then in 2004.

The Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada, in a 1917 and again in 2005

The difference between the two photos shows more clearly and concisely than any million words just how much trouble our Earth is in.

I haven’t read the entire book, What Matters by David Elliot Cohen and photography by Gary Braasch. But you can check the book out at its website where there is a e-version available that appears to be free. Here’s the book description from Amazon:

For more than a century, photography has revealed truths, exposed lies, advanced the public discourse, and inspired people to demand change. Socially conscious pioneers with cameras transformed the world—and that legacy lives on in this eye-opening, thought-provoking, and (we hope) action-inducing book. Like Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth before it, we believe that What Matters will fundamentally alter the way we see and understand the human race and our planet.

What Matters asks: What are the essential issues of our time? What are the pictures that will spark public outrage and spur reform? The answer appears in 18 powerful, page-turning stories by the foremost photojournalists of our age, edited by The New York Times best-selling author/editor David Elliot Cohen (A Day in the Life and America 24/7 series), and featuring trenchant commentary from well-recognized experts and thinkers in appropriate fields. Photographer Gary Braasch and climate-change guru Bill McKibben provide “A Global Warming Travelogue” that takes us from ice caves in Antarctica to smoke-spewing coal plants in Beijing. Brent Stirton and Peter A. Glick examine a “Thirsty World,” chronicling the daily search for clean water in non-developed countries. James Nachtwey and bestselling poverty expert Jeffrey D. Sachs look at the causes of, and cures for, global poverty in “The Bottom Billion.” Stephanie Sinclair and Judith Bruce present the preteen brides of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Ethiopia.

Sometimes the juxtaposition of photographs can be startling: “Shop ’til We Drop,” Lauren Greenfield’s images of upscale consumer culture, starkly contrast with Shehzad Noorani’s “Children of the Black Dust”—child laborers in Bangladesh, their faces blackened with carbon dust from recycled batteries.

The combination of compelling photographs and insightful writing make this a highly relevant, widely discussed book bound to appeal to anyone concerned about the crucial issues shaping our world. What Matters is, in effect, a 336-page illustrated letter to the next American president about the issues that count. It will inspire readers to do their part—however small—to make a difference: to help, the volume includes extensive “What You Can Do” sections with a menu of web links and effective actions readers can take now. This year give What Matters.

It looks from what I read of the e-version (sampling some chapters), that this might be a book that can get people talking about global warming beyond the usual response of “if global warming exists it wouldn’t be so cold in the winter”. Our climate is changing and it’s changing far more rapidly than scientists have predicted. There’s now an almost clear passage at the north pole. Antarctica is losing huge chunks of its iceshelf and other areas are degrading. There was a recent report that the nitrogen is now being released from the northern ice where its been sequestered. The Earth is in trouble and it’s time to stop talking about whether the problem exists and talk about what to do to adapt to the changes that global warming is going to make in our lives — I think we’re beyond talking about how to stop it. Now we need to deal with the repercussions and this book might, with it’s wonderful photographs be a way of explaining it to those who need to see to believe.

Someone pointed me to this youtube video. I loved what Taylor Mali was talking about and it got me thinking. First watch the video then read my thoughts.

Back in the dark ages, I was very active in women’s rights issues. I also taught courses in Assertiveness Training. One of the key issues that always had to be dealt with was how women talked. When you listen careful, there are still a lot of women that end every sentence with a slight uprising inflection that turns a statement into a question. It’s as if they’re asking permission to have that opinion. Women who expected to have a chance at breaking through the glass ceiling had to train themselves to actually make declarative sentences without the rising inflection that seemed so natural to them.

Things have changed a lot since then; there’s still often a glass ceiling, but it’s usually also invisible. PC or political correctness has made as all afraid to speak our minds. There is, however, a very big difference between talking down to someone, insulting someone, and expressing an opinion. Lately, expressing an opinion different from the person you are speaking with has somehow become wrong. I truly don’t understand that view of things and it often gets me into trouble but then I, unlike some others I could name, am a maverick.

It is our duty to express our opinions. It’s our right to let people know when we disagree with them, provided — and this is a big exception — we do it with respect and courtesy. That’s not difficult to do, but you do need to be sensitive to the other person and remember they don’t have to believe or think the same way you do. Guess what? People can disagree with each other and still be friends, colleagues, or co-workers. Most of the problems today stem from the fact that we’re so busy trying to be just like everyone else, trying hard to not stand out, and that means that none of us are happy.

Personally, I think a lot of this has to do with how we talk to each other. Speak clearly, concisely, with respect, courtesy, and with authority.

So what do you think about how you talk? Do you question authority? Do you speak with conviction?