Future shock

During a 70’s era college course in social psychology, we were each given the assignment of predicting possible future events in society and presenting them next time we met. I predicted technology would make fixed workplaces obsolete. I’d be able to do my job while at the beach or in a coffee shop and transmit it over telephone lines to an employer at another beach or coffee shop anywhere around the world. I predicted fixed residences would also become obsolete. I figured if I weren’t tied to a workplace I would become geographically un-tethered. I could travel on motorcycle, or recumbent bicycle across the US and either camp or stay at youth hostels along the way. I predicted the same would be true of relationships ..I would form them as I went. Everyone would. The idea of marriage or monogamy wasn’t in the cards ..and I considered the possibility that they may not even be compatible with who we are as a species. I admit, I got a lot of my ideas from the book ‘future shock’, the ‘whole earth catalog’ and a broken home. I remember the girl sitting beside me going “Man, ain’t no way you got a girlfriend, cuz if you do I sure feel sorry for her..!” However, the guy sitting on the other side was in shock. He looked like ‘preppie’ from the movie Love Story. He started out by saying his forecast was definitely more reality-based than mine ..and went on to talk about marrying his high school sweetheart and making partner at a precedent-setting law firm. Senator Edward Kennedy would be president. Decency and Christianity would prevail ..student protest wouldn’t be tolerated ..we’d win the war in Vietnam ..and defeat communism wherever it appeared. The standard of living would soar in the US ..Monsanto would make life better through advances in chemistry (making me think of Tomorrowland at Disneyland). And they’d live in a Mediterranean-style house in Benedict Canyon where his wife would stay home raising their two and a half children. He got a laugh out of that and for a moment I thought I had misunderstood the assignment. Looking back, I admit ..my ideas may have been offbeat ..but I was only eighteen years old. Now I’m not so sure they were any more or less ‘reality-based’ than preppie’s.

Mel Gibson

Los Angeles DA Steve Cooley doesn’t consider extortion a crime when other attorneys do it. Its “hardball legal negotiations.” Only people outside the profession mistake it for a crime. “Lawyering is a tough business,” he says. So, if I secretly record my neighbor skinny-dipping with his girlfriend then threaten to show the video to his wife unless he pays me $ 20 million (because I know the damages his wife could bring are far greater) ..I’m simply practicing tough ‘neighborly negotiations’..? As long as I don’t make the threat ‘explicit’, according to Cooley. In other words I cannot be charged for an ‘implied threat’. Better make sure I say something like “Hey George, love the rack on your skinny-dipping partner. Oh and by the way ..can you help me finance the purchase of that mountaintop retreat I’ve had my eye on.” I should avoid saying “Hey George, if you pay me $ 20 million I won’t show this video to your wife.” Funny, in my profession ..context and prior information can quickly add up to turn an implied statement into an explicit one [link]. Like if you were to find out I secured financing from a previous neighbor the same way. However, that’s inadmissible according to legal guidelines. So here’s my point. Mel Gibson’s estranged girlfriend secretly recorded him making vulgar and racist remarks during a party they hosted at his home. Similar comments had definitely hurt his career once before. The recordings came up during a recent custody battle where her attorneys suggested they would like to resolve the couple’s differences ‘quickly and quietly’ if he would agree to “..care for his ex and their daughter in a more generous way.” Instead of $12 million they wanted $20 million. According to Cooley that’s not an attempt at extortion by attorneys. Doesn’t matter if the ex-girlfriend had secured a stream of income from a prior relationship with actor Timothy Dalton in a similar manner. Now I’m no big Mel Gibson fan ..but I do know that threatening someone with character assassination for financial gain is illegal. I’ve seen it on TV and looked it up on the Internet. There may be a fine line between extortion and ‘aggressive negotiations’ in the legal profession, but they’d definitely haul my ass to jail for dealing with my neighbors that way.

Nomad

Frank is a nomadic dumpster diver. He’s frequently blitzed on meth and it shows. His eyes bulge and quiver. and his hands shake.  “Why do you do it ..?” I ask. One voice tells him it’s his reward for two tours of duty ..says it’s OK ..it’s just a phase (he was never around the stuff before). A second voice tells him he needs something to obliterate the first one when it starts sounding like bullshit. He tried taking courses at the city college but discussions in his political science class left him feeling conflicted between the patriotism he felt going in and the alienation he feels now. “Nobody gives a shit around here.” He’d leave campus pissed ..go back to his tent in a field near the airport and watch planes fly away ..imagining himself flying away someday too. Reminded me of a song that used to go through my head when I was on the road:

“This old airport’s got me down / it’s no earthly good to me / I’m stuck here on the ground, as cold and drunk as I can be / You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train / So I best be on my way in the early mornin’ rain.”

Song for Japan

The prophesies of Charlie

I think Charlie is trying to convince me he’s a prophet. He doesn’t come right out and say so because he knows that might sound bogus (even though I’ve never denied the possibility of prophesy). So he is going about it indirectly. He begins to narrate a series of recent events, in a telling manner, hoping I will reach that conclusion myself. He knows suggestion is more powerful than direct assertion. First he tells me that his mother is psychic. When his sister lost her car keys in the park, his mother emptied her head of all preconceptions and strolled randomly through the park until she came to a stop. When she looked down by her feet, there were the keys. Now I don’t doubt this story ..but I do believe he’s planting the suggestion that he inherited psychic abilities. Earlier this week he goes into a psychic/head shop. When he asks the owner what time the next bus is due, a female customer overhears and offers him a ride home. It turns out she’s an aspiring actress and tells him she can foresee a future where he finishes writing his screenplay and they meet again. Astonishing, he says. He tells me he is actually planning to write a screenplay but never mentioned it to anyone. I believe he’s offering evidence of supernatural forces at work. The next day he enters a rare coin shop owned by a friend and buys an ounce of gold (for around $1,300.00). Before he leaves, his friend throws in an extra coin for free. “Man, nobody does that ..ever” he says “..unless they see the end of times.” He goes on to say “Bill, I think it would be a good idea for you to put more gold in your survival kit. ..you’ll sleep better at night.” Now he’s recommending that I act on these forces. Then he tells me not to be alarmed, but he has experienced a profound breakthrough recently. More like a series of epiphanies actually. He predicts a tsunami hitting the coast of California, much like the one that struck Japan. He tells me that, as a   “psychologist” ,  I must surely know that society treats its prophets like psychotics. He recommends I organize my neighbors in the canyon and begin sandbagging and building retaining walls in anticipation. I tell him I’ll think about it. Skeptic that I am. Interestingly enough, he never once said he was a prophet. Although I came away with the impression he did. Implications are far more convincing than direct assertions. He got me to conjure-up this one by myself.

Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Part two

Continued from [part one]  Now I want to talk about ‘discourse analysis’ and what it reveals about communication over social networks. Discourse analysis is the branch of psychology dealing the way people process information from what they hear and read. I think it’s telling. Face to face communication is a probabilistic event. Language is a relatively narrow band of communication that can only suggest what the speaker has in mind. This presents the listener with a range of possibilities. Communication is successful only when the listener infers the most likely meaning intended by the speaker. Ordinary conversation is generally successful because we have context to help guide us along. We rely on facial expressions, intonation, emphasis, location and other visual and auditory cues. However, where ordinary communication is probabilistic, text messaging is a crapshoot. Text is cryptic. Context is lost and we rely on memory to supply the missing cues. However, memory is fallible. Research in discourse processing has shown that the biggest piece of missing information we supply is the intention of the speaker ..and it’s their intention that we most often get wrong. We perceive threat where none was intended. Offense at what may have only been sarcasm. By nature, the flow of conscious experience is displaced over social networks. This simply means it occurs outside the context of our immediate situation. That’s the beauty of the Internet. It allows us to share experiences that are ‘displaced’ in time and space with users from all over the world. It also places a heavy burden on text comprehension, which is much less developed than speech comprehension in the language centers of the brain. I believe this will provide a rich source of field-observation for the study of human consciousness for years.

Psychology of facebook

Presented to the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies

Part one

Anthropology:   I’m going to start with what I know about anthropology, which isn’t much but I feel it’s relevant. In my view, facebook is a fairly tame and nontoxic community – unlike others I’ve been in (such as high school, workplaces, dinner tables, neighborhoods, yahoo chat rooms). Without a constitution or written protocol, congeniality prevails. I think this says something about human nature.  Social networks are tuned to the way we are wired.  Like taking the first step out of a cave and into a larger community where there’s no anonymity – it’s best not to offend anyone. Privacy is a recent development. Tribal villages are more typical of human existence. Just look at the indigenous people of the Amazon. They live in circular settlements with one wall surrounding the perimeter, but no walls on the inside. They’re never alone and everyone can see what everyone else is doing. It pays to be on-guard and congenial otherwise you risk offending others and being banished from the tribe. In the Amazon, that means certain death. I believe that’s where the fear of abandonment comes from. I’m not talking about some trendy catch-phrase from pop psychology. It’s built into our constitution because it was essential for our survival. The threat of death-by-banishment is no longer real but the feelings certainly are. So, on facebook ..we tread carefully.

Behavioral science:   Psychologists have known for a long time now that there are few things more rewarding in life than validation from our peers. It beats television and ice cream and it’s the motivation underlying most communication. That’s why Twitter is so widely popular. Without let-up, it provides a constant stream of validation for every thought that crosses our brain. Buddhist practice is aimed at countering a very active function of the human ego: impression management. We put a lot of effort into presenting the right ‘persona’ .. or the way we want others to see and remember us. There’s nothing spontaneous going on there. The messages we broadcast are anxiously crafted to make us look the way we want to be perceived. Don’t believe me ..? Look no further than politicians approaching an election year. Newt Gingrich recently found religion because it sends the right message to Christian conservatives. Mitt Romney has ‘reinvented’ himself to look stupid and appeal to the average voter. What people choose to share on facebook in no way presents the whole picture. It’s not our nature.

Part two continued here ~>[part two]

Superstitious behavior

Apparently the American public believes in superstitions that are no less primitive than those of natives living in the rainforest or suicide bombers of radical Islamic sects. Members of a Midwest Baptist church claim that U.S. service men are dying overseas “..in divine retribution for American decadence and tolerance of homosexuality.” Now, I don’t have a problem with the Supreme Court defending their right to free speech. What bothers me is when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. goes on to imply that their beliefs represent those of American society. According to Roberts: “The content of Westboro’s signs plainly relates to broad issues of interest to society at large regarding the moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, and the fate of our nation.” In addition, he says their beliefs “reflect matters of public import” [link]. Now if I’m to believe what I’m hearing from the highest-ranking justice in the land, then Americans are indeed a superstitious group of people. “Thank God for IEDs ..Thank God for dead soldiers” .. (!?) Forget federal funding for schools. No amount of education in the world is going to counter that type of savage thinking.

Extraterrestrial adaptation

Robert Sapolsky

If an alien creature invaded earth by entering the brain of human beings, hijacking their nervous system and driving them to engage in high-risk ventures sure to lower their chances of survival .. you’d think some of us might notice something. Yet something disturbingly like this may be happening without notice. When mice get infected with toxoplasmosis, an alien bacterium, the toxoplasmum goes dormant inside the amygdala of their brain and reduces their fear of cats [link]. Cats eat the reckless mice and ingest the toxoplasmas where they wind up in the intestine mingling with others of their kind. Toxoplasmas reproduce sexually only in the gut of the cat, so suppressing the fear response in rats and mice is a sure way of gaining entrance into the cat intestine. Neuro-practitioners call this ‘adaptation by behavioral manipulation’ [link]. A parasite learns to manipulate host behaviors that enhance their own chances of survival. In other words, these alien bacteria learn to perform brain surgery in order to get rides to wild parties where they can exchange DNA and procreate!

Apparently these clever little creatures have found their way into people too. Nearly one third of all humans have dormant toxoplasmas sleeping inside their amygdala. Since people are pretty high up in the food chain ..the only real threat comes from themselves (or perhaps an unsuspecting bear or mountain lion). Chances are, infected individuals will start acting recklessly and wind up getting killed in a car accident involving excessive speed. So they only appear in the traffic section of the paper, or the actuarial tables of an insurance company. Otherwise, symptoms appear close enough to schizophrenia that they wind up in a psychiatric population and are never heard from again. I think I would call this a successful alien predation.

Neuro psychology of king’s speech

Stuttering is a speaker’s way of overcoming a timing deficit in the muscles that control speech vocalization. It’s enough to make the natural delivery of speech somewhat less than automatic. Like trying to ski and think about it at the same time, deliberation interferes with the fluid motion required to speak fluently. Stutterers try to compensate for this by rushing the process and speaking faster. They quickly exceed the capacity of the speech delivery system, which makes them either freeze-up or produce the same sound repeatedly. This happens when speech signals from the brain arrive at the system too quickly. Congestion occurs and access is momentarily denied. However, the system was already triggered to proceed ..so it starts uttering the last sound available, if any.

Most speech therapists use some form of ‘auditory feedback’ to impart a sense of timing to the delivery of speech. This involves a device with a pair of headphones that delays the feedback of speech and creates like an echo. It’s intended to help stutterers overcome the urge to speak too quickly and focus on smooth and continuous phrasing. The echo persists until the speaker begins to slow down and ‘close the gap’. As they slow down, the delay is shortened until their speaking voice and the echo are heard as one sound. Over several sessions, this technique helps the person master a pace that approaches the natural rhythm of speech.

In the movie ‘The King’s Speech’, the therapist first used a pair of headphones to completely block feedback by playing symphonic music instead. It wasn’t intended to treat the problem but to show the King that fluent speech was possible. Although the King dismissed it as a parlor trick ..it worked because it denied him access to what he was saying so he couldn’t speak and think about it at the same time. He only knew it worked later on in the story when he listened to the recording that his therapist had made during the session. His speech was near perfect and it’s what prompted him to continue therapy.

Neuro speculation: Egypt

The amygdala is an almond-shaped mass of gray matter deep inside the cerebral cortex that plays a central role in self-control. It helps keep emotional expression in-compliance with culturally accepted norms. When damaged, an individual has difficulty with impulse-control and restraint from inappropriate and aberrant behavior [link]. Over the past decade, research has uncovered a lot more about the amygdala and how it processes signals from our social environment [link].

I have a theory. I believe that some social signals affect the amygdala differently than others. Some elicit greater restraint and vigilance while others offer release from conditioned restraint and vigilance. Neuroscience informs us that when the amygdala is surgically removed, animals show signs of inappropriate affect ..boredom where there should be fear and hypersexual activity where there is no enticement [link]. I predict that if you housed a normal group of animals where they could watch the frenetic activity of the amygdala-impaired group ..they too would show signs of inappropriate affect. Observation alone would induce the same effect as impairment. MRI studies already show heightened activity in response to authority and perceived threat. I believe they would reveal another type of activity in response to collapse of authority and diminished threat. My theory says that the amygdala would then act to release spectators from conditioned inhibition and give license to repressed impulses and sexual aggression.

This may explain the high incident of sexual assault committed by revelers celebrating the downfall of President Mubarak in Egypt [link]. Festivities associated with a break in the social order released a frenzy of predatory sexual behavior in a few that quickly spread to other participants in the crowd. Predatory behavior of this sort has also been observed at soccer matches and in crowds celebrating at the Rose Parade in California. I believe that lowered internal restraints coupled with the lax enforcement of sexual harassment laws in Egypt may have contributed to the chain of events observed. By no mean am I offering excuses for what occurred, I’m only trying to draw a possible connection between real-world events and accounts of aggression reported from the lab.

My heart goes out to the CBS correspondent who fell victim to it.

Rational Charlie

I admit, I don’t subscribe to a rational model of man. I believe we’re hybrids. Part logic, part emotion, part visual, part verbal and part many other qualities, some of which we don’t even know. We make our way more by heuristic than analytic reasoning. Most of our brilliant discoveries have come from seeing the relationship between vague and loosely connected ideas. Albert Einstein, for example, came up with his theory of relativity only after letting his mind wander [link]. The real world is multi-dimensional and sloppy by nature.

That’s why I had to cringe last night during dinner. Charlie has an insatiable need to be right and a contentious way of dismissing anything to the contrary. In addition, he holds people to standards that no one can meet, not even himself. He scrutinizes other peoples’ speech for statements that he can prove false ..and then points them out as though they’re character flaws. This can lead to some pretty rough exchanges. For instance, when I heard Cindy say “I am moved by things I don’t understand.” Charlie responded “What things, specifically? ..and how can you be moved by something you don’t understand..?” I felt her statement rang true. We’re all creatures of appetite and don’t always act with perfect information. However, I felt Charlie was suggesting “you’re a fool for not behaving in a more rational manner.” Later on in the evening I heard her say “As desires enter me, a picture is formed in me as to what will answer that desire.” Charlie goes “Too passive. You say ‘Desires move into me’. Lacks responsibility of a choice. Furthermore, a picture is non-verbal and external to one’s true nature.” For some reason that’s where I felt compelled to intercede. “Just because she’s speaking in a passive voice doesn’t mean she acting in a passive manner, Charlie. Besides, visualization is primary to human nature while language is subordinate to it. Why do you think the graphical interface made Bill Gates a billionaire ..?” Now he tells me he was trying to impress the lady and I blew it for him.

The Grammys

I think growing up listening to the Rolling Stones has shaped by nervous system and left a definite imprint on my brain. I’m talking like, a specialized location dedicated to their music with channel-direct connections leading to it. Only takes a couple of cues, like the opening chords of ‘street fighting man’ to instantly activate the rest of the song. I experienced this last night while Mick Jagger was only mouthing the words “I need you you you ..” at the end of his performance during the Grammys. I swear I could hear his voice loud and clear just watching him do that ..even with the thundering sound of a sterling, multi-piece back-up band.

Egypt

“In a way previous generations could never have imagined, young protesters have brought down a dictatorship. If previous revolutions had been hatched in mosques and smoky cafes, this one was hatched online by computer geeks” [link].

I do believe the prophesy of the Electronic Frontier has been fulfilled [link]. Information technology can be used as a force for political change and democracy. In 1991, Soviet youths brought down the USSR using camcorders with satellite uplinks. Now an educated generation of Egyptians has brought down Mubarak using laptops connected to the Internet. That’s brilliant. They were able to bypass traditional lines of communication, which were shutdown by the government, and quickly deliver their message to a cross-section of the population. I admire Wael Ghonim, the young Google exec who helped organize the protest. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time in history that a revolution, overthrowing a long-standing government, has been spread over the Internet ..successfully!

An illusion

“In the west we tend to project or own notions of mystique and tranquility on Buddhist practice. In reality there’s a lot of acrimony and fighting going on in the monasteries.” ~ Erik Curren [link]

I agree. Buddhists are subject to feelings of hostility and aggression same as everyone else. A book by Rossi Jiyu-Kennett who spent eight years in a Japanese monastery is illustrative [link]. However, I believe there is a difference between Western and Buddhist notions of ‘fighting’. When a practicing Buddhist fights, they are fighting – mindful of the decision to fight – aware of what interpretation brings to the battle – and knowing full well that the real enemy is interpretation. They don’t believe in such things as good or bad fights ..only consequences. And interpretation obscures consequences. In fact, it’s probably the villainy of interpretation that got them into conflict to begin with. I’m reminded of a parable zen master Perry once told us. I call it ‘the battle of evermore’ because I don’t remember the actual title. Nor do I remember the exact words, so I can only paraphrase. It goes something like this:

The battle: One sentient being, unable to escape the cycle of reincarnation, is locked in perpetual battle with a ferocious beast from hell. After many lifetimes of this, he throws down his sword in disgust and says “Enough! I can no longer fight like this.” Suddenly the illusion of the ferocious beast vanishes, the barricade of defensiveness crumbles and the endless cycle of battle ends.

Big time

There are fewer ‘big acts’ in music out there these days. The Internet has freed the airwaves and given our ears access to a much larger pool of talent. So what we have now is a greater number of acts connecting with smaller audiences. I’d say the music market has definitely become ‘differentiated’. Fine with me ..I’ve gotten weary of going to the LA Coliseum. For concert promoters however, this means a lot of empty seats. Last year headliners such as Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers canceled stadium gigs due to lower than expected ticket sales. So, big concert promoters such as Nederlander responded by raising ticket prices to make up for the difference. Online start-up ‘ScoreBig’ responded by discounting tickets to fill the empty seats. I think that’s brilliant! Definitely a more compelling reason to see a show. Like the record industry, I think the old-style concert venue is doomed. Artists are aware of this. I see them playing in places like the House of Blues more often now. And as far as promotion is concerned ..I see artists taking that bull by the horns as well and posting events over the Internet. Make friends with any of them on myspace or facebook and you’ll see what I mean.

Smells like teen spirit

“High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

When I hear someone in position of authority say “I’m going to rigorously enforce [this particular law] because, without laws ..we’d be a country of anarchy” – then I watch them go out and prosecute offenders in a manner that’s way out-of-proportion to the offense – I don’t believe they’re really acting out of fondness for the law. They’re acting out of aggression that is typical of teenagers climbing the social network in high school or adults climbing the hierarchy of power in politics.

Last year, LA Dist Atty Steve Cooley waged sudden war on marijuana dispensaries because they were accepting cash instead of trading in goods and services. Apparently the law didn’t spell out an exact currency and the term ‘co-op’ could be interpreted to mean a system of barter. Turns out he was planning to run for Attorney General of California.

Arizona Sen Russell Pearce and Kris Kobach co-sponsored Arizona SB 1070 giving police the authority of INS agents to detain Hispanics where the sole probable cause is “..looking illegal.” This certainly is a subjective cause, prone to the bias of a police officer with no training as a federal immigration officer. To me, it’s the same as detaining someone on suspicion of dealing drugs because their hair’s too long. Turns out both sponsors have political ambitions. Kris Kobach is running for Secretary of State in Kansas and Pearce plans to run for president of the Senate and someday hopes to get elected Sheriff of Maricopa County.

Last week Orange County Dist Atty Tony Rackauckas decided to file criminal conspiracy charges against a group of UCI students who protested a speech on campus last year. They face both six months in jail and, as felons, diminished prospects for the future over a nonviolent protest, which may have been rude, but certainly not criminal. I suspect that Rackauckas is also seeking higher office.

Cosmic Charlie

It is well known that the matter, making up the tissues of our body, is in a perpetual state of decay and replenishment. We are not the same cellular material we were the week before. What I want to know is what kind of ‘blueprint’ do these ‘replenishment cycles’ follow ..? What keeps me from dissolving into the atmosphere at the end of the week ..? It only makes sense that some sort of ‘cosmic memory’ exists to pass information from one replenishment cycle to the next. Because what I’ve been told, even the scaffolding gets demolished. While it may be incomprehensible to me, I refuse to dismiss it. Since I have no basis for it, I have to start somewhere familiar.

Embryonic journey: It is well known that the cells of our body already contain information about their destiny. Genetic material guides embryonic development from one generation to the next. Even this was a mystery until the discovery of ‘epigenetic memory’. The contents of epigenetic memory (epigenomes) are what persist in order to tell chromosomes how to express the characteristics of our ancestors. You erase epigenetic memory and you have ‘equipotentiality’ ..the ability start fresh and be whatever you want to be. Anyway, it wasn’t until we had a set of ‘seer stones’ that we could actually sense the presence of epigenetic memory (it resides in deep layers of DNA, at what are now called the sites of telemere and centromere). I hope someday we acquire a set of similar stones to penetrate the mystery of cosmic memory.

Charlie

Charlie was convinced aliens were following him disguised as policemen. It was part of plot to take over by snatching people one at a time. He hasn’t seen his friend Michael since the night of his DUI arrest. Charlie managed to bolt out the passenger door, but it was close. Tonight he decided he’d been waiting, crouched in fear, long enough. He got in his truck and, with the stereo blasting, circled the neighborhood trying to flush ‘em out. When an officer arrived Charlie successfully outmaneuvered the unsuspecting alien with it’s own gun, then called 911 for reinforcements. But it was a trick and a whole regiment of aliens showed up instead. That’s when he knew it was Armageddon time. He took off his clothes, sat on the pavement, looked up and patiently waited for rapture to come and take him away from there.

Cosmic zone

Dawn is breaking on the continent of Capella. Overhead, the star of Davriel is still visible in a purplish blue sky. A meteorite trail flashes by. Sallareä bows her head in homage to all she does not know. She’s unaware that, momentarily, what she does not know will be paying homage back. Flickering particles of crystal enter a sector of Sallareä’s narrative-space. Passing through the prism of her senses, an apparition emerges. Sallareä sees a constellation of linked images that, to her, resembles a mandala. It has a message. Whoever this presence may be is telling her that everything is OK and would like to know if they can join her narrative-space and play.

Google

The Internet is like an anarchist state. No one is in charge and everyone can contribute. That’s how it should be. It puts everyone in charge of what comes and goes by a democratic process of selection. What is of interest to the most rises in visibility and what is of interest to the fewest decreases in visibility. It’s still available but mostly to the interested ‘niche’. What has no niche, or is offensive, fades into obscurity and may vanish altogether. That’s how it should be. Since there’s an open-door policy for entry, the ‘gateway’ needs to reside at the point-of-retrieval. This has been the protocol for nearly every database system I’ve installed ..the successful ones anyway. The gatekeeper to the Internet has been the role of portals such as AOL and Yahoo, or search-engines like Google. The most successful being the one that allows the most clear and manageable handle on chaos. That would be Google I believe. They have an equitable and consistent method for delivering Internet content. They call it ‘PageRank’ and it allows viewers to determine what comes to the foreground and what recedes to the background of our collective Internet experience. Rankings are based on factors such as the amount of attention a site receives or the aggregate number of links or ‘signposts’ directing traffic there. It is a most democratic point-of-retrieval system, provided they stay away from paid-ranking practices. Now they’re turning their attention to making Internet services available over the greatest number of devices and locations with their Android operating system. This has made the selection process even more democratic. In addition, it has put the Internet in our back pocket. Browser-based touch-screen phones have created a virtual ‘wallet’ ..containing a marketplace with virtual ‘catalogs’, ‘order-takers’, ‘currency’, ‘transaction-handlers’ and ‘record-keepers’. The number of services they can deliver to the palm of your hand is virtually endless. I don’t see the role of Google diminishing anytime soon [link].

Coastal zone

Ok, the way I look at it ..we can continue fighting the tide or we can step back and come to grips with a changing coastline. Looks like we’ve chosen to bunker down and fight. I believe this kind of old-school mentality just leads to faster erosion, more polluted water and fewer homes we can claim as beachfront property. What we end up with is a barrier that’s in constant need of repair and beaches that sicken us. That’s what happens when you build out to the edge. Ask anyone who lives on Broad Beach in Malibu or on the bluffs in Santa Barbara. The beach has receded hundreds of feet since I moved here in the 1990’s. Ask any one who still surfs the river jetty in Newport. Respiratory ailments, skin rashes and diarrhea come with the territory. You might say it’s nature’s way of restoring balance. I agree with UC Santa Cruz Oceanographer Gary Griggs and the Pacific Institute. We gotta’ retreat. Move the fucking concrete and asphalt back a couple hundred yards and replace it with cobblestones and sand. Restore a wetland that once acted as a natural filter and did a much better job at keeping the sand on the beach. Or just sit back and watch the ocean reclaim its property. What we’ll be left with are beaches of upturned asphalt, concrete pillars, rusted-out rebar and other detritus of a civilization that, for centuries, crammed its most valuable homes and businesses to the edge of the ocean.

Receptivity

Senator
Russell Pearce

I have a theory. People who rate themselves as highly ‘consistent and uncompromising’ on issues are slower to adapt to the unexpected and less likely to learn from their mistakes. To put it bluntly, “I think inflexibility leads to arrested development”. Roger Shank has a model of speech comprehension that says people only tune-in long enough to retrieve the most likely script from memory. After that, communication becomes a process of listening for information that fills-in the missing pieces. Tom Trabasso says script-based processing is a useful strategy but only when matters are highly predictable ..like listening to a kidnapping story where you can safely narrow your attention to the parts that talk about “what kind of force was used” or “what the kidnapper’s demands are.” My theory says that over-reliance on script-based processing is sort of like Procrustes bed in Greek mythology .. reception becomes limited to what conforms to a standard set of precedents in the listeners head. The rest is quickly dismissed as either immaterial, inconceivable or unacceptable (take for example John Boehner’s “Hell, no!” anti-Obama strategy, or Senator Russell Pearce’s claim that all opposing views are “treasonous”). I talked to Dr Thompson about it. Although he generally considers theories a dime a dozen, he thinks it merits attention and even suggested some ‘assessment tools’ I could use to measure ‘willingness to yield’ on issues. I didn’t think it would be hard getting people to admit to having an uncompromising nature and I have tests that measure how swiftly people handle unexpected events in a narrative. Now I’m interested in getting started and seeing what turns-up in the literature. Perhaps it’s already been done. I mean, you’d think it’d be a factor in Alzheimer’s or something. Considering the political atmosphere around here there’s bound to be some interest in the subject.

Anti anxiety

Sian Beilock

Writing has been shown to replace ruminating. Ruminating is generally thought of as the mental activity devoted to replaying past traumatic experience. It is a well-known contributor to clinical depression. That’s why writing workshops are often included in the treatment of depression. However, ruminating over future events, such as taking a high-stakes exam or something, can be equally disruptive. In this case, ruminating often leads to “choking” where students perform more poorly than expected given their skill level, especially when there are large incentives for optimal performance and negative consequences for poor performance. University of Chicago Psychologist Sian Beilock has found that the simple act of writing about anxiety can significantly reduce students’ chances of choking, especially if it’s done just prior to test-taking [link]. She says that when students are able to express their fears in writing, they’re given the satisfaction that they’ve dealt with them enough to move on and stop ruminating over them. This, in turn, releases space in working memory ..making it available to work on the task at hand.

System tool

New Years Eve and I’m battling a computer virus called ‘system tool’. I finish and it feels like I just defeated alien predators on xbox. I join friends at SoHo to celebrate New Years, and boast about being an expert ‘tool’ remover. They laugh, conjecturing about the different ways I could have been assaulted by a tool ..then ask me to tell them more about this ‘tool’. I tell them it’s a scam-artist that holds your PC ransom until you agree to buy a subscription for some phony anti-virus software. I admit, I bent over and let this bugger in ..but he led me on. He was disguised as a Windows XP update. Same shield and message box telling me there’s a security update available and asking me what I want to do with it. I clicked the ‘x’ in the corner to close the message and deal with it later so I could continue with what I was doing ..when suddenly my Internet session closed and my desktop was replaced with a butt-ugly screen that blocked me from doing anything except taking their bogus offer, which I didn’t ..figuring it wouldn’t end there. I shuddered and told them it made me feel ‘violated’ and ‘unclean’. “Friggin’ unhygienic” is the way Brian put it and everyone moved back a little. I am such a geek. Happy New Year out there to all the nerds and the geeks and the hackers (but only the good ones)..!