Click to enlarge: BF Skinner and an operant conditioning chamber (it feeds or shocks a rat based on the rat's behavior).
Ilearned just recently in a series of lectures on major ideas in psychology that it takes 2-3 positive reinforcements for a test subject (like a mouse) to learn how to repeat the behavior that leads to reward.
It takes only one bad experience to teach a test subject not to repeat the same error.[1]
This is a very significant thing. Positive reinforcement takes time; negative reinforcement is nearly instant. It's a carryover from our evolutionary past in which one mistake could mean death. (It's carved into our collective conscience with sayings like "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me").
This should say a lot to parents, teachers, bosses, ministers, and anyone else in a position to hurt a human being they are accountable for.
[2013-06-06]
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Brandi, You're a Fine Girl
I've loved this song since I was a child. Hard to explain. I grew up around boats and sails, ropes and bells, and other dockside images that resonate with me still. Anyone that grew up around water will identify with that.
Looking Glass - Brandi, You're a Fine Girl
[2013-06-07]
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[1] In this case, the reward was food when a lever was pressed. The negative reinforcement was a shock to the feet when approaching food in a certain area of the cage.
Click to enlarge: Eric Snowden, who asked for asylum in China (then Moscow, then Ecuador?) after revealing NSA data collection practices used on Americans.
<rant>
Isn't it interesting when governments are compromised, embarrassed, or tested by folks like Eric Snowden, there's a flurry of distracting events.... like a five-year-old New York bombing video released for no reason, and Jimmy Hoffa's body is (not) dug up (again).
We are pawns in an information game, and if the players play well enough, we never know where the real story is.
When my brain makes things up, it bounces back and forth between images of someone like Snowden eaves-dropping on a phone call to China, to just the opposite - that I live in total obscurity in a mound of data that no one really cares about or will ever sift though during the lifetimes of anyone around today.
We are all absorbed by a sense of our own self-importance. Sorta has to be that way so we eat and work stay alive and stuff like that.
[2013-06-23]
</rant>
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Click to enlarge: The cover of One Size Fits All by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
The only thing worse than not being able to see similarities between competing models is not being able to see the differences.
In the first case, you end up creating new solutions for the same recurring problem; in the second, you keep using the old solution for new problems.
A number of things help avoid this:
• Willingness to see others succeed with your ideas (and give them the credit) • Willingness to fail with others' ideas (and take the blame) • Willingness to succeed and fail together
And shared goals and attentive listening and tolerance and diversity and all those other good things that should go without saying but are usually said and then go away.
Click to enlarge: Bill Bixby turned into the incredible Hulk when he got angry.
If you want some insight into how ill-informed, mean-spirited and lonely people are, read the comments to any gun control or religious news story.
One minute you're a mild-mannered ordinary human being reading the discussion thread of a trending topic, the next minute you're furious at the opinions of others, people you don't know, will never meet, and probably wouldn't tell you what they thought if you did meet them.
The lesson: Don't read controversial news story comments. Say and do what's right. Nobody cares what sensible people think except other sensible people, and they're not reading news story comments.
[2013-04-10]
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Click to enlarge: Top: A man sporting Google Glass over what appears to be conventional glasses. Bottom: Locutus of Borg, a.k.a. Cpt. Picard.
We will one day all be broadcasting ourselves most of the time for most of our lives. Life will be one big reality show for anyone that wants to participate.
We are almost there now; you can post a picture or stream live video from your phone.
The difference between now and then is, someday this will be so pervasive, you will need to take special steps to avoid being broadcast, just as you do now to protect your habits online.
Much of it will be unavoidable, like store and street corner cameras are today.
Imagine the implications for tragic or history-changing events, like 9/11 or the Arab Spring, in which every pair of eyes is also a camera.
(Repost from July 12, 2011 over at my OldTimeRadioDiner blog, no longer active. I started that back when I thought I could keep two going at the same time.)
If you've spent much time listening to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (I listen when I can)[1], you know that the Shadow People have often been discussed.
There's not much on Wikipedia, which I turned to first for some historical context (>) but with a little Googling there's a wealth of speculation and personal accounts.
Interestingly, this wonderful OTR episode (link below) of Hall of Fantasy from 1953 incorporates many aspects of what I understand to be the nature of encounters with Shadow People, though in this treatment they are decidedly sinister.
Is the 1953 story a reflection of growing American paranoia? Real events? The seed of a modern collective myth?
Film historians often site the political uncertainties of the Cold War era and post-nuclear Japan as sources for Godzilla, giant creepy crawlies and invaders from Mars. This radio play could be the fictional matrix of a modern neurosis.
If someone knows of an earlier documented reference, feel free to comment or contact me. You can find me a couple tabs over, right here >
[1] 2013-06-23: I used to, not much anymore. With two young children, I have to sleep when they sleep. I use late evenings to read a little or listen to audio books. Mornings I write.
"They can't bust you for seeds, man." --Overheard on the school bus one morning on the way to McDowell High School, late 70's. The speaker was a boyhood friend that had gone down a different path than I did; he was in a crowd that proudly referred to themselves as "dirt bags." He's an attorney now, I think. I'm a writer. Go figger.
[2013-04-11]
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Click to enlarge: Top: Loblaws logo, very similar to the one in use when I worked for the company in the early 80's. The nested arcs were adopted about that time, IIRC, so even though it's retro now, I recall it as new. Bottom: Loblaws ad from We Love Erie Days, which I truly loved as a child. It was a week of feel-good self-affirmation in a city that didn't do much of that the rest of the year. This ad is from oldtimeerie.com >
My family was very private about money. Most families are. As a boy, I never knew what my dad made, and Mom said a number of times she never knew what her dad made, and I've kept that practice in my own home.
But for a few years, my dad and I worked for the same company, and I saw his position posted on the bulletin board for an opening at another Loblaws store. (He was a grocery manager.)
I felt like I had violated him somehow, and the feeling was palpably and indelibly uncomfortable.
Loblaws grocery managers I worked for included: Ralph Suscheck, Bruce Carpenter, Earl Rosenquist, and Earl Boyd. There were others, but those are the ones I remember.
Click to enlarge: "The Judgement of Solomon," Antoine Coypel (1661-1722), oil on canvas.
Heard on the Today Show today during the second half of the first hour that thieves are targeting the homes of those who are away at funerals, since times and names are public.
That's been happening since I was a kid and old enough to understand what grownups were talking about.
I wonder at what point you get old enough that nothing you hear is entirely new?
I know Solomon already covered this, but it doesn't really sink in until you experience it yourself.
[2013-06-13]
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Click to enlarge: This is Nim Chimpsky, the subject in Project Nim, a controlled animal communications study. "Nim Chimpsky" is a play on sounds, evoking famous linguist Noam Chomksy, who shifted linguistic studies with his Syntactic Structures in 1957. More on Project Nim >
Some new things I'd like to see in the next 30-40 years (Lord willin' and the creek don't rise), in no particular order:
* Reconciliation of Rome with Protestants * Tolerance among religious fundamentalists of all faiths (ie, stop killing each other) * Linguistic animal communications with humans. * Decriminalization of drugs * An end to abortion, euthanasia, and executions. * Gay rights as normal as any other right.
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Click to enlarge: George C Scott talks to Dolphins in Day of the Dolphin (1973), considered silly by critics, but at the age of 10 I ate that stuff up, along with Erich von Däniken, Sasquatch and the Devil's Triangle. (Which is to say, those subjects share a crypto-phile attraction, though animal communications is a serious subject.)
I was turned on to linguistics as an undergrad by Prof VandeKoppel at Calvin College. I entered Michigan State University with the intention of studying animal communication systems and pictured myself something of a more introverted George C Scott from Day of the Dolphin. At MSU, I studied under Prof Lockwood, a prominent Cognitive Stratificational linguist (who had studied under Lamb, IIRC), and was diverted to that field, which, however, lost my interest.
I've been privileged to work with language most of my life, in one capacity or another.
If I could do it differently, I'd be a novelist. Not a best seller, just a guy that writes one good book a year, has some readers, and makes a living at it.
I was told while shopping around my first book that it was filled with "grotesqueries." Since I'd never heard that word before, I asked the acquisitions editor what she meant. She explained that a grotesquery was an abysmal and embarrassingly bad error that often goes unnoticed by poor writers but is easily seen by others.
(She got the definition wrong but was successfully insulting.)
She did pull out an example where I mangled a little grammar to remain conversational, so I guess he had a point.
Click to enlarge: The Original Big Wheel by Marx Toys. There was a Marx toys factory in Erie, on West 12th, IIRC, across from where Bucyrus Erie once was. Lords is on that corner as well, or nearby.
When I was little, I wanted a Big Wheel more than anything in the world; didn't get it. Eventually, when you don't get something you desire, you live on the memory of the desire. I'll bet my memory of wanting a Big Wheel is more enjoyable than had I actually owned one. It has to be, because desire is ever unspoilt, like Heaven and birthdays and Christmases yet to come.
[2013-06-10]
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Click to enlarge: Arnold Stang, radio, TV and movie character actor from yesteryear. You may recall him from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or innumerable TV shows ranging from Milton Berle to The Cosby Show.
I always liked Arnold Stang. You may not recall his face, but the voice is unmistakable. I encountered him recently on an episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater called "Appointment in Uganda."
Here is Stang as "Francis" sparring with Uncle Miltie... (about 1:15 in...)
Listen to Arnold Stang in CBS Radio Mystery Theater's "Appointment in Uganda" here >
Click to enlarge: Top: Joseph Smith papyri purportedly translated into the Book of Abraham. Bottom: Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism.
I've spent spent some time listening to defenses of Mormonism (purely academic interest after listening to a Skeptoid segment[1]) and there is something very interesting at a level above the discussion on the scrolls and translations:
We cling to what we're reared to love and view others who don't share our love as unenlightened, misguided, or somehow damaged.
Just as Catholics might say Protestants would make great Catholics if they hadn't been distracted by that Luther guy.
Just as Jews might say Christians would make great Jews if they hadn't been distracted by that Jesus guy.
I'm not arguing for a relativism that embraces or reconciles all these things, only perspective.
It's all accordin' to how your boogaloo situation stands, you understand.
[2013-06-14]
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Clap For the Wolfman Studio Version & Slideshow Tribute
Clap For the Wolfman The Guess Who Performs with Host Wolfman Jack Midnight Special
"In Europe & Australia the term "Duracell Bunny" has entered the vernacular as a term for anything that continues indefatigably while in North America the term "Energizer Bunny" has a similar connotation. " (From the Wikipedia article linked above.)
[2013-06-11]
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Take a Virtual Trip
My high school chemistry teacher Mr Moore used to say "take a trip and never leave the room" after a particularly bad answer or comment or story that was so detached from reality it could only be compared to a drug trip.
(It was the 70's; drug references were common among those that didn't use them and wouldn't know them if they saw them.)
I always wanted to take a trip on Route 1 all the way from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida. I got to thinking, I can map it with Google and click my way through, but there must be a way to automate it into a movie, and someone has indeed started something like that:
The steps are too far apart to feel like you're driving, but some day soon I'm sure I'll be able to drive that route virtually, if not behind the wheel.
Click to enlarge: DVD cover of the movie Flame in the Wind (1971) from Unusual Films out of Bob Jones University.
Isaw Flame in the Wind many, many years go at Bethel Baptist Church during a Watchnight service. (If you're not familiar with the term, "watchnight" is a New Year's Eve religious service.) Pastor Kenneth L Andrus, then pastor of Bethel, prayed into the new year after we'd watched this film and enjoyed our finger sandwiches and punch.
Of course, the temptation was irresistible to know exactly when the new year arrived, so us kids all craned our necks and squinted at the clock at the back of the sanctuary to see exactly when it became 1972.
Flame in the Wind is from Bob Jones University; production values are good and some of the acting deliciously sinister (Bob Jones leadership and students must have had fun playing nasty Catholics).
But there is no Protestant counterpart to Vatican II and the film's theology layers modern sentiments over historical events, so today we see it as Catholics vs. Protestants when in reality it was Christians vs. Christians. As the story goes, the big bad corrupt church is persecuting the noble reformers who want nothing more than to read the bible in Spanish.
(Mr Henry had been none too happy during intermission when he discovered a trail of crumbs leading from the kitchen to the sanctuary, marking the secret refreshment path the kids were using. I think he would have conducted his own inquisition if we hadn't had to settle down for the second reel.)
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Click to enlarge: This is Bethel Baptist Church (which was at that time at 737 E. 26th Street in Erie, PA - map >). It also housed Bethel Christian School for many years. I attended Bethel Christian School 7th-9th grade. I have very fond memories of that time and the friends I met there.
Movies in those days were of course large spools of celluloid, an hour apiece. Bob Jones charged venues for each showing, which is standard practice. I think I recall Bethel showing it twice, once on New Year's Eve and later at Bethel Christian School after Christmas break.
I have fond memories of that night. Our best friends, Rich Nickel and his brother Davey Nickel, joined us and enjoyed it a lot. One reason this night was such a treat is we got to see a movie on a big screen, and in church of all places. (Theatrical movies were off-limits to good Baptist, so this incongruity was a welcome exception).
Bethel in fact, as my Grandpa Cairns liked to point out, was built on plans for a movie theater, so in case a church didn't work out, it could be converted. True story. The floor of Bethel "East" was slanted like a movie theater is today.
More information from Bob Jones University on Flame in the Wind is here >
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Click to enlarge: Top: Michael Servetus. Bottom: John Calvin.
Lest we grow complacent in our own self-righteousness, don't forget that reformer John Calvin was instrumental in the burning of Michael Servetus for denying the Trinity. Learn more >
When Servetus wrote to Calvin about coming to Geneva, Calvin wrote to another person: "for if he came, as far as my authority goes, I would not let him leave alive."
Want to know what really pissed Calvin off? Servetus had sent him a copy of his own Institutes of the Christian Religion with prolific comments in the margins pointing out where he (Calvin) was wrong.
Nobody likes a critic. But Calvin, bless his heart, asked that Servetus be beheaded instead of burnt. (But alas, he was burnt anyway.)
The Institutes were still taught while I was at Calvin. I didn't take that class; I was able to avoid it by taking REL 301, which was a class on Christ and Culture with Prof Holtrop and noted for being extremely difficult; but I passed with an A and left with great respect for Prof Holtrop. He didn't ask us to agree with him, just demonstrate we learned the material, even if that meant writing something at the end of the bluebook like "I don't agree with what I just wrote," which I did for a few responses.[1]
I won't judge John Calvin any harsher than anyone else from that period, but fair is fair and and if we're gong to judge medieval personalities with modern sensibilities, let's judge them all alike.
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Someone (not me) actually posted the entire movie on Youtube. You can watch it now:
Flame in the Wind (1971) - The Inquisition's Bloody History
[2103-06-11]
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[1] I took Prof Holtrop's REL 301 the same year M*A*S*H broadcast its series finale, which was a nationwide event. We begged him to cancel class, which was held once a week on Monday nights, but he refused. I went to class instead of the dorm M*A*S*H party. I was one of only a handful that did.
I of course watched the M*A*S*Hfinale later (many years later) in reruns, but only once. One particular scene was so disturbing, I can't watch it again, and I'm sorry that's among the images the show has left with me, but I suppose that's fitting, as I'm sure it was the intent.
BTW, the main reason I chose REL 301 over The Institutes was because the Institutes text books cost a gabillion dollars and I wanted to save my money. I'm glad now for the choice; instead of a survey in John Calvin I got a personally challenging perspective on Reformed theology from Holtrop that has stuck with me since, in a good way, like oatmeal at breakfast.
I've never felt religious artifacts were necessary for faith, or even a corollary to faith, but when physical evidence lightens the suspension of disbelief, that's a good thing.[1]
I happened upon a recent lecture on the Shroud of Turin in which the speaker was going through most of what I'd heard before, at which point, my skeptical half was saying, "Okay, it's old, it wrapped a dead person, appears to be 1st century, but did it wrap Jesus?
Then the speaker said there was no evidence of decomposition on the Shroud, and bingo, the light goes on.
(If you want to get into all the reasons why the shroud is fake - it's a medieval fraud, it once wrapped some unfortunate soul killed like Jesus, someone stole Jesus' body, Jesus never really died, etc - you can, and they're all good questions, but I've gone over these many times and see little merit in most of them.
You can stretch any explanation to fit, but no one would bother to do this for a lesser historical figure. The only way these explanations sound convincing is if the alternative is unthinkable, in which case you're less debunking and more dismissing.)
Recent tests suggest it's the burial cloth of a 1st century man who was tortured and died and shows no indication of decomposition.
So there it is. No Aramaic graffiti "Jesus was here," just an artifact that looks an awful lot like what an awful lot of people think it is.
There are myriad antiquities with no provenience that certainly at one time belonged to someone we otherwise know from history. There's nothing surprising about a few folks saving something they thought belonged to God. It's the subsequent layers of hoaxes and wishful thinking that make us suspicious (and rightly so).
[2013-06-12]
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Click to enlarge: Turin Shroud (Caravaggio) (c)2003 Rev. Albert R. Dreisbach Jr. Collection, STERA, Inc.
I can't find the lecture I was listening to, but these sources are good:
Wikipedia: Learn more about the Shroud of Turin here >
Click to enlarge: Marty Feldman chooses Abby Normal's brain in Young Frankenstein.
I am now listening to lectures on abnormal psychology by Professor Drew Westen, Is Anyone Really Normal? Perspectives on Abnormal Psychology.
What do psychiatrists wear on their feet at night? Freudian slippers. (Bet you can't tell I made that up.)
[2013-06-17]
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Click to enlarge: Protestant Billy Graham (L) and Catholic John F Kennedy praying together in 1961, when such things were rare.
One man's burden.
I once had a close friend who was burdened for pedophiles. He was not one, but may have known of one or a few who were struggling with it. That took a lot of courage. He was working at that time at a downtown ministry that helped folks with some big problems and that problem may have have been among them.
I suppose, like everyone else, I care about some things more than others; one thing that weighs heavily on me is reconciling Christians who are divided over trivial matters, from all denominations that proclaim Christ, but especially those that are exclusive and divisive.
[2013-06-03]
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10 Hours of Gregorian Chant
If you like that sort of thing (I do). I have no idea how the guy got Youtube to permit something that long.
I've been having an email discussion with brother Tom recently regarding Jesus' awareness of his identity and role.
IMHO, we don't have to accept that the apostles represented Jesus accurately, only that their recollections and interpretations were spiritually accurate. Since Jesus wrote nothing himself, we have no other choice, and in the end, it doesn't matter (to me, anyway) if Apostle X "misremembered" an event because to cast it differently offered an insight the bare facts did not.
(For example: Jesus fasting for 40 days, and his post-resurrection ministry lasting 40 days.[1])
The ancient mentality toward historical documentation was very different from our own, and none of the gospels were biographies in the sense we would use the term today.
If we think of the synoptic gospels as Impressionist paintings rather than photographs, we are closer the truth.
(My own analysis and insight, and all deficiencies thereunto appertaining.)
[2013-06-06]
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Overheard on NPR Friday June 7, 2013:
Q: Why do elephants paint their toenails red? A: To hide in cherry trees.
That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Everyone knows it's to hide in strawberry patches.
[2013-06-07]
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[1] You're welcome to interpret those as literally 40 days, but the writers didn't expect you to. They expected you to see something more important than that.
That being said, the privilege of adjusting the text to interpret events lies only with the original writers, community of writers, or oral transmitters, not the translators or collators or anyone else who came after.
Click to enlarge: The front gates of Belleview Hospital in New York City, a name once synonymous with "crazy" and popularized on 1970's sitcoms like Barney Miller.
A famous study showed that once we are instructed to regard perfectly healthy people as insane, we will do so despite consistent evidence that they are perfectly normal.[1]
This works for other things, too. Once inclined by influence or experience to view some people as stingy or rich or lazy, that's exactly how we'll view others that match the same general description (nationality, color, neighborhood, language, etc).
Take that into account the next time you cast a filtered light on a coworker, neighbor, or the person next to you in the pew. ("She dresses so beautifully. She manages to find the most beautiful bargains with what little they have.")
Your opinions are infectious.
Good ones, too.
[2013-06-12]
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Click to enlarge: This image speaks for itself. A man is holding signs that say "GO USA" and "Get A BRAIN! MORANS"
Just as wars are mostly fought by kids who have an undeveloped sense of mortality, so those who trade in irreverence, violence, and lewdness have no scars yet from long-term exposure to those things.
By the time they're old enough and the excitement has soured or they've become exhausted by saturation, a new crop of kids are lapping at their feet and it's then about money and habituation rather than excitement.
The result is not only a generation inured to violence and dehumanization, but a generation unable to express themselves above the level of a realty show spat.
Indeed, unable to read this post and understand what I just said.
[2013-06-11]
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[1] "The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment done in order to determine the validity of psychiatricdiagnosis, conducted by psychologistDavid Rosenhan and published by the journal Science in 1973 under the title "On being sane in insane places". The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis. Source >
When I was a kid and people still read newspapers, a birdcage lined with newspaper was a common metaphor writers used to describe how others sometimes treat their work.
When my parents and grandparents were kids, they wrapped fish in newspaper; different metaphor, same idea.
Arthur Treacher's Fish 'n Chips (a competitor to Long John Silver's) used to line their fish 'n chips baskets with food service paper printed like old newspaper. We tried to read the stories, but they were often cropped and nonsensical. Arthur Treacher's is still around > but not near me.
How'd you like to be the writer that wrote for Aurthur Treacher's fish 'n chips basket liners? One way ticket to fish, no middleman to stop the news on it's way to it's a useful purpose.
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Click to enlarge: Here is a picture of Grandpa and Grandma Cairns (Thomas Cairns and Geneva Cairns) and grandchildren circa 1972. Grandchildren are: Dan Young (held by Grandpa), then L-R, Tom Tom, Carolee, Dee Dee, Linda, me, and Tom.
"Guests are like fish: After 3 days they both stink" --Grandma Cairns (Geneva Cairns, née Bauer; my dad's mom; she was really very sweet and had a way of saying things like this without a hint of unkindness.)
Brandi, You're a Fine Girl
