Disasters and “the forgetting”

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[This is a slightly edited version of a piece that I wrote very early in my blogging career about the tsunami of January 2005. It occurred to me to reprint it in light of the horrific earthquake in China.]

We hardly hear about the tsunami anymore, although for a while it dominated the news. The tsunami was videotaped in a staggering variety of manifestations: from the tall towering waves of Japanese art, to rolling swells that almost resembled a normal tide coming in—except for the fact that this particular tide just kept coming and coming and coming. We viewed forlorn beaches where villages had once stood, and saw keening mourners whose anguish was almost unbearable to watch even on the small screen.

Over and over, newspeople, relief workers, politicians, and officials declared this to be an unprecedented catastrophe. Continue reading →

To Hillary: oh please go gentle

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Hillary Clinton’s become persona non grata to Democratic leaders and the pundits sympathetic to them, who’d like nothing better than for her to go away and make nice to the new nominee, Obama. Why oh why won’t she just fall into line like a good girl? (Here’s a typical rant on the “sad spectacle” of her tenacity; and here’s Gerard Vanderleun’s deep sociological analysis of the situation).

My own offering is a poetic one, a riff on the Dylan Thomas villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Continue reading →

Memorial sculpture and its discontents: outsourcing Martin Luther King

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Folks are not happy about this.

Martin Luther King is about to earn his place on Washington DC’s Mall with a 28-foot high memorial statue that is likely to dwarf those of nearby Lincoln and Jefferson. But that’s not the source of the controversy: the sculptor’s citizenship and the statue’s character is. Continue reading →

Speech patterns of the 25-and-under female

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Have you ever noticed that there are fashions in voices? In the past five years or so I’ve noticed the extreme proliferation of a high-pitched little-girl cutesy voice in women in their late teens and early twenties. Since it spread too quickly to be a mutation, I can only imagine that it represents a choice.

You’ve heard it, I’m sure, either in your own daughter or her friends, or the waitress at the restaurant or the salesgirl in the store. Its pitch is very high, and its voice quality is both light and metallic, with a rising inflection in each sentence that suggests a meant-to-be-charming mix of indecision and uncertainty.

I’m not sure how the Voice of the Cohort is decided on. Continue reading →

Mind and matter: psychological brain changes

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A Canadian study reports that brain changes involving ribosomal DNA have been detected on autopsy in victims of childhood abuse who ended up committing suicide. This finding somewhat complements animal studies showing that early neglect changes the dendrites of rats.

Of course, the Canadian study is not without its flaws. It suffers from a common problem with human research, low sample size. The comparison was between 18 men in the study group and 12 controls who had not been neglected and who died from causes other than suicide. Therefore one huge possible flaw is that the brain changes might be from some aspect of the suicidal tendencies of the subjects rather than the abuse itself. It’s even possible that the brain changes might represent congenital differences rather than reactive changes.

But there’s probably something to the idea that the brain anomalies are not innate. Continue reading →

Harry Harlow and his monkeys: being cruel in order to be kind?

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While researching my recent series on questioning authority, I got the idea to write a post about the seminal Milgram experiments on obedience to authority.

When I was a psych major back in college, part of our learning experience involved—as you might expect—studying psychology experiments. Many were of the so-called “rat psych” variety, and some were of a more clinical nature. Then much later, while getting my clinical Master’s in the early 90s, I had to read many more. In between, I actually worked as a social science researcher in a place with a sterling reputation. So I’ve done my time—and more—in the field of psychological research, including being a subject back in college (I remember interminable sessions with what was known as a “memory drum.” Bloody boring.).

But I must admit (or is it confess?) that too much social science research is “garbage in, garbage out.” Not all of course, but quite a bit. Some of this is the fault of sloppy methodology. But most of the problem may be inherent in the nature of the beast of social science research itself: too many variables to control for, too many unknowns.

But even social science has some experiments so very wonderfully done, and with such fascinating results, that they not only impressed me when I first encountered them, but they stayed with me and inform me still. Continue reading →

We many, we happy many, we conservatives

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It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals. And that’s been true for thirty-five years, so it has nothing to do with what administration may or may not be in power at the moment.

This may explain why Michelle Obama seems so very unhappy despite her great blessings, and why she speaks to a certain constituency when she voices that bitterness—and it ain’t the “bitter clingers” of Pennsylvania she’s addressing.

According to Arthur Brooks, who wrote a book entitled Gross National Happiness, there are reasons for the greater happiness of conservatives. Continue reading →

The many dimensions of Jello

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….including the Fifth:

Jello has long been a highly advertised food, although I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because it has no intrinsic food value whatsoever.

One possibility is that whatever is lacks in nutrition it makes up for in “beauty and sculptural variety.” And early on it gained symbolic significance in our national life:

Immigrants at Ellis Island were ritually served bowls of Jell-O under signs that read “Welcome To America.”

Saying “buh-bye” to Hillary, the woman who just won’t go away

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Hillary is like a burr on the body politic of the Democrats and the MSM—they can’t shake her off, try though they may.

Yesterday’s primary results—an expectedly large margin of victory for Obama in North Carolina and a surprisingly small one for Hillary in Indiana—really changes nothing essential about the race. But today there’s another flurry of attempts to say “buh-bye” to Hillary. Continue reading →

Michelle Obama’s conspiratorial world

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Michelle Obama has been doing quite a bit of campaigning herself, and it’s clear from her speeches that she shares one thing with Hillary Clinton: the belief that a vast right-wing conspiracy is sabotaging her husband.

Ms. Obama doesn’t utter that now-famous phrase. But she seems to feel that her husband is entitled (remember when that word was used for Hillary’s sense that she was owed the Presidency?) to be elected. If that doesn’t happen, it can only mean that nameless, faceless forces are unfairly arrayed against him: Continue reading →