Linear vs. Global Thinking

I took this interesting assessment: http://www.onionmountaintech.com/files/Global-Linear%20Activity.pdf. I scored a +10, which puts me squarely in the "global" category. I fit pretty well into this category, although I really cannot work on more than one thing at once. I do like to work on one thing for about five minutes, then switch to something else. I tend to have five or six tasks I am working on, but I can only concentrate on one at a time. For example, I can't talk and type at the same time. It is also hard for me to talk and to monitor miscreants in the class at the same time.

I think that one of the challenges I have had as a teacher is trying to adapt to teach linear thinkers. I try to use outlines, although this becomes less useful as the classes advance and we depend more on seminar. Seminar is, in fact, my favored way of discussing ideas. What I am working on is summarizing what we said in seminar to make it more accessible to linear thinkers.

I think it might be informative for you to take this assessment, although I cannot ask for your results, as that would violate your privacy. After you are done, read the descriptions of the two types of thinking. Let me know if this was useful to you.

That is so unprofessional

There is something else that disturbs me, but it is beyond being a “pet peeve.” The more I think about this phenomenon, the more I think it is a symptom of a dying civilization. This is the recent custom of using the term “unprofessional” as a catchall adjective to describe all sorts of behavior that we do not like. Maybe this is not something that junior high students hear very often, but it is ubiquitous among adults. I rarely hear somebody’s behavior, particularly behavior that occurs while at work, criticized with any other adjective.

A “profession” is a person’s job. If something is “unprofessional,” then it breaks some rule of the marketplace. Have we really become so diminished as a culture that the only concept of good or right that we have is based on suitably for a commercial undertaking? What happened to things being “wrong”? Or “demeaning”? “Mean-spirited”? “Cruel”? Even milder terms – such as “careless” or “unconventional” – are disappearing from our vocabulary.

Some of the behaviors that people term “unprofessional” are simply wrong. For example, I once worked at the same company as a man whom everyone described as behaving unprofessionally. He would rarely criticize a person in private, but he would save up whatever he wanted to say and humiliate the person in front of the whole department. He also would make demeaning jokes about people who worked for him. I did not work in the same department as this guy, but I did talk to people in his department. They complained about him a lot. They never described him as “cruel” or “demeaning,” but always as “unprofessional.”

The fact is that this man’s behavior WAS all these things. Why wouldn’t somebody call it by the correct term? The badness of his behavior is minimized by using a term that indicates that the only thing he is guilty of is breaking some rule of business etiquette. It seems in cases like this, you should reserve “unprofessional” for behaviors like showing up to work with your shirt untucked or forgetting your tie.

The other sense in which the word “unprofessional” is used is more pernicious. This is when the word is used to describe actions that are not wrong in any real sense, but which seem strange to you or make you uncomfortable. This can become a way to squelch innovation. Was it professional for Galileo to question the established notion of the nature of the world, which was believed by most scientists and based on generations of thought? Probably not – it got him into a world of trouble and upset a lot of people. Was John Woolman unprofessional when he jeopardized his livelihood by confronting his friends and neighbors about owning slaves? What about Albert Einstein questioning the linear concept of time? (Have you ever seen a picture of Einstein where he looked professional?)

It seems that the function of creative and innovative people is to ask questions and make observations that make other people uncomfortable. If this is “unprofessional”, then maybe that word should be seen as an appellation of honor. That is why I am creating the “Unprofessional of the Year” prize, to be awarded right here. Nominate people by responding to this post. I haven’t come up with a prize yet, but I am sure the honor of being mentioned in this blog will be the most exciting part of it. The prize probably will, in fact, be totally comprised of seeing your name here.

To qualify, all the nominee needs to do is to do something or say something that is called “unprofessional,” but that is not wrong in any other way than it calls into questions established views or methods. Take the time to type up the story and post it as a reply to this blog essay.

Ants

This summer we had a giant community of ants move into a planter we had in our front yard. I know that most ants out here are pretty vicious, but I always respected my grandfather's dictum, "If you don't bother it, it will leave you alone." I took the attitude that the little fellows were in their habitat, so I should leave them alone. However, these turned out to be really aggressive beasts. They sometimes bit my daughter while she was sleeping, and they attacked my dog. I was worried that my dog would get killed by them one day, because they moved around the place almost in a swarm. The final straw was when my wife put her arm on top of the patio wall. The ants jumped on her, wrestled her to the ground and stole her glasses. Well, not really, but they did attack her.

I hate to use poisons, so I tried to dig out their queen. If I could just get rid of her, the nest would die a slow, peaceful death. At least that was the way it was with the red ants back home - I think the local ants may have a way to replace a queen. Anyway, I couldn't find her. I still didn't want to apply poison to the ground - I didn't want to poison bugs that were not bothering me, nor the predators that eat ants and other bugs. I tried a trap with mayonnaise and boric acid. They loved the mayo, but the boric acid didn't seem to bug them, either.

Finally I decided to poison the guys. I kept on thinking that maybe they would take the road of peace and quit biting us. I hate to kill things that are just trying to get on with their lives. But the foul little demons decided ambush the dog again, and my daughter still woke up with ant bites on her legs. So I bought a bottle of liquid death. I sprayed their heinous nest of wickedness. They seemed to appreciate the additional moisture, and I did not really see them thinning out. I knew it wasn't instantaneous poison - they wanted the ants to share some with the queen before they died. But it didn't seem to bother them for a couple of weeks. So I got some nest treatment and poured that on them. I gave them a really, really big dose of the stuff. I didn't want them to go on living with just an annoying stomachache. I figured smiting them at once was the best option. I don't like to think of them suffering needlessly because I didn't have the courage to do them in, so I doused the nest.

Finally, they disappeared. I still feel guilty about having to use poison, which I hate to do. I also worry about the residual effects of the poison I did use. But at least we haven't been attacked for a couple of weeks.

Pet Peeves

I know I covered these in class, but I think they might need reinforcement. My first pet peeve is the use of the word "troop" instead of "soldier." I don't know why this has become so common, but even NPR uses it now: "14 troops and 7 civilians were killed in a car bomb explosion." A troop is a group of soldiers, not a single soldier. I have seen speculation that the reason they started using this word incorrectly is that "soldier" sounds more personal than "troop," although I don't think this is really true. It could also be because "soldier" sounds like somebody whose primary objective is combat, while "troop" may seem less hostile. You sometimes hear of troops deployed to distribute medical equipment or to help out in some other way.

My other pet peeve is the use of "prior to" when you mean "before." People say this to sound more educated. I used to use this phrase myself, and part of the reason I find it disturbing may be that I was embarrassed that nobody pointed out how ridiculous it sounds. I didn't figure it out until I read The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. The funny thing is that I rarely hear students use it, but frequently hear teachers using it. Remember that you can get extra credit if you correct your teacher for using this overworked phrase. Just write down the incident and let me know about it.

Confabulation

To follow up on my post on misinformation, let me point out something else that I think is frequently a source of misinformation: confabulation. Strictly speaking, confabulation consists of making up a story to explain events that you don't completely understand. Typically, it is associated with amnesia. A typical example would be a person with amnesia who goes to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. While he is waiting, he browses the magazine rack and an article advertized on the cover of Redbook catches his eye. While he is reading, he drifts off into a mild fugue state. When he snaps back to reality, he has forgotten why he is in the drugstore reading a woman's magazine. So he creates a story that he had come to the store to buy the magazine for his wife. He buys it and goes home, forgetting his prescription altogether. Even people with mild memory-affecting conditions can go through this pattern. One thing that people who live with amnesiacs who continue to forget things need to keep in mind is that this happens frequently, and they should check to make sure they make it to appointments, pick up prescriptions, etc.

An important thing to remember is that the person does not consciously invent an explanation. To them, they are searching their mind for memories. To them, the story they make up seems like a memory, and they honestly think they are remembering something that they actually imagined.

Even people with no diagnosed memory problems can confabulate. Sometimes we cannot explain something, so we come up with an explanation. Even though this is a product of our imagination, our minds see it as something we learned, not something that we came up with. We can sometimes pass this information off as fact. This is particularly true of teachers, who are asked many questions every day. Sometimes we give an answer as fact that is really just reasonable conjecture.

Notes from the Misinformation Zone

This past semester, I discussed misinformation with my seventh graders. My belief is that teachers have traditionally been the leading source of misinformation in America. I think that the internet has passed teachers. The advantage the internet has is that you can usually check information rather easily. It is not usually so easy when your teacher is giving you wrong information. I think you should make a habit of checking surprising or questionable information by asking somebody else whom you trust or looking up the information online. Remember to stick to reliable sources. Even great teachers sometimes will give you misinformation. We are responsible for providing a large, large amount of information - and it is inevitable that we sometimes get it wrong.

One example of misinformation that stuck with me until a few days ago regards SAFEWAY - the grocery store. My seventh-grade history teacher told us that Safeway was founded by nuns who wanted to provide a store that charged reasonably priced groceries. It was essentially a non-profit organization until it was taken over by a grocery conglomerate. It turns out that this is not true at all. Safeway was started the same way as any grocery store, and for the same reasons. I believed this information, and passed it along, until I decided to look it up. This is one way misinformation is spread.

Nissan Denki cube

I told some of you that Nissan was planning with some of the cities in the Phoenix area to set up electric charging stations. Also, there would be stations connecting Tucson with the Phoenix area. This is the concept car for a possible electric car to be released in 2010. I just read that the actual car that Nissan is likely to release is not going to look like this at all. It is supposed to look more like a conventional car. This is frustrating, since I want this car. I especially like the lightning-bolt motif (see the front grill and the charge indicator). It also looks a lot like my Scion Xb, which I really like.

Note to the Anti-Reagan conspiracy

You are going to have to find a new name. This may be a surprise to some of you, but the United States once had a president named "Reagan." Calling your group the "Anti-Reagan Conspiracy" might attract the attention of the FBI. On the other hand, "the anti-Laura's Little Sister Conspiracy" is an ungainly title. Come up with something. Thanks.

Mr. Bateman's Blog

I will remove the moderation for comments, but please try to stay on topic. It is hard to wade through all the pointless posts to determine if somebody had something pertinent to say.

HL - More on the decision to drop the bombs

I am spending some time researching the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am surprised that most of the articles I am able to find support Truman's decision. When I took American history in high school, it seemed that the consensus was coming around that Truman should not have dropped the bombs - at least not on enormous civilian targets. Now it seems people are starting to see Truman's decision as a wise one. One element that is influencing the change is the declassified documents that are referred to in the article I handed out last week.

I have found some articles that criticise Truman's decision. This one is actually an excerpt from a book. The author does a good job of summarizing the arguments:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html

This is one that attracted a lot of attention, although it is mostly just a blog entry. In this one, he shows how Truman violated a set of Roman Catholic ethical principles known as "Just War Theory." If you want to learn more about Just War Theory, Google it.

http://www.jimmyakin.org/2009/05/harry-truman-was-a-war-criminal.html

Read these articles and let me know what you think it would be useful for me to have the whole class read. Thanks.

HL - The Decision to Drop the Bomb

Here is a nice list of primary documents regarding the dropping of the bomb. I haven't really had a chance to look through all of these, but if you look through them and find some particularly interesting or informative, let me know.

One interesting thing was the scanned copy of the leaflet that was dropped on Japan warning them that the US possesses "the most destructive explosive." It is printed in English, not Japanese. Most of the leaflets dropped by the Japanese were in English and Japanese.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php

Yonaguni Monument

This is something I just found out about.  I first came across it when I was reading some fringy stuff about Lemuria, so this is a discovery that has been adopted by certain proponents of, ummm, "unconventional" theories.  It is interesting in its own right, regardless of your perspective.  They have found a large stone structure under the water near Japan.  It definitely has the appearance of being man-made, although it is officially designated as a natural feature.  This link will give you an interview with a Japanese professor who believes it is man-made.  If it is man-made, it would indicate that human civilization goes back to the last ice age.  This would put the earliest known civilization in the Pacific, and not in the Indus Valley or Mesopotamia.  Be sure to watch the video.  Also, read up on this topic online and let me know what you think.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arqueologia/esp_ruinas_yonaguni_2.htm

Pop culture connection

This is a really interesting video. What interested me in this song is that almost everything the guy says could apply to The Great Gatsby. The "seventeen miles" is not quite right, and "only trace amounts left in your blood" doesn't quite fit, although Daisy had been drinking earlier in the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aopK2A8MCd4

Note to the anti-Bateman conspiracy

It looks like everybody is getting in on the conspiracy business. I think it will be very hard to organize a conspiracy whose potential membership is comprised of most of the student body and the entire faculty and administration. Just saying.

Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor in advance?

Here is a link to the complete interview with Robert Stinnett. I gave you the full text of the other article. I will post more links, with commentary, as I find things.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=408

BTW

Nick - you are forbidden from reading that previous post. Sorry, but I am sure you understand.

Note to the anti-Nick Conspiracy

Hello, seventh graders in the anti-Nick conspiracy. Since most of you are not experienced conspirators, let me give you some advice:

1. If you are part of a conspiracy against someone, don't go up to that person and say, "Hey! I just joined the anti-Nick conspiracy!" If the person knows who is conspiring against him, then you no longer make up a conspiracy, but revert to being the same ordinary seventh graders you were to begin with.

2. Start conspiring. You seem to be all talk and no action.

3. Don't let Nick join. This one seemed pretty obvious, but apparently not.

AH - More about Hannibal's elephants

This is an article that claims that Hannibal's elephants were clearly a forest subspecies of African elephants. It claims that this subspecies did not go extinct until the 1st or 2nd century AD. It does not have a bibliography, so I don't know where the research is from. An internet search gives me this same article over and over again. There are still elephants that are called "forest elephants," but it looks like Hannibal's elephants were a separate subspecies. Maybe Hannibal contributed to their extinction.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/African_Forest_Elephant

AH - Hannibal's elephants

Here are a couple of articles on Hannibal's elephants. The first one addresses an interesting problem - elephants hate going up hill because of the exceptional amount of energy that it takes for them to go up inclines. This article concerns only African elephants. I haven't found a study that says that Asian elephants are more likely to enjoy climbing, but it is almost certainly true. I worked at a casino that featured Asian elephants as performers, and they had those guys climbing ramps all the time. This seems to lend credence to the argument that Hannibal used Asian elephants.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9607

This next article deals directly with the question of whether Hannibal used African elephants, Asian elephants or forest elephants. I can't find the New Scientist article that this article references. If you do, please post the link. This article is from 1984, so I will also look to see if there are any more recent articles that address these concerns. If it turns out that Hannibal used forest elephants, that would explain why they resembled African elephants, but were able to climb uphill and survive in the alps.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/18/science/the-mystery-of-hannibal-s-elephants.html?sec=health

HL - A Dangerous Question

It is a little risky to ask you to voice your opinion about whether or not a play is a great work of literature. The reason I am doing it with Our Town is because it is one of the few readings we do this year that we have the luxury of evaluating this way. The only way to determine for certain if a writing is literature is to see if it survives the test of time. I would never ask you whether The Iliad should be considered literature, because generations of scholars have decided that it was. If you tell me that you read it and you do not consider it a great work, then I would say that you are not putting enough effort into understanding the greatness of it.

With Our Town, the case is a little different. It was written in the middle of the last century, so it has not stood the test of time. Contemporary literary critics are divided as to whether it is a great work or not. It is not like The Old Man and the Sea, which seems definitely to be on its way to being an accepted book in the Western Canon.

If you decide that Our Town is a great work of literature, you have to realize that it is great a new way. Aristotle would never see a book about common people leading ordinary lives as a great work. There are those who see Our Town as introducing a new, American standard of greatness. The question really is, do you accept this assessment or not?

AH - Democracy vs. Republic

I did not respond to this question very thoroughly in class, so let me clarify. The difference between a democracy and a republic is related to the way the will of the people is carried out. In a democracy, the people make as many choices as possible. In a republic, some individuals are chosen to carry out the will of the people. A pure democracy - with every decision discussed and decided upon by the citizenry - has never existed on a large scale. It is possible to run a village or a church this way, but we have never had a nation run this way. Greece always had the ideal of a pure democracy, but usually they ended up running a system closer to a republic. A republic is much more workable. Elected officials can meet in one place and make decisions that affect the people.

From this description, it is clear that the United States is a republic. We have elected officials who make laws, set policy, establish taxes, etc.

The thing people in a republic need to watch out for is abuse of power. There must be a method in place to make sure that the officials stay accountable to the will of the people. If they don't, they run the risk of revolution. Even without a typical revolution, sometimes the republican system will be replaced or overpowered by an individual who is seen as representing the will of the people better than the corrupt government. This happened in Greece with tyrants such as Peisistratus. It also happens in the Roman Republic with the rise of the Caesars.

I have made an observation that may be interesting to you. Largely, I have found that Republican tend to like the Romans, while Democrats prefer the Greeks. You can see how, in some ways, the ideals of these powers reflect the ideals of these parties. The Greeks believed that equality was the goal of the state. Much of the wealth of the Athenians belonged to Athens, and they put a lot of effort into making sure it was distributed fairly. The Romans saw the state's role as expanding and providing opportunity. They were less concerned with equality, and more concerned with making sure people were rewarded for service.

I don't want you to read too much into this. Greece and Rome were very different from any government we have today. Also, I don't think this came about intentionally. If you look at the history of the parties, the Democrats were for the independence of the states, while the modern Republican Party was founded largely to oppose slavery in the middle of the 19th century (there were earlier parties that used the name "Republican," but the modern party started in opposition to slavery). The positions of the two parties developed slowly, and not in an effort to copy the concerns of Greece and Rome.

HL - Reassessing Hoover

It looks like we will not have time to explore Hoover's presidency to the extent that I had intended. My closing thoughts on Hoover, then, are that he did not cause the Depression and he did try a lot of things to stop it that he does not get credit for. The biggest problem Hoover had was that he let himself seem insensitive to people who were suffering. In a sense, his "everything is OK" attitude is understandable, too. The last thing the economy needed was a president creating a panic because he said things about how bad the economy was. Hoover was clearly aware of how confidence in the country and the economy could lead to a healthier system. Hoover did not "sleep through" the Depression. Calvin Coolidge probably would have slept through most of it, but he didn't get the chance. Hoover was very knowledgeable about the economy and tried to draw lessons from history.

Some have said that Hoover had the misfortune of being an uncharismatic president at a time when America needed a leader more than anything. I understand what the point is, but I don't think Hoover was completely without charisma. If he were, how could he of won the popular vote by such a large margin?

HL - FDR and the Depression

Here is a Paul Krugman piece for the New York Times. I referenced some of these ideas in class, but didn't remember where I saw this article. Krugman makes the argument that the New Deal would have worked better if FDR had taken bolder action. He essentially takes the opposite view from the conservatives who say that FDR's policies failed because he made too many sweeping changes in the economy. The reservation I have about including this link is that Krugman is really more concerned with contemporary economic policy than with understanding FDR.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1

HL - Did FDR Prolong the Depression?

Since I don't think we are going to have time to delve into this issue to the depth that I had hoped, here are links to two articles regarding the issue:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=B630965F5DA4E3281307EB1D4474B32D?diaryId=10644

The first is from UCLA summarizing the journal article published by two of their economists claiming that FDR's economic policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years. The second article is one of the many criticisms of the article that I found. It does not do a point-by-point criticism, but it analyzes GDP projections used by the UCLA economists.

You do not have to read past the URL to realize that the second article is from a leftist website. I hope if you read it, though, you do not disregard it on that basis alone.

There is another method some have used to criticize FDR's New Deal and its effect on the economy - the comparison of the US recovery vs. the recovery in other countries. We talked briefly about this in class. England did recover more quickly, but they did so through a dole (payments directly to people without any work requirements). A dole is definitely a way to get cash flowing in the economy, but it is unlikely Americans would have liked it. It was also against FDR's nature to give people something for nothing.

Analysis of FDR's reaction to the Depression informs the discussion about our current president's economic policies during our economic downturn. Since historians and politicians cannot agree on the efficacy of FDR's approach, it is clear why they cannot agree on the best approach now.

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