Selective Bias

Psychologists say that if you ask someone to study a room for 30 seconds looking only for red objects, and then ask them to close their eyes and name the blue objects in the room, most people can't name more than three or four blue objects. They have selectively filtered out any data that conflicts with their bias. Try this on your friends. You should have at least six objects of each color scattered around the room within sight of the viewer.

If you try this experiment, please let us know the results.

To Spank or Not To Spank

When you were growing up, did your parents inflict corporal punishment upon you as a form of discipline? Which of these forms did that punishment include?

Spanking/ Smacking / Slapping / Whipping / Paddling/ Switching/ Belting/ Whacking / Pinching/ Biting/ Pulling hair/ Grabbing or Yanking/ Restrictions on going to the bathroom, eating, drinking, or sleeping/ Coercion to do exercise (pushups, etc.) / Placing soap or hot sauce in the mouth

Are you aware that in the United States, it is illegal for anyone to hit an adult. Well, I suppose there are some law enforcement instances in which a law officer can strike an adult. But it is illegal to hit:

Wives or Husbands/ Boyfriends or Girlfriends/ Parents/ Teachers/ Employees/ Elderly people, Disabled people/ Rude store clerks/ Soldiers/ Pets

But in all 50 states, it is legal for parents to hit children as long as they do not leave a bruise or injury. It is legal in some states for school teachers to paddle students, even if they leave severe bruising.

Parents generally use corporal punishment for tantrums, swearing, sassing , and refusing to listen. Parents who support spanking claim that if they lose the right to use corporal punishment, they would not know how to control their children.

Last month a lawmaker in California proposed introducing an anti-spanking bill in the state legislature. The bill would have banned the spanking of children under the age of four. The penalty would have ranged from required attendance in a parenting class to misdemeanor punishments of up to a year in jail and a $1000 fine.

After receiving much negative press in both the state of California as well as in the national media, the lawmaker watered down her proposal to make it legal to spank a child on the buttocks. But all other forms of corporal punishment would be banned.

In letters to the San Diego Union-Tribune, some local parents had this to say about the proposed anti-spanking legislation:

“Government has no business in the subtleties of child rearing.”
“Spanking is hitting, and hitting is violence. Spanking is unnecessary violence directed at children.”
“We have six children. I didn’t spank the first three; but by the time we got to four, my husband and I started using spanking as a form of discipline. And it has been very effective.”

“(We don’t need a) Nanny state-Big Brother government approach to controlling families.”
“Spanking your children illegal? That would be absurd! They are your children to raise as you please.”
“Growing up in a culture that uses strict discipline to teach its youth respect and responsibility has actually made me a better person.”

“(This bill) would include such actions as burning, cutting, baby-shaking and interfering with a child’s breathing as unjustified. These actions not only harm a child, but emotionally scar them for life and cause them to become prone to abusing their own children."
“...spanking to discourage potentially lethal behavior, such as playing with matches or probing electrical outlets, needs no defense.”

"Let's educate our parents in the new, improved disciplinary methods and our children will grow up internalizing good behaviors, without fearing a spanking parent."

Well, what do you think? Should we butt out on spanking?

Thoreau’s Legacy

Henry David Thoreau is known to most Americans today for his legacy in three areas:

1. Civil disobedience, which is defined as "an illegal, public, nonviolent, conscientiously motivated act of protest, done by someone who accepts the legitimacy of the legal and political systems and who submits to arrest and punishment." Standing up for what you believe in and being disobedient does not necessary mean committing an illegal act. It can change the law to better suit society. People practicing civil disobedience break a law because they consider the law unjust, and want to call attention to its injustice, hoping to bring about its withdrawal. In 1849, Thoreau wrote a powerful lecture on the "relation of the individual to the State." The lecture was published with the title "Civil Disobedience." This masterful essay has influenced generations of activists, including Mahatma Gandhi in India and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States.

Thoreau believed in the power of people's innate instincts to lead them to know right from wrong. He resented the government that tried to force him to pay taxes for a land grab war (War with Mexico, 1846-1848) that he knew in his heart was wrong. He abhorred the institution of slavery and resisted the government that forced him to take part in supporting that institution because he was a citizen of the republic. He respected and trusted only the divine influence of his own instincts. He believed that people must follow their own consciences. If their instincts tell them that some law or rule is wrong, they should not blindly obey it, but refuse it and change it.

2. Living a simple life. Thoreau listened to a different drummer. He kept his needs simple. Other than a rowboat and his books, he owned almost nothing. He boarded mostly with his family, and on several occasions, with his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. When he ran out of money, he took a paid job until he was flush again. As a surveyor and skilled carpenter, he was always able to find work. "He chose to be rich," wrote his friend Emerson, "by making his wants few and supplying them himself." Thoreau's philosophy centered around a fervent belief in "simplicity": he believed that modern men cluttered their lives with too many material goods and property, plus too much regimentation and duty, leaving them much too little time to think deeply and appreciate the lessons of nature. Thoreau loved nature and celebrated it. His writing reminds us how important it is to take time to sit still and listen to nature to find inner peace. Thoreau helps us remember that what is important is not how much we accumulate, but how we live our lives that matters.

That reminds me of a friend of mine who in 1968 said that he wanted to become wealthy. That was the goal that he established for himself in this life. As a result of investing in land and properties, he is now worth over $15 million. Two years ago, he gave a million dollars to the local Children’s Hospital. Now he is starting to give the money away. But the question I have is this: Is getting rich a worthy goal for this lifetime? What sacrifices did this man make in his relationships (the divorce and the time not devoted to his children) in order to accumulate that wealth?

3. The experiment at Walden Pond. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved into the one-room cabin he had built for $25 on land Emerson owned on the shores of Walden Pond. "I went to the woods," he wrote, "because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." He wanted to see how long he could live without a job or any responsibilities to civilization.

Instead of accruing material gain, he set out to lose as many of the ties to the material world as he could. He felt that attachments to things and to man-made laws and duties were strings that tied people down to a physical existence and left them too busy and exhausted to explore their spiritual existence.

When he was thrown in jail in Concord, Massachusetts, for not paying his taxes, Thoreau was visited by Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "Henry, what are you doing in jail?" and Thoreau's answer was, "As long as government is doing immoral things, moral people belong in jail."

I wonder why those of us today who consider ourselves moral Americans aren't in jail?

"I Grieve For My Country" Redux

A recent report by the Justice Department’s inspector general regarding 143,074 national security letters issued between 2003 and 2005 has revealed widespread violations by the FBI of special surveillance powers given to it by Congress after 9/11. These national security letters give the FBI the authority, under limited circumstances, to obtain private records secretly without a search warrant. They give the FBI the authority to search e-mails, bank account transactions, phone records, credit card data and other information. The bureau had said, after issuing the emergency letters, that the required subpoenas would follow. They never did. The FBI also underreported its use of national security letters to Congress.

Under the Patriot Act, the Bush administration and Attorney General Gonzales promised to safeguard the civil rights of Americans as the War on Terror continued. But now we learn that the FBI has assaulted the privacy rights of individuals, including some who were not even targets of any investigation. They are still using surveillance without legal authorization on our free, innocent American citizens, obtaining confidential information unrelated to any criminal investigation. Sen. Patrick Leahy said that national security letters “can do great harm to innocent people when they are misused.”

I think it is time once again to post the poem that I wrote in December of 2005 titled “I Grieve For My Country”:

Newspaper Report: July 10, 2005. “The Bush administration pledged yesterday to veto legislation banning the torture of prisoners by U.S. troops.”

Newspaper Report: December 15, 2005. “The House of Representatives voted yesterday to renew the USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the FBI to conduct secret searches, monitor telephone calls and emails, and obtain bank records and other personal documents in connection with terrorism investigations."

I grieve for my country
The land where I was born
A nation the world once envied
And now all scourged with scorn.

From those tortured at Abu Ghraib
To those held at Guantanamo Bay
This is not the nation I remember
From a not-too-distant day.

Now we are like all the others
Of nations stained with shame
We speak empty phrases of freedom
But what honor can we claim?

We invaded the Iraqi nation
Based upon a lie
Now fifteen thousand are wounded
And thousands had to die.

And while our citizens are monitored
By tools of the FBI
The Patriot Act in action
What we read they now espy.

I grieve for my country
The land where I was born
A nation the world once envied
And now all scourged with scorn.

A Plasma TV is a Girl’s Best Friend

I have just finished reading a report of a poll revealing that, if the value were equal, over 75 percent of women would prefer receiving a new plasma TV instead of a diamond necklace. I thought it would be interesting to poll my wife about that. So I said, “Punkiebuns, if the value were the same in both cases, would you rather receive a diamond necklace or a new plasma TV?” Without hesitation, she replied that she would take the plasma TV. Next, I posed question #2: “Under the same conditions, would you rather get a Corvette (which she covets) or a diamond necklace?” Again, there was a quick reply that she would desire the Corvette. Then came question #3: “ Same conditions: Would you rather have a new dishwasher or a diamond necklace?” Looking at me with disbelief, as though it were silly to pose such a question, she exclaimed, “The diamond necklace, of course!”

That got me to thinking about the song titled “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” from the Broadway musical and later the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” The movie was a 1953 adaptation of the 1949 stage musical, which was based on a novel written in 1925. The story includes the gold-digging Lorelei Lee, which starred Carol Channing in the stage musical and Marilyn Monroe in the film.

Lorelei and her best friend are showgirls from Little Rock. Lorelei’s dream is to marry someone rich, and she will do almost anything to achieve that goal. She eventually becomes engaged to a wealthy man who is so in love with her that he will buy her almost anything she wants.

The song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is sung by Lorelei. Many film scholars now regard this lyric as a feminist text well ahead of its time. It explores women’s power and powerlessness in relationships in the social milieu of that time. The song is a pointed commentary on a society that values women only for youth and sex appeal, and the need for women to take care of themselves (for when they are old and "can't straighten up when they bend.”)

Basically, the commentary included in “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” is that in a romantic relationship, it is best for a young woman to receive diamonds (1920s through the 1950s) because:

1. A kiss and romance are great, but they don’t pay the rent
2. If her man abandons her after a woman grows old and loses her charms and even her shape, the diamonds never lose their shape
3. In case of a divorce, there is still value in the diamonds
4. If your lover turns out to be married, you can get rid of him and still keep the diamonds
5. When you get old and stiff and can’t stand up, you “will still be able to stand tall at Tiffany’s”

I suppose that all the changes and new opportunities for women that have taken place in the United States since 1925 place that song in a different context. Most women today work outside the home and have independent incomes. In fact, some women bring home fatter paychecks than their mates. So perhaps in today’s world, diamonds don’t have the appeal they once did.

Maybe that would explain why my wife would rather have the plasma TV.