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Today’s Headlines:

• Man drowned by tractor [Must have been a revenge crime….]
• Garage Hopping Grows [I hope mine doesn’t take up the sport.]
• Rubber sidewalks protect beer kegs [Your tax dollars at work….]

But … on to today’s subject:

Unless you’ve had your head under a rock recently, you are undoubtedly aware of the media’s recent “feeding frenzy” over John Edward’s extracurricular relationship and his reluctance to tell others about it. In the midst of the news coverage, I couldn’t help but notice how many of those who have been most shrill in their condemnation of the evil he has done are themselves—well—obese. That led me to wonder….

Perhaps the reason the one among us who is without sin is supposed to cast the first stone is that we all have at least one area of weakness of equal or greater consequence than those we are willing to condemn in others. We see the motes in the eyes of others while failing to notice the beams in our own.

While pondering this issue, it occurred to me that we tend to establish hierarchies of evils based on our individual belief systems. Just how bad is adultery, which would seem to be a form of lust? Although I have been guilty of it, I’ve never been fond of wrath. How bad is gluttony? Is it worse than sloth? What about pride and envy? Are we guilty of pride when we want athletes from our own country to do well in the Olympics? Are we guilty of envy when we want something we have seen advertised, or is it envy only when we covet a neighbor’s spouse or SUV?

I am not, of course, arguing in favor of any of the “sins,” whether venial (not so bad) or mortal (deadly). I am not sure that there’s a way to avoid the sense that some transgressions are worse than others. My wondering has to do with the degree of awareness we have of our own failures to live virtuous lives while we busily condemn others for their shortcomings. If lust and gluttony are both mortal sins, why does the glutton feel so righteous in condemning the adulterer? I suspect that both would be quick to condemn the thief for greed. I wonder if that would apply equally to the pride of the lobbyists and politicians who established the financial rules that led to the subprime fiasco in which a few got rich at the expense of many who lost everything they had. The nuances can be complex.

When a wife asks, “Does this dress make me look fat,” even a totally honest husband can say, “No, dear.” On the other hand, if she asks, “Do I look fat in this dress,” the totally honest husband knows that lying may be kinder and safer than telling what he sees as the truth. Would saying the kind thing be a venial sin or a virtue? What about those who stuff themselves at holiday meals because their mothers feel loved when others love the food they have prepared? Love and gluttony by the spoonful….

When I was young, my mother used to tell me that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. I must have been quite a stone thrower, both literally and figuratively, as I heard that saying with regularity. At the time, I really didn’t understand it. I made a mental image of a glass house and knew that I wouldn’t want to live in one. I didn’t understand that it was a metaphor for our inability to hide the truth about ourselves. We all live in glass houses, and there’s no escape. The stones we throw will come back to haunt us.

And whom can we blame for that?

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com

Today’s Headlines:

• More Money for Crime [So we can buy more of it?]
• Foreclosure flings soar [From foreplay to foreclosure?]
• Support Right to Bare Arms [Especially in summer…]

But … on to today’s subject:

One of the fundamental NLP presuppositions (based on the work of Alfred Korzybsky) is that the map is not the territory. This is true not only for physical maps and the territory they supposedly depict, but also for the mental maps we construct to represent what we think of as reality. Most people have used a street map to drive from one place to another, only to discover that not all the streets did what the map showed, with streets showing as through streets on the map, turning into dead ends in the territory. When you encounter such a situation, you undoubtedly conclude that the map is “wrong” and that the territory is “right.” I suspect that you blame the map for the difference rather than curse the territory.

Today’s Headlines:

• Pakistan Wows To 'Weed Out' Taliban agents [Wows and vows?]
• Sleep apnea sufferers more likely to die [And I had been thinking that everyone would die eventually….]
• Man seriously hurt in mobile home stabbing [Never stab a mobile home…]

But … on to today’s subject:

Most of us have heard the phrase, “Six degrees of separation,” in reference to personal connections: those whom we know directly represent one degree of separation. We are two-degrees of separation from everyone they know, and we are three-degrees of separation from everyone those people know, and so on. The idea is that the distance between any two people anywhere on earth is no more than six degrees of separation.

This concept has been sufficiently pervasive that a trivia game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” was developed showing that any actor can be connected to Kevin Bacon through film roles. Person A was in a movie with Person B, who had been in a movie with Person C, who was in a movie with Kevin Bacon. And so on. (The game is best played by those who pay close attention to who is in which movie….)

Recent scientific tests confirm the theory, except that it turns out that the degrees of separation are from 5 to 7. For one reason or another, it occurs to me that further study might demonstrate that the actual numbers are 7 plus or minus 2. This may be one of those situations that are “too coincidental to be coincidental.” The magic number seven, plus or minus two, happens to be the number George A. Miller established in 1956 as the limits of what has come to be called “working memory.”

When asked to remember a string of numbers, for example, most people do pretty well with between 5 and 7 digits. We can look up a phone number and remember it long enough (working memory) to place the call. If we don’t already know the area code, we may need to check the reference in the middle of dialing.

It is a little mind boggling to think that the degrees of separation between people could share the Magic Number Seven, plus or minus two. Could that really be simple coincidence, or are we discovering something significant about the Cosmic Order?

Even if it turns out that the magic of the Number 7 is coincidental rather than Cosmic, we are still left with the fact that we are a lot more closely connected to others than we might have thought. Only seven others separate us from strangers on the far side of the planet. We know somebody (1) who knows somebody (2) who knows somebody (3) who knows somebody (4) who knows somebody (5) who knows somebody (6) who knows Osama bin Laden. In the other direction, Osama in Laden is connected to everyone who died on 9/11 by no more than seven degrees of separation.

Now … I’m not sure what that means. It is perfectly possible, of course, for people to hate even those they know most intimately, so merely the awareness that we are more closely connected than we suspected would not be a panacea. It might, however, be a start.

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com

Today’s Headlines:

• Naked Passenger Causes Flight Diversion [I can understand that….]
• Crude on the Rise [Must be cable TV….]
• Less Drivers = Less Accidents [Less Ignorance = Fewer Errors….]

But … on to today’s subject:

“Anchoring” is the term that NLP uses for stimulus-response conditioning. Much of our (human) behavior is influenced by anchors that have been set over the years, from traffic signals and signs, to names that we associate with faces, to the meanings we ascribe to words. The word “run,” for example, is an anchor—a stimulus—that has a variety of meanings—responses—based on the context in which it is used.

Today’s Headlines:

• On Force 29 Minutes, Squad Car Wrecked [The car evidently needed more training. ]
  
• Dead Doctors Used in Scams [Perhaps the live ones wouldn’t cooperate.]

But … on to today’s subject:

Jonathan Swift raised eyebrows and tempers in 1729—when many in Ireland were starving—with an essay entitled “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was that the Irish could ease their economic difficulties by selling children born into poverty as food for rich ladies and gentlemen. To support his argument, Swift includes a list of preparation styles and calculations showing the financial benefits of his suggestion.

Today’s Headlines:

• FBI Crime Down [How much crime did the FBI have before it went down? ]
  
• Don’t Fear the Vista from Your Windows [Don’t think of elephants….]

But … on to today’s subject:

One of the best-known comedy routines of all time is “Who’s on First,” by Abbott and Costello. In rounding the bases of a baseball team, Abbott and Costello go from Who to What to I Don’t Know. Abbott says that Who is on first, What is on second, and I don’t know is on third. He then asks, “Who’s on first.” Costello replies, “I don’t know.” Abbott says, “He’s on third. We’re not talking about him now.” It’s a Dizzy Dean of a trip.

Today’s Headlines:

• Two-armed Suspect on the Loose [As opposed to a one-armed bandit?]
  
• Midwest Floods Devastate May Raise Food Prices [Midwest flood devastation?]

But … on to today’s subject:

Yes, this is another blog about the way politicians (and their kissing cousins, “political operatives”) use language. Even though they may not always avoid the inappropriate use of negative commands, (such as, “Don’t vote for my opponent!”), they tend to be pretty crafty at using presuppositions.

Today’s Headlines:

• Cindy’s Cookie Copied
  
• Science proves bikinis turn men into boobs

But … on to today’s subject:

If John McCain had remembered what people thought when Richard Nixon said, “I am not a crook,” he probably would have avoided saying, “I am not George Bush.” The strange way the brain interprets negative language has been well known for years, and yet negative constructions—in places with undesirable consequences—abound. Among the common examples of what are considered negative commands are the following:

Today’s Headlines:

• Clinton, Osama meet to discuss unity
  
• Teen points gun as school bus driver

But … on to today’s subject:

In some ways, the headlines I select for “Today’s Headlines” are examples of Metamodel violations. In other ways, they are just bad grammar or typographical errors, but—for those not familiar with the vocabulary of NLP—let’s start with a brief overview of the Metamodel.