A study of 4000 public employees in the UK found that the symptoms usually ascribed to “sick building syndrome” are actually more strongly correlated to “job stress and lack of support in the workplace” than to physically measurable triggers (i.e. “poor air circulation and unacceptably high levels of CO2, noise, fungus and airborne chemicals”).
On the other hand, if you work in a place that makes you feel awful, it doesn’t much matter why you feel that way, or what the cause is . . .
From the always-interesting New York Observer, Jason Horowitz has written an article about “the Affect.”
From the San Fernando Valley, where some think the accent has its origins in the infamous Valley Girl, to the soap stores of Soho, young women are communicating differently. But unlike their Cockney counterpart, they don’t peddle wilted flowers in the London markets. They have college diplomas from Georgetown and Penn, and respectable addresses in Kips Bay and wherever else laundry machines in doorman buildings spin Theory pants and Michael Stars shirts in a black and pastel blur. They sell advertising space and plan events in New York City. They practice law (uhhhhm, ob-juhk-tion?), trade stocks (baiiiigh? seh-uhhhl?), and eat at swanky restaurants (sew guuuuuhhhd.) This Affect, however, is not inherited from parents, though it’s an effective tool for extracting money and presents from them. It’s not even picked up in the playground — except in its more posh precincts. It’s caught from other proudly upper-middle-class girls who love nothing more than to linger on a vowel.
The article includes some observations by John V. Singler, a sociolinguistics professor at New York University, who listened to recordings of the Affect.
There was more pitch range than usual. Usually the extremes of pitch change for emphasis, and this wasn’t the case. In terms of the amount of pitch variation, in ordinary sentences and not in places of emphasis. I hadn’t noticed that before.
Other signature characteristics of the Affect are glottal stops in place of “t’s” and that “high, rising intonation contour, more commonly referred to as “uptalk” — the seemingly contagious practice of lifting the end of every phrase to create the effect of a question.”
On the one hand, Horowitz notes, professional women are paying voice coaches to help them unlearn this accent. (I guess it’s an accent? lol)
On the other hand, it may represent the latest in the ongoing drift of spoken English, or, as Horowitz slyly notes, “The time may not be far off when mothers will be reprimanding their children for not inserting a ‘like’ before an adjective.”
There’s only one person known to have it.
Her symptoms? A preternatural memory.
Give her any date, and she can
recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred . . .
[She] remembers trivial details as clearly as major events. Asked what happened on Aug 16, 1977, she knew that Elvis Presley had died, but she also knew that a California tax initiative passed on June 6 of the following year, and a plane crashed in Chicago on May 25 of the next year, and so forth. Some may have had a personal meaning for her, but some did not.
She’s not an idiot savant. She’s a “fully functioning person.”
Now–isn’t this typical!–she’s been kidnapped by scientists and is being held in a lab where they’re preparing to run a series of MRIs . . . ha ha ha, just kidding about the kidnapping part. She’s volunteered to be studied. We guess.
(I wonder if her mother ate a lot of eggs.)
Hyperthymestic syndrome
Scientists are predicting that the next bout of intense solar activity will come sooner, and be more intense, than the last one.
We may start to see some action as soon as this fall. Peak activity will hit about 2012.
As a practical matter, we’re even more dependent on technology than we were the last time this happened (around the turn of the millenium). So this is going to be . . . interesting.
Fortunately, we also have the aurora borealis. During the last period of peak solar activity, I saw northern lights all the time here in Upstate New York. I am really looking forward to seeing them again.
You can collect a cool $1000 if you can come up with an account of “repressed memory” — fictional or non-fictional — recorded before 1800.
The prize is being offered by Harrison G. Pope, Jr. and James I. Hudson, directors at the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Their theory is that repressed memory (the notion that someone who underwent a trauma might suffer temporary amnesia) is a romantic notion rather than a scientifically valid phenomenon. If they’re wrong, they reason,
somewhere, in the thousands of years prior to 1800, would have witnessed it and portrayed it in a non-fictional work or in a fictional character.
You have to be the first one to report a qualifying account to win the money. Details here.
Well, the Permian extinction of yore. If you can’t recall it, that’s perhaps because it happened 250 million years ago, and you’re not a geologist, or both.
There’s a book on it out, now: Extinction, by Douglas H. Erwin, a Smithsonian paleobiologist. It’s been reviewed here in a Washington Post piece by Joshua Foer.
A quantum computer that can calculate . . . while it’s not running.
“It is very bizarre that you know your computer has not run but you also know what the answer is,” says [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign research] team member Onur Hosten.
“Very bizarre.” Master of the understatement, Onur.
This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. “A non-running computer produces fewer errors,” says Hosten.
Let me guess: Microsoft operating system!
:-D
Wouldn’t you love to see one of these babies chase a Jeep!
Okay, it would have to be a very small Jeep to get that Spielberg effect.
Here’s the facts: seventeen inches long; probably an egg-layer; semi-aquatic; probably ate fish. Oh, and predates any other known fur-bearing mammal by 40 million years.
Way cool.
The problem is, we may not know how little we know.
So claims Yale University psychology professor Frank Keil in this article. Keil has conducted research on the disconnect between what people think they know compared to what they actually do know.
We are good at estimating how well we know simple facts (such as the capitals of countries), procedures (such as how to make an international phone call), and narratives (such as the plots of well-known movies). But we seem to have a specific “illusion of explanatory depth” — the belief that we possess a more profound causal [emphasis mine] understanding than we really do. We can be appropriately modest about our knowledge of other things, but not so about our ability to explain the workings of the world.
This is particularly pronounced, Keil says, when the object of our faux understanding is a relatively complex object or system. Because complex systems are “richly hierarchical,” he explains, “they can be understood at several levels of analysis.” Unfortunately, we tend to confound a high-level understanding with a comprehensive understanding.
One can understand how a computer “works” in terms of the high-level functions of the mouse, the hard drive, and the display while not having any understanding of the mechanisms that enable a cursor to move when a mouse is moved, or allow information to be stored and erased, or control pixels on a screen.
Yet once we’re able to explain how to save a file, or log onto the Internet, or defrag a harddrive, we slip into the illusion of believing we understand our computers.
We’re also vulnerable to this illusion, Keil continues, when the parts of the system are visible. “The more parts you can see, the more you think you know how those parts actually work.”
Keil’s piece confines itself to a discussion of physical phenomena, but it strikes me that the same can be said of our understanding of events–historical and current. Surf the ‘net tonight, for instance, and you’ll find as many theories about what’s going on in Iraq right now as you have time to read. People are writing about who was behind the bombing of the Golden Mosque, what their motivations were, and whether this represents civil war or not. Many of these explanations are delivered with supreme confidence.
But in every case, we have individuals who are working with the highly visible parts of a very complex phenomenon.
So, if Keil is right, the aforementioned confidence is actually supreme overconfidence. It’s not understanding; it’s the illusion of understanding.
Almost no one really understands what’s happening–the exception being the people who actually masterminded the bombing.
The same goes for every major event, from Bush’s deal to hand over commercial port operations to Dubai to — well, fill in the blank: _________________________.
We deceive ourselves when we assume that knowing what the pieces are, and how they fit together, is enough to proclaim causality.
And by the way, maybe the political divide in this country wouldn’t be so harsh if we all acknowledged this, eh?
