Author Archives: Morgan Mussell

The Secret Life of Pronouns

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Who knew that pronouns can predict romantic compatibility, reveal power dynamics, lying, and who will recover from trauma?  James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin has been tracking the truth of pronouns for 20 years.

James Pennebaker

He includes them in the group he calls “function words,” necessary parts of speech that are invisible to us in conversation:  the, this, though, I, and, an, there, that, he, she, where, when.  Pennebaker contrasts these with “content words,” which carry meaning and evoke images in our minds, words like, school, family, life, friends.

In a recent NPR interview, Pennebaker related that he and his students studied couples’ compatibility in the context of speed dating, http://tinyurl.com/7skcgf4.  Computers proved an essential tool for analyzing results, since try as we might, we really don’t hear function words.  By entering both the transcript and the speed dating outcomes, Pennebaker’s team discovered a strong correlation between matching function word usage and the decision to get together after the first meeting.  The computer predicted who would hit it off more accurately than the couples themselves.

This is not because similar people are attracted to each other, Pennebaker says; people can be very different. It’s that when we are around people that we have a genuine interest in, our language subtly shifts.

“When two people are paying close attention, they use language in the same way,” he says. “And it’s one of these things that humans do automatically.  They aren’t aware of it, but if you look closely at their language, count up their use of ‘I, and, the,’… you can see it. It’s right there.”

The other discovery Pennebaker discussed in the interview centers on power dynamics.  When two people with different status or power interact, the subordinate uses “I” much more frequently.  Pennebaker suggests self consciousness is the cause, concern about how we’ll be perceived.

Finally, Pennebaker weighed in on the My Fair Lady question:  if we change our language, do we change?  After 20 years of research, Pennebaker says no.  Change who you are and your language will change, but not vice-versa.

What’s interesting is that several people I respect claim that changing your handwriting changes personality.  Organize your penmanship, for instance, and other aspects of your life will follow.  This suggests the added visceral dimension makes the difference.  Makes you wonder – The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.  Probably doesn’t work as well on a keyboard…

You can read about Pennebaker’s research in The Secret Life of Pronouns, 2011:

People and the Planet: A Report by the Royal Society

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On April 26, The Royal Society, the UK’s 350 year old academy of science, released the results of a 21 month study of patterns of population and consumption.  Sir John Sulston, chair of the working group, put it very simply:

“The world now has a very clear choice.  We can choose to address the twin issues of population and consumption.  We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption, to reframe our economic values to truly reflect what our consumption means for our planet and to help individuals around the world to make informed and free reproductive choices.  Or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward vortex of economic, socio-political and environmental ills, leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future.”  http://royalsociety.org/news/Royal-Society-calls-for-a-more-equitable-future-for-humanity/

The Society issued a 132 page report that makes several key recommendations  http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/people-planet/report/:

  1. The international community must bring the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 per day out of absolute poverty, and reduce the inequality that persists in the world today. This will require focused efforts in key policy areas including economic development, education, family planning and health.
  2. The most developed and the emerging economies must stabilise and then reduce material consumption levels through: dramatic improvements in resource use efficiency, including: reducing waste; investment in sustainable resources, technologies and infrastructures; and systematically decoupling economic activity from environmental impact.
  3. Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes urgently require political leadership and financial commitment, both nationally and internationally. This is needed to continue the downward trajectory of fertility rates, especially in countries where the unmet need for contraception is high.
  4. Population and the environment should not be considered as two separate issues. Demographic changes, and the influences on them, should be factored into economic and environmental debate and planning at international meetings, such as the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development and subsequent meetings.

Please look at this video clip of Sulston summarizing the findings of the report, which he will present at the United Nations on May 1, ahead of the Rio+20 conference.

Of special interest to me was Sulston’s critique of GDP as the key measure of economic wellbeing for nations.  GDP, he says, drives growth to levels that cannot be sustained.  Michael Meade once observed that unbridled growth in the body is cancer, and unbridled growth in the body politic is a parallel ill.

Growth is such an ingrained measure of wellbeing that re-imagining global socio-economics will not be simple or easy.  One tactic, according to the working group, is to factor in real costs:  what are the real costs of disappearing forests and species?  What is the real cost of water when the study predicts that 1.8 billion people will live with severe water scarcity by 2025?

The issue of water brings to mind my previous post, “Another Regulation Conundrum,” http://wp.me/pYql4-21e, which describes a couple’s 40 year effort to create an self-sustaining and non-polluting homestead.  One of their projects was recycling household “gray water.”  The county building codes have no provision for such experimental ways of doing things, and the couple has racked up large fines and an eviction notice.  In a very real sense, the status quo is the problem.  According to the Royal Society, not only our building codes but the mindset behind them must change or the quality of life for everyone will continue its spiral of decline.

One parting thought:  the study was released on Thursday.  Why haven’t we heard it mentioned on any US media?

Another Regulation Conundrum

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My previous post centered on regulations to force bloggers to disclose seemingly small-fry issues, like whether they were comped with an ebook for reviewing independently published authors.

Thursday’s paper ran a story from the New York Times on a more weighty and poignant regulatory issue.  The article, “Marin County battles hippie holdout,” tells of David Lee Hoffman, an entrepreneur of artisan teas, who designed and built 30 structures during the 40 years he lived on a rural hillside.  Inspired by youthful treks through Tibet and Nepal, Hoffman, 67, and his wife, Ratchanee, have tried to create a sustainable, non-polluting, homestead.  In the process, by ignoring repeated notices of violations of county building codes, they racked up $200,000 in fines and have just been ordered to vacate their home until the violations are fixed. The case is now before a judge.  http://www.sacbee.com/2012/04/26/4443307/hippie-askldj-flaksj-dfklaj-sdlfkj.html

photo by Jim Wilson, New York Times

The Hoffman homestead contains such fanciful structures as the Worm Palace, a Solar Power Shower Tower, and a moat, which is integral to recycling household water.  One of the county’s chief concerns is their method for disposing of human waste, which uses worm colonies to help turn human waste into humus.  Composting toilets are not legal in Marin.  The county also says it’s worried about an excess of rain, which could flood the moat and send the gray water into nearby creeks.

Hoffman says, “I did what I felt was right.  My love of the planet is greater than my fear of the law.”

***

There’s nothing simple about the regulations that govern our lives, and many of them serve us well.  I like clean water and knowing the content of the food I eat.  I want pure aspirin when I have a headache, and I want to trust the odometer when I shop for a used car.  If I buy a hot dog during a ballgame, I don’t want to have to think , of Upton Sinclair’s, The Jungle.  And I might not want to live downstream from the night soil in the Hoffmans’ garden.

And yet…

Most of us know, in the corners of our awareness, that many of our problems are beyond the capacity of our current institutions.  We know that business as usual is part of the problem.  That regulators do not create solutions.  As Einstein said, “One cannot alter a condition with the same mind that created it in the first place.”

How do we enable people like the Hoffmans, willing to devote their lives to imagining new ways of living?  If we fine and evict people for living their dreams, pretty soon we’re going to run short of dreamers.

Regulating Bloggers?

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Disclaimer: I certify that I have received no financial renumeration, goods, or services for the content of this post.

I know you’re all shocked that the superPacs have yet to contact me, but under a proposal before the California Fair Political Practices Commission, bloggers expressing political opinions might have to insert such a disclaimer.  Last Thursday, FPPC chairwoman, Ann Ravel, announced plans to make such disclosure “suggested” for this November’s elections, and mandatory thereafter.  http://tinyurl.com/773olq2

This stirs up many questions, the first and foremost being, why?  Why focus on bloggers when we all know victory in this election will cost hundreds of millions of SuperPac dollars?  For attack adds on TV, not a few hundred blog posts.

The current FCC push to force TV stations to post the sponsors of political adds is news.  A district court decision to allow superPacs to solicit political add time on PBS stations is news.  The fact that bloggers post their opinions is not.

I believe some politicians cannot abide a medium that is beyond their control, and political blogging is a macguffin as defined in Neal Gabler’s marvelous book, Life, the Movie (look under Book Reviews here for more info). Gabler writes:

“It was with Kennedy in mind that Norman Mailer in 1960 prophesied that ‘America’s politics would now be also America’s favorite movie’…Candidates were the putative stars, the primaries open costing calls, the campaign was an audition, and the election itself the selection of the lead, while the handlers served as drama coaches, scriptwriters, and directors.  As for substantive issues, though they couldn’t be purged entirely, they largely became what film director Alfred Hitchcock…once called macguffins-that is, they were the excuse for setting the whole process in motion though they have virtually no intrinsic value.”

That helps me understand why Ms Ravel would float such a silly proposal.  How would the California FPPC try to regulate bloggers living out of state?  How much money would I have to rake in to be required to disclose?  Five dollars?  Fifty?  Five-hundred (I wish)?  Will twitter or Facebook users have to disclose as well?  What about book reviews?  Will I have to disclose which publishers are buying my pearls of wisdom?  What about lucrative Hollywood kickbacks for my movie reviews?

I think this proposal is a bluff intended to float the notion that bloggers need to be regulated, a move toward the slippery slope of controlling what we can and cannot say.  This being America, the pols still have to tie such actions to some concept of “fairness,” although here it’s pretty thin.  To go after bloggers who might somehow make a buck when Citizens United rules the day is like meeting a Martian invasion with mosquito spray.

But now it’s time for a quick commercial break:

Come on, SuperPacs, make me an offer!  Show me the money!  This space for sale!  Get it while you can!  Bargain prices!  Show me the money!  Will write for loot.  Everyone has their price.  Show me the money!  Did I say that already?  Try me out!

Call me….

Remembering Phil Ochs

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Phil Ochs, 1940-1976

Music has always influenced me, especially while I was growing up.  One of the poet/songwriters I really loved was Phil Ochs, who died in April, 1976.  Ochs corrected the people who labelled him a protest singer – “topical singer” was his phrase.  Though his music extended beyond topical songs, his anti-war songs, and music that demanded social justice remain his best known pieces.

Ochs was born in El Paso in 1940.  His father, a doctor, had been drafted during WWII and suffered from depression after his discharge.  The moved a lot as he had trouble establishing a medical practice.  Phil dropped out of college, but after an arrest for vagrancy in Florida, decided to become a writer and journalist.  He enrolled at Ohio state where he discussed politics and learned the guitar from a fellow student who turned him on to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers.

Ochs learned quickly and was invited to the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary also appeared.  During the ’60’s, he wrote hundreds of songs.  One of his best known was “I ain’t a marchin’ anymore.”  Ochs quoted the lyrics when called to testify at the Chicago Seven trial after the 1968 police riot during the Democratic Convention.

It’s always the old to lead us to the wars,
always the young to fall.
Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun,
Tell me is it worth it all?

Several of Ochs’ most haunting ballads center on Christian themes.  I haven’t read either of the two biographies, so I don’t know the role of faith in his life, but these songs are filled with poetry, sadness, and a vision of Jesus that lies on the opposite end of the spectrum from those who  invoke Christian themes to support their political views nowadays.  Here’s a clip of the first two minutes of a live version of, “The Crucifiction,” performed in Stockholm in 1969. The recorded version runs to almost nine minutes and is available on iTunes for anyone interested.


In the green fields a turnin’, a baby is born
His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn
An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard
Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard
And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars
But to the silence of distance they are sworn

Images of innocence charge him go on
But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn
To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate
And a blinding revelation is laid upon his plate
That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate
And God help the critic of the dawn.

So he stands on the sea and shouts to the shore,
But the louder that he screams the longer he’s ignored
For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs
And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged
‘Till the giant is aware, someone’s pulling at his leg,
And someone is tapping at the door.

So dance dance dance
Teach us to be true
Come dance dance dance
‘Cause we love you

Another one of my favorites has always been the “Ballad of a Carpenter.”

Two thousand years have come and gone
many a hero too.
But the dream of this poor carpenter
remains in the hands of you
remains in the hands of you.

The events during and after the 1968 election convinced Ochs that no one was listening to “topical songs.”  He tried to return to his musical roots – Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard – hoping that would open better avenues of communication, but he began to rely more heavily on valium and alcohol to keep him going while touring.

He travelled to Chile in support of Salvatore Allende, a democratically elected Marxist.  He and another Chilean folksinger barely escaped with their lives after visiting other South American countries.  In 1973, he was attacked by robbers during a trip to Africa and his vocal cords were damaged as the attackers tried to strangle him.  Ochs believed the CIA might have arranged the attack.  Paranoid?  Perhaps, although after his death, the freedom of information act revealed that his dossier was 500 pages long.

The final recording on Ochs’ final album was the haunting, “No More Songs.” Plagued by bipolar disorder and alcoholism, Phil Ochs took his own life on April 9, 1976.

A star is in the sky, it’s time to say goodbye,
A whale is on the beach, he’s dying.
A white flag in my hand, and a white bone in the sand,
And it seems that there are no more songs.

Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody home?
I’ve only called to say I’m sorry
The drums are in the dawn and all the voices gone
And it seems that there are no more songs.

To paraphrase what he sang in “The Carpenter,” the dreams Phil Ochs tried to embody, remain in our hands.  May he rest in peace.

Google Glasses, Anyone?

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A video released by Google earlier this month serves as an introduction to their Project Glass, which aims at putting smartphone apps on a pair of voice controlled glasses.  You can watch the clip now or at the end of this post.  I suggest you invest the 2 1/2 minutes  upfront, since the clip is kind of wild and provides the context for the rest of the article.

I discovered Project Glass in a New York Times op ed piece, “The Man With the Google Glasses,” by Ross Douthat, published April 14. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-man-with-the-google-glasses.html?_r=4

Douthat says that regardless of whether the project comes to fruition, this video speaks volumes about our collective condition – a mix of unbelievable technical expertise and ever-deeper alienation.  As a writer, I couldn’t construct a better illustration of this than the final scene in the youTube clip.  Our protagonist can video chat and share a gorgeous sunset with his girlfriend, and he has to – she’s nowhere near the apartment where he lives.  In a digital world, “sharing a sunset” has more than one meaning!

Douthat quotes an NYU sociologist who says that more Americans now live alone than in nuclear families.  Similar stats tell us similar things that we already know or sense.  Douthat presents both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the impact of online media on our social connections or lack thereof.

He also adds a note of caution about the political ramifications of the trend.  He quotes sociologist, Robert Nisbet who believed that “in eras of intense individualism and weak communal ties, the human need for belonging tends to empower central governments as never before.”  Douthat suggests that old time totalitarianism is not a likely prospect, but says that “what the blogger James Poulos has dubbed “the pink police state” which is officially tolerant while scrutinizing your every move — remains a live possibility.”  

This reminded me of a piece in February on MSNBC concerning Samsung’s new generation HDTV’s, with internally wired cameras, microphones, and options for 3d party apps, which could allow someone to peer into your living room.  “Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets…Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.” http://richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/in-america-television-watches-you/

In truth, I’m not too paranoid on that score, since the average evening at our house is so quiet the spies would go to sleep.

What stays with me from the video is the sense that the Google glasses turn the entire world into a version of my computer screen, where the world “out there” is wallpaper for the applications I’m running.  The phrase these days is “virtualization,” though in one sense, it’s nothing new.

Various artists, philosophers, and spiritual masters have told us “reality” is more like a dream than we know.  Physicists teach nothing is really solid.  Biologists explains that we don’t see rocks or trees “out there.”  What we see are photons striking the rods and cones in our retinas.  Behavioral psychologists have established that at a certain level, our brains do not know the difference between  “real” and imagined events.  As James Hillman put it, “Every experience has to begin as a psychic event in order to happen at all.”  In this sense, the human mind and senses perform the fundamental act of virtualization and have done so for millennia.

Does this mean I’m going to sign up for a pair of smart glasses when they hit the market?  Nope.  They’re a bit far along the nerd scale, even for me, and actually, the prototype is more than a little creepy.  It’s not hard to imagine surreal scenes on the street with smart-glassed pedestrians trying to navigate around each other, and even worse, smart-glassed drivers reading and responding to their emails.

All kidding aside, once this idea hits the streets in some refined, future incarnation, it will likely be one more seductive technological tool/toy to learn to use in a way that serves us and not the other way around.

Mark Coker on the Justice Dept. vs. publishers

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Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, is probably the best known advocate of ebooks as an alternative to traditional publishing, yet he doesn’t want those publishers to disappear.  He made this clear in an article on cnn.com on Sunday entitled, “A dark day for the future of books.” http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/

Mark Coker

The Justice Department launched an anti-trust suit against Apple and five large publishing companies for adopting “agency pricing” and allegedly forcing Amazon to comply.  At the time, Amazon was pricing many books below cost, a move the other publishers feared would harm their print book sales. Three of the publishers have settled, while the remaining two, plus Apple, are going to court.

Coker seldom sides with big publishers, but in this case his reasons are clear:  he fears the Justice Department’s intention to protect consumers could actually harm them by harming the publishing industry by “forcing them to comply with onerous conditions…including restrictions on collaboration with fellow publishers and increased federal auditing and reporting requirements — [which] will increase publisher expenses and slow their business decisions at the very time when publishers need to become faster, nimbler competitors.”

Coker says that although agency pricing raises ebook prices, it “prevents deep-pocketed retailers or device makers from engaging in predatory price wars to harm competitors or discourage formation of new competitors. It would enable the marketplace to support more retailers, which would mean more bookstores promoting the joys of reading to more readers. And it would force retailers to compete on customer experience rather than price. Customers are best served when we have a vibrant e-book retailing ecosystem.”

As I understand Coker’s argument, if ebook prices drop too low, print publishing, the staple of brick and mortar stores as well as libraries, will become a money losing proposition.  I think we all know a certain “deep-pocketed retailer or device maker” who isn’t above “predatory price wars.”  Much as I love my kindle, I don’t want Amazon to become the only game in town.

I suggest everyone with an interest in writing, publishing, and ebooks read Coker’s article, the latest installment in a very convoluted drama.

What is Social Darwinism?

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No, I am not playing Jeopardy, I’m considering the phrase Barack Obama used to characterize the recent House budget proposal.  I thought I had a good idea of what he meant:  survival of the fittest, applied to human endeavors.

I learned a lot more from an article in a New York Times opinionater blog post written by Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia.  In his article, “The Taint of ‘Social Darwinism,'” Kitcher credits the birth of the concept to 19th century philosopher, Herbert Spencer, who first talked of “survival of the fittest.”  The phrase was never used to describe evolution but survival in the human jungle.  Kitcher characterizes the Social Darwinist view:

“Provided that policymakers do not take foolish steps to protect the weak, those people and those human achievements that are fittest — most beautiful, noble, wise, creative, virtuous, and so forth — will succeed in a fierce competition, so that, over time, humanity and its accomplishments will continually improve. Late 19th-century dynastic capitalists, especially the American “robber barons,” found this vision profoundly congenial. Their contemporary successors like it for much the same reasons.”  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/the-taint-of-social-darwinism/?src=me&ref=genera

I can’t help thinking of Charles Dickens’ London, where “the fittest” is the pre-repentant Ebenezer Scrooge.

One not so grand irony is that many of our latter day Social Darwinists were born into wealth and opportunity, while truly self-made men and women, like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, understand the value and necessity of supportive social structures.  In Kitcher’s words, “Horatio Alger needs lots of help, and a large thrust of contemporary Republican policy is dedicated to making sure he doesn’t get it.”

I urge everyone who has a stake in this debate – meaning all of us – to give Philip Kitcher’s article a read.