Hard = False

The Boston Globe ran a story today titled Easy = True.

The reporter laid out some results from the study of cognitive fluency.

Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out that people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard. On the face of it, it’s a rather intuitive idea. But psychologists are only beginning to uncover the surprising extent to which fluency guides our thinking, and in situations where we have no idea it is at work.

One result, one familiar to me, is that rhyming statements are more likely to be seen as true.

McGlone did a study in which he presented subjects with a series of unfamiliar aphorisms either in rhyming or nonrhyming form: “Woes unite foes,” for example, versus “Woes unite enemies.” He found that people tended to see the rhyming ones as more accurate than the nonrhyming ones, despite the fact that, substantively, the two were identical. Phrases that are easier on the ear aren’t just catchy and easy to remember, McGlone argues, they also feel inherently truer. He calls it “the rhyme-as-reason effect.”

My favorite result comes in the form of an apparent paradox:

Couples asked to come up with a short list of good qualities about each other reported higher levels of marital happiness than the other couples in the study - but so did those couples asked to come up with a long list of each other’s bad qualities.

So when your significant other is mad,
ask her to write out ONE HUNDRED bad
things about you. She'll find it hard work,
and conclude that you're not really such a big jerk.

Over the Edge of Darkness

We saw Edge of Darkness, the new movie starring Mel Gibson. It's a paranoid political thriller, but it's more moody than fast paced, and it's kind of a downer.

Oddly enough, the movie features a Republican U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

But no one, not even Republicans, will like him.

I have to say the film was well acted,
but as for the ending - well, that's been redacted.

I'm Half An Hour Early

Happy bloggiversary to me.
It's been a six year spree.

Less Than Frozen

Our spending freeze will be nuanced and fair,
not even chilly - just full of hot air.

Vein Drain

Some donate blood,
then fall with a thud -
an outcome much to be dreaded.

Luckily, I'm just lightheaded.

Behind the Stage

The city puts on its prettiest face
for tourists,
polishes up the place
and invites them
to see the sights
the dazzling lights
and the dizzying heights
of downtown.

I love that show,
but I like to go
behind the stage to see
how it works.

One of the perks
of living here
is getting to know
where the warehouses are,
where the railroad yards sprawl,
where the people in grittier jobs
gather away from the snobs,
although, truth to tell,
they can be rather snobby as well,
but, of course,
in reverse.

The empty spaces
also call
to me,
flat wasted fields,
where something big once towered
a factory perhaps,
long ago collapsed
and bulldozed away.

I stand,
random rubble at my feet,
bricks, glass, concrete,
and weeds,
mere temporary residents
soaking up the sun
in this bleak and empty lot,
which in twenty years
may be a happening spot.

Budget Magic

Obama gets tough:

President Barack Obama plans two separate actions to curb salaries and bonuses of the highest- paid executives in the government.

But, wait.

Bonuses? How do they qualify for these bonuses in the first place?

Should the head of the IRS
get extra compensation
for managing to press
more taxes from the nation?

Telephony Phonies

You may remember the fake pimp who got ACORN people to give him some embarrassing advice on secret video.

Well, he and some buddies pulled a new spectacular stunt - in the office of a U.S. Senator. It fell rather flat:

FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system.

Here's the thing. You can enter an ACORN office under false pretenses, and you probably haven't broken the law yet. But, sure enough, you're not allowed to mess with the Feds like that. There's a law for that!

And tapping anybody's phone? There's a law for that too!

Any publicity is good, some people say.
Well, these guys are stars!

That's something to rethink while they're away -
locked behind bars.

Piling On

Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury, at UCLA, think our national legislature works like a virtual sandpile:

Their model assumes that the roles of sand grains is played units of political pressure. They assume that there is a network of influence in Congress through which representatives exert political pressure on each other (just as sand grains exert forces on each other through the network of contacts between them in the pile). When the pressure on representatives reaches a threshold, they co-sponsor the resolution and this, in turn, puts pressure on other member of congress to sign.

Glenn Reynolds doesn't concur,
and he comments with a smile
that he always thought they were
a different kind of pile.

Love Notes

How Tiger Woods' wife finally became convinced of his cheating ways:

Elin confirmed her lingering suspicions about Tiger’s affair with Uchitel by impersonating her husband in text messages with Uchitel, prompting the rage that led to Woods fleeing his house.

People rarely fret about
who's at the other end
when they tap a message out
and hit the key to send.

Right vs. Left

Did you ever notice that lots of people get confused about right and left, but hardly anyone gets confused about up and down?

Mirrors are permanently confused about right and left. But they never make a mistake about up and down.

And then there's... English.

Forgive me for complaining,
but, the last time I checked,
left also means remaining
and right also means correct.

Where In The World

I did remember that Haiti and the Dominican Republic were on the same island.



But if you had asked me which was which...

At geography, I'm not the best,
and in a quiz, I would have guessed
that Haiti was to the west.

However, given an outline of North Carolina and South Carolina,
I would have done much finah.

Glaciergate

Oops:

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s (formerly) prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (known as the IPCC), may have raised millions of dollars for his New Delhi institute on the basis of the totally bogus ‘glaciergate’ claim by the IPCC that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.

His predictions were not backed
by any cold hard facts.

So maybe he just felt
the glaciers would melt.

Books

My daughter and wife are big on "Great Books".
As for me, I like second-rate books.

Oh, sure I'll break down and read Hume,
but leave me alone in a room
and you'll probably find me gobbling down
authors rather less renowned.

Long Term Parking

For those of you with long memories:

"Happy Guantanamo Closing Day!"

By the way,
there will be a delay.

Shimer Class

My wife is co-teaching a class at Shimer College, here in Chicago. The title of the course is "The Morality of Capitalism". The course description reads:

Capitalism has brought more wealth to more people than any other economic system in history, but it works by appealing to self-interest and greed, and it causes huge disparities in wealth. Is it good or evil? Can we determine its moral status? Readings include writings by Plato, Aristotle, Smith, Marx, Veblen, Weber, Mises, and Rawls.

Class started today, with a discussion of part of Plato's Republic. Shimer is a "great books" college, so the students were already familiar with the Republic.

As for Plato, you may be leery,
or think his ideas are the worst,
but when it comes to theory,
he often covered it first.

Air America Up In Smoke

A dream goes belly up:

Air America, the liberal talk-radio network that helped boost the careers of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday that it was declaring bankruptcy and going off the air.

My theory is that NPR
is much preferred in a liberal car.

The voices sound so even-toned
and all the shows are publicly owned.

Air America Up In Smoke

A dream goes belly up:

Air America, the liberal talk-radio network that helped boost the careers of Al Franken and Rachel Maddow, said Thursday that it was declaring bankruptcy and going off the air.

My theory is that NPR
is much preferred in a liberal car.

The voices sound so even-toned
and all the shows are publicly owned.

Currency

I find a dime on the ground.
It's badly battered,
imperfectly round.
None of that matters to me.

I imagine the coin
is a gift.
Across the rift,
we're joined.

Thank you, I say,
feeling her presence -
hovering, pleasant.

I walk by a pool
where people make wishes,
tossing my ten cents in,
almost sensing her again,
sadly reflecting.

I am a fool in my way,
but the feeling is delicious.

So I go on, coin-collecting,
glimpsing her shining face,
an image that won't erase.

Playing With The "Fourth Wall"

Ayn Rand's play, Night of January the 16th, is known for its jury gimmick.

She was reportedly influenced by another play, The Trial of Mary Dugan, which also had a jury gimmick.

The gimmicks are different, but related.

In Rand's play, the jury is drawn from the audience, and they actually vote to determine the verdict of the play.

In the Trial of Mary Dugan, the audience is addressed AS IF it were the jury. And at the end of the play, an actor planted in the audience pretends to be the jury foreman, and shouts "Not guilty."

There is no wall.
It's space, that's all.