Untapped Worlds – An Intro

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Professor Taboo

12.6-watts average. That is it. That is the average electric power (i.e. metabolic-energy) the human body must supply the brain for one “normal” day says Scientific American magazine. Want to know what sort of items can be powered with only 12.6-watts and for how long? To help better understand this comparison, let’s pretend we have a 12.6-watt battery to run some common household items. A basic clock-radio you might see on a bedside table in a cheap hotel will run for approximately 3-hours, if the radio volume is soft; maybe 4-hours if the radio is never used. A Nintendo Wii game-console can run on 16.8-watts for an hour. A standard 19″ CRT TV, 55-90 watts for an hour. A camping range-burner requires 800-watts for 1-hour. The average household coffee-maker requires 900-watts per hour. Getting the picture?

The human brain must conserve metabolic-power and run as efficiently as possible in order to function “normally” for a 14-16 hour day awake. Naturally, when asleep the brain is using much less metabolic-power, but still consumes small amounts. Power efficiency becomes critical in abnormal circumstances; either the body has enough metabolic-energy stored or it doesn’t. When the body does not, the potential for serious or traumatic harm increases proportionately to the danger, correct? Without the necessary brain-power for higher or acute cognitive and motor reactions, the greater the bodily harm or mortality. We see this organ-power equation illustrated in the animal kingdom every day. For example, animals falling prey to predators. Those animals with a higher healthier organ-power coefficient typically escape death, or their chances of escape are higher than those hunted animals with lower or less-healthy organ-power coefficients. Roadkills are another example. Animals with a low coefficient (i.e. tiny brains with tiny metabolic power to that tiny brain) typically cannot cross a busy highway 10-times without being hit.

In different more complex scenarios, humans are no different. Place an ordinary 20-something year old person who has been raised in a peaceful, quiet, unpopulated region all their life with absolutely no training or education of weapons or warfare, into a violent war zone for a 6-8 week period, their rate of survival — excluding mental health of course — will be extremely low, if not fatal. Too drastic? Then replace the war zone conditions with modern traffic rules and complex motor vehicles, multiply all that by ten(?) depending on the site’s population, and make it a teenager or 20-22 year old driver, and no driver’s education whatsoever. What might or probably will happen after 2-6 months? Ask an auto-insurance underwriter what the statistics would be.

Here’s the point in this so far: humans are surrounded, no… constantly bombarded, with a never-ending supply of stimuli to the eyes, nose, ears, skin, and tongue in a 24-hour period! It is impossible for our brains to receive, process, store, and use all the available daily stimuli when it runs on only 12.6 watts per day. What does the brain do to compensate…to cope? It prioritizes. For millions of years our brains have slowly learned what is critical to survive, what is needed to increase survival-rate, what is unnecessary but nice, and what is utterly useless. And it does this prioritizing FAST, real fast! It has to; 12.6 watts runs out quick, or in other words, cognitive fatigue, let alone physical exhaustion, leads to collapse. Perhaps the only exception to this metabolic law is drug use or abuse. The reliability or unreliability of drug-induced cognition, heightened or otherwise, I will leave alone or for another time. 😉

Suffice to say, our human brains are quite prone/susceptible to various degrees of ambiguity, superstition, memory-errors, and deception.

Deception

When success, advantage, surprise, control, victory, or secrecy are sought, one method of better assuring that outcome is through deception. You find it in many team sports, you find it in multimillion dollar business tactics against competitors, you find it in card games, you even find it among verbal human interactions. Deception is especially useful in combat and wartime. Perhaps one of the best examples of this was Operation Bodyguard.

Operation Bodyguard and its seven sub-operations leading up to the 1944 D-Day Normandy invasion of Nazi Fortress Europe, were highly successful operations of deception saving hundreds of thousands of American, British, Canadian, French, and other Allied lives. For several months prior to the actual invasion into Normandy, France, the Allied High Command under Dwight Eisenhower flooded the Nazi airwaves, radar surveillance with well-planned misinformation, and even inflatable tanks, artillery, and supply trucks creating a completely fictitious Army Group to deceive German reconnaissance planes. By June 6 and 7, 1944, the operations were so successful that Hitler and his élite commanders waited 7 weeks before fully responding to the Normandy invasion forces, much too late to stop it. Oh the power and usefulness of deception.

History is laden with examples of armies, sports teams, gifted magicians, and large groups of people being duped by simple tricks designed to divert and/or confuse the brain. Take for example, this clever trick play by a high school baseball team…

Magic tricks are plentiful with deception, diversion, and confusion, so many that there is no need to list the thousands or embed their videos here. But one poignant example of people or large groups being utterly fooled would be that of the Peoples Temple in 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana where over 900 men, women, and children committed mass suicide/murder following orders from their cult leader Jim Jones. Until 9/11 this had been the greatest loss of American civilian lives by a single act or day. What is important to remember is that our brains can be led to misinterpret information. Our limited senses can cause the brain to construct false perceptions of people and in the world we live.

Memory Errors

Fact: the human brain has difficulty recalling an event in the past, and details are often distorted or incorrect. This applies to every single brain on the planet. Scientific evidence shows this fact repeatedly no matter how mundane or monumental the event, our human memory is not as good as we’d like it to be.

Our memory is not as fixed as we might perceive, but much more fluid. What does that mean? Conceptualization is the norm, errancy is prevalent… along with egocentricity I would think. 😉 This 17-minute TED video from award-winning Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist from Stanford University and UCLA, explains her ground-breaking research about the brain’s misinformation effect and its extremely imaginative capabilities for creating false memories. Dr. Loftus’ findings and talk are superb…

No matter how highly we hold our memory skills, the brain is simply not currently wired nor the metabolic wattage (12.6 watts) to be a precise 300-year DVR. Will it ever be? Ask that question in 10,000 or 100,000 maybe 1-million years. Right now the overwhelming scientific neurocognitive data suggests that our brain’s conceptualizing skills, including imaginative or experiential conjecturing, are far more dominant and gifted than fact-finding or fact-storing. Don’t despair though, we have the intelligence to improve this human condition…over a long, long period of course.

Superstition and Ambiguity

In my next post in the series Untapped Worlds — Departure, I will finish the Superstition and Ambiguity portions, establishing the/our brain’s faulty interpretations based on its limited (or very limited?) sensory feedbacks — it only learns what it is actually fed. Then move further (evolve?) to more impactful human experience. How can we upgrade our brains? How can we improve its immaturity before it’s too late?

Mmmm, we must leave port. To be well-traveled, more acutely aware, more precise, we must first depart from traditional cognition!

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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Bewildered

Posted on September 13, 2015 by Professor Taboo

There are many many subjects I know nothing about; nothing of real significance that is, other than vague generalities and oversimplifications. For instance, I’m clueless about architecture and how to read a blueprint. I’m clueless about farming and how or when to plant certain crops, how to keep up the soil, when to harvest, etc. I’m also clueless about rugby or cricket and their rules! I’m clueless on how best to perform medical operations; I’m not a board certified doctor! There are many subjects I just don’t know enough about to carry-on any type of extended intelligent conversation!

So here are my questions to the cyber-world:

Is it wise to speak overtly, to be long-winded about things one knows very little or nothing about?

Why is it every two & four years — the American political cycle — everyone knows EVERYTHING about the dynamics of governing 319-million diverse people, or in my state of Texas 27-million, and are suddenly experts on ALL factors that effect people’s needs and wants and their current and future well-being? How do they have all the solutions!? What’s their secret? I want to know!

And now for some comic relief with much “truthiness”… 😀

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Civil Responsibility 2016

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Professor Taboo

I pointed to the classroom’s lesson hook on the board, I turned to my 8th graders and repeated the question, “Who has the power to do things in the United States?” I quickly had to add, “…LEGALLY do things!“

Over the years of teaching Social Studies, there is one answer I consistently get: “THE PRESIDENT!” I remain silent for as long as necessary. Why? For a number of fine reasons, comic relief is one, but mostly to gauge how extensive the class will need to cover U.S. government, and indirectly Texas state government, for the upcoming week or two. However, there is another reason I like to ask the class this hook question. Inevitably parental teaching and influence will surface between the lines of their responses, especially if I allow the students some time and freedom to challenge each other’s answer and explanation. Those opening minutes are not too unlike adult conversations over political issues you catch at town squares or workplace break rooms. Every four years these conversations, sometimes volatile debates, can be exactly the same as those my 8th graders start. 😮

Senator Huffines reply to me about the absurd injustice of Texas businesses refusing service to any of the LGBT community on religious grounds

If all of you received a quality education in primary school through secondary school and graduated obtaining your diploma, perhaps in the upper half of your senior class or better, or had the fortune to attend four years of undergraduate studies obtaining a bachelor’s degree, then it is reasonable to assume that you know that our U.S. President does NOT have all the power to do things. There is a very good reason… it prevents one person, or one office, organization, branch, from gaining a greedy and/or abusive advantage; in a word: dictatorship. Yet, surprisingly (or not) a significant population of American adults under the age of 50 feel the U.S. President is the sole person responsible for good times and bad times. At the risk of stating the obvious, this political mentality is tragic, let alone harmful for a community’s, a state’s, or a nation’s future.

Critical thinking skills are sometimes (often?) NOT taught to our young children, adolescents, or undergraduates. This is partly due to how much freedom people and institutions are indeed given, e.g. the above image and response letter from Don Huffines, my Texas Senator, regarding the rights of business owners to refuse all services to ~~gays-lesbians-transgendered~~ whomever they choose. Another reason critical thinking skills are not taught or tested in primary and secondary schools is that until recently Common Core Standards in education did not exist 10-20 years ago. Thus, a generation of un-ingenious or unimaginative followers were raised. Today, 43 states have fortunately adopted Common Core Standards teaching critical thinking skills to young minds. But that is only in public education. It does not reflect the ever-increasing popularity in some states for charter or private schools, much less the home-schooling sector.

Following is a good 3-minute video about these skills and how ProCon.org promotes them in non-partisan fashion.

As I alluded to in my previous post, I have very little time at the moment to write in-depth 3,000 – 7,000 word posts on such MONUMENTAL subjects as voting and other civil responsibilities during campaign years, primaries, elections — and elections of public officers who APPOINT other officers or judges into positions of great power the general population will have no direct say in their placing — and how these officials will affect millions of citizens for years to follow. Knowing how your candidate might “appoint” other officials, collaborate with other officials, or remain consistent to their campaign positions and promises are just as crucial as your here-n-gone single vote for him or her! I feel this is a subject, a blog-post that is important enough to pause my hectic life for a few hours and share in a small way how paramount civil responsibility is to each of us… including your own children’s and grandchildren’s futures and how to make changes, improvements, even though they may be slow and gradual.

Therefore, if you would like to get a broad introduction into how to be a more informed wiser voter, I’ll recommend my post Oversimplification 2012 and its 4-part series as a starting point. However, if you’d prefer the abbreviated more shallow introduction — i.e. the version(s) many American voters prefer or only have time for — then continue reading. If you barely had time to read this far, then I beg you to try and at least watch completely the below video. It could cause you to reconsider your voting and political tendencies regarding our privileged, important, and free (or costly?) civil right to vote that each of us are gifted. Voting, and voting wisely, as well as freely, should never be ignored or taken lightly.

So many political issues and controversy are rooted in economics; its healthy or unhealthy status. This is partly why I chose Joseph Stiglitz’s video and commentary over his new book, The Great Divide. Also because he is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics and has loads of wisdom to impart!

I hope this very brief post has helped you and other voters to be a bit more informed, but informed in more objective broader ways. Please get or remain very involved in your community’s, your county’s, your municipal’s, your state’s, and your federal elections. Correspond with your elected officials frequently. Vote and vote wisely, and just as important, vote for a greater good for the greatest number!

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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MIA

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Professor Taboo

Where have I gone you ask? Let me see how to briefly answer 😉 without sacrificing the most relevant points while still making sense.

As the school year drew to an end and closed for the summer June 6th, I fully expected to have the free time to comfortably and earnestly blog. I was looking forward to completing about 2-3 posts per month! I have about eight posts started and outlined a dozen more topics I’m excited to get posted… in all of my categories.

But as I settled in my summer home in the Hill Country, my own wishes and plans went quickly out the window. Unless you’re an island unto yourself… life, family, and career sometimes have little regard for one’s petty personal desires. HAH!

Life

If I choose to keep writing my blog-posts, I will have only short 30-60 minute windows early early in the mornings when no one else is up. This is honestly a welcomed peaceful quite-time ritual: a wave of the flower garden’s watering-wand brings showers to Black-chinned hummingbirds, infrequently the Ruby-throated or Rufous hummingbirds, buzzing down darting in and out of the spray… often no more than 3-feet away from my nose. Four out of five of these mornings have the cool southerly or southwesterly breezes blowing through our hilltop oasis. As I’m writing this (and not outside) I notice our nearby roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) family trots from one end of the yard to the other. This is the prelude of a day in nature’s front-row that is never the same from previous A.M. shows. This is the “life” I would give up if I were to focus on my blogging and all of you. Hmmm, the quandaries. 😉

Family

For two weeks I’ve had my 14-year old son with me. It has been great and rejuvenating rekindling our relationship, again. I haven’t seen him since Xmas 2014 and then before that Spring Break 2014. We talk on the phone biweekly, sometimes more. It isn’t the same though; touching, seeing each other’s expressions, hugging, mean so much more with more lasting impressions. But the landmass of Texas is more than huge — which did allow he and I to talk the drive back, and talk, and talk, and talk five hours, the entire return trip. However, despite that immeasurable profit, traveling expenses are higher when hotel rooms must be included with food and fuel costs. For the last 13-years I’m the one that must and has foot the entire bill if I want to see my children which has made visitations difficult.

The time with my son is precious and highly needed, if not at least for my sake and sanity. And my newly married 21-year old daughter and her husband came to visit last weekend for 2-nights, 3-days! You couldn’t chisel the smiles off my face I was so thrilled! As I wrote a couple of months ago in my post And It Begins, my relationship with my daughter was put on hold 13-years ago when she, her brother, mother and step-father moved from the DFW area to Houston. My face-to-face time with my kids becomes, has become even more priceless. This is the current positive side of “Family.”

I was not told that my sister — an addict, recovering & relapsing the last 35+ years NEEDING to be either in a halfway house or inpatient dual-diagnosis hospital — moved into my mother’s home last December. I am not going to go into the many problems this lumps onto my widowed mother of 76-years living in her 3,000 sq. ft. ranchita on 13-acres and all the daily weekly chores, tasks, and projects a property that size requires… FROM RELIABLE helpers/workers/family members!!! I guess I did go into it a little detail, huh? This is why my Mom never told me she moved in. Instead of being upset and irate last winter, now I’m even more upset and irate when upon my arrival I assessed and determined how horribly behind all the chores, tasks, and projects have fallen and some not even started the last 7-months! Yet, that’s not all of it!

She wants to put on the market and sell the house and property by the end of August… of 2015! *large exhale*

Wonderful, beautiful, fun, responsible family! 🙂

Unreliable, unpredictable, over-weight & smoking, clinically depressed family in dire need of professional help, not resort accommodations! 😦

Family.

Career

The last two years the Texas Board of Education along with their conservative legislative constituents in Austin, will have their specialized curriculums implemented this 2015-16 school year. The most significant changes in the state-wide curriculum will be in the science and social studies/history textbooks and standards (visit New Texas Curriculum Standards and New BOE Chairman for more info).

The Professor’s circus will return!

These social conservative changes force me to reevaluate my personal conviction of “let the PARENTS aid their children in deciding religious and political debates.” My job responsibility is to offer the various perspectives, that information and data, monitoring student’s performance and proper objectivity. Unfortunately, now that the Texas GOP remains in office with more conservatives seated in our state Congress along with continued conservatives appointed on the Board of Education, as a Freethinking Humanist my convictions and conscience are increasingly challenged putting my performance-reviews further under the microscope by my supervisors and superiors. It doesn’t help either that I’m only a 5-year experienced teacher… easily replaced by a biased Christian-conservative teacher with 10-15 years experience. This past spring I’ve begun considering a career change, more like a career return to the psych/A&D field of therapy, crisis management, and guidance. In 1989-91 I was in the field and doing exceptionally well.

Hence, the tedious, enormous task of job-searching begins simultaneously with everything mentioned above. HAH!

What It All Means

It means simply my enjoyment of writing and blogging will be suspended, or very infrequent until further notice. It has taken me almost 2-weeks just to finish this post! I know all of you are crying and mourning my absence and thought-provoking posts. It is hard, I know. I’m sorry. But this shall one day pass. 😉

Meanwhile, please feel free to read and/or visit my other posts, both old and recent. Comment if you’d like. I will log-in two or three times a week to check for new comments and suggestions for my Us and Them page.

Until then…

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

Machiavellian Meloidae

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Professor Taboo

For those of you who are utterly fascinated (like me) with Earth’s most resilient creatures — no, humans are not even close — the Meloidae take survival and reproduction to an all new high… or rather a cunning, evil low may be the correct designation. If you think politicians or double-agents are unscrupulous, then you don’t know much about these ingenious Coleoptera. No, not Cleopatra, Coleoptera… though the behavioral similarities are clearly there.

Beware of Seductive Female…

Coleoptera Meloidae

Bees. Yes, seductive fake female bees! Or perhaps I could have left-off “bees”. HAH! But let’s not go there, yet. But I do want to talk about perfumes… seductive perfumes!

The larvae of the Blister Beetle, after they are hatched, must immediately seek food. But they do not seek out just any menu. They want a specific 5-star platinum dinning establishment with an unforgettable experience, AND they want and will be chauffeured there! Men, married men, husbands with a pregnant wife or newborns… does this sound familiar? How do these newly born larvae do it? As the below video will show, their genetic coding makes them work as one team, climb to the top of a blade of grass or leaf, clump together, then the Coup d’état… they lure an unsuspecting (horny) male Digger-bee, and do it with specialized perfume, or pheromones! Again, sound familiar? Talk about the greatest STD. Wow! Guys, this totally redefines the need for super safe sex!

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What Can We Learn From Blister Beetles?

Having a background in psych counseling and assessment, as well as certified 4th through 8th grade teacher in all core subjects with a deep fondness for science and social studies (history), my students have always enjoyed relating or connecting Earth science and its creatures to self or to us. Invariably the bored middle school kids ask the question… How does this effect me or help me in life? Well my little unknowing enquiring mind, it does in many ways. Case and point: the Blister Beetle.

Male Digger-bee with stowaways

Ever heard of the adage “If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is” or its gullible opposite “Never look a gift horse in the mouth“? Those two phrases and similar ones carry a lot of wisdom. As many a magician have demonstrated over the centuries, our eyes can be easily deceived. Our ears and nose can be fooled as well, to a lesser extent. Obviously, the “perfumed pheromones” these meloidae larvae ooze, cause much “male digger-bee intoxication” and I believe mimic other species’ perfumes! I’ve fallen prey to different parfums enivrants as many times as these male digger-bees! And I’d wager I have hit the ground, once or twice, much harder than these gullible lads!

Our judgement and perceptions (of self and others) can be quite flawed. Only through periods of time — sometimes years, and in the case of humanity, centuries or millenia — and through trial and error do we learn from events and our mistakes. Hopefully not fatal mistakes. Therefore, it really behooves us flawed humans (and hetero males?) to consider situations with as much cognitive examination as with emotion, especially impulsive emotion. Easier said than done, right? Particularly when some of us are genetically wired to feel and feel strongly, or to find and love, and love strongly. Believe me, I have wrestled with this advice for much of my life, as my recent posts about my daughter, marriages and divorces, and the nature of love can greatly attest!

Five-Factor Model – courtesy of noboproject.com

All of us, every single human being alive, are inextricably connected to this planet and its life-giving (and taking) environments and creatures. We absolutely can learn from all the animals, how they survive, adapt, evolve, and especially reproduce, even from the aversely simpatico relationship of Blister Beetles and Digger bees.

Subtraits of the Big Five – courtesy of noboproject.com

In modern psychology, Machiavellianism (and this beetle) is one of three personality traits of the Dark Triad; dark meaning malevolent manifestations. Essentially it is behavior exhibited by a high drive to achieve at the expense of or disregard to others. Clearly this is the female Blister Beetle’s — and her offspring’s — motivation and behavior. What I find fascinating is the question “Are there Blister Beetles among us as humans?” Is it simply genetic programming in order to survive and perpetuate the species and they cannot CHOOSE morality… the “higher road”? Or are there always choices between species; in other words, species who are inferior deserving of extinction and those as superior who deserve to live and survive? Are we talking about humans or beetles? Humanity’s long long history of wars and genocide speak volumes of this Genetics versus Morality judgement. As much as Blister Beetles have a very high regard for self and their offspring, I think humans do too… particularly certain males. By default I must reluctantly include myself in that gender. 😦

In Wikipedia’s description of Mechaiavellianism, the section on human relations with other personality traits, I found to be uncomfortably familiar. Are you familiar with the HEXACO model? I wasn’t until I began comparing this beetle’s behavior with similarities to other Earth species, which I typically like to do as a good (Freethinking Humanist) science teacher. See the three figures of the HEXACO “Big Five” tables.. Where do you think your (self?) personality falls?

Traits beyond Five-Factor Model – courtesy of noboproject.com

Personally, I see the Blister Beetle’s Machiavellianism within several primate species, especially certain Homo sapiens. Would you agree or disagree? Why or why not? Are we products of our DNA or of our environment, or a little of both? Are you a Blister Beetle or a Digger bee. Or if you’d like to protect your true identity (like I do here!) you can simply comment about these cunning little insects and their larvae. 😈

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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