Nostalgia

Do you know the MGMT song, "Kids"? It's the 21st Century version of Cat Stevens' "Remember The Days in the Old School Yard." These world-weary 20-something lyricists [Ingrosso, Goldwasser & VanWyngarden] are reminiscing about their lost youth: "Take only what you need from it. A family of trees wanted to be haunted." When the howling wind made the trees in the Smithsonian woods creak and groan, I couldn't get that song out of my head.

Notice the past tense. A few weeks ago, the policy of allowing leashed dogs to transit school property to enter the woods was rescinded. A batty lady very loosely in charge of 3 free-range dogs [whom we had unpleasantly encountered earlier that month] had let her Lab menace a walking party of school children; and now all dogs are banned. Highly inconvenient, since we have yet to find another way into the nature preserve. Highly ironic, too, since we had just been given the blessing of the Smithsonian Police to patrol the woods for hunters, innit?

It's not only the intrusion of having to find another place for Lili's daily trek; it's the humiliation of remembering the time when Lili was the Off-the-Hook bad dog [and I, the bad owner], several years earlier, when she menaced a Vizcla on the school grounds. Ironically (again), just the day before I got warned off by the School Safety Officer, Lili & I met the [always unleashed] Vizcla & her owner in the parking lot, without any drama. After I had loaded Lili into the car, I made friendly overtures to the other dog, who seemed to chagrin her owner by coming over and licking my proffered "paw."

But now to the heart of the matter. As I have made clear in such posts as "What's keepin' ya?" and "The Holy Ground," our walks in those particular woods have given structure & meaning to my life [Can't speak for Lili's existential experience.]; and the prospect that they may be forever lost to us causes me emotional pain & suffering (aka, nostalgia).

Having done this Wolf Work on myself, I knew that the only way out of my anger was to seek out another "family of trees [that] wanted to be haunted." Before we had discovered the joys of the Smithsonian woods, we used to walk Lili in a municipal sports park [on an erstwhile landfill, now converted to a nature preserve]. It has much to recommend it. It's about equidistant from our house, but nowhere near a school. The dogs-on-the-leash rule is strictly enforced by park rangers. In previous years a family of Blue Herons graced the wetlands pond. (This year we've spotted turtles, beavers, deer, and the occasional snake.) In the past, I had found the paved paths a bit too safe & boring, compared to the rough & ready challenge of the Smithsonian woods. However (hurrah!), the other day I discovered a dirt path leading into some woods on the edge of the park, complete with trip-you-up tree roots & a bluff with a stunning view of a tidewater inlet way below. Reminds me of when I was a kid in Tarrytown, overlooking the Hudson River.

So, see? The cure for nostalgia is...nostalgia. The cure for one Paradise Lost is to find another Paradise (which might one day also be lost), innit?

Meanwhile, during Winter Break it's been "crickets" @ the old school yard. No children to menace and no authorities to enforce the No Walkies Zone. We may have revisited "The Holy Ground" a time or two; but when it's term time, we'll make new memories in "another part of the forest" that graces this Chesapeake estuary.

"I have a bone to pick with you."

Like most idioms in your first language, the meaning of this one seems obvious: "You and I have a score to settle." But why does it mean that? Why a zero-sum-game power-struggle vibe, rather than, "Oh, look! I've brought a bone that we can share, cuz I'm an altruistic mammal." [See this week's NYTimes Science section, for a heart-warming University of Chicago study of (relatively) "free" rats liberating caged rats, even if they did not then get to enjoy the newly-freed rats' company. They even saved and shared their chocolates with their less fortunate brethren, like something out of a Festive Seasonal Disney flick.]

My extensive collection of Word & Phrase Origin books shed no light on the (bone) subject, so I ventured into [onto?] the web, where I found a site (Usingenglish.com) intended for the wising up of those for whom English is a second language. Mint, nar'mean? They don't bother with derivations, just plug & chug ["This means that. Just memorize it, already."] definitions. Other sites attempting to explain whence cometh the bone-to-pick-with-you idiom get all vague and say "Dating from the 15th or 16th century. Referring to two dogs fighting over a bone. See bone of contention."

So, what? Before the 1400s, English dogs behaved with ratlike altruism and shared their bones? I should cocoa! [Try finding the derivation of that idiom, I dare ya. I've been looking ever since I first heard it used in Ealing Studios comedies, in the (19)60s.] Then came the reign of the Tudors, and the Great Bone Panic. [I just made that up. Use of the Poetic speech function.]

And thus, to the bone I have to pick with the NYTimes science reporter, Sindya N. Bhanoo. As with most attributions of species-wide behavioral traits [including the sweetie-sharing rats of Chicago], there is the danger of extrapolating beyond the data. I suspect, for instance, that the "altruism" of the lab rats [which was found more consistently in the females, incidentally] is another manifestation of the Oxytocin effect, in which In-group members are tended & defended, whereas Out-group members [street rats, for instance], would receive short shrift.

Likewise, the Tudor dogs who were observed [proverbially] contending over bones may have been those indolent little hand-fed ones who hung around Hampton Court Palace [not the noble Big Dogs who went out with the hunting parties, and could forage bones galore out in the woods].

Alas, the thoroughly modern Lili is only allowed stage prop Nylabones, which she nevertheless seems to value highly, since she usually tries to pick [gnaw] two of them at once.

No Teddy Bears' Picnic

If you're familiar with Harry Hall's 1932 recording of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic, " you're in distinguished company. For more than 30 years, BBC sound engineers used it to check frequency cycles before broadcasts, because of the fidelity of the recording and the wide-ranging pitches of the little ditty. Tell you something else that was wide-ranging: Irish lyricist Jimmy Kennedy's various attributions of the danger posed by Teddy Bears in the woods. For a supposedly light-hearted children's song, it's as full of dark foreboding as a Twilight flick. "If you go into the woods today, you'd better go in disguise...you'd better not go alone. It's lovely out in the woods today, but safer to stay at home." And why all the angst? "Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic."

I'm not a big fan, never was, of sending mixed messages to children about safety hazards. Seems to me there are enough truly scary things and situations out there "in the woods" to worry about, without setting up "straw men" like picnicking Teddy Bears, nar'mean? But that's me being literal-minded, rather than Poetic, about it. I've read [and recommended] Bruno Bettelheim's book, The Uses of Enchantment, the point of which is, that Grimm fairy tales [and zombie films, and their ilk] afford a less amygdala-setting-off, more reassuringly metaphorical way of facing our fears.

About 2 months ago, as Chris & I were walking Lili into the thick of the woods, a middle-aged woman [I should talk!], clad in a brown velour track suit which the 80s wanted back, jogged up to us and said, "Better be careful! There are police in the woods!" Intrigued, Chris & Lili forged ahead, while I stumbled behind them [my ankles suddenly turning to jelly from anxiety]. "A dead body? An armed & dangerous felon?" I wondered. What did their presence betoken, that had so freaked out the Lady in Velour? When Chris saw them, he asked "What's up?" They said, "We're looking for hunters." They were U.S. Federal Special Police Officers, from the Smithsonian Institution Office of Protection Services [Did I mentions that "our" woods are a Smithsonian nature preserve?], acting on a tip that hunters had been spotted in the area. So we regaled them with anecdotes of our many encounters with [apparently illegal] hunters in the woods over the years, and they admired Lili, and gave me a business card with their phone & fax numbers, asking that Lili & I be their "eyes & ears" on our daily rounds. "Our office is just around the corner, and we'll be waiting to hear from you."

Talk about an official seal of approval! It was as if Lili had been transformed from a ravening beast, to a Deputy Dawg! I may continue to experience fear, intrusion, and even pain & suffering when I trip over a hidden tree root; but I think my days of humiliation in the woods are over.

But what, we wondered, was Brown Jogging Lady so spooked about? Was she a superannuated Hippie, who still regarded the Fuzz as the foe? [This was before OWS, mind.] Had they advised her not to wear deer-colored clothing in the woods during hunting season, or she could get shot?

Like Jimmy Kennedy, she manifested ambivalence about the threat level in the woods that day. I do, too, of course, always dreading my next encounter with Skipper the Unleashed and his insouciant owner. As it happened, the very next day Chris, Lili & I were once again menaced by the appalling pair; and I just happened to drop the name of the Smithsonian Police.

Haven't seen them since. Still, with other free-range dogs about, newly fallen lumber every day, and muddy footing, it's no picnic.

The Uncanny Valley

This highly technical term, coined in the 70s by the Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, could just as well be the title of a Hollywood horror flick, nar'mean? What Mori-san meant, though, was that sudden dip in a graph measuring the "appeal" of humanoid robots, that occurs when The Thing looks both Too Human, yet Not-quite Human, and the observer gets freaked out.

Dr. Christian "Jeepers" Jarrett's article, "The Lure of Horror," in the Halloween issue of The Psychologist, tries to account for the apparent predilection among current cinema-goers [it's a British journal] for being freaked out. Despite what you might gather from the weekly Box Office grosses listed in The Hollywood Reporter, not everyone craves creepiness. In fact, it's mostly males aged 6 to 25 who really dig "trips" to the Uncanny Valley. The rest of us get quite enough of that eery sensation, thank you very much, from our nightmares, hypnogogic illusions [in that twilight state between sleep & waking], and the weird coincidences of everyday life.

The concept predates modern film-making. Freud & his contemporaries were writing articles about Das Unheimliche [the Uncanny] in the early 1900s, pondering the scariness of dolls with missing eyes [remember the cartoons of Orphan Annie?], clowns, and anyone hiding their face behind a mask [or veil]. The limbic explanation, then and now, is that we vulnerable mortals need all the visual cues we can get, to determine whether a stranger poses a threat or not. If we think someone is PLU [People Like Us], and suddenly the mask slips, to reveal that they are [gasp!] non-PLU, our visceral response may be so dramatic that we get vertigo.

Back in the day, when I was a VA Trainee, I was interviewing a young "woman" veteran, to assess whether the first government-funded sex-change operation would increase or decrease his/her suicidal acting out. I had lived in Greenwich Village, the mecca of glamorous transvestites; but the individual before me looked and acted more like an Amish farm girl. When I asked about an incident from adolescence, the person's voice, body language and facial expression morphed into the 16-year-old boy he had been; and I nearly fell out of my chair. It wasn't scary; it was uncanny. We both had a good laugh about it, and carried on with the interview, in the safe surroundings of the Manhattan VA hospital. As a transsexual individual trying to live a "normal" life in 1970s NYC, however, the uncanny feelings my patient evoked in macho men often turned violent. [ See The Crying Game, not so much Tootsie.]

In this regard, Jarrett reports a startling finding from my least favorite research tool, the fMRI. 40 subjects watched creepy clips from scary movies and also boring clips from the same films. The researchers expected the amygdala to light up during the creepy bits; but, no, the intracranial wolf did not howl. What lit up were the "visual cortex, the insular cortex (a region involved in self-awareness) and the thalamus (the relay centre between the cortex and the sub-cortical regions)." I hate to admit it, but this is heavy. It suggests that members of that coveted demographic, males between 6 and 25, do not seek out horror films to get scared. They are there to get schooled. They are practicing [in what they are quite aware is a safe, pretend setting] vigilance. They're getting good at discriminating the PLU from the non-PLU, innit?

Their motto is not, "Jeepers, creepers!" It's "We won't be fooled again."

Throwing Shade

Talk about humiliating! What kind of music have I been listening to for the last 15 years, that I missed out on the idiom, "to throw shade"? Well, obviously, not to Li'l Kim (nee Kimberly Denise Jones), the Bed/Stuy (Brooklyn) rapper, whose 1996 hit "Crush On You" contains the lyric, "I'ma throw shade if I don't get paid." Back in the day, the only American rapper I cared about was Eminem [for the arbitrary reason that his hometown, Sterling Heights (Michigan), is where we stabled our horses, Dusk & Owen].

These days I am obsessed with UK rappers, but mostly guys, as heard on BBC Radio 1.

Anyway, the phrase was being bandied about in the middle of the night this weekend, by "tired & emotional" [a euphemism used in the UK press, to avoid libel actions] young people, who couldn't clarify its meaning just then. "Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, to 'throw shade'?" I kept asking, to no avail. For the rest of you tragically un-hip, I can now inform you [according to the Urban Dictionary], it's a bad thing, similar to dissing someone. As to its derivation, their guess is that it comes from that old expression, "to put someone in the shade." [To outshine them, with one's wonderfulness.] As used on the Night in Question, I would speculate that it could be a corruption of the German word, Schadenfreude [joy in another's shame], which (though actually pronounced "shodden froy-deh") might be transliterated "fro da shade." [Nar-mean? "Throw the shade," innit?]

So, who is likely to "throw (da) shade," and why? Well, duh! Individuals who feel dissed, themselves, are gonna want to diss the disser back, in retaliation. Or...should the disser be unavailable [or too dangerous to diss directly], a proxy target of our aggression [cuz, let's face it, a diss is an act of aggression] may be substituted. A small example from last week comes to mind. Ruth, the Maine Coon, has made bold [in her 21st year] to usurp the couch pillow [next to me, as I type this] from the erstwhile Top Cat, Zanzibar. She was ruling this roost when Zanzibar came up to roust her [or at least share the spot with her]. The couch is big. They're small. All 3 cats plus Lili could fit on it easily, with room to spare for a blogger. But Ruth was having none of it. She blasted young Zanzibar with a sustained, foul-smelling hiss [a clear diss], until he backed off, pivoted, and smacked sleeping Lili upside the head with his paw [an act of displaced aggression]. Since Lili is besotted with Zanzibar, she did not appear to feel dissed [perhaps, mistook his bop for a love pat], and, in the event, she did not retaliate.

As noted in previous posts, a diss is often in the eye of the beholder. Think of the last time you felt humiliated by the basking of another in the [often arbitrary] limelight of fame, fortune or admiration, while you have been toiling, thanklessly, in the shadows. Gets right up your nose, nar'mean? A former patient of mine described being on the losing end of Fate's Wheel of Fortune as, "An existential smack on the snout." It makes you [or me, at least] want to howl, "Das ist nicht FAIR!" like the Clever Dogs of Austria.

I say, first do the Wolfwork of admitting how angry the [implied or in-your-face] diss makes you feel. Then, try to resist passing on the pain by dissing an innocent proxy [a sleeping dog], rather than the actual source of your humiliation [Ruth]. If possible, throw shade so subtly that you don't get into trouble for it.

The tree that is throwing shade on Lili in the picture is, alas, in big trouble, leaning as it does perilously close to our house in a time of howling winds & earthquakes. The axeman cometh.

"Lean Toward the Sunny Side, but Don't Overdo It"

Readers of this blog might expect this to be a post dissing the latest article from the Science section of the NYTimes, but no! This is the title of an inane article from the Business section [of the NYT], from September 23rd, so there. Its author, Alina Tugend, has combined a 2007 article by Profs. Puri & Robinson of Duke Business School, with Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman's 1995 book, The Optimistic Child, adding contradictory [undated] "findings" from Prof. Sweeny of UC-Riverside and Prof. Phelps of NYU, to make rather a dog's dinner of the topic, The Efficacy of Optimism. Her high-concept title says it all. Her experts would all [probably] agree, that [to use her own metaphor] being a bit more like Winnie-the-Pooh than like Eeyore [more optimistic than pessimistic] is often [not always] a better strategy for success [at least, in financial affairs, getting hired & promoted, and in managing stress while waiting for test results, whether academic or medical]. She has the grace to point out that all the research she cites was published long before our current all-bets-are-off economic predicament.

Quibbles about murky research and comparing apples to oranges, aside, she kinda has a point.

The Duke biz-whizzes were trying to say that both wild optimism and profound pessimism often result in an individual's doing a whole lot of nothing: the Pooh bears, because everything will be all right anyway; and the Eeyores, because no personal effort will make things turn out all right anyway. One could say that both character types manifest external locus of control. Enter a more resilient character [Who, Piglet? Or maybe Tigger because of his bounces...], who is Cautiously Optimistic. He believes that most circumstances are temporary, not permanent (Where have you heard that before?), and that his personal efforts might affect them, thus manifesting internal locus of control. This character is willing to expend Therbligs galore, in the guarded hope of Good Outcome. He knows that Life offers no guarantees of success, but he likes his odds.

This weekend, we flew up to Boston to watch our elder daughter expend Therbligs galore, in her first ever half-marathon. Since her previous sporting triumphs have involved rowing boats over water and riding horses over fences, she and we were Not Sure of the Outcome. Her stated goal was to avoid being scooped up by one of the "Lame Gazelle" wagons that hounded the back of the pack of 7000 runners. My secret goals were that she avoid humiliation [however she chose to define it], and that she not incur an injury resulting in chronic pain & suffering. To counter my fear, I willed myself into a mindset of Cautious Optimism.

And it worked! My biggest challenge, as we scuttled from the 3-mile point to the 7-mile point, was the intrusion of desperately needing a restroom [which a kindly native informed me I would find at the boathouse in the park]. By the time we had found a legal parking spot (What are the odds?) on a side street not far from to the Zoo, just in time to see her make her way down the home stretch into the stadium, we were all in floods of joyful tears.

Meanwhile, remember Ruth [our spindly 21-y.o. Maine Coon]? Having spent the last few years as a howling Banshee on the top floor of our house (like a feline Mrs. Rochester from Jane Eyre), she has decided to venture down (into the realm of the Big Dog), just Looking for Some Touch, which I am giving her every few minutes, as I type this blog. Somewhere in that tiny cat brain, the fear of the dog is trumped by the Need for Affection; and with Cautious Optimism, she expends the Therbligs to get her arthritic 5-pound body downstairs and onto the couch, where purring (not howling) ensues.

Never the Same Woods Twice

Or maybe it is? Pre-Socratic philosophers started debating this point around 500 BC. Heraclitis may (or may not) have said "Panta rhei" ["Everything changes (or, possibly, flows)"], famously declaring that one could never dip one's toe into the same stream twice. Pamenides, on the other hand, was an early conservation-of-matter guy, declaring "Change is impossible." There is nothing new under the sun. [Not even the sun.] Wade Lassister set this idea to music in the finale of the 1980 musical & film, Fame: "I sing the body electric (a line lifted directly from Leaves of Grass). I celebrate the me yet to come. I toast to my own reunion, when I become one with the sun." The song ends cute with the astrophysical & show biz prediction, "and in time, and in time, we will all be stars."

It's still a hot topic for Presidential candidates, whether the Earth's climate is actually, irreversibly changing, or just going through what David Bowie might call one of its cyclical "Ch-ch-changes." If only we were French, and could simply finesse the argument with a bon mot: "Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose."

For a while this summer, every walk in the woods lent support to what Parmenides termed dismissively "the mistaken opinion that things had changed." In the wake of the earthquake, and tropical storms, many mighty trees had fallen. Some of them, eerily, days later. [Thank goodness for Lili, the "timberwolf," who in the past has given me a "heads up" of falling lumber, and so allayed my fear of being poleaxed.]

But falling trees have not been the only hazard on our woodland walks this summer. A few weeks ago we were assailed by an unleashed, Hound-of-the-Baskervilles-type dog, who came growling and charging at us, leaving its (oblivious? psychopathic?) master far behind. It was fear that got up my nose, but Lili might have been merely affronted by the intrusion. In the melee of snarls & skirmishes that ensued, I was dragged off my feet (not once, but twice), in an attempt to keep hold of Lili's leash. Only when I was on the ground the second time, did the other owner speak. "I'll call my dog, and he'll follow me," he said. By now, my humiliation and pain & suffering had banished all Japanese commands from my consciousness, and I was reduced to shouting "God damn it!" to all and sundry. I can vouch for the efficacy of swearing as an analgesic, though [see "Why Keep a Dog & Bark Yourself?"]. On the wings of my adrenaline, we flew through the woods in record time; and only later at home, when the bruises "bloomed," did I realize that I could have been seriously injured.

Since then, I have "played Backgammon" with the incident, revisiting it in my mind, trying to figure out what would have been a better "Not your victim, not your enemy" response to the situation, to make it stop haunting me. In retrospect, I decided I should have told the owner to grab hold of his dog. [Nar'mean?] I should also have taken off my over-the-shoulder European leash and held it in both hands, for better leverage. Every time I've seen his telltale Range Rover illegally parked at the entrance to the woods (where are the police when you want them?), I have rehearsed my "flame-out chart" what-to-do list, ready for action.

Yesterday was the rematch. This time, the owner was strolling even farther behind his snarling, charging dog. Initially, I commanded Lili [in our Japanese code] to "lie down" and "stay"; but when the other dog made aggressive contact, I realized our power subtext was "lame gazelle," so I just held onto Lili's leash as she barked and lunged. This time I yelled, "Do you have a leash?" No reply. Eventually, the owner called "Skipper" a few times, and reluctantly the dog left the fray and headed back to its master, only to turn around and make a second sortie. This time I shouted, "Do you have a leash?" until he beckoned Skipper again, and they proceeded on their way.

So, that was my Parmenidian moment: "Nothing changes. You can try to rewrite the script, but you'll still end up looking (and sounding) like a shrill, histrionic loser who can't take the heat, while the smug thug with the flash car and the free-range dog looks like a winner."

Ah, but was it a complete rerun? At least this time I didn't fall down and get dragged like a rodeo clown; and I communicated clearly that the guy should have put his dog on a leash [which is both the custom and the law in these woods]. So, encouraged, we forged ahead with our walk.

Just as we were cresting the hill where the mid-summer fracas had occurred, I made out the outlines of a tall man and a large dog approaching. But I took the Heraclitian view, that these two were not my old nemeses, that each man/dog encounter was "a different stream," and that things might turn out differently for us this time. So I put Lili at a "down/stay," ensuring her compliance by stepping on the leash to keep her there. A totally different man, with a Cockney accent and a huge black lab on a chain, smiled as they passed peaceably by, and said, "I do that, too. I put my foot on the lead sometimes, for more control."

Heraclitis was right! It's never the same woods twice.

Hide or Seek?

When you find yourself in times of trouble (you know, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, extended power outages), do you want to hide under the covers until it's over, or seek out the company of others? One day in 1975, while sitting in the back row of an American Airlines jet out of LaGuardia, I had a great view of the port-side engine exploding on take-off. The laid-back voice of the pilot came on, drawling, "Now, folks, those of you on the lefthand side of the aircraft might have noticed a loud bang and some sparks coming out of the engine just now. We've shut it down, and we'll be circling Long Island Sound for a little while, before returning to LaGuardia Airport. We regret any inconvenience this might cause y'all."

Naturally, I took this as my cue to begin cracking wise to my fellow back row passengers, in an effort to provide a little comic relief and team-building. Trust me, I was hilarious; but did any one of them make eye contact, smile, or even lift their shoulders in the Phatic, "I know, right?" gesture signifying "I heard you, but I don't want to get into it right now"? Nary a one. The young man next to me was underlining his textbook so intensely, that his pen tore the page. Others literally pulled their blankets (remember airline blankets?) over their heads for the duration of our half hour flight, back to a foamed runway flanked with a contingent of firetrucks. You know when a stand-up comic is losing the crowd and asks, "Anyone here from out-of-town?" I figured these stiffs were all just visiting from Cincinnati (the flight's putative destination), since no self-respecting group of New Yorkers could have resisted my schtick. They would have joined my improv and tried to top my gallows humor with their own zingers, ya know?

It's easy to guess what was up their noses, though, right? Fear of crashing; and, who'd a thunk it, the intrusion of my banter into their silent recitation of the Act of Contrition (or whatever).
I, on the other hand was feeling humiliation, that my attempts to Find the Funny in the situation were Not Well Received; and the pain & suffering of feeling All Alone.

That's what's so sad about last week's contretemps with Billie Joe Armstrong on Southwest. The airline whose best feature had been its cabin crews' ability to Find the Funny in every situation, and transform nervous strangers into a jolly group of Fellow Travelers, became known as the Uptight Enforcers of a Strict Dress Code (No Saggy Pants Allowed). What a somber little half hour flight from Oakland to Burbank that must have been, after the obstreperous Greenday frontman was frog-marched off the plane. Did any remaining passenger have the moxie to crack wise to his fellow row-mates, I wonder, or did they all just hide themselves away in their paperbacks and iPods?

Good thing the fuselage of that plane didn't deconstruct like a sardine can, right? (Or a wild goose wasn't sucked into the left engine, as happened to us, back in 1975.) It would have been every man for himself.

Wolverhampton Wolves

I refer not to that ancient city's alliteratively nicknamed football club [officially, the Wanderers], but to the flash-mob packs of masked looters and arsonists, who are the subject of my contempt, yet also of my attempt to understand what on earth has got up their noses this week.

That sociological sage [and, allegedly, appalling father] John Phillips, late of The Mamas and the Papas, wrote these lyrics to "Safe In My Garden" (1968), concerning the rioting youth of that era: "Could it be we were hot-wired? Late one night; we're very tired. They stole our minds and thought we'd never know it. With a bottle in each hand; too late to try to understand. We don't care where it lands--we just throw it. When you go out in the street, so many hassles with the heat [hippie slang for the police]; no one there can fill your desire. Cops out with the megaphones, telling people stay inside their homes. Man, can't they see the world's on fire?"

The riots he was describing ostensibly arose from the twin "root causes" of an unpopular war [Vietnam] and racial injustice in 20th Century America; yet he posits a very 21st Century "spark" that ignited that summer of burning cities: some kind of subliminal, electronically-mediated GroupThink, that robbed young people of their individual will and transformed them into the mobile vulgus [the wandering mob], wreaking seemingly random havoc, but not getting much satisfaction from it. Pretty prescient, for a guy who died in the Spring of 2001, no?

Many of this week's unrepentant pillagers, when asked by BBC reporters, what got up their noses to provoke such displays of rage, answered, "It's a Class War, innit? We've got nuffink, so we're takin' it from the rich, nar'mean?" Mind you, they all seemed to own Blackberries, on which they BBM'd {"hot-wired"?] each other the list of successive targets, most of which were modest "mom & pop" shops owned by Sikhs & Hindus [not by "rich snobs," as one boy put it]. So, why the disconnect between the looters' Robin Hood myth of robbing the rich, and the reality of their robbing the barely-making-ends-meet South Asian shopkeepers?

Well, [pace The News of the World] I blame the UK's gutter press, of which The Daily Mail is the prime surviving example, whose narrative subtext is "Everyone we photograph is richer, luckier, and more powerful than you, Dear Reader. Envy them. Feel humiliated by them. Cut them down to size, if you get the chance." That's right. I blame the media for the mayhem that continues to spread throughout England tonight, perpetrated not by "werewolves" [who spend the daylight hours adhering to the social norms] but by packs of wolfish youths [boys and girls] who declared proudly to daytime reporters, "No snobby cop's going to tell us what to do!"

Yeah, right. But the cynical editors of The Daily Mail and their ilk are profiting from your shenanigans. Their motto is: "Long live the Class War! [Let's hope there are still some corner shops left tomorrow, to sell our Schadenfreude.]"

What's your point?

Lately I've been asking the "What's up my nose?" question about an insidiously lovely song by Ed Sheeran [currently #3 on the BBC 1 chart] called, innocuously enough, "The A Team." As the [you should excuse the expression under the circumstances] "addictively" catchy lyrics clarify repeatedly, it is the "Class A team" to which the heroine/victim in the song belongs [meaning that she is fatally attracted to drugs classified in the UK as Class A, such as crack cocaine]. I badgered my visiting 20-something daughter about 2 aspects of this song. Why, when it seems to glamorize, without irony, lethal drug abuse, is it so popular? [Because it's beautifully written, played & sung.Very few listeners downloading the song are thinking critically about its message.] And why, when such glamorization is as old as the opera La Boheme [and its current iteration Rent], does it make me so angry? As it happens, I was doing all this heavy "wolf-work" a week before Amy Winehouse's untimely death.

Before I deconstruct my "issues" with Ed Sheeran, let me draw your attention to an editorial in yesterday's NYTimes, entitled "Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader," by David J. Linden, "Professor of neuroscience @ Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the author of The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods,Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good." [2 fun facts about the author & then my critique of his research: before joining the Johns Hopkins faculty, he worked for Big Pharma; and his father is a high-profile "shrink to the stars" in Santa Monica, CA.] The burden of his argument, taken from the animal & human research of others [some of it, decades old], is that "addicts want their pleasures more but like them less." This he attributes to "blunted dopamine receptor variants" in these individuals.

Point of order. As its title suggests, this is a very informally written Pop Psych book [not a peer-reviewed journal article]. How large was his human sample size? In the NYTimes, he cites mostly anecdotal evidence concerning famous dead guys [such as Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley, Winston Churchill, and Otto von Bismarck]. How do we know that these "I can't get no-o satisfaction" folks are actually getting less satisfaction from their "cocaine, heroin, nicotine or alcohol" than their peers are? Just guessing, here: he asked them? [Or the researchers who actually carried out the studies did.] And the addicts said [in a variant of the old Irish joke], "This blow is terrible, and there's not enough of it!"

And don't even get me started on Theory of the Mind, which posits that we can never truly know another individual's experience, so how can we possibly know that we liked the drug less than the Man on the Surbiton Omnibus [British legal term of art for "the average guy"] did?

Is the circularity of Linden's argument making you dizzy yet? If you are an addict, there's something wrong with your dopamine receptors. [Not your fault, you poor victim.] To quote one of my favorite famous dead guys, the comic novelist Evelyn Waugh [who wrote brilliantly about alcoholism in Brideshead Revisited], "your brains is all anyhow."

Is this supposed to mean that everyone with this genetic variant is doomed to substance addiction? Back in the 70s there was a controversial theory that sought to "explain" [excuse?] alcoholism as the result of a genetic variant that metabolizes ethanol in the [poor victim's] brain more slowly than in your man on the Surbiton omnibus' brain, storing it as a morphine-like substance. [Thus, alcohol addiction was actually morphine addiction; and we all know how to "cure" that, right?] Studies suggested the prevalence of this gene variant in certain ethnic populations [such as my own, the Irish]. It's not our fault! We've got a disease, innit? What? Like an allergy? Like a peanut allergy? Jeez! Well then, let's just avoid peanuts. Or, mutatis mutandis, alcohol.

What's my point? What's up my nose, about Messrs. Sheeran & Linden? The fear, that by ceding locus of control over what we choose to ingest [by mouth, nose, or vein] to an "accident" of our brain physiology, we are condemned to fulfill the dark prophecy that "anatomy is destiny." The humiliation, that we have no option but to follow our noses to the irresistible substances that we crave, even though they will [glamorously or sordidly] kill us.

As the Brits would say, "Blow that for a game of soldiers!"

"Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair"

In the latest issue of Spin magazine, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner explains how a song was "born": "We were in the studio and I pulled someone's chair out."

Do ya see, now, he was trying to circumvent Gestalt psychologist Edward Tolman's Expectancy Effect, defined in The Dictionary of Psychology [ed. Ray Corsini, 2002] thus: "a tendency for an expectation to cloud a person's ability to observe or reason, that may lead to an error or bias in the direction in which the person expected the results to go." Or, to apply Occam's Razor, we are all creatures of habit. We expect a chair to be where it usually is.

When I say "all," I include Tolman's lab rats, who were trained to run a maze, at the end of which they had come to expect a High-Value Treat. When the fiendish experimenter substituted a Treat of Lesser Value, "the rats displayed disgust."

There is a British idiom, "Sick as a parrot!" Maybe its corollary could be, "Disgusted as a rat!"

The Expectancy Effect does not always result in disgust [or a pratfall from sitting down where a chair no longer is]. Sometimes it causes a better-than-it-really-is distortion [called a Positive Halo Effect in Educational Psychology, where certain students are given the benefit of the doubt & inflated scores, while others (under a Negative Halo) are expected to do badly & downgraded accordingly].

Get this, from yesterday's London Evening Standard. A man [who had recently quit taking his meds] fatally stabbed a perfect stranger in the street, because he "mistook him for a Zombie." See? If you're expecting Zombies, you're likely to "see" them everywhere.

Oh, come on. Who hasn't done it? Your beloved black cat has died, and now every dark sweater or towel, glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, "is Midnight!" It's only delusional if you open a fresh can of FancyFeast for "him." In certain cultures, not even then.

Returning to the Zombie hunter example, hands up if you expect all rich Frenchmen [or rich Italians, for that matter] to be lechers. Or all mothers to be paragons of virtue.

Oopsie daisy! It ain't necessarily so. Rules of thumb concerning human nature, like chairs, are subject to change without prior notification.

Who's Got Your Back?

While watching Wimbledon tennis on telly with the sound muted, I'm listening to Radio Wimbledon, which provides commentary on all the matches [from Center Court to Court 14], as well as traffic, transport & weather advisories for those in the stands. If you're in SW19, Radio Wimbledon's got your back. As young girls in the 60s, clutching General Admissions tickets to the grounds and CheapDayReturn train tickets back to our town, my sister & I had each other's backs, too, minding the time to make sure we had enough of it to hoof it back to Wimbledon Station and get our tickets punched by the Station Master before rush hour [when our CheapDayReturns expired]. All this, without the aid of Radio Wimbledon, cellphones, debit cards, or even wristwatches! What a team we made.

We still do. The British relationship therapist, Dr. Sue Johnson, quotes "a traditional Irish saying" [although I can't find it in any of my aphorism reference sources] thus: "We stand in the shelter of one another." Or, if we are gazelles @ the LA zoo, we lie down in the shelter of one another. If Chris had used a wider-angle lens, you could have seen a spindly-legged baby gazelle, toddling around under the vigilant gaze of these 3 "lifeguards," all of whom had its back.

Ah! It's soothing, just to see them. No, really. Watching a cohort of furry creatures tend & defend their vulnerable members has been shown [in those studies I'm not wild about, for ethical reasons] to lower cortisol, not just in the creatures themselves, but in the observer. [Except maybe not in would-be predators, like those leopards from the previous post, who chunter to themselves, "Curses! Foiled again!"]

The Radio Wimbledon commentators make frequent reference to each contestant's looking up to the Player's Box where their entourage of "lifeguards" [coaches, family, friends] are sitting, "seeking their sympathy, or approval, or their righteous indignation at a bad line call." The exchanges are all done non-verbally, but sometimes with operatic intensity. Unfortunately, when members of a player's cohort see themselves on a telly camera [via the Jumbotron], they tend to stiffen up, cast their eyes down, and leave their vulnerable Young One momentarily undefended. That's why it's heartening to hear the radio accounts [or to be there in person, to see the authentic exchange of give-a-damn looks]. As my favorite Radio 1 Scottish DJ, Edith Bowman, says, wherever in the world Andy Murray is playing, she is listening, "Willin' him on, just willin' him on!"

Such fan support helps the player [if he or she is aware of it, and our Andy is a keen Twitterer]; but it also helps the sports fan. Remember the truth about oxytocin? It makes you want to tend & defend those in your reference group, but not the opponent. Nar'mean?

"Can a leopard change its spots?"

Rhetorical questions get right up my nose. [Just for fun, notice how many RQs I sneak into this post, and how annoying they are.] This famous RQ is from the Old Testament prophet Jeramiah [13:23], who prefaces his animal metaphor with what these days would be called a racial slur: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" In both cases, one might be moved to reply, "Why would he even want to [change]?" [Jeramiah's answer would be, to avoid the destruction of Solomon's temple, silly! Go read his whole sarcastic, "Now you've gone and done it, and you're gonna get it!" rant for yourself, if this isn't ringing any distant bells from your Judeo-Christian-Islamic upbringing.]

Ever since I was assigned my first patient in 1971, the leopard-spot-changing question has dogged me. [Remember this variation on the theme of an old joke? Q:"How many psychotherapists does it take to change a lightbulb?" A:"Just one; but the lightbulb has to really want to change."] Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels a little bit defensive about the efficacy of The Talking Cure. In this month's issue of The California Psychologist, there's an article with the subheading, "Psychotherapy is Effective!" Here's what various cited outcome studies have "shown" it can do: "provide symptom relief and personality change, prevent future symptomatic episodes, enhance quality of life, promote adaptive functioning in work/school and relationships, [and/or] increase the likelihood of making healthy and satisfying life choices." Not to mention buying a little time, when your colleagues, constituents & the media are baying for your blood. Nar'mean?

How do you suppose most of these studies determine whether the desired outcome has been achieved? Why, by self-report questionnaires, mostly. "After 10 sessions, I can definitely see my spots fading!" Got any methodological problems with that? Remember the principle of Cognitive Dissonance? [The more Therbligs/money/effort you invest in achieving a goal, the more likely you are to believe that you achieved it.] That's why, explained our grad school profs, "no-cost" psychotherapy hardly ever "works." "Charge 'em at least fifty cents, if you want 'em to change," they advised. [The APA Ethics Committee is constantly chasing its tail, as to whether barter is a therapeutic form payment. "Taking it out in trade" (as the lewd British euphemism has it), is definitely not, and is punishable by loss of license to practice.]

But, even if a paying leopard really wants to change its spots, can it? How much of brain function is "hard-wired" [as neuro-scientists used to like to say], and how much is "plastic" [as they like to say, these days]? Turns out, the more the patient and the therapist believe in the plasticity of brain function, "the more positive change is observed." Even if they insist on calling it "rewiring."

These days, I regard "a good therapeutic outcome" as "changing a leopard into a snow leopard."

And I hate RQs because they are at best intrusive [a big waste of time, since they promise an answer which they don't deliver], and at worst humiliating [since, like Jeramiah, they imply, "Schmuck, you should know this already!"].

On a Wild-Goose Chase

It's probably not what you think it is. In the 16th Century, as if horses didn't have enough to do already [what with pulling plows & carriages, carrying warriors into battle, or on hunts for wild boar, deer, or foxes], they were ridden [for sport & for wagers] over the fields and stone "fences" of England, in a variety of contests of speed, agility & endurance. The Steeple Chase [also called the Point-to-Point] involved racing from one church steeple to the next. In the Paper Chase, directions to the next "point" on the route were written on pieces of paper [like a treasure hunt]. More arcane than these was the Wild-Goose Chase [used as a metaphor in 1592 in Romeo & Juliet], in which the lead horse is the "alpha wild-goose" who chooses the route, which all the others must follow in the chevron formation of geese in flight. Since the interval between lead "goose" and the others must be maintained [in an apparent race of attrition], the enterprise became a metaphor for "a fool's errand" [a futile waste of Therbligs], since the only way to beat the "goose" in pole position would be for it to fall at one of the fences. As in modern steeplechases [such as the Grand National], however, many fewer horses finish the race than start it, so it's a Schadenfreudelich, Survival-of-the-Fittest wager the punters are making.

What a great concept for a reality TV show, no?

Most mornings, Lili gets to engage in a more literal wild-goose chase, charging the flock of insouciant, poo-dropping Canada geese who congregate on the school playing fields, and sending them off in a honking, airborne chevron [possibly just to the nearby golf course]. The school groundskeepers love this, as do the kids out for PhysEd [who whoop and applaud, and shout "It's a wolf! It's a bear! It's the Goose-anator!"]. Haven't heard the last moniker much, since the Fall of Arnie, though.

Unlike the English sporting event, no animals are harmed in the making of Lili's morning show. The geese do not seem to experience her intrusion as awful [after all, they come back again the next day]; just highly inconvenient. Her efforts could be viewed as futile, in that they offer no permanent "goose-anation." This is not a trivial matter for the keepers & users of airport runways, as Sully the Hero of the Hudson could tell you. Indeed, many airports have hired wild-goose-chasing dogs, since that high-profile [but not uncommon] bird-strike incident.

The mission [as they say in government-speak] is "on-going." Win some, lose some. [Supply your own triumphs and disasters from this month's headlines.] Disasters cause pain & suffering to their immediate victims, fear to the rest of us [that we could be next], intrusion [of additional security measures] and humiliation [that we can't seem to find a "fool-proof" fix for the given threat]. No wonder the wolf is howling!

But, if we can focus on some of the triumphs, we might believe that our efforts are not futile. Our personal wild-goose chase may not be a "fool's errand," even if it must be "repeated, as necessary." Our Therbligs will have not been expended in vain.

"(Venez) M'Aider!"

In 1923 Frederick Mockford, the senior radio operator @ Croydon Airport, near London, was asked to come up with "the international radiotelephone signal for help, [to be] used by ships and aircraft in distress." [Webster's 1988 ed.] Since much of Croydon's air traffic plied the route to and from LeBourget airfield in France, Mockford thought of the French phrase, "Venez m'aider!" ["Come help me!"], which was shortened to "Mayday," then lengthened to "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" [since the redundancy makes it clear that you really mean "Help!" and are not just talking about the 1st of May].

In this April's issue of AOPA Pilot magazine [the official publication of the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association], an article called "High Anxiety" recounts the consequences of a Panic Attack, suffered by a private pilot "with 20 years of flying experience" while he was flying solo and practicing an Instrument [as opposed to Visual] approach into Oceanside Municipal Airport [near San Diego, CA}. "Shortly after I entered the clouds, a wave of incredible panic and terror came over me. I believed I was completely out of control of the situation. I was afraid of losing control of the airplane, as well as the repercussions of [Air Traffic Control] if I got on the radio and told them I was losing control of the airplane." [In other words, he feared that if he called a "Mayday," he might lose his pilot's license.]

Well, since this is a nonfiction article [not an episode of Lost], we can assume that he managed to overpower his "howling wolf" [fear-fueled amygdala, which was freezing up his hippocampus] and get it together for long enough to land, yah? Here's what he recalls of that process: "I started talking to myself out loud, telling myself that there was nothing that needed to be done that I hadn't done many times before. I got the needles centered where they were supposed to be and completed the approach successfully."

Thereafter, though, he developed the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress, becoming unable even to fly as a passenger in a commercial airplane, and sought psychotherapy [of which more, later]. Meanwhile, what may have saved his life during the event was talking out loud to himself. If he had burst forth into song [maybe "I believe I can fly," or "Off we go into the wild blue yonder"], he might have gotten a good result, as well, since his vocalizations short-circuited the unhelpful shallow breathing which fuels Panic. Speaking, singing, and whistling a happy tune really do work as anti-anxiety strategies, just as Rogers & Hammerstein told us.

His psychotherapist used 2 non-pharmaceutical techniques with our grounded pilot. He suggested a bit of in vivo desensitization [taking aerobatic gliding lessons with a seasoned instructor as his co-pilot], and cognitive challenging of any feelings of anxiety he experienced while flying, with reality-testing. If he began to feel anxious, he would quickly realize that he "was in complete control of the airplane and there was no reason to feel that way." [And even if he "lost it," the co-pilot could take over the controls at any time, if necessary.]

It is unclear, whether our pilot also took medications to control his anxiety. At the end of the article there is a message from the AOPA Medical Services Program, setting out the regulations for becoming recertified as a private pilot, after taking SSRIs or benzodiazepines. We do know that he has currently chosen to fly ultralight aircraft, for which no pilot's license is required.

Be that as it may, the article offers insight into the onset, course, and successful treatment of a first-time Panic Attack, when a seasoned pilot who always thought he had "the right stuff," got "tangled up in blue," lived through it, and found the courage to take aother leap of faith "into the wild blue yonder." Once again, he believes he can fly.

"I Believe I Can Fly"

Are you familiar with R.Kelly's 1993 Grammy-winning R&B song? If you flew Northwest in the 90s, you heard it as part of their pre-flight informational video, apparently designed to spare the cabin crew the Therbligs it takes to perform the safety spiel, which [up until last week] bored everyone but rookie passengers. On several flights I was on, the song caused nervous laughter and wisecracks: "Oh they believe they can fly? How strangely not reassuring!"

My fellow travelers were engaging in Poetic speech, as was a youth [at the foster care agency in Detroit where I consulted], in response to a certain card on Murray's Thematic Apperception Test. The decidedly literal-minded and unhip lady who had administered his psychological test battery wrote in her report, "The subject began to sing a song, to the effect that he believed he could fly." She thought he was delusional. I [her supervisor] thought he was quick-witted, creative and funny. After a brief lecture on psycholinguistics (and particularly, Pragmatics), my opinion prevailed.

Funny old phrase, though, innit? TAT creator Murray, himself, spoke of the "Icarus Complex," defined in The Dictionary of Psychology [ed. Ray Corsini, 2002] as "a desire to be important and gain fame and fortune, but paired with a tendency to not succeed, in part because of refusing to try or giving up too quickly." Okay, Test Lady and Murray, which would you have us do? Take a leap of faith into the wild blue yonder, and hope our feathers don't melt in the sun's heat, or shut up and obey the laws of gravity?

My father had at least two things in common with singer/songwriter Robert Kelly. He was born on the South Side of Chicago, and he believed he could fly. For high school credit, he and some classmates got to go over to nearby Midway Airport and learn to repair and fly the Sopwith Camel of a WWI flying Ace. Rosie [known more prosaically as Red in his pre-Naval Academy days] was the most promising pupil; and the Ace hatched a plan for him to become the youngest American to fly solo over an ocean. Therefore, on Easter Break of 1936 [after the 16-year-old had earned his pilot's license] the two of them flew the biplane down [in fuel-limited hops] to Florida, and waited for good enough weather for a flight to Cuba. Time ran out before the skies cleared; and they despondently "puddle jumped" their way back to Midway, not having succeeded in their quest. [As NASA has learned to its cost, you can control alot of things, but not Florida weather.]

"Nevermind," thought he, "I'll go to the Naval Academy and become a Marine Aviator." But on Service Selection night in December of 1941, the flight school quota for the top 10th of the Class had already been filled by the time his number came up; and he was consigned to the "Black Shoe Navy" [as Surface Warfare was called, then and now]. So, on his 61st birthday [geddit?], he renewed his private pilot's license, bought a Cessna, and once more took to the skies.

The next post will consider the case of a private pilot with 20 years' experience, who suddenly experienced an in-flight Panic Attack, and no longer "believed he could fly."

This is a picture of Lili (who turns 7 next week), taken several years ago, when she joyfully "flew" over obstacles with the greatest of ease. Now, she has to be asked to do so; and sometimes she "dogs it" by leaping beside [not over] the barrel. C'mon, Lili! Even in dog years, you're not 61 yet.

Just in case...

The ramshackle buildings of the school my sister & I attended in the 60s, in Bushy Park, Greater London [in transit to which, we passed by Hampton Court Palace], had served as Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force during World War II, where Ike & the Yanks hammered Gen. Sir Frederick E. Morgan's plan, "Operation Overlord," into a viable strategy for the invasion of Europe. The Kindergarten classroom had been the erstwhile "Eisenhower Room."

By March 1961, JFK had succeeded Ike as President, and inherited from him the never-viable plan, "Operation Pluto," for a CIA-caper [the invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro counter-revolutionaries], known since its spectacular failure as "The Bay of Pigs." Two days before the debacle, Radio Moscow, in an English language broadcast aimed at listeners in the UK, had predicted such an "adventure" [and its failure]. So too, it turns out, had the British Ambassador to the US, warning that UK intelligence sources advised that the Cuban populace were overwhelmingly pro-Castro; and they were likely to meet an intrusion onto their soil with hostility, not joy & gratitude. Nobody @ the CIA passed his message along to JFK, though.

We & our Bushy Park classmates [most of whose parents worked in or for the US military in London] were humiliated at our nation's fiasco, and terrified by Moscow's predicted anti-NATO ballistic retaliation [since the UK was likely to be their proxy whipping-boy]. Almost to a child, we became Nihilists, refusing to do our homework, since "What's the point? We're all going to be blown to smithereens by the Russians, anyway."

So our beloved teachers, most of whom had been through the London Blitz about 20 years earlier, gathered us together and shared their experiences of Back in the Day, when actual bombs were actually falling [not just maybe, mind], every night, sometimes on friends & family, before the Yanks condescended to become Allies. "Of course we all thought about giving up," they said. "How trivial & pointless homework seemed, when London was burning every night. But, if we hadn't just kept on doing it, we wouldn't have been able to go on to University and become your teachers, now would we? And where would you be then, eh?"

Concrete, but compelling role-modelling, is what they offered us. Not any of your "Not to worry. Everything is going to turn out fine." Just the Existential question, "What if we don't all get blown to smithereens? Maybe it would be best to have done your homework, JUST IN CASE (of survival).

So we pulled ourselves together and did our homework.

Zanzibar is sitting in a Flight Bag [also known as a Chart Case], which pilots always carry with them, even to this day, so that if their more sophisticated methods of navigation "go down," they can still figure out where to land safely. Just in case.

Taking the Mick Out of Murphy's Law

In 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base, a team of military engineers were studying the effects on the human body, of "sudden deceleration," using a speed sled on rails & brave volunteers. The lead researcher, Capt. Edward A. Murphy, annoyed with the imprecision of one of his technical assistants, remarked that if a device could be fitted incorrectly, this clown would do it. Later, Dr. John Paul Stapp, who survived a 40-G [sic] deceleration in the sled, told reporters that, "the good safety record on the project was due to a firm belief in Murphy's Law."

So, how did the 20th Century dissing of one schlemiel in the California desert morph into the pessimistic worldview now implied by the idiom, "It's Murphy's Law, isn't it?" uttered whenever [as the 18th Century Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote] "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley"?

Well, as long as we've wandered back to the British Isles, let's consider the far older [but unattributed] expression, "It's sod's law, innit?" In post-1950s dictionaries [both British & American] the two phrases are listed as interchangeable. But dey're not really, are dey now? Cuz your British lexicographer was until recently reluctant to codify pejorative references to the Irish, even referring to a certain AKC breed of dog as a "red setter," lest offense [and, presumably, reprisals] be taken. [Compare this to the linguistically insouciant Yanks, who t'row scores of Hooligans into Paddywagons every March 17th, for da love o' Mike!] Mind you, there also are no "German Shepherds" in the UK; there are instead "Alsatians," n'est-ce pas? ["Don't mention the War!"]

Cultural nuances aside, though, there are important locus-of-control differences in the lessons to be drawn, between Sod's and Murphy's Laws. The former posits "a perversely malignant universe," in which "dropped toast always lands buttered-side-down," and bad things happen to good people. It is essentially Nihilistic. Murphy's Law, on the other hand, suggests the adoption of a "belt & suspenders [or braces, as the Brits would have it]" approach to human endeavors. There may be no such thing as a "fail-safe" plan; so there should be at least one back-up plan. Written down & rehearsed [since, once the limbic system is lit up, hippocampus-mediated problem-solving will go off-line.] Yeah, sure, that plan might not work, either. Score one for the Nihilists. But, then again, it just might. Worth a try, yeah?

For Lent, I'm trying to give up seeing the world in Sod's Law terms. I still believe in Murphy's Law, of course. I know, for instance, that at the end of an hour-long, free-range adventure in the woods, Lili will still feel the need to "leave a message" for her canine correspondents on the lawn of the public schoolyard. Never let the other guy have the last "word," is her motto. Luckily, though, this time she was "only taking the Mick" [Google it]; and no deployment of a New York Times blue plastic bag was necessary. [But I always carry at least one in my pocket, pace Capt. Murphy.]

"Just looking for some touch."

That's a canny wee lad, yon man fro' Nazareth. Meaning, of course, Dan McCafferty, the legendary frontman of that Scottish rock band which took its name from the first line of the song "The Weight" by that Canadian rock band, The Band: "Pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' 'bout halfpast dead." D'ye ken? [By which they (The Band) meant, of course, the little town in the LeHigh Valley of Pennsylvania, not far from the towns of Emmaus and Bethlehem.] Dearie me! How Metalingual this post is turning out to be!

What the brilliant Mr. McCafferty did, while singing his live cover of the ZZ Top song, "Tush," was to replace that arcane and confusing word [Dusty Hill pronounces it to rhyme with "hush"; yet he seems to be "looking for" the shortened form of the Yiddish word "tochus," which rhymes with "push."] with the universally understood and desired, by man, woman, and beast, "touch." Download the lyrics from Hair of the Dog, Live to see what I mean.

Now, let us segue back to 14th Century France and the [slyly political] poem by Gervais du Bus, Roman de Fauvel, in which all the rich but not-so-powerful people seek to ingratiate themselves with a self-important brown horse [in some translations, a donkey] named "Fauvel," by stroking [currying] his coat. Thus, in France, a "curryfavel" came to mean a flatterer. By 1530, the idiom had crossed the Channel, cut loose the brown horse part of the metaphor, and become the compound verb, "to curry favour." They have disagreed about much, but both the French and English have long known that the way to gain favour with a horse is to stroke its fur in the direction in which it lies flat [from the Old French correire, "to put in order"].

Conversely, the idiom, "to rub (a person or animal) up the wrong way" means "to be annoying."

Still, why all the idiomatic hostility towards currying? Why is it considered a duplicitous thing to do? Perhaps because [look it up, skeptics] stroking a mammal's fur (hair) produces oxytocin [Get this!] in both parties: the groomed and the groomer. This, theoretically, fosters trust, which [if the "groomer" is a sexual predator and the "groomed" is a vulnerable individual] is not only manipulative, it's against the law [in many places].

With that caveat, now you know how to get "that warm, fuzzy feeling," without ordering dodgy nasal sprays claiming to contain oxytocin ["the love hormone"] online. Pet your pet. Brush the hair of the dog. Curry a brown horse. [Here are Dusk the mare & our younger daughter, when she was just a canny wee lass.] Or [with their permission] stroke or brush the hair of someone who is already in your circle of trust. Pace the Broadway musical Hair, this is unlikely to bring about World Peace; but it may strengthen the impulse to "tend and defend" those within your own reference group.

Remember, "we're all looking for some touch," but not from a stranger on the subway.

Big Love & Other Oxytocin Myths

My husband snapped this photo of me & our firstborn enjoying a stroll through the Muir Woods redwood park this Valentine's weekend, exactly 30 years after he & I walked the same path. Everybody say, "Aww," cuz that's the last sentimental sentence in this pseudo-science-debunking post.

In 1953 Vincent du Vigneaud synthesized the so-called "pro-social" neuropeptide, Oxytocin (OT), for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1956 [but not for Peace]. Until the 21st century, researchers mostly studied the effects of this hormone in nonhuman mammals, concluding that it facilitates labor and lactation. From whence, it was only a short anthropomorphic leap of logic, to conclude that OT acts like a maternal love potion, cementing the mother-offspring bond, at least until the young can fend for themselves. Having witnessed at an impressionable age my cousin's pet mouse giving birth and then eating all of her young that we were not quick enough to rescue from her, I can tell you [as they say Up North in England], "It don't necessarily follow." Apparently, the amount of OT sufficient to induce labor & delivery is not always sufficient to guarantee maternal feelings [let's say, behavior] towards her progeny. Anyone who raises livestock is aware of this, and has one or two "foster mothers" on hand, to "adopt" the rejected newborns. Those who work in neonatology or "foundling" rescue have seen this occasional failure of Oxytocin to vincit omnia in humans, as well.

Nevertheless, OT has lately been hailed by [mostly European] neuroscientists, as the "Love Hormone" for shy, fearful and/or autistic humans, now available as a nasal spray [talk about "Gets Right Up Your Nose"], at least for research purposes. In April '05, Kosfeld et al. [from Zurich] proclaimed "Oxytocin increases trust in humans." In December '05, Kirsch et al. [from Germany] reported "Oxytocin modulates neural circuity for social cognition and fear in humans." By April '10 Hurlemann et al. [from Bonn], in the article "Oxytocin enhances amygdala-dependent, socially reinforced learning and emotional empathy in humans," began, "OT is becoming increasingly established as a prosocial neuropeptide in humans with therapeutic potential in treatment of social, cognitive, and mood disorders."

Oh, yeah? Show me the data. More to the point, show me the methodology. The slender bough from which all these "findings" hang, is the Multifaceted Empathy Test: a self-administered computer instrument, on which a subject first categorizes a series of photos [happy, sad, or angry], and then rates [0 to 10] "how much you feel for the person in the photo." With and without OT up your nose, double-blind. Seriously? Why not just ask subjects to rate Facebook pictures? "Would you 'friend' this person? Now, with OT up your nose, would you?"

Did I mention that trans-nasal Oxytocin is chemically similar to MDMA? [Google it.]

Let's hear it for the Dutch [Carsten De Dreu et al., June '10, Amsterdam], who used a slightly more real-world scenario, involving a game of strategy, allocating wealth [10 Euros] to Self, the In-Group, and/or the Out-Group. [Not unlike the contentious bail-out of debtor EU nations by (ahem) the Germans, nicht wahr?] They use wonderfully evocative terms, like "in-group love" and "out-group hate." Here's what they found: "The Neuropeptide Oxytocin Regulates Parochial Altruism in Intergroup Conflict Among Humans." Absent OT up their nose(s) the (male) subjects mostly opted to keep their Euros to themselves. With a snootfull, though, they would sacrifice their Euros for the good of their in-group, especially if it "hurt" the out-group. Conclusion: OT "drives a 'tend and defend' response in that it promoted in-group trust and cooperation, and defensive aggression (including protectionism and preemptive strike) against perceived out-group threat."

Sound familiar? Sounds like Circle-the-Wagons, Jets-versus-Sharks, Small Love [not Big Love] to me. Next time, a discussion of how OT gets into the bloodstream [other than via a nasal spray].

Hint: Consider the old English expression, "to curry favour."

Does a hangdog expression betoken guilt?

Funny, how old words morph their meanings, innit? Take "hangdog," which has been around since the 1670s, adjective & noun, originally meaning "contemptible & sneaking." [Think Dickens' passive-aggressive character, Uriah Heep, always presenting himself as 'umble, while surreptitiously scheming to bring the high & mighty down.] By 2010, The American Heritage Dictionary defined a "hangdog expression" as "looking shamefaced & guilty."

Consider the word "guilt," even. As late as 1934, the only definition in The Concise Oxford Dictionary was "culpability." Guilt wasn't a psychological construct. None of your subjective, self-referential, conceptual feeling [as in "survivor guilt," or "Jewish/Catholic/Protestant guilt"]. Just the objective fact of the case: "How does the defendant plead? Guilty or not guilty?" Also, "How does the jury find: guilty or not guilty?" [Their verdict is a subjective opinion, but it's presumably based on the objective, admissible facts presented.] The notion of remorse doesn't come into it, until the sentencing phase of the trial, if the erstwhile "not guilty" defendant is found "guilty" [at which point, his lawyer advises him to show how sorry he is by adopting a hangdog expression].

So, here we are in the 21st century, with the burgeoning field of Social Neuroscience and its ugly Iron Maiden, the fMRI [colloquially referred to in the media as The Brain Scanner], claiming to have located the Seat of Guilt in the Brain, no less! Point of order, would that be the seat of objective or subjective guilt, they've found? Let me not bore you with my observations on the flawed research designs of such studies [like, having a subject read or watch scenarios of other people behaving badly, in order to light up the Guilt center(s) in the subject's own brain... What? When I watch Othello snuff Desdamona, I'm the one who feels/is guilty?]. Let me instead quote the brain-imager, Dr. Gregory Miller of the University of Illinois: "Functions do not have a location. Decisions, feelings, perceptions, delusions, memories do not have a spatial location. We image brain events... We do not image, and cannot localise in space, psychological constructs."

At most, then, the fMRI is currently no better than the 20th Century polygraph at measuring physiological changes correlated with limbic system changes correlated with psychological constructs, such as fear and humiliation. From which I know, having treated several Intelligence Officers who had failed the annual polygraph test because of an exaggerated sense of guilt, over sexual peccadillos, rather than because they were actually guilty of breaching national security. So dedicated were they to their Intel work [from which they were sidelined by the failed polygraph test], that some of them would ask [semi-jokingly], "Is there such a thing as a 'guilt-ectomy' that I could have, just so I could pass the polygraph?" Just give those brain-imagers a chance, and they'll be in there before you can say "knife."

Back to the title question, addressed on a pet behavior blog, in the form, "Do dogs feel guilt?" Their answer was, "No. Guilt is an abstract concept. Dogs express fear & submission, in response to the owner's anger, which they sense through body odor, glaring eyes, stance and tone of voice." The dog "looks hangdog" to avoid or lessen the Alpha Dog's punishment [just like a defendant who has been "found guilty"].

The wolf looks "sheepish" in the presence of a more powerful wolf. It has correctly read the power subtext of the situation. It endures the humiliation of acting submissive, to avoid the pain & suffering of being put in its place [which might be completely beyond the pale, where chances of survival are slim] by the Big Dog. That's more useful than guilt. That's Social Intelligence.

"T'es folle ou quoi?"

French slang for, "Are you crazy, or what?" Also, the title of a 1982 comedy, ads for which were plastered all over the Metro station walls that winter [the coldest on record, at the time]. It became my lingua franca catchphrase during our Eurail Pass honeymoon, as effective in Milan and Vienna as it was in Paris, to back off street hasslers without giving offense. It conveyed the power subtext, "I am not your victim, nor am I your enemy," in a way that the more common but histrionic "Laissez-moi!" ["Leave me alone!"] just misses.

As effective as the phrase is, after 40 years of close, professional encounters with Those Who May Be Crazy, I don't like its implication. Now, for a bit of Attribution Theory. Do you imagine that what I object to is the use of a derogatory term for those suffering from Mental Illness? Not me. Sticks & stones and all that. I object, Ladies & Gents, to the overuse of the Insanity Defense, to excuse wolfish behavior, nar'mean?

In March of 1981, you may recall or have read, one John Hinckley, Jr. fired 6 exploding bullets at President Reagan, hoping to win the admiration & love of the actress Jodie Foster. He was a lousy shot, and managed to kill and maim several people; but only one ricocheting bullet entered the armpit of the President, who survived. The shooter copped an Insanity Plea [which a DC jury bought] and remains to this day an inpatient @ St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC [which advertises monthly for clinical staff, if you're interested in a job opportunity]. For years, he has been granted weekend passes to visit his parents.

I'm no fortune teller, but I bet the Tucson shooter's defense team are pouring over the transcripts of the Hinckley trial, to unearth bits of jury-swaying gold dust. A spate of articles, both in the popular and scientific press, have addressed the thorny "T'es folle ou quoi?" question, in hopes of being better able to identify and forestall future pistol-packin' werewolves from acting out. Presciently, in the 24 July 09 issue of the Schizophrenia Bulletin, William T. Carpenter wrote a pros & cons think piece, "Anticipating DSM-V: Should Psychosis Risk Become a Diagnostic Class?" Under "cons," he notes that the proposed criteria for a diagnosis of Psychosis Risk Syndrome [PRS] or Attenuated Psychotic Symptoms Syndrome [APS], are commonly found in "non-ill" young people; and so the risk of needless stigmatisation and overtreatment is high.

Even if the Syndrome makes it into the next edition of the so-called "Book of Broken Things," the last people who are going to be able to inform the authorities about a perceived loose cannon will be Mental Health providers. Unless HIPAA is amended or repealed, that is. Back in the day, in pre-HIPAA times, one of my jobs as an active duty Navy Psychologist was to do annual assessments of veterans receiving disability pensions for service-connected Mental Illness. It was a Hobson's Choice the vet faced in his interview. Too sane, and he would lose his benefits. Too crazy, and he might get rehospitalized on the spot. In the summer of 1981 a vet told me that it was his ambition, "to become another Hinckley." Without fear of litigation or loss of my license to practice psychology, I informed my Department Head, who called the FBI, who arrived promptly, to "continue the interview process" with the vet.

Couldn't get away with that nowadays. Not even sure if I could get away with remarking, to a weird-acting, in-my-face pavement artist on the streets of Paris, "T'es folle ou quoi?" But I bet he could get away with murder.

Buffalo Springfield Redux

Stick around 3 score years or so, and you're likely to have a certain number of deja vu moments. Cue Stephen Stills' 1967 hit, For What It's Worth. ["There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong."] It became the anthem of the anti-Vietnam War movement, although he wrote it in response to a scuffle between rowdy clubbers and policemen in NYC [4 years before the student deaths @ Kent State, mind you, as mourned in his former bandmate Neil Young's song, Tin Soldiers.]

[Music trivia note: The band's name, Buffalo Springfield, has nothing to do with the Wild West, where endangered species roam, play, etc. It was inspired by a steamroller parked in the street outside their LA house, manufactured by the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company.]

For me [who took to playing it on "infinite repeat" during those anarchic, all-bets-are-off days of the late 60s], the song had the power to transform my overwhelming fear (for myself, for my classmates who were facing the nightmarish fight [in Nam] or flight [to Canada] dilemma, and for my going-to-the-dogs country) into something less primal. Like all works of art (and this one earned the band induction into the Roll & Roll Hall of Fame, ya know), it imposed some order on the chaos, partly by making the general particular: "There's a man with a gun over there." As the song implies, it doesn't much matter if he's a public servant or a vigilante. Either way, it lights up our limbic system.

Good ol' Stephen Stills channels his pre-frontal cortex, and advises, "I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down."

There you have it. That's the whole, sane, soothing message of his song. Not an empty promise of "Everything is going to be all right." Not the braggadocio of "We will rock you." Just, "Stop. Everybody look what's going down."

Cuz, as he said in another song, with another band, "We have all been here before..."