Embarrassing Blunders

There was a picture in the news of Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz gazing at a military drill through binoculars that clearly still had the lens caps on. According to the photographer, he did this three times, while nodding to the military official who was explaining to him what he was supposed to be seeing. Of course he wasn’t seeing anything.

What do you suppose was going through his mind at the time?

I suppose he could just have been too drunk to notice. Or so angry about something else at the time that it didn’t even register that he only saw black through the binoculars. But I want to think of it as a parallel to The Emperor Has No Clothes – just because HE didn’t see anything, doesn’t mean others didn’t, and if others might see it he certainly wouldn’t want to admit that it wasn’t clear to HIM.

It is our propensity toward covering up this sort of inadvertent, confusing, ‘at-the-moment’ mistake that makes people-watching so interesting: delicious glimpses into the psyche. We can endlessly speculate “what were they thinking?” It’s not the public displays of idiocy, where you just don’t CARE what they were thinking (like Brittany shaving her head or the Anna Nicole Smith judge pandering to the cameras) but the Hillary-captured-in-an-unguarded-moment sort of thing – or this bit with the binoculars. It is the stuff of wanting to save face, putting on a good face, not realizing anyone is watching our face, or hoping that people can’t see our real face – and the psychological drama behind it. It makes for fascinating observation.

We cover up. We pretend we didn’t do what we did. We pretend we did something else, or act as if we don’t understand what we did. In our confusion it is our feelings of embarrassment that become our focus and we will do almost anything to avoid them. We don’t ask questions, we don’t question ourselves. We don’t get to the bottom of ‘it,’ or back up and reassess or, most ridiculously, don’t even laugh at ourselves and move on! (Though that should probably be our goal.)

And if you don’t think that is part of the universal condition, just look at a cat the next time he falls off a windowsill.

Just a bit of fun

My friend Joann sent me a connection to a video that any Star Wars fan would enjoy.

Long ago...in a grocery store far, far away...

Baking

Yesterday was Mark’s birthday. I wanted to bake him a cake, something I don’t often do. (With only 2 of us in the house, a cake is a sure way to overindulge! Cupcakes, most of which can be put in the freezer for eating over a longer period of time, are a much better choice for us.)

I’m not sure why I was feeling so stressed when I was working with it. I managed to get the cake layers out of the pans and onto a cooling rack without breaking them, and then to make my mother’s ‘from-scratch’ Cocoa Butter Cream Frosting. Putting it together is always dicey for me – wondering if it will stand upright instead of leaning to one side – and getting the icing to the right consistency is ‘iffy’ as well. (I once ended up with concrete – and that was many, many years ago, so you can see how traumatized I was by that.) But still… It’s not rocket science and I’ve done it many times, even if not recently. Where was that ‘uncomfortable’ feeling coming from?

But it all worked – looked great, tasted great. (Since the trick to getting it straight is to cut off the rounded top of the bottom layer, you also get to taste it!) Mark was thrilled.

And then I cut into it. Bit of difficulty there in the middle. What was that?

You know how you are supposed to put waxed paper on the bottom of the pans so the cake comes out easily?

Evidently you are also supposed to remove it before you put it all together.

Flower and Garden Show

It was the big weekend! The Northwest Flower and Garden Show!! Actually, I don't know why I get so excited about it, but at this point in every winter, a little garden excitement is very welcome. We got some ideas to add to our garden planning and found a garden swing that is a 'must have.' And we just had a good time together.

Some of the 'Demonstration Gardens:'

Dog Show, again

Dr. Mark takes up the Dog Show Challenge with this ‘guest’ post. (I love it when he talks Psychology.)

Well OK I will respond then. I love talking about judgment and decision making behavior.

So let’s take an example that appears in the literature, judging beef cattle. There are 15- 25 dimensions that can be used to decide what grade of beef a given cow will likely end up as. The research shows that the judges of such things really only use 3 or 4 criteria and maybe as many as 7 in rare cases. What one really wants in such a situation is a panel of judges whose collective determinations predict the outcome well (safe beef in the meat isle.) Technical jargon: The inter-rater reliability can even be 'moderate' as long as each of the 'raters' use at least some dimensions that help predict the criterion.

What you have in the dog show is only one judge, and many more criteria.

The dog show is so much more complicated a judgment task that I can only laugh at it. There are 125 recognized breeds, each of which has on the order of 50 criteria: color, weight, shape of all the different body parts, blue tongue etc. etc. The overall judge for best in show has no idea which dog will win each of the 7 categories so we are to believe that he knows and can evaluate a potential pool of 125 breeds times 50-some pretty bizarre multi-faceted criteria in the time that spans about 3 commercial breaks. The standards don’t necessarily represent any real dog, so where is the example for each of the judges to use as a point of reference? Some of the criteria are mutually exclusive, can’t really appear together so how to weight each of them appropriately? So, best in show is supposed to be the one dog that best exemplifies that specific breed of dog better than all of the other entrants. I don’t buy it even if the head judge takes on faith that the judges of the individual categories did their job.

(Your radiologist too is evaluating x-rays relative to some “normal” standard that basically is there in his head, by the way.)

Anyway, it all comes down to which of these 7 dogs do I, the judge simply like the best, and thankfully I don’t have to explain the criteria and probably couldn’t. I want a job like that; can wear a tux and look dignified and won’t (can’t) be questioned. What a racket. Oh yeah and then how does one determine that one “judge” actually judges better than another? What would the criteria look like for that?

-- Dr. Mark

The Dog Show

I can't let it pass without comment. And there is always much to comment about, so here are a few:

The Westminster Dog Show was this week (not, as Mark has been consistently calling it, the WestChester Dog Show.) And a poodle didn't win. Nor did a terrier, not that I would have minded that so much. But there were two poodles in the final seven so it was touch and go for a while there. We hate poodles. Ridiculous hair cuts. (And have they changed over the years? I don't remember them actually looking like that.)

But instead, a beautiful English Springer Spaniel won. And what a delight he was to watch; silky coated and light of foot, enjoying his moment and sure about how terrific he was.

We were glad the Dandy Dinmont didn't win either - he has too much head and hair that makes him seem out of proportion.

We noticed, this time, that they tried to keep the camera focused on the dogs instead of the oddly-shaped dowagers with sensible shoes and formal attire who were leading them, awkwardly, through their paces. And we still miss Joe Garagiola and his off-the-wall comments on the commentary, although they did bring in an old, retired Scottish breeder/handler who rabbitted on and on about female dogs he has known, seemingly just so he could say 'bitch' on the air over and over without network repercussions. Amazing, is what the world of dog breeders must be.

It seems like all the hard work of judging is done by the time the TV cameras start rolling and the hype begins. When all the dogs of one breed are together, there is something to judge. But judging the best dog "compared to the breed standards" when a whole bunch of different breeds are in the ring is absurd. The guy reading off the 'standards' summary is talking about, for example, 'webbed feet' but the judge isn't looking at the dog's feet at all. Or the standard refers to temperament, when temperament is completely absent in the show ring - or the dog wouldn't be there in the first place. Amazing.

All of which is just a lead-in to try to get Mark to expound on learning theory and memory.

Let's see if he takes the bait...

A Tucson snow

This happens so rarely, and I missed it. Just wasn't in town at the right time. Nevertheless, my sister sent the picture, along with permission to share it - so I am! Nothing is more beautiful than snow in the desert.

Happy Valentine's Day

Burning Questions

I occasionally have one of those burning questions on my mind that just won’t let me alone; the mystifying sort of question that probably someone has the answer to, but not me.

For example: How do you get down at the end of a Bungie Jump?

(OK, all you techies out there. I know. You look in Wikipedia for the answer. Which gives you the helpful information that “Mobile cranes provide the greatest recovery speed and flexibility, the jumper being lowered rapidly to ground level and detached.” Head first? How does the crane get to you? Are you still attached to the rubber band thingy? Not actually putting the question to rest, is it?)

Or, if the human body replaces all its cells every 7 years, why do I still have a scar on my wrist where a cat scratched me in 1963?

Or, most puzzling of all: Why can I go to bed late, dead tired, and fall right to sleep only to wake up 3 minutes later, completely done with even the possibility of sleep for hours?

These are the things that drive people mad. Burning questions, indeed.

Needing a break

We took advantage of a nice day and caught the ferry to Bainbridge again. We needed a break from "storm debris clean-up" and fussing about roofers and taxes and windows and "what on earth are we going to do about the garage?"

We got off to a bad start though. Getting to the ferry terminal in downtown Seattle is a challenge of wills between us and the City Planners. And the Planners always win. They only allow access from one lane on one street - and a single left turn. You can't drive down the same street from the other direction and simply turn right into the ferry entrance. Neither can you just cross that street on the light and drive directly into the entrance. No, you have to go around and through and over and under and left, right, left, right until you have gone 4 miles out of your way NO MATTER WHICH DIRECTION YOU ARE COMING FROM. OK. I'm so over that now...

We were heading to Poulsbo, a Norwegian sort of village with a great seafood restaurant and wonderful shops and the most excellent bakery this side of anywhere. Heaven. I found another Raggedy Ann doll for my collection and a much-needed-and-long-sought-for something to put on the mantle, a new shirt, the makings for a 'project' and a chocolate éclair.

My definition of a great day? Any day spent with Mark.



(Check out the distant and snow covered Mt Baker glistening in the late afternoon sun at the right in the last picture. What a place!)

Fast Food

Having a need for a quick lunch in between errands yesterday, I stopped for a burger at a drive-through. In years gone by this would have been routine, but I haven't had to do such a thing in a long time now, due to one thing or another. A revelation here: I'm out of the Fast Food habit!

So it was a bit of a surprise that a single cheeseburger, fries and a Diet Coke would be almost $4 at McDonalds. Even more unsettling was that I couldn't really find the meat. And there wasn't enough salt on the fries...

All of this might be considered to be progress by some. More healthful. Less enticing. But I'm disappointed.

Growing up in the dawn of the fast food era I was hopelessly addicted. The notion of stopping someplace for fries and a coke was so much a part of what I thought being a teenager should be about that I was completely taken with the idea. Mind you, there was very little else about 'being a teenager' that I was particularly taken with, but for some reason, this little bit stuck long after most people had outgrown that sort of thing and moved on to salads. And when I moved on, literally, to an island in rural Alaska where there was NO fast food available I experienced more than a bit of "withdrawal."

For years afterward, any trip 'outside' absolutely had to start with a burger and fries. It was so bad that my parents once stopped, on their way to the airport to pick me up, at a local McDonalds and convinced the manager to sell them the separate parts of a Big Mac, just so they could put it together, hot and delicious and not soggy, at the airport. (They brought their motor home, complete with kitchen facilities, in case you were wondering. I have incredibly wonderful parents!)

But now it's come to this.

End-of-an-era sort of thing. Sad, really. Dare I say it?

It just wasn't that good.

Ground Hog Day and Birthdays

The ground hog didn't see his shadow this morning. (Or did he? Oh dear. I forgot already!)

OK - looking back to the news, yes, I mean No...

I mean he didn't see his shadow. At all. And so that means an early spring - or is it 6 more weeks of winter? Six more weeks of summer?

I don’t get this stuff.

Another example: The notion of "Spring forward, Fall back" isn't simple to me at all since I have trouble with the general concept of setting clocks in the first place. And don't even get me started on airport "arrivals" and "departures." (I am arriving at the airport but I want to depart... ) Do you feed a fever and starve a cold or the other way around? Doesn't everyone get that one confused?

(At least "lefty loosey, righty tighty" makes sense to me. I get points for that, don't I?)

It would seem that there is too much to interpolate between ground burrowing mammals and weather conditions and catchy slogans. (And what's with this "Candlemas" business? Wasn't it complicated enough?) The whole 'springing forward and falling back' just seems like so much lurching around to me that I can't really get a grip on the back-process notion of squaring sunlight up with working hours. Oh well. Since it doesn’t, inherently, make sense to me, my brain just dumps it right back out. So I can’t even remember, 5 minutes after reading about the ground hog this morning, whether it was ‘shadow’ or not, and whether, whatever it was, it was good or bad.

To me, Ground Hog Day is simply my mother's birthday. And since I've never even met a ground hog, but know and simply adore my mother, the birthday always overshadowed the 'holiday.'

(Sorry. "Overshadowed" may have been a confusing choice of words here.)

I just wanted to wish my mother a happy birthday!