Progressives, Focus, and Perspective

1. “Progressive” doesn’t always lead to progress

I recently read the book Science Left Behind: Feel Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left, by Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell. I’ve been dismayed by some in politics (New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg, for example) who feel comfortable dictating how we should live. The libertarian part of me just doesn’t like that. I’m a fan of the scientific method, preferring to let it tell us which theories have a sound basis instead of pushing theories that fit an agenda.

The definition of “progressive” the authors use is built on the Nolan Chart, created by David Nolan in 1971. Instead of the simpler “left” and “right” you hear about so much in politics, this approach creates 4 categories of a person's or group’s tendency toward social and economic freedom (or lack thereof).

According to this definition, the terms “liberal” and “progressive” aren’t interchangeable. It gets confusing, though, since the “progressives” of the early 1900s morphed into “liberals” in the ‘20s then back to “progressives” later in the century. What’s more important than the label is considering the economic and social control involved with a political viewpoint. This chapter helped me understand that it’s more complicated than just “left” vs. “right”, and that I’m becoming more libertarian in my views all the time.

The authors describe four mythologies progressives seem to embrace:    

1.      Everything natural is good
2.      Everything unnatural is bad
3.      Unchecked science and progress will destroy us
4.      Science is only relative, anyway

Berezow and Campbell challenge these assumptions through the rest of the book. Topics include food, conservation, clean energy, vaccines, animal testing, “progressive” Europe, gender differences, education, and journalism. They include many details, but in a style that’s easy to read.

I don’t necessarily agree with Alex & Hank on every point. They seem to have a disdain for anything outside mainstream medicine, for example; I’m in favor of whatever works, regardless of what the FDA says. I was looking for thought-provoking material, though, not just a book to agree with. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

2. How to look stupid while improving my vision

I’m a Krav Maga student, always on the lookout for something that will help me get thrashed less often by my instructors (Robert, Matt, Justin, and Frank are actually the nicest guys around. Just not when we’re sparring). While at Meijer recently I thumbed through a magazine called “Train Hard Fight Easy”. What caught my eye was a short article on how you can improve your visual focus and peripheral vision by practicing with a device called a Brock string.

It really is a string, with several adjustable beads. String lengths vary from 3 feet to 12 feet, with 3 to 5 beads. Should be easy enough to make, but I bought mine from Ronnie and Maggie Dail’s website for about $10 with shipping. This one is nearly 6 feet long and has 5 beads.

To use the string, attach one end to a door knob (I’d suggest two half-hitches). Arrange the beads at various locations along the length, with the nearest one close to your nose. The string should slope down away from you, but not so much that the beads slide out of place. Here’s my setup:

Now try to focus on each bead individually. The one closest to your nose should appear to have two strings heading away in a V-shape, if you’re focused properly. The other beads will seem to have strings in an X-shape converging on the bead when you’re in focus. Move your head slightly left, right, up, and down and try to keep focused on the bead. Also, keep the nearest bead as close to your nose as you can, as shown here:

(note that I look even more dorky now than I do, well, all other times)

It’s hard to describe exactly what this looks like; watch this YouTube video with helpful camera angles to get a better idea. I found I could see the V and X shapes without any trouble, but it did seem a good eye exercise to slowly change focus from one bead to the next. No silver bullet for Krav Maga sparring here, so I’ll need to keep looking. Or maybe just keep practicing and taking my lumps (and punches).

3. A new twist on an old genre makes fun reading

Who knows how many mystery novels have been written over the last century or two. My engineer brain likes crime fiction in particular, trying to figure out who did it while enjoying the character development. I look for stories written from a new angle. Part of it's just the fun of a new perspective, but since I'm also working on ideas for writing my own fiction, I'm curious to see how other writers do it successfully.

Becky and I were looking around in Target recently. While nosing around in the book section (where else?), I spotted Dog On It, by Spencer Quinn. The main characters are Bernie, a private investigator, and his dog, Chet. Bernie is hired to check out a missing persons case that's not at all what it initially seems to be.

What makes Quinn's story so interesting is that it's narrated by the dog. Chet leads us through the investigation while having multiple adventures of his own. His observations on human and dog behavior are clever. I laughed out loud at so many passages in the book, my sides still hurt (could be from my last Krav Maga class, though).

Quinn has written at least five other stories in this series, and I plan to read them all!

Habits, Calm, and Starlings

Habits, Calm, and Starlings

1. You might not get rid of that bad habit, but you might be able to change it

Charles Duhigg has written a fascinating book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. I listened to the audio version (10.5 hours). Books that have sociological or psychological flavor always grab my attention; I guess it's a habit.

Have you ever considered how of what you do each day is on auto-pilot? The brain likes to function that way, since the more stuff that's on auto-pilot, the more brain power is available for thinking about new or unusual problems. Habits have three components, a cue, a routine, and a reward. It doesn't matter whether the habit is "good" or "bad", it works the same way.

There's a "Golden Rule" of habits: to change a habit you don't like, keep the same cue and reward, but insert a new routine. Tony Dungy took this approach when coaching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Indianapolis Colts. He knew a team could be faster than its opponent by running plays automatically, without thinking each one through. Dungy worked with the existing cues (watching how the other team was setting up for a play) and rewards (executing plays well and beating the other team). His success came from training players so thoroughly on how to react to certain cues that they just ran the "routine" for certain cues. The approach took years of work, but eventually paid off with the Colts' Super Bowl win in 2007.

Duhigg uses a number of examples to show how harnessing the power of habits leads to success. Examples include swimmer Michael Phelps, aluminum company Alcoa, retailing giant Target, civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, and megachurch pastor Rick Warren.

2. A calm body is a calm mind

While looking around in the library earlier this month, I spotted a book by Gayatri Devi, M.D.: A Calm Brain: Unlocking Your Natural Relaxation System. Brain and body functioning (and the improvement thereof) is another gripping topic for me, so I interrupted my other books-in-progress to read this one.

Remember how it feels when you're alert and focused, getting things done but not anxious about it? That's actually a delicate balancing act between your body's alerting and relaxing systems. The frontal lobes in your brain are trying to rule with logic and thinking, while your "core" brain is subconsciously monitoring conditions around you. The core brain manages your instincts and triggers your "gut feelings".

Problems can start when we feed our attentiveness to the detriment of relaxing. Our culture of multitasking just makes it worse; it's possible to be so engaged with email, surfing the web, or writing blog posts that we literally can't relax. The core brain tends to get overruled by the frontal lobes anyway, so the problem can quickly get worse. It's not the sort of thing we can think our way out of.

We all have stress in our lives, but some level of stress is actually beneficial. It can help us fight off disease conditions, defend against pain, provoke creativity, and spark enhanced performance in tasks. The key is to manage the stress, not try to eliminate all of it.

At the end of the book Devi lists a number of ways you can promote more calm in your life. Several I noted to work on are: seeking long-lasting, close ties with other people, cutting down on multitasking, and never compromising on sleep (she has an entire chapter on sleep - it's truly a wonder drug!).

3. Starlings will eat all your bird food, if you let them

I love birds, and have enjoyed keeping bird feeders for years. Starlings are a problem, though. They’re the locusts of the avian world, showing up by the dozen to swarm over my feeder. Our other guests (chickadees, finches, sparrows, cardinals, nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, junkos, mourning doves) have better manners and don’t eat so much. The main thing is, I just don’t like starlings, and prefer they eat somewhere else.

I did some Googling and discovered that starlings don’t like obstacles. That hatched an idea (pun sort of intended). Lowe’s has plastic fence material with 2”x2” openings. Seemed large enough for the little birds to jump through, but too large for starlings. Our cardinals and doves mostly feed on the ground, so they’re unaffected. I bought some of the fencing and rigged up a barrier around the feeder, using another shepherd’s hook and zip ties (see photo).

My initial try actually worked too well. I had the fencing rigged so all the feeder perches were obstructed. The chickadees didn’t care about that (they seem fearless in general), hardly slowing down when passing through the fence. The starlings were also keeping away, but so were the nice birds. My tweak was to slide the fencing up so the bottom perches are exposed. I figured the little birds would land there, but the starlings would still see an obstacle, and that seems to be the case. Just from watching how much bird feed we go through in a typical day, it appears the likeable birds are still feeding but without company from pesky starlings. A few starlings have figured out how to feed through the fencing, but I haven’t seen nearly as many lately. Cool!