The Power of Words

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If you've ever doubted the power of words you should read this letter, written to the family of Frank Ciulla, a victim of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing,  by the Connells, the family who discovered his body on their land. It was written after the Ciullas had visited the Connells several years after the bombing. Here's a small excerpt:

It was just wonderful to meet you face-to-face. We needed to talk to you all too. As you said, we will get to know Frank through you. He was never just "another victim" to us. For months we called him "Our Boy." Then we found out his name. He was "Our Frank." Please believe me we were deeply affected by his coming to us. We will never forget our feelings seeing him there, a whole-bodied handsome man, the life gone out of him in a twinkling. We were just past trying to grasp the whole thing. 

Then to have to leave him there, but he was visited throughout the night by police and a doctor and we went back again in the morning. He was a fellow man and he had come to us in the saddest way. So now through him we have you in our hearts, and please, we want you all to know that you are welcome here whenever you come. 

The Connell Family

 

Frankencells

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Remember the hullabaloo over stem cell research back in the early days of this century? The issue wasn't really stem cell research in and of itself, but the use of human embryos as a source of stem cells. Well, our ever-curious scientists decided to go to the other end of the spectrum to see if they harvest stem cells from dead people:

Death will come for us all one day, but life will not fade from our bodies all at once. After our lungs stop breathing, our hearts stop beating, our minds stop racing, our bodies cool, and long after our vital signs cease, little pockets of cells can live for days, even weeks. Now scientists have harvested such cells from the scalps and brain linings of human corpses and reprogrammed them into stem cells.

In other words, dead people can yield living cells that can be converted into any cell or tissue in the body.

(H/T to Lex for the link).

Social Media Political Derangement Syndrome

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Every four years we have to suffer through a Presidential campaign, but in the era of social media the agony has truly been heightened to an almost unbearable level. Not only do we have to listen to candidates and pundits, now we have to bear our (supposed) friends sharing their own, often wharped, views about the various candidates and their supporters. I have to admit I kind of snapped this morning and wrote this on Facebook:

An interpretation of modern American politics based on extensive reading of my friends' Facebook and Twitter posts – in four paragraphs:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Teach a Republican to fish and he hires all the non-union fishermen, pays them minimum wage, decimates the fishery, ships the entire catch to the Cayman Islands and has them stored in a secret freezer. He keeps a small portion in the states to live off of day-to-day and pays capital gains on it. Fires all the fishermen and figures out a way to get more fish in China. Blame the lack of fish in American waters on the Godless Democrats' turning us into a non-Christian nation and hope that no one has actually read the Bill of Rights.

Teach a Democrat to fish and he establishes a Department of Fishing, writes 3,425 pages of regulations, hires all the fishermen, pays them so-so wages but gives them killer pensions, accidentally decimates the fishery and taxes the cattlemen to help pay for the clean up. When they get mad he starts talking about rising tides lifting all boats, but gets distracted and starts blaming the Republicans for global warming. 

The Green Party candidate doesn't eat fish so he fries up some tofu and calls the Democrat and Republican mean names.

Admittedly it's not very witty, nor very inciteful, but it made me feel better. Sure, I could turn off social media, but then I'd lose out on this unprecedented opportunity to learn exactly how wharped many of my "friends" are.

I’ll Do as I Do, Not as I Say I’ll Do

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During a presentation I gave last week at ConvergeSouth I mentioned that, in my experience, making decisions based on survey results was a dangerous proposition. For instance, when I was working in a marketing department we'd constantly ask customers if they'd be willing to spend $x on a product they'd say "yes" and then we'd send them an offer with that exact price and a rare few would actually buy it. In other words we learned real fast to follow the money and largely ignore what people said they'd spend.

Here's the thing: we knew people weren't lying to us, but it was a lot easier for them to say they'd spend money than to actually spend it. In essence they were lying to themselves. According to this interview on Freakonomics most of us are very good at lying to ourselves:

DUBNER: I wouldn’t say you’re wrong there, but let me also say this: we lie to ourselves all the time. We’re constantly trying to predict how we’re going to behave in the future when something happens.  A tax hike.  A price change.  A Presidential election.  And we’re almost always wrong.  Take something as simple as driving. The American Automobile Association is constantly surveying drivers.  They’ll say something like, “if gas prices stay as high as they are now, or go up, will you drive less?”  And people always say, “oh, absolutely!”  And then you look at the data and they do not drive less.  Here’s Joel Weichsel with AAA:

Joel WEICHSEL: “I think there may be people who lie to themselves, or imagine that they’re doing something that they’re not.  But I think there are also people who maybe forget about things that they’ve done.  

RYSSDAL: “Forget?”  He’s being very polite and saying “we’re lying to ourselves.”  That’s what he’s saying.

DUBNER: It’s a synonym.  But I will say this: I don’t believe it’s necessarily intentional. One problem with any survey is that the power of suggestion comes into play.

The full interview can be heard here and it's worth a listen:

A Doctor Describes Losing a Daughter to Cancer

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Reading about anyone's loss of a child to cancer is terrible, but somehow reading a doctor's account of losing his adult daughter to an incredibly aggressive malignancy makes it seem even worse:

Her oncologist arrives in a few minutes.  Comparison of chest C-T’s shows that the undifferentiated tumor in her lung has doubled in size in less than three weeks.  The hopelessness of the situation is discussed with her husband, and a decision is made with the assistance of a hospice physician to provide comfort care.  She receives ice chips, and morphine is administered.  About four hours later, she enters a peaceful coma and dies at 6:30 am on August  29, just 20 days after the initial MRI demonstrated the brain tumors.  

The purpose of this brief chronicle is not to criticize the practice of medicine. While I had several  disagreements with non-physicians, the physicians who cared for my daughter, without exception, were very understanding and gave freely of their time.  Each did everything possible  to deal with her  enormously  aggressive malignancy.   Rather, I have attempted to relate  the experiences of  a father/physician as he watches his daughter die of cancer.   Her course was a testament to the limitations of medical care.  In this era of molecular biology, the most valuable medication was morphine, a drug that has been available for almost 200 years.

Although painful, I am capable of describing the events of my daughter’s illness.  When I try to describe my despair and grief, words fail.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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Remember "It's the economy stupid?" The first President Bush certainly does, because that phrase famously summed up the soon-to-be President Clinton's campaign focus in beating him. Here's the thing – Clinton ended up getting too much credit for the economic recovery that occurred during his first term, and Bush-the-first didn't get enough credit for making the tough and politically disastrous policy decisions that kick started the recovery in the first place.

Why bring that up now? Because it's interesting to see how President Obama is blamed for things that he literally has no control over, like high gas prices, but gets no credit for things he had a direct hand in, like an improving economy. He is also being criticized for budget deficits that were largely made necessary by the policy decisions of his predecessor, President Bush-the-second. Could Obama have made policy choices that kept the deficit from growing as much as it did in his first term? Sure, but many economists think that would have been much worse for the economic recovery we're seeing. In fact some argue that his policies weren't aggressive enough – that larger short-term deficits might have led to a faster, steeper economic recovery. 

What further complicates the issue in this election cycle is that President Obama came into office as the US economy was in an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime freefall. In the same way that it's difficult to prove a negative, it's also difficult for a sitting President prove that the economy could have been in worse shape if his policies had been different. Quite frankly it's easier for a challenger to say that things could/should have been much better and that it's the President's fault that they aren't; he literally doesn't have to prove it since it's a matter of opinion.  That's how Clinton took out Bush Sr. and that's how Romney is trying to take out Obama. 

It remains to be seen if the recent economic improvement will be enough to convince voters that Obama is worth keeping around. If it's not, Romney will inheret a growing economy and unless he really screws up he'll be given far more credit for it than he deserves.

We’re #79!

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According to this website Wake Forest University is the 79th most expensive university in the country based on total cost (Tuition + Room and Board + Required Fees). Wake's total for the 2012-13 school year was $54,860. Other notables:

#1 – Sarah Lawrence College ($61,236)
#4 – Columbia University ($58,742)
#7 – Dartmouth University ($57,996)
#9 – University of Chicago ($57,711)
#36 – Boston College ($56,516)
#39 – Georgetown University ($56,362)
#48 – Penn ($56,106)
#53 – Duke University ($55,871)
#67 – Yale ($55,300)
#73 – Brown University ($55,016)
#78 – Notre Dame ($54,905)
#84 – Stanford ($54,508)
#85 – Harvard ($54,496)
#92 – University of Richmond ($53,970)
#98 – University of Miami ($53,102)

Know Whereof You Speak

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This video of a woman calling Obama a communist, and then not being able to explain why he was a communist, was an uncomfortable reminder of what it feels like to be caught using words beyond your comprehension when debating/arguing/philosophizing. When I was in high school I accused my brother of being a fascist and he realized pretty quickly that I didn't actually know what a fascist was, and so asked me to explain why he was a fascist.

Oops.

Let's just say I've done a much better job since then of not using adjectives I don't actually understand.

Minds Like Empty Rooms

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Harper Lee, in a letter to Oprah Winfrey about her love of reading books, talks about working to learn and having things happen on soft pages:

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.

And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up — some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal.