The Ideal Female Body Type Throughout History

(This post is a companion to an article I wrote about the medias impact on young women’s body image and sense of self from a couple of weeks ago.  I had an interesting conversation about the topic, and had a few additional thoughts on this important matter. For a more in-depth discussion of this topic, please reference that post.)

Throughout human history, the standard for female beauty has been difficult to achieve and has been shaped by social context.  As expected, those women with greater resources and socioeconomic status were more easily able to conform to these societal ideals.

In colonial America, the harsh environment and difficult way of life required that every family member contribute to the family circle’s survival.  The labor intensive environment in which these people lived called for large families as children could help tend the land and assist with chores.  During this time period, societies valued fertile, physically strong, and active women.

In the 19^th century however, society’s ideal beauty standard shifted towards women with incredibly small waists and large bosoms.  Society placed great emphasis on female fragility, thus making them a more promising candidate for marriage.  The great lengths that women went to during this time period to conform to society’s beauty standard (corsets, rib removal) had consequences however.  Women of this time period were sickly and prone to headaches – the fine art of fainting was taught in finishing schools throughout the country.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, we saw the rise of the feminist movement as women began to eschew corsets and complicated dresses for pants.  These women cut their hair short, bound their breasts, took up smoking, and became activists fighting for women’s suffrage.  Flappers as you may have heard them described were considered fashionable during this time period.  Their look was angular and thin – boyish looking in many regards.

Mid-century – during WWII – the country’s ideal beauty standards changed once again.  The nation’s men were overseas fighting, and women went to work en masse in industry and manufacturing, a la Rosie the Riveter.  Society reverted to valuing strong, physically able women.  Once the war was over however, things shifted again to standards that emphasized traditional family and gender roles.  Women went back to wearing skirts and dresses and makeup.  The style icon of this time period was Marilyn Monroe (you may have heard of her).

The tumultuous 60’s changed our notions of beauty once again.  Once again, women were fighting for equality, both at home and in the workplace.  The introduction of the birth control pill afforded women a much greater degree of sexual freedom than their prior contemporaries experienced.  As before, this decade of activism idealized women that were thin and had boyish bodes like Twiggy.

While there is a pattern during the previous time periods, things get much more complicated the closer we get to modern times.

Current Media Influence on Society’s Ideal Beauty Standard

While previous generations had a much greater understanding of self-sacrifice and sense of community, people in the U.S. have become accustomed to the notion that we should have it all.  People expect to have a perfect family, career, and home life, completely unrealistic notions that defy logic.  The modern media inundates women with conflicting messages about what is beautiful, making it difficult for the modern woman (young women in particular) to choose a role model.  The 1990’s saw icons made of waif-supermodel Kate Moss and Barbie-doll incarnate Pamela Anderson.  It is extremely rare for rail-thin women to have naturally large breasts, but that didn’t stop Mattel from creating a physiologically impossible model of the idealized female form.

Twenty-five years ago, the average fashion model was 8% thinner than the average woman.  While America has gotten fatter during this timespan, that number is now 23%.

No discussion of body image and the media would be complete without referencing Becker’s landmark study comparing rates of eating disorders before and after the arrival of television in Fiji in 1995 (Becker, Burwell, & Gilman, Eating behaviors and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls, 2002). Ethnic Fijians have traditionally encouraged healthy appetites and have preferred a more rotund body type, which signified wealth and the ability to care for one’s family (Becker & Hamburg, Culture, media, and the eating disorders, 1996). Strong cultural identity is thought to be protective against eating disorders; there was only one case of anorexia nervosa reported on the island prior to 1995. However, in 1998, rates of dieting skyrocketed from 0 to 69%, and young people routinely cited the appearance of the attractive actors on shows like “Beverly Hills 90210″ and “Melrose Place” as the inspiration for their weight loss (Becker, Burwell, & Gilman, Eating behaviors and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls, 2002). For the first time, inhabitants of the island began to exhibit disordered eating.

Causality

As modern American society revolves around corporations selling goods and services to the populace, the motivation to push a beauty ideal in line with the products they sell is enormous.  If you don’t service an existing need, then you need to create one.  The methods available to companies to hawk their products are omnipresent and incredibly effective.  It has become almost entirely impossible for a woman to pick up a magazine of any sort without being subjected to advertisements featuring heavily altered photographs shot in studio lighting hawking the latest beauty trends.

I must admit that I am shocked that most women don’t question why fashion trends come into being and why they change on a seasonal cycle each year.  I am also shocked that women younger than 20 spend $87 on facial cream that helps to smooth pores and prevent wrinkles.

The pattern throughout history makes it clear that women of any age (and people in general) are susceptible to outside influences when defining their sense of self.  The pressure to conform has become ever greater in a society that creates competition (both real and imagined) amongst peers.  It is the combination of these two factors – powerful, outside influences and sense of competition – that are at the root of this matter.  As a society we must work with young girls from an early age to help foster a sense of self-worth that arises from innate potential rather than superficial conventions.

Until the modern woman is able to see the beauty within herself, she will never be beautiful to the outside world.

Works Cited

Becker, A., & Hamburg, P. (1996). Culture, media, and the eating disorders. Harvard Review Psychiatry, 163-167.

Becker, A., Burwell, R., & Gilman, S. (2002). Eating behaviors and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls. Psychiatry, 509-514.

Mourn the American Dream

There is an idea that is central to the core of the American idea, and every institution is framed around it: that anyone has the opportunity to make it and that the only limits are your own.  As America was forming itself as an independent country, this ideal was true for the significant majority of Americans. The problem however, is that this is no longer true for modern-day Americans despite the declarations of moronic politicians and partisan think tanks.  A recent study of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility than we do. Early America relied upon inequalities such as race, sex, and sexual orientation as means to determine Americans’ fates.  While these conventions still exist, they are becoming increasingly antiquated.

There’s a very strong disconnect between the mass populace and the aristocracy in America.  In the United States, the emerging aristocracy remains staunchly convinced that it is not an aristocracy, that it’s the result of hard work and talent. (Marche, 2011)

“If you’re not rich, blame yourself.” – Herman Cain (huge douche)

In that old view, being rich was proof of hard work and lack of money proof of indolence or worse.  (Reich, 2011)  The old view was also that great wealth trickled downward – that the rich made investments in jobs and growth that benefitted all of us. So even if we doubted we’d be wealthy, we still gained from the fortunes made by a few.  But that view, too, has lost its sheen. Nothing has trickled down. The rich have become far richer over the last three decades but the rest of us haven’t. In fact, median incomes are dropping.  The recent downward mobility has been concentrated among those earning between $34,500 and $89,300 a year, while those in the top 10 percent of income earners ($122,880 or more) saw less negative shocks during this same period.

Wall Street moguls are doing better than ever – after having been bailed out by the rest of us. But the rest of us are doing worse. CEOs are hauling in more than 300 (650 in my case) times the pay of average workers (up from 40 times the pay only three decades ago), as average workers lose jobs, wages, and benefits… (Reich, 2011)

The old adage that I’m sure many of you have heard from your parents – that you must work hard, study hard, and stay late and you will be able to become a doctor or a banker (making you a dick), or anything you want to be, has become patently false in our society. You will note that I said in our society, as that adage still proves to be true in countries in which the system has much lower levels of corruption, and much higher levels of parental involvement and educational focus (such as South Korea).  Those in positions of power will frequently take the standpoint that the cycles of poverty in this country are related to personal weaknesses rather than a system that has evolved to benefit the rich and powerful and perpetuate an entirely different cycle of wealth. Those on the Right that take this stance will often label those of us less fortunate as either bad people or suffering from some sort of moral failing.

The New Reality

The majority of new college graduates are unemployed or working jobs that don’t require a degree.  In 2011, roughly 85% of college graduates moved back home and are saddled with an average student loan debt of $27,200. Our stagnant job growth has led to an unemployment rate of over 18% for young people.  Is it possible that nearly one out of five young people are bad people?  It is certainly possible, but not bad in any way that would prevent them from landing a job.  The sad reality facing recent graduates is that the vast majority of them will be underemployed for the duration of their lifetimes.   The Great Compression has continued to erode America’s middle class for the past 30 years, and the recent financial crises, unnecessary foreign wars, and corruption have only sped up the process.

The People

Naturally, everyone is playing the blame game.  The Tea Partiers blamed the government for excessive spending. The Occupy Wall Street movement blames the financial industry.  The rich blame the poor and the poor blame the rich, etc.  What these groups are failing to see in their myopic views of the world is that the system currently in place is the real culprit. Each of these groups has identified a component of the system, but rather than laying the blame upon one aspect of the system, they must acknowledge the fact that all of these components deserve some share of the blame, some more than others. What these groups are really mourning is the arrival of a new social order, one that is no longer defined by opportunity, but by pre-existing structures of wealth.

Even as American society has become more unequal and social mobility has declined, the myth of mobility maintains its strength. A recent survey in the New York Times showed that 80 percent of Americans polled believe it is possible for anyone to move from poverty to great wealth. The same question posed in 1983 produced an affirmative answer from less than 60 percent.

The extent of these illusions is no doubt overstated in polls that tend to register the most immediate impressions of individuals who repeat what they have heard endlessly on radio, television and the rest of the media. Moreover the ideological role of individualism in America, along with the influence of advertising and the media, is not new. Even so, the apparent disconnect between these conceptions of social mobility and a reality that moving in the opposite direction is significant.

It is hard to imagine even any temporary regression back to the days of the swelling American middle class. The forces of inequality are simply too powerful and the forces against inequality too weak. But at least we can end the hypocrisy. In ten years, the next generation will no longer have the faintest illusion that the United States is a country with equality of opportunity. The least they’re entitled to is some honesty about why. (Marche, 2011)

Works Cited

Marche, S. (2011, December 13). We Are Not All Created Equal. Retrieved December 31, 2011, from Esquire: http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/american-class-system-0112

Reich, R. (2011, October 31). OWS has transformed public opinion. Retrieved December 27, 2011, from Salon: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/31/how_ows_has_transformed_public_opinion/singleton/

Standards.

Throughout my entire college education, I was taught the importance of standards.  I learned about the tremendous benefits of having, implementing, and adhering to standards.  They enable anyone to work from a common base and understanding, and this enables people to create and share things that benefit everyone.  If standards are so great, I began to wonder why they weren’t implemented everywhere.  While that is a separate post, one thing that struck me as having the potential to drastically alter life for everyone on the planet, was a set of standards for communication.

Communication is fundamental to the human experience.  It is a way of sharing ideas and clarifying understanding between parties.  Through communication, ideas become objects of reflection, refinement, discussion, and amendment.

The communication process also helps build a meaning permanence for ideas and make them public. Listening to a person’s thoughts and explanation about their reasoning gives someone the opportunity to develop their own understandings of the information presented.  Language, or its effective equivalent, is very important in society, as it is a means of social construction, providing the symbolic resources for members of a community to negotiate meanings and representations of their world.

I am going to approach this from a technological and mathematical perspective, as that is my background. One of the reasons that I love mathematics is because the mathematics that I practice are the same mathematics that others practice in Indonesia, Turkey, Russia, Brazil, China, or Australia. Mathematics is the only means that humans have to communicate with one another on a global scale universally. There is something very powerful about that idea, and that is what got me thinking about this topic in a more meaningful way. Clearly, the technology sector is littered with standards, and for very good reasons. Standards make sure that everyone is on the same page, working with the same information, and working towards their goal using the same tools from a common base.  This enables innovation without breaking existing systems.  The Internet is built upon standards such as TCP/IP, CSS, HTTP, etc.  Technologically, I am able to communicate with someone anywhere else in the world in near real time. This is where we run into an issue however, as my message may be delivered, but it is likely that it would not be understood. It is at this point of the communication process breaks down, and I ask myself why.

There are many different ways in which humans communicate across the globe. There are numerous languages and dialects throughout different regions that prevent the sharing of ideas between parties. Not only is this detrimental to humans as a species, but it also creates an uneven playing field.  Humans are being held back from capitalizing upon the talents and resources of the collective.

The lack of communication standards prevents the sharing of ideas amongst peoples. Sure, there are ways to combat this – such as through translation (either through technology, or through an intermediary) – but these are fraught with inaccuracies. Neither of those methods offers a 100% accurate translation of the original idea, as there may be translation issues, or an inability to convey nonverbal information that derived through body language or delivery from the original sender of the message. Inaccuracy is the enemy of effective communication, and can change an idea. The impact of this is that it can separate people into different categories and classes in society. This can be as simple as someone calling me a “Geek” (which I relish), or as significant as someone in the Arab world being falsely identified as a member of Al Qaeda or being a Western Sympathizer.  Miscommunication, (often based upon assumptions), is something that we should be striving to eradicate. It prevents the progress of people and society.

I am not naïve enough to think that a standard form of communication would even the playing field (that is a whole different post), but the ability for any individual throughout the world to be able to effectively communicate with any other individual is immensely powerful. There would also be other benefits to society, as standards would lower costs for products and services.  Economies would benefit from increased efficiency, better collaboration, and true, worldwide competition.  It would also allow the creation of new things, as people are able to collaborate with a much wider base of people.  The amount of innovation throughout the world in all sectors would skyrocket.

There are tremendous impediments towards the adoption of a communication standard however. There are cultural issues, and there would certainly be claims from groups of people about respecting their heritage and what role their language and communication plays in that. Those are valid points, but I am of the opinion that we are on the slow path to homogenization throughout the world anyway.  If you extrapolate the path that we are on out 2000 years, I don’t see how you could deny it.  Naturally, this would carry over into the political realm, and it would create tremendous tides of nationalism throughout the world. Each country would jockey over whose method of communication should be standardized, and it would no doubt turn into an ugly debate.  Once again, false constructs, debated-ly necessary, prevent us from reaching our true potential.

I know that adoption of a standard form of communication will never happen in my lifetime. I imagine that in the future when humans are forced to leave the earth, and their home effectively becomes their Transport, this is when we will begin to see a shift towards a communication standard for mankind.  It can’t come soon enough in my opinion.

Having just read USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s book Self Comes to Mind, I began to think about what it is that makes a mind.  I needed to develop an understanding of consciousness that went from an abstract concept to a fully fleshed out idea.  I picked up this book after reading an article he had written in Discover magazine called Of Two Minds, hoping to determine how consciousness and the mind are related.  I am happy to say that these questions were answered in this book, and helped me to further my understanding of how the brain works.  Given my proclivity for technology as well, I got to thinking a little about how the brain and modern CPU design are similar, and what shortcomings we will encounter when trying to create an A.I. construct.  Read on for my thoughts on what consciousness is and how it relates to technology.

Organisms make minds out of the activity of special cells known as neurons.  Neurons are sensitive to changes around them; they are excitable (an interesting property that they share with muscle cells).  Thanks to a fibrous prolongation known as the axon, and to the end region of the axon known as the synapse, neurons can send signals to other cells, often quite far away.  The number of neurons in each human brain is on the order of billions, and the synaptic contacts that the neurons make among themselves number in the trillions. Neurons are organized in small microscopic circuits, whose combination constitutes progressively larger circuits, which in turn form networks or systems. Minds emerge when the activity of the small circuits is organized across large networks so as to compose momentary patterns.  The parallels between the structure of the mind and that of the latest generation of CPU’s is quite interesting.  The billions of transistors/neurons in these systems communicate across the system, in ways that are specific to the task at hand.  This isn’t new, but the shift that CPU’s have taken (especially with AMD’s Fusion lineup/Intel’s Sandy Bridge) towards forming these transistors into highly functional and specialized networks is an interesting development.  This specialization is similar to the different regions of the brain being able to perform certain tasks extremely well.  I think that sometime within the next 20 years, the only thing preventing an A.I. from achieving parity from human consciousness will be a limit to our programming capabilities and our ability to provide sensory input.  It is important to note that I don’t believe an A.I. can achieve consciousness as we currently define it.

Conscious minds result from the smoothly articulated operation of several, often many, brain sites. The ultimate consciousness product occurs from those numerous brain sites at the same time and not in one site in particular, much as the performance of a symphonic piece does not come from the work of a single musician or even from a whole section of an orchestra.  The oddest thing about the upper reaches of a consciousness performance is the conspicuous absence of a conductor before the performance begins, although as the performance unfolds, a conductor comes into being. For all intents and purposes, a conductor is now leading the orchestra, although the performance has created the conductor-the self-not the other way around. The true marvel is that the score and the conductor become reality only as life unfolds.  The grand symphonic piece that is consciousness encompasses the foundational contributions of the brain stem, forever hitched to the body, and the wider-than-the-sky imagery created in the cooperation of cerebral cortex and subcortical structures, all harmoniously stitched together, in ceaseless forward motion, interruptible only by sleep, anesthesia, brain dysfunction, or death.

The patterns, or maps, of the mind represent things or events outside the brain, either in the body or in the external world. Ultimately, consciousness allows us to experience maps as images, to manipulate those images, and to apply reasoning to them. Maps are constructed when we interact with objects, such as a person, a machine, or a place, from the outside of the brain towards its interior. Maps are also constructed when we recall objects from inside our brain’s memory banks. The construction of maps never stops, even in our sleep. The human brain maps whatever object sits outside it, whatever action occurs outside it, and all the relationships that objects and actions assume in time and space, relative to each other and to the mother ship known as the organism. The human brain is a mimic of the irrepressible variety. If you think of brain maps as equivalent to their parchment brethren, you begin to realize that the lines in a brain map are not drawn with a pencil; they are, rather, the result of the momentary activity of some neurons and the inactivity of others.

Brain maps are not static like those of classical cartography. Brain maps are mercurial, changing from moment to moment to reflect the changes that are happening in the neurons that feed them, which in turn reflect changes in the interior of our body and the world around us. The changes in brain maps also reflect the fact that we ourselves are in constant motion. We come close to objects or move away from them; we can touch them and then not; we can taste the wine, then the taste goes away; we hear music, but then it comes to an end; our own body changes with different emotions, and different feelings ensue. The corresponding brain maps change accordingly. A spectacular consequence of the brain’s incessant and dynamic mapping is the mind.  The mapped patterns constitute what we, as conscious creatures, have come to know as sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes, pains, pleasures, and the like-in brief, images. The images in our minds are the brain’s momentary maps of everything and of anything, inside our body and around it, concrete as well as abstract, actual or previously recorded in memory. Perception, in whatever sensory modality, is the result of the brain’s cartographic skill.

Because brain maps are the substrate of mental images, map making brains have the power of literally introducing the body as content into the mind. But body-to-brain mapping has a peculiar aspect: although the body is the thing being mapped, it never loses contact with the mapping entity, the brain. Under normal circumstances they are hitched to each other from birth to death. Just as important, the mapped images of the body have a way of permanently influencing the very body they originate in.  The brain’s pervasive, exhaustive mapping of the body covers not only what we usually regard as the body proper, but also all of the bodies spying outposts, such as the tactile elements of the skin, the ears, and the eyes.

Emotions are complex, largely automated programs of actions concocted by evolution.  The actions are carried out in our bodies, from facial expressions and postures to changes in viscera and internal milieu.  Feelings of emotion, on the other hand, are composite perceptions of what happens in our body and mind when we are emoting.  As far as the body is concerned, feelings are images of actions rather than the actions themselves. While emotions are actions accompanied by ideas and certain modes of thinking, emotional feelings are mostly perceptions of what our bodies do during the emoting, along with perceptions of our state of mind during that same period of time.  Naturally, this would be extremely difficult, likely impossible to replicate in an A.I. entity.  We can provide input about the physical manifestation of the A.I. to its CPU, and we can simulate emotional involvement through programming, but the ability to emote is not something that a man-made A.I. construct can achieve.

Consciousness is a state of mind-if there is no mind, there is no consciousness.  The conscious state of mind is experienced in the exclusive, first-person perspective of each of our organisms, never observable by anyone else. We can amplify this definition by saying the conscious mind states always have content: they are always about something.  Finally, conscious states of mind are possible only when we are awake. Conscious states of mind are felt.

Autobiographies are made of personal memories, the sum total of our life experiences, including the experiences of the plans we have made for the future, specific or vague. Autobiographical selves are autobiographies made conscious.  They draw on the entire compass of our memorized history, recent as well as remote. The social experiences of which we were a part (or wish we were) are included in that history, and so are memories that describe the most refined among our emotional experiences, namely, those that might qualify as spiritual. As lived experiences are reconstructed and replayed, their substance is reassessed and inevitably rearranged, modified minimally or very much in terms of their factual composition and emotional accompaniment.  Entities and events acquire new emotional weights during this process. Some frames of the recollection are dropped on the mind’s cutting room floor, others are restored and enhanced, and others still are so deftly combined either by our wants or by the vagaries of chance that we create new scenes that were never shot.

Systematic discovery of the drama of human existence and its compensations was arguably possible only after the development of full human consciousness-a mind with an autobiographical self that is capable of guiding reflective deliberation and gathering knowledge. Eventually, given the probable intellectual capability of early humans, it is likely that they would have wondered about their status in the universe, something akin to the “where from” and “where to” questions that still haunt us today. That is when the rebellious self comes of age. That is when myths are developed, when social conventions and rules are elaborated, leading to the beginnings of a true morality. I suggest that the engine behind these cultural developments is the homeostatic impulse-the dynamic process by which the brain regulates life. In one form or another, cultural developments respond to detection of an imbalance in the life process, and they seek to correct it.

These thoughts on consciousness leave no room for an A.I. construct to attain consciousness as we currently think of it.  It is too closely tied to biological processes and living organisms.  The best that we can hope to attain is an impressive level of mimicry of the human experience.
Traits and functions rise or fall in the history of life depending upon how much they contribute to the success of living organisms. The most direct way of explaining why consciousness has prevailed in evolution is to say that it has contributed significantly to the survival of the species so equipped. Why then, has consciousness flourished? The answer is a large variety of apparent and not so apparent advantages in the management of life. Even at the simplest levels, consciousness helps the optimization of responses to environmental conditions. As processed in the conscious mind, images provide details about the environment, and those details can be used to increase the precision of a much-needed response, for example, the exact movement that will neutralize a threat or guarantee the capture of prey. The lion’s share of the advantage comes from the fact that the conscious mind infuses the exploration of the world outside the brain with a concern for the first and foremost problem facing the organism: the successful regulation of life.

If I told you to guess what percent of the wealthy individuals in the United States own about 85% of the wealth, what would you guess?

Would you guess 30%? 40%? 50%?

According to a recent report by Edward Wolff from New York University, the top 20% of wealthy individuals own 85% of the wealth in the United States. More importantly, and certainly more shocking, is the fact that the bottom 40% of Americans own very near 0% of the wealth in this country. This is the widest that the gap in wealth has been since before the Great Depression.  It should also be noted that the gap between the richest Americans and the middle class is also growing rapidly.

An interesting study conducted by Michael Norton, the Harvard business school professor, and Dan Ariely, an economics professor at Duke University,  polled 5000 Americans and asked them to estimate the current wealth inequality ratio. The survey’s respondents guessed that the top 20% of Americans owned 60% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% owned 10%. Their estimations are a far cry from reality. The survey also asked respondents to identify what they felt the ideal wealth distribution percentage should be in this country. They responded that the top 20% should own just over 30% of the wealth and the bottom 40% should own about 25% of the wealth in this country. What I find extremely interesting about these results is that they remained fairly constant across the conservative-to-liberal spectrum, and among the rich and poor people. For those of you keeping score, the ideal wealth distribution percentages that they stated are roughly equivalent to the current distribution percentage in Sweden.

The only feasible way to “solve” this inequality is through taxes according to some experts. But in order to do so, “about 50% of the total wealth of the United States would need to be taken from the top 20% and distributed to the remaining 80%,” according to Norton.  The opposition to tax increases is also near-universal across party lines, and amongst the rich and the poor.  While people engage in a form of wealth redistribution through charitable donations, it is nowhere near the scale needed to solve this income disparity between the rich and the poor.

New ways of tackling this issue you need to be found. Although the role of the tax and benefit system in redistributing incomes and in curbing poverty remains important in many countries, data suggests that its effectiveness has gone down in the past 10 years. Trying to patch the gaps in income distribution solely through more social spending is like treating the symptoms instead of the disease.

The largest part of the increase in inequality comes from changes in the labor markets.  This is where governments must focus their attention. Low skilled workers are having a harder time finding jobs, and increasing employment is the best way of reducing poverty. This is easier said than done, but addressing wage disparities and increasing the spending power of the masses would help tremendously.  The Fed has interest rates near zero and corporations are sitting on enormous cash reserves.  A new line of thinking needs to take place at the Federal Reserve and in Washington.  Perhaps the best way for countries to reduce the income gap however,  is through better education. Better education is a powerful way to achieve growth which benefits everyone, not just the upper tier of society.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría warned of the dangers posed by inequality and the need for governments to tackle it.

Growing inequality is divisive. It polarises societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor. Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hard-working people to get the rewards they deserve. Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option.

As companies have begun to dramatically increase their horizontal drilling efforts in the massive shale deposit known as the Marcellus formation, concerns have risen around its environmental impact and what that might mean for people’s health in the area.  The number of wells in this formation has increased from two in 2005 to 210 in 2008, and 768 in 2009 according to numbers from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Fracking Explained

Slickwater Hydraulic Fracturing, also called fracking, is when an enormous volume of freshwater and a mix of proprietary chemicals-varying by the company operating the well-are forced down a well so that the rock breaks, the gas is freed, and the tainted water comes back to the surface.  The process works like this:  a plot of land a few acres in size is cleared and a well is drilled to the shale layer (3,000-5,000ft deep typically).  This shale layer is usually a few hundred feet thick, and a drill drills horizontally for distances as long as a mile.  The company then inserts a steel pipe with holes in it the length of the bore and encases it in cement to help it handle the immense pressure from the water being pumped through it.  The company fracks the shale in 1,000 foot sections, beginning at the far end of the pipe.  Over 1 million gallons of freshwater is pumped through the pipe at pressures as high as 6,000 pounds per square inch which fractures the shale.  Subterranean pressure pushes the fracking mixture back up the pipe, but along the way, this flowback fluid picks up other compounds from the shale such as heavy metals, salt, and naturally radioactive materials.  This fluid is stored near the site in either tanks, or more commonly, holding ponds.  The gas rises through the pipe afterwards.  The water and chemical mixture is about 99.5% water and 0.5% chemical mixture (each company uses a proprietary blend).

The Main Concern

These proprietary blends of chemicals are the main concern.  One would assume that this wouldn’t be a big deal since the companies are required to disclose the chemical types and their concentrations using Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) per OSHA’s requirements.  It is a big deal however, because fracking is excluded from having to meet “underground injection control” provisions from the Safe Drinking Water Act. This exemption, commonly called the Halliburton Loophole, was written into the 2005 Energy Policy Act and was strongly supported by Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton.  Each company uses a mixture of 10-12 chemicals in a well, but they don’t disclose these, claiming that they are the intellectual property of the company.  Halliburton’s mixture contains hydrochloric acid, ethylene glycol, the bacteria killer glutaraldehyde, and other unknown chemicals.  BJ’s Services’ chemical mixture includes methanol and petroleum distillate blend.  These mining companies have made MSDS available for local regulators upon request, but they do not disclose their mixture, how they are used, or what percentage they make up of the blend.  An independent review of the chemicals themselves (one that doesn’t account for any combination of chemicals) by Theo Colborn, a former EPA science advisor found that these chemicals fell into 14 potential health concern categories including lung, liver, blood, kidney, and brain damage.

Timeliness of Action

It is important to determine whether or not this process affects the groundwater in this massive chunk of the U.S.  As you would expect, each side dismisses the claims of the other.  Also as you would expect, each of them have some truth behind their statements.  While there have been no documented cases of groundwater contamination so far, the mining industry’s claim that it is has a spotless record is wholly incorrect.  If you include the entire process, especially the holding ponds, then there are thousands of documented cases of contamination.  There is an EPA study that is being conducted currently with the results expected in 2012.  Given the rapid increase in mining of this area, it could potentially be too late.

The average American doesn’t realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists” to protect incumbent interests. It’s shocking how the system actually works.

Those who know me are likely to assume this is another one of my “people are ignorant” diatribes, but this quote is from Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google.  His title and position lend his statement more weight than I will ever garner with my opinion, but I am glad that he is stating the truth in a public setting.  He mentions how Washington is set up to protect it’s incumbencies and how this leads them to write laws that further this goal.  Check out the video:

I won’t rant about how this system has ruined our country and disgraced the principles on which it was founded, but I would like to talk a bit about how this statement has surprised people.  When Eric Schmidt gave this interview, the blogosphere picked up on this headline quite quickly.  I don’t think that any rational person could have been surprised by the contents of his statement, as they would already know them to be true.  I think that people were surprised that they were said “out loud” so to speak.  Intelligent people, especially those with managerial experience, know that at a certain level, the entire system is designed to protect itself.  The system does not deal well with those trying to cause it harm, and it usually fights back.  In fact, of the people that I have discussed this issue with in person, all of them were amazed that there was not more fallout.  Our consensus was that the election and the Chilean miner story captivated the press during this timeframe.

I think I need to explain a little bit about how the system of writing laws actually works in our country today.  This explanation should provide you with some insight into why our country has become a shell of its former self.

NPR ran a story the other day titled Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny that breaks down how many of our laws come to be.  The story mentions an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  It has 28 employees, located in Washington D.C. Their senior director of policy, Michael Bowman noted that it isn’t the 28 employees of the organization that write the bills, but rather it is the members of the group.  Those members are a mix of state legislatures and some of the biggest corporations in the U.S.

Most of the bills are written by outside sources and companies, attorneys, [and legislative] counsels,  Bowman says.

It is one organization of many that perform the same function.  Here is how it works:  ALEC is a membership organization.  State legislators pay $50 a year to belong.  Private corporations can join, too. The tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and drug-maker Pfizer Inc. are among the members. They pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Tax records show that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year.  With that money, the 28 people in the ALEC offices throw three annual conferences. The companies get to sit around a table and write “model bills” with the state legislators, who then take them home to their states.

ALEC’s Bowman says that more than 200 of the organization’s bills have become laws in the past year.  When asked if the unofficial drafting process is an effective way to accelerate the legislative process, he replied:

“It’s not an effective way to get a bill passed,” he says. “It’s an effective way to find good legislation.”

The difference between passing bills and “finding” them is lobbying. Most states define lobbying as pushing legislators to create or pass legislation. And that comes with rules. Companies typically have to disclose to the public what they are lobbying for, who’s lobbying for them or how much they are spending on it.

If ALEC’s conferences were interpreted as lobbying, the group could lose its status as a non-profit. Corporations wouldn’t be able to reap tax benefits from giving donations to the organization or write off those donations as a business expense. And legislators would have a hard time justifying attending a conference of lobbyists.

Much about ALEC is private. It does not disclose how it spends its money or who gives it to them. ALEC rarely grants interviews. Bowman won’t even say which legislators are members.  This secrecy should immediately raise your suspicions.  Is it lobbying when private corporations pay money, (a LOT of money), to sit in a room with state lawmakers to draft legislation that they introduce in their home state?

Consider some of the perks for lawmakers from organizations such as ALEC.  They encourage state lawmakers to bring their families to these gatherings, and recent tax records show that the group spent $138,000 just to keep the legislators’ children entertained for the week.  That is disgusting to me, and I hope it is to you as well.  Corporations sponsor golf tournaments on the side, and throw lavish parties at night.  Want to know what the catch is?

The legislators don’t have to declare these as corporate gifts.

This allows the legislators to say that they went to an ALEC conference rather than saying they went to Lake Tahoe on some corporation’s dime.  They also don’t have to declare which corporation sponsored the event.  The process get’s even more suspicious through something called “sponsorships.”  These are a way for the members to avoid paying for their way to these events and the perks they receive.

Michael Bowman initially said state Sen. Pearce, who also accepted a scholarship, would know who paid for his trip. But the Arizona lawmaker said ALEC paid for it. Later, Bowman said Bob Burns, another Arizona state Senator, would know. Burns was in charge of pooling money for the scholarships. He did not respond to NPR’s repeated requests asking where the money came from.

In an office at the Arizona statehouse, a review of records show that not one Arizona legislator who went to the conference reported receiving any gifts of meals, parties, golf outings or banquets tickets from a private corporation.

Does this surprise anyone?  It shouldn’t, as this is what our country has become, both politically and in the business sector.  The entire process has become corrupt and untrustworthy.  It makes me ashamed to be an American.

As Generation Y, henceforth referred to as the Millennials, begins to overtake the workforce, it becomes increasingly important for management to develop the skills necessary to manage this new type of employee.  Some of you may be thinking that they are no different from their contemporaries, but that is a fallacy. It is important to recognize the ways in which this new workforce is different so that managers are better equipped to deal with them.  Millennials represent 41% of the U.S. population – nearly 80 million individuals.  By the year 2014, they will account for half of all U.S. workers.  Why then are so many managers ill-prepared for this generation of employee?

What Are Millennials?

Millennials are those individuals that were born between 1982 and 2000, and are part of what some sociologists have dubbed the “echo-boomer” phenomenon.  They exhibit characteristics that differentiate themselves from their cohorts, such as typically being miles ahead of management on the technology curve.  Millennials are also not shy about boasting of this fact either.  They have an almost inherent familiarity with technology and are not afraid to get their hands dirty with such matters. Privacy issues, especially online, matter a great deal less to this generation than they do to older generations. They display incredibly short attention spans; their attention is frequently diverted by text messaging, Twitter, or Facebook.  Millennials maintain close relationships with their parents, and almost always consult them on important life decisions as well.

The Challenge

Interacting with this new generation of employees has proven to be a challenge for many organizations. Management simply does not understand this new type of employee and the ways that they differ from the preceding generation.  It was found by the U.S. Army that Millennials do not respond well to command-and-control management.  What they found was that the best way to manage them was by leading by example. When management mentors Millennials, they feel empowered and that management cares about them.  When Deloitte conducted some research into Millennials, they found that they were the product of a consumer economy and seen themselves as customers, which means that they expect to be able to influence the terms and conditions of their jobs.  Another interesting aspect of this generation is that their parents are typically extremely involved in their lives. This carries over into the workplace as well. Merrill Lynch found that these “helicopter parents “are helping their adult children negotiate pay and benefits, angle for promotions, and decide which job offers to accept.  Their research found that Millennials needed mentors, flextime, and the reassurances of their parents.

Millennials thrive upon frequent feedback. They’re focused on high achievement, so they want explicit benchmarks for success and a clear path for reaching those benchmarks.  This generation is constantly seeking attention and praise for their efforts.  Millennials often seek this recognition in a group setting rather than in an individual one. Group activities and networking are fundamental to this generation, whether they extend from Little League baseball, or from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Civic engagement is also extremely important to this generation. Within this generation, volunteer rates are soaring and voting rates are rising as well.  This generation of workers wants something in addition to their salaries. They want to feel that what they do has meaning and matters to others.  This sense of civic duty could stem from the terrorist attacks on 9/11, which may have left them with the desire to find substance and meaning in their lives, whether that is on the job or elsewhere. Often times, this generation simply wants to be empowered to do their work in the best way that they see fit.

The push towards hiring a new generation of workers has caused issues for management. This new generation of workers is different from the one that it replaces.  The previous generation of workers could be given a task and set to it with little concern given by management as to whether they would complete the assigned tasks.  Millennials have very short attention spans, and are easily distracted from their work.  The older generation of workers was much more solitary about their work, whereas the Millennials thrive upon teamwork, interaction, and frequent feedback.  The previous generation of workers are content to toil away at their duties, but the new generation of employees seek recognition for their efforts from management.  Perhaps the most important distinction between the Millennials and the previous generation of workers is that the new generation is much more focused upon group activities and networking.

It is these differences that needs to force managers to begin to understand these new employees.  These differences require different management practices in order to maximize the potential of the employee.  At the root of this issue is change, both for the employees and for management.  Since management does not have a clear understanding of the Millennials, it is important that management involves them in the process of devising a solution. This will help management understand this new generation of employees, make their concerns known, and allow for the Millennials to offer their input. This will give the Millennials a stake in the outcome, and dramatically increase the odds that positive changes will occur.

A different possible solution is for the company to implement a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE).  This would allow management to focus upon results rather than on the time put in by employees in order to get the work done.  This would of course, require a shift in the payment system from an hourly wage to a salaried wage.  This change would allow the employees to engage in the collaboration and activities such as networking, which are so important to them, while still getting results from their work. This strategy has proved extremely successful wherever it is implemented.  This isn’t an optimal solution in some cases however, as it can be difficult for management to determine whether or not everyone is contributing.

I was discussing this issue recently with a Professor of mine, and he mentioned the all-too-common management practice of burying their head in the sand.  While marginally comical, in some companies this is a common practice.  The case can be made that in this current job market, this is a viable option.  It is, but only in the short term.  Any company with management that does not know how to interact with, and maximize the strengths of these employees is doomed to failure.  An intelligently ran business will use this cushion provided by the unemployment rate to train their managers about the differences and strengths of the Millennials.  The stakes are high, and the time is now.

I just read Roger Scruton’s article Against Neurotrash (great article) on Big Questions Online.  As scientists begin to use the term Neuro as a prefix to a seemingly endless parade of behaviors and sciences, I think that this merits some discussion.  Genuine science and true religion cannot conflict. Science discovers truths, religion reveals them. But no truth contradicts another, and all truths have a place in the scheme of things, bound each to each in a web of mutual implications. Pope John Paul II believed this, and made a point of emphasizing that the Church has neither the right nor the power to contradict the findings of science. Moreover, if science and religion conflict over some matter, then it is religion, not science that must give way. Of course the Church has not always obeyed that rule. But it is a rule dictated by the laws of thought.

Since the Enlightenment, science has been capturing territory and mindshare from religion, explaining the cosmos and our tiny corner of it in ways that make no mention of a supernatural plan. And for two centuries religion has been gradually giving way, accepting that now this feature of our world, now that one, could be accounted for without reference to God’s purpose. But our situation has begun to change. In recent years a new kind of science has arisen, one with a more aggressive face. It wishes to seize territory in advance of any negotiation, and which often lays waste to the place that it conquers.  I don’t necessarily think that this is always a bad thing, as religious dogmatism has often caused more harm than good.  One only need look at some of the school systems in the United States in order to see that.  Rather than teaching young minds through logic and the scientific method, some schools have begun to teach “supplemental science” that teaches children that man and dinosaurs lived together a la the Flintstones:

DVDs of “Flintstones” reruns. Kids can learn a lot from these. For example, they show how humans and dinosaurs not only lived together back in the day but also demonstrate early man’s ability to harness the power of dinosaurs to improve his own life. Fred Flinstone’s job at the rock quarry is a good example. Dinosaurs there helped him lift and smash rocks for the betterment of all.

Is it any wonder that our school system, already ineffectual due to bad teachers and lack of funding and novel ideas is so bad?

In the article, he mentions the transition of sociobiology to evolutionary psychology and it’s current trend, the amalgamation with all things categorized as neuroscience.  Over time, many tenets of religion have ceded territory and mindshare to this advancement of the sciences.  God, as it were, is losing ground to the chemical and electrical signals of our brain in terms of how we think, how we behave, and how we understand the world around us.  As he mentions,

…the trend is to take any feature of the human condition that suggests that we are especially significant in the eyes of God, dress it up as an “adaptation,” and if possible do a few fMRI scans so as to locate it in some region of the brain and — Hey! Presto! — what looked like a revelation of the supernatural is turned into a piece of neural circuitry.

The scientific community has become enamored with prefixing “neuro” to nearly everything, using fMRI pictures to explain the real reasoning behind human behavior.  We now have neuro-ethics, neuro-aesthetics, neuro-art history and neuro-law; we have neuro-economics, neuro-politics, neuro-jurisprudence and neuro-marketing. There is neuro-musicology, neuro-poetics, neuro-philosophy and even neuro-theology.  I understand that how the brain functions determines our behavior more than most people care to admit, and that is what I find so fascinating about it, but I fear that the speed and force of which it is being applied could damage it’s acceptance.

In the article, Mr. Roger Scruton mentions the “selfish gene” that the philosopher and neurosurgeon Raymond Tallis coined.  The “selfish gene” gained popularity because it established that we were not anything special relative to anything else in the world.  He contends that while traditional theories, such as “Darwin’s are serious and vindicated science; neuro-theories are essentially improvised.”  Explanandum and explanans are both described in question-begging terms, the one as a form of behavior that could be exhibited as well by a baboon as by a person, the other as a neural process that can be picked up, after the event, by a brain scan.  This is the opposite of the careful and deliberate formation of tentative casual laws of Darwin, and these neuro-theories are accepted due to their push towards establishing us as a biological computer.

I am with him so far ultimately, but where I begin to diverge is in his statement that, in regards to what neuroscience can tell us:

What it tells us about the terrain of thought and emotion is not more true than religion but less true.

I find it odd that something with almost no scientific evidence can be relegated to higher status than a competing notion with a growing body of evidence about how human beings operate.  He uses the example of erotic love to make his case stating that the I to I relation of lovers as revealed by a smile or a kiss, cannot be explained as a distinguishing factor by neuroscience.  I would agree that it hasn’t been explained yet, and that the pair-bonding that is induced by the release of oxytocin into the cortex during intercourse doesn’t answer this question, but I also think that we are still very early in this science.  I expect new ideas, better methods, and improved technology to continue to teach us more about how we operate, and why we behave as we do.

He ends his article with the statement that people hold onto their religion because it “protects and endorses the belief that science might appear to steal from us, but which it can never steal in fact: the belief in human uniqueness.”  I think he’s right about why some people hang onto their religious beliefs, but I also think that long into the future, human uniqueness will have a much different definition.

NOTE: This post was composed on my phone so my formatting options were limited at this time.

Please discuss your thoughts on the matter as I welcome your opinion about the shift towards neuroscience explaining us as more like biological computers than special creatures in the universe.

To realize a mistake.  To not lie.  To love one another.  To not kill.  Those are very simple things, but these times won’t allow for them.  There is no green on this planet, even though we want it… we want it so badly.  A place where we can live peaceful days, with no wars and no stealing, a sacred place where people can live as people.  Yes.. there…  That place is called

Paradise

As I have sat back for the past year and analyzed my life and observed the world around me, I had a funny feeling the other day. It seemed that the world had begun to spin faster recently, and that this has contributed to an odd sense of turmoil and disorder in the world. I have become accustomed to the lack of involvement by the populace, both mentally and politically, but I do not believe it has ever been as pronounced as it is currently. I don’t postulate that this has happened without cause or reason, and in the future I intend to post my thoughts on the matter in order to encourage a conversation around the issues that may have caused this indifference.

I began this blog with a heavy heart. I knew that starting it would force me to address the reason why I stopped writing over a year ago, and that issue has only become harder to deal with over time… I digress, the point of this site is to write about the issues and ignore personal matters.

I used to blog on multiple platforms over the years, and during this interval a lot of things have changed.  The most impactful of these was the closing of my initial blogging platform Vox, of which I was a beta tester more years ago than I care to remember.  I’ve used, and maintained, other blogging services as well, but I was never happy with the level of customization that they offered. Many times I pondered the idea of creating my own site from scratch, but the CMS that a blog truly requires would best be provided by an existing solution.  I decided to host my own WordPress blog, largely because it allowed me to tweak its look and design as I seen fit. It also allowed me to take advantage of all of the social media features that has made WordPress such a strong platform over the years.

This site will focus on issues in the world such as politics, the economy, resource management, and others, and how they can, are, or will impact us. I will be posting articles that I write about technology topics, management topics and practices, issues in the sciences, and other errata that I deem worth knowing and talking about.  I promise to do my best to update this site with information on a regular basis, and to take part in a conversation with you about the topics presented here.  I encourage you to browse around the site, check out my other sites, and contact me in your preferred manner any time.

I truly hope that you participate in the conversation revolving around the issues presented on this site. It is my hope that intelligent, level-headed individuals can engage in a polite and productive conversation about important issues so that we may one day be able to work towards solving them in the best interests of all of us on this planet.  One of mankind’s greatest minds once said:

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. – Albert Einstein

Together, we can work to build this world.

This Paradise.