Interrogator Redux

To get secrets from a hard-core terrorist, One interrogator spoke softly

I looked closely at the word "interrogate" this evening as I browsed which news articles to comment on and began to wonder where the word comes from. The reason I wondered is that smack dab in the middle of this word is "terror." "In" "terror" "gate."

From the perspective of the word's roots - in Latin interro means, roughly, to question closely, to question while in the presence of, to question while accusing of doing something. In essence, you are questioning with a very particular purpose, not just the random type of small talk that goes on in the world. -gate simply means to set something in motion - so adding gate to the end of a word means it is being done, in the present tense.

The reason this word looked caught my attention was because of the content of the article. The United States has chosen to move away from the Geneva Convention over the past seven years because we believed that we knew answers that no one else knew. We knew that in order to protect ourselves we had to torture people into giving us the answers that we wanted.

The United States has been attacking and being attacked in the Middle East and Mediterranean region since our country was founded. Our CIA has funded and trained various groups that we believe benefited us for many purposes (we put Hussein and bin Ladin in positions of power) since at least the 1950s. Unfortunately, 9/11 was the sowing of what we had reaped.

All of this is a confusing, continual issue that, if we could solve we might not because of the individuals in power who are after financial gain. The United States did approve a plan in the 1960s to create an incident which might incite a public reaction to allow for military actions to occur against a specific target.

And now, after all of these actions in our past we come back to speaking clearly, and slowly to someone who attacked us to learn about them. I can never agree with the fundamentalist ideologies of the world because they are out of touch and reaching for a time that is no longer here. As well, I cannot fully accept and believe in the patterns of economic development that the world has taken because of the costs that we aren't calculating. We really are stealing from future generations in exchange for current ease of living. If we really are capitalists then we would be considering these future generations in our equations because that is in our long term best interests.

Confusing and scary subjects that, today, are real life and need to be paid attention to and dealt with.

Psychology based upon Environment

In an insane society the sane populate the prisons.

ADHD in Kenyan nomads is shown to be beneficial to those who are still living in the bush whereas those with ADHD who have settled down into modern life are hurt by the "disorder."

Something interesting I heard from a PhD psychology student friend of mine recently - something is only a disorder when it affects your life in a negative manner. An individual who happens to be a modern day paranoid living in the time of the 1950's Communist witch hunt might actually be considered quite a normal member of society back in the day - because the logic says that paranoia isn't an issue until it negatively affects your life. And back then paranoia might have actually benefited you because there is the chance of greater social esteem for talking to the cops or FBI about every person who showed a tinge of socialist leaning (cus dammit - those reds needed to be taken down!). Yet today, that paranoid gets medication and therapy sessions.

What this really says to me is that psychology supports conformity because it benefits the individual. Is this true though? Isn't it true that those who fight against the tide, those who have looked at the naysayers and said down with your close minded logic, those who have stood up against the masses - haven't those people brought the most benefit to society? And in the end, doesn't an advancing society benefit the individual the most? The changing perceptions of mental disorders based upon societal norms troubles me. It is a system designed to to push the status quo and it seems to fly in the face of evolution.

When the Powerless Rise Up

The Legitimacy of your Power Affects how you use it.

"The research shows that when given legitimate power, participants were more likely to take action than those legitimately assigned to a position of powerlessness. When power was conceived illegitimately, the powerful no longer took more action and risks than the powerless."

Those who should be in positions of power were smarter with that power and actually acted with that power. Those who were not in power when they were supposed to be in power tended to act as if they had power when illegitimates were in power. And, very importantly, those who were in power but weren't supposed to be tended to not use that power well or not even use the power at all; in essence they were afraid of the tool they had and didn't yield it.

Another study I read showed that people who had power were more able cognitively because of being assigned that power, whereas those who were assigned to low power positions lost some of their cognitive abilities.

What the first studies say is that human beings innately know when we should or shouldn't be in a position of power. The second study shows that simply being put in a powerless positions tends to make us less able. This lends credence to the theory that success breeds success and also explains a little the continuance of power.

But another interesting thing was shown, and this interests me even more. Those who were supposed to be in power but weren't tended to act as if they were in power more so. This gives me a sense of joy about the human species, which in essence is like any other animal on the planet. You take away my evolutionarily given rights and I will find you and take them back.

"Elsie - mother of the modern loaf"

Elsie - mother of the modern loaf - BBC.Com

Very interesting article.

"Elsie Widdowson and her scientific partner, Robert McCance, oversaw the first compulsory addition of a substance to food in the early 1940s, when calcium was introduced to bread.

They were also responsible for formulating war-time rationing - some experts say that under their diet of mainly bread, vegetables and potatoes, that was when Britain was at its healthiest."

Very interesting tidbit at the end...

"She studied children at a German orphanage where one group was scolded as they ate - and found these children did not thrive as well as other orphanage children fed the same diet."

And one final thought...Why is every year faster?

People say on a constant basis, Wow, things get faster every year. Another year, flew by, seems to get faster every year...continue on, many phrases fit in there.

The reason every year (or any time period in general) seems to go by faster than any previous time period of similar time is that for any particular person the equal amount of time, is a smaller and smaller percentage of their overall life. Now to explain myself...

When you are one year old, a one year time period is a damn near existence:
1 year/1 year

When you are five, one year of life is 1/5th of your life. Thus, its importance relative to you life is lesser.

Every year thereafter, is worth less of your overall life, and carries less significance than the prior year. As we continue to accumulate thought and experience and lessons the current times become less and less valuable, again relatively, than the prior times as the accumulated time before the current time keeps getting larger while the current time is always equal to whatever that time period is.

So, YES, it does feel faster this year than last...and every person will always agree, because for them, irrelevant to how much faster it goes for anyone they are talking to, it is always faster for everyone, of course, relative to everyone else's experience.

:-)

And the egg comes before the chicken...dinosaurs laid eggs before chickens evolved...

And no, if a tree falls in the woods and there is nothing there to hear it, it does not make noise. Sound is a phenomenon created by these brain like things identify a certain type of energy created by various reactions in the universe.

They didn't think it far out enough...

http://www.livescience.com/history/070215_fewer_children.html

A. Children are more expensive.

B. Lifetimes are longer, thus an individual is relatively, from a simple
economic standpoint, more valuable.

C. Tied to the lifetime differences, the number of people who lived through
first birth, then infancy and teenager hood, and so on, is greater and
greater every year. This itself is merely an observation...

D. Mothers are having children later, children are reaching level of social
maturity later (getting into the work force, finishing education and then
starting their family).

E. The time alive per generation (TAG) will not drop as much as the relative
drop in the absolute number of individuals which, from a genetic standpoint,
would seem to say something very important, and that has to do with the
success of the genetics.

F. Due to the lower number of children and the greater economic needs to
develop one properly, those individual children are valued greater as the
relationships from an emotional level would become greater. The individual
child means more emotionally to lose than one of 10, none of whom you were
able to get amazingly close to (other than the eldest or youngest of
children). Each child has greater value, which would again create a greater
value per generation than would be expected with the significant drop off in
absolute numbers.

G. The economic necessity of children is lesser as individuals are able to
better to hedge against their future and are no longer dependent upon
children to support them in their old age.

As we look all the way down in nature we find that the number of young born
continually drops the more valuable the off spring is...why does this
surprise us? Come on now...