Jeremiah Stanghini

How Our Culture Failed Women in 2013

I’ve written before about my affinity for the documentary Miss Representation and its “brother” film that’s coming out in a few weeks The Mask You Live In. Well, a few weeks ago, the organization responsible for those movies put out a wonderful — well, in some ways — video detailing the ways in which the media has failed women in 2013. At first, it lists some of the great achievements that women have had this year and then… the video turns a bit sour.

We see a time lapse of a woman being airbrushed on the cover of a magazine, very sexist advertising (magazine and commercial), oversexed music videos, movies, tv shows, and then it turns to how the media cover some news events. There are — seemingly — ignorant men (mostly) patronizing women either in person or talking about women in patronizing ways. However, there are some really powerful moments. There’s a segment from Rachel Maddow where she’s discussing how women can have all of these ticks in the boxes and still get talked to in a negative way. There’s also — and this is my favourite — a video from this past summer when the Texas legislature was trying to ram a bill through that severely limited the rights of women regarding abortion.

I realize that for some, this can be an issue that incites a lot of passion in one direction or the other, but my preference for the video has nothing to do with that issue and everything to do with this woman, this strong and powerful woman, standing up for herself and for women to what is a room and a profession dominated by men. I remember when the now famous Wendy Davis filibuster was first starting to take shape in June and I remember turning on the stream sometime in the evening and having it running in the background. And then as they got closer to the end when things were really getting interesting. I remember trying to understand some of the wonky ways that procedure was being applied and then I remember Leticia Van de Putte…

It was one of the most powerful things I’d ever seen live. And if I recall correctly, I think these words were enough to motivate the gallery (the visitors sitting up above watching) to make noise until the clock ran out and the filibuster worked. Again, I want to make it clear that I’m not arguing in favour or against the merits of the filibuster, but just to draw your attention to that moment when Leticia Van de Putte said those words and the crowd erupted. I wish it weren’t, but it seems an apt metaphor for so much of how the world works today.

On a slightly happier (?) and stranger point, in an edition of The Economist from late last year, someone pointed out that Angela Merkel, the Chancellor (kind of like a President or Prime Minister) of Germany, appointed a female defence minister. And not only was this defense minster going to be a woman, but also that she is a gynecologist, entered politics at age 42, and has 7 children.

I think it’s great that Germany has appointed a female defence minister, but I wish that it weren’t news that Germany appointed a female defense minister. I look forward to the time in my life where the fact that someone’s been appointed to high political office or has been crowned the CEO of a big corporation and happens to also be a female is not newsworthy.

Note: You’ll notice that I made the title of this post about “our culture” and not “the media” and that’s because I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to pin the failure all on the media. There’s a feedback loop between our culture and the media. Yes, the media could certainly end that feedback loop, but so could the culture. In a way, everyone deserves a bit of the blame.

Evidence that Liberals and Conservatives Can Have Civilized Conversations on Climate Change

This past summer, I talked about a segment on a cable news show in the US called, “All In With Chris Hayes.” I first started watching Chris Hayes when he started his weekly weekend show, “Up With Chris Hayes,” (that has since been renamed for the new host, Up With Steve Kornacki). I really liked his show because he often had guests on the show who were of differing ideologies. For some cable news networks, that’s big, but what was even bigger was that the people that were on the show — rarely — would scream at each other to make a point. That’s not to say the arguments never got heated — sometimes, they did — but there was still an element of civilized conversation. It’s what I imagine good political discourse should look like.

When Chris’s show moved to primetime, he tried to bring some of those same elements. There was a graphic a while back (this is the closest I could find) that showed Chris Hayes’ weekend show (or was it Melissa Harris-Perry’s? I don’t quite remember) was — by far — the most welcoming show for non-white male guests. Meaning, proportionally, the show had far more women and non-white people on the show than any of the other shows on cable news.

Anyway, back to the segment from this summer.

In the segment, Chris Hayes had on Tim Carney — a noted conservative. They were talking about what was a bit of a hot button issue at the time, but the two of them were able to actually participate in a civil discussion. No one tried to yell over the other and as a viewer, I left the segment feeling more informed about the issue from both perspectives.

A couple of days ago, Chris had Tim on the show again — this time to talk about climate change. When Chris first introduced the segment, I wondered if the discussion might descend into a yelling match, but I was pleased to find that wasn’t the case. In fact, someone of a liberal ideology (Chris Hayes) and someone of a conservative ideology (Tim Carney) were actually able to have a civil discussion about climate change. It was kind of amazing to see. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a cable news segment where that’s happened on the matter of climate change.

The end of the segment was my favourite part:

If we get to the point, Tim, if we get to the point where James Inhofe goes to the floor and says, ‘you know what the world is warming and carbon emissions are contributing to that warming, but the liberals are wrong with their solution’ and [Matt] Drudge goes on the front page of Drudge [Report] and says the world is warming, but the liberals are wrong about their solution,’ … nothing would make me happier.

In case you’re not very familiar with the climate change “debate,” there’s a sect who purport that climate change isn’t real. Usually, the ideology of people who makeup these kinds of groups are conservative, (but that doesn’t mean they speak for all conservatives or that they’re the only ones). As a result, this tends to make conservative politicians — as a way to cater to these voters — espouse the same kinds of opinions (Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma being one of them).

That’s why Chris is saying that nothing would make him happier than to see noted conservative outlets (the Drudge Report) submit that climate change is real, but that the liberals are wrong about how to fix it. As far as I can tell, this is what many liberals have been wishing would be the case for some time. That is, ‘it’s okay if you don’t think we have the right solution, but can we at least agree that this thing is real and we have to do something about it?’

Over 40% of the World’s Population Will Vote in 2014

A few days ago in a post about global museum attendance, I mentioned that there were going to be a number of people voting across the world this year. In fact, that number is almost 3 billion. That’s right — over 3 billion people will be voting in an election this year. The total world population only broke 3 billion in the 1960s.

The Economist had a great graphic showing the different elections there was going to be this year and I thought it was worth taking a closer look at.

For instance, as you might expect there are nearly no elections taking place during the summer months. In fact, from May to September, there are only 2 elections taking place, whereas, aside from December, there is only one month that has only 2 elections (January).

Any election is important and has lasting repercussions, but one of the elections that I’m most interested to see the results of is the election in South Africa in April. This past November, South Africa opened voter registration and had over 2.5 million people register. Of those 2.5 million, 1 million were new voters. There will be another voter registration taking place in February of this year. There are quite a few people expecting the current party in power (African National Congress) to lose quite a bit of their support. Since 1994, all the Presidents of South Africa have been from the African National Congress (ANC).

Currently, the African National Congress has almost 70% of the seats in the National Assembly. The polls are predicting the ANC to lose some of their seats. In fact, support is expected to drop nearly 10%. If this hold true, the ANC would still have a majority of seats in the National Assembly, but there are still many days between now and the election in early April. If that support were to dip below 50%, it would be the first time since 1994 that the ANC had less than 200 seats.

Facebook is a Poor Predictor of Performance of Job Applicants

A few months ago, I planned on writing more posts about academic research. I wrote one about spending your bonus on others making you happier (than if you’d spent it on yourself), but haven’t got around to it since. My intentions were good as anyone can see from looking at the list of tweets I’ve favourited over the last 100 days. Just about all the tweets I’ve “bookmarked” to read are academic in nature.

I came across an academic article the other day that seemed quite interesting and reminded me of much of what you hear when you’re in university: be careful what you put online! Even after you’ve graduated, you often hear that your employer (or potential employer) will be watching to see what you put online, so be careful what you put on Facebook. We’re told that it can have an adverse effect on our ability to be hired (or maintain our current employment).

This particular study tried to address a gaping hole in empirical research. That is, the popular press often talk about how important it is to have a pared down social media profile, but there hasn’t been much research studying the effects of potential employers using social media profiles in screening candidates. Before we take a look at some of the results, I wanted to share three important points from the article:

First, as discussed, SM [Social Media] platforms such as Facebook are designed to network with friends and family rather than to measure job-relevant attributes. Indeed, most SM information pertains to applicants’ outside-of-work interests and activities, which may have little bearing on work behavior. This factor, in and of itself, may be enough to suggest that criterion- related validity for SM assessments may be low. [Emphasis added]

The researchers raise an important point that — no doubt — you’ve seen elsewhere. Most people use Facebook in order to connect with friends & family and as a result, it may not be the best measure of how one would function at work.

Second, the sheer volume of SM information also may inhibit decision makers from drawing valid inferences. . . This large amount of information may put demands on decision makers’ ability to process all the potential cues and to determine what information (if any) is relevant and what is not. This situation may cause decision makers to rely on biases and cognitive heuristics may reduce validity. [Emphasis added]

I’ve written extensively about cognitive biases. The researchers mention of the volume of information regarding social media makes me wonder how long before organizations are using Big Data to try and analyze all the social media data in painting a portrait of a candidate.

Finally, inaccurate information may undermine the criterion-related validity of SM assessments. For example, the desire to be perceived as socially desirable may lead applicants to embellish or fabricate information they post on SM, such as experience, qualifications, and achievements. Furthermore, because other people can post information about applicants on SM platforms (e.g., Facebook), applicants do not have complete control of their information. As such, applicants may be unduly “penalized” for what others post. In fact, one study found that comments posted by others on one’s Facebook profile had a greater effect on observers’ impressions than did one’s own comments (Walther, Van Der Heide, Kim, Westerman, & Tong, 2008).

In this study, the researchers had recruiters rate Facebook profiles of potential job candidates and then followed up with those job candidates after they’d secured employment. As you might expect from where this post has led, the evaluations the recruiters gave of the potential job candidates based on their Facebook profiles were unrelated to the ratings issued by supervisors on a number of factors: job performance, turnover intentions, and actual turnover. Moreover, these predictions based on Facebook profiles aren’t more useful than other, more common methods: cognitive ability, personality, self-efficacy, or even GPA. What’s more, they found that Facebook ratings were higher for females (vs. males) and that ratings were higher for White candidates (vs. Black and/or Hispanic candidates).

I understand that many managers think more data will help them make better decisions, but as has been demonstrated in this article, when it comes to job candidates, maybe checking their Facebook profiles could lead managers to make the wrong decisions.

Chad H. Van Iddekinge, Stephen E. Lanivich, Philip L. Roth, & Elliott Junco (2013). Social Media for Selection? Validity and Adverse Impact Potential of a Facebook-Based Assessment Journal of Management DOI: 10.1177/0149206313515524

Why I Like Snow and Not for the Reasons You Might Think

I grew up in Canada. I’m Canadian. I lived in and around the Toronto area until I went off to university in Michigan. From there, I spent some time in warmer parts of the continent (California and British Columbia) and even spent some time in New Zealand and Hawaii. As I’ve spent some time away from Canada, I’ve been able to avoid “Canadian Winters.” In fact, this winter will be my first Canadian Winter in almost a decade.

As a Canadian, I can say that Canadian Winters aren’t all that bad, but I suppose that depends on where you live when you’re experiencing said Canadian Winter. Just a little while ago, Winnipeg experienced weather that was colder than Mars
and at the time, Mars was much farther from the Sun than Earth:

MARS was 88.2 million km farther away from the sun than we were today. Winnipeg was still colder. Welcome to Canada. pic.twitter.com/HMjXb2Z8Qj

— ichannel’s Sean (@ichannels_Sean) January 3, 2014

Folklore tells us that it can be “too cold to snow,” but a smart meteorologist will tell you that this isn’t true. Technically, it can never be too cold to snow (except when you reach absolute zero, but there are other things to worry about when this happens). However, snow can become far less likely when it’s colder and this has to do with a lack of water vapour in the cold air.

So, in my first Canadian Winter in almost a decade, I find myself elated whenever I see snow in the forecast or when I open the curtains to see it snowing. Of course, snow is quite pretty, so it’s fun to see it snowing and it can be fun to play in, but when I see it snowing, I know that it’s likely not that cold outside. I should also mention that I rarely, if ever, have to drive in said weather because I usually walk, so that may be colouring my experience. Nonetheless, it’s great to know that I won’t be needing to wear my long underwear just to walk down the street to get groceries.

Another “Final Jeopardy!” Spelling Error: Yul Brynner vs. Yule Brenner

Earlier tonight, I received an email from someone who found a post I wrote this past summer about the official final jeopardy spelling rules. This person alerted me to a something that happened on tonight’s (January 2nd, 2014) final jeopardy. [As an aside, I tried to wait before posting this to see if there might be a YouTube video of what happened, but I haven’t seen one, yet.]

As it was retold to me through email, the “answer” (or question, as it were) to final jeopardy tonight was “Yul Brynner.” One of the contestants correctly spelled this and one of the other contestants answered incorrectly. However, the last contestant (there are usually three), spelled their answer, “Yule Brenner.” Note the “E” in the first name and the “E” replacing the “Y” in the last name. Most people would think that they answered incorrectly. While it’s true that they did spell their answer incorrectly, note that it doesn’t really change the pronunciation of the two names. That is, you can pronounce “Yul Brynner” effectively the same way that you pronounce, “Yule Brenner.”

Why am I focusing on the pronunciation and not the spelling? Because from what people have identified in watching the show, it’s the pronunciation that the judges emphasize in this game. That’s why there was quite an uproar this past summer when a young Jeopardy! contestant misspelled Emancipation Proclamation as “EmancipTation Proclamation.”

Here are a couple of excerpts from my post this summer that might help shed some light on this whole idea of spelling vs. pronunciation [Emphasis Added]:

I have no official source for this, but from what I’ve heard from various people over the years, there is no official written set of rules that the judges are required to abide by. It has been mentioned that this could be done for liability purposes, because if the judges were to make a ruling that went against their written rules, a player could potentially sue them, or something like that. I believe that in the contestant paperwork, all players must sign something agreeing that all judges’ decisions are final. There may be some general guidelines for acceptable responses in this paperwork, but they probably don’t cover all possible scenarios, and the judges’ decision will always be final.

There are a lot of little rules of thumb that longtime viewers of the show have been able to piece together over the years, and most times the show’s rulings seem pretty consistent with past precedents. It is generally accepted that leading articles can be omitted and still be ruled correct, as in “Grapes of Wrath” or “Midsummer Night’s Dream”. However, incorrect or missing articles within a title will lead to an incorrect ruling, such as “One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest” or “Gone With Wind”. Those may be poor examples, but I can’t really think of any good ones at the moment.

As to the consonant/vowel distinction, the general rule is that when giving a response verbally, you don’t have to pronounce it correctly, but you must at least give something that could be a possible phonetic pronunciation of the correct spelling. Generally this means that you could change vowel sounds, but you need to use the correct consonants, otherwise what you’ve said does not appear to be the same word as the intended correct response. Without examples in front of me this is hard to explain. It often comes up in cases of foreign words, or names of famous people that someone has seen in writing many times, but rarely has heard spoken aloud.

In Final Jeopardy, the rules are similar, but the opposite is true.While your spelling can be incorrect, what you have spelled should be possible to pronounce in the same way as the intended correct response. Normally if you change a consonant, something is not going to be pronounced the same way, while changing vowels could still lead to similar pronunciation. One recent exception to this rule was when Franz Liszt was the correct FJ response, and one contestant responded with “Who is Lizt”. While she was missing a vowel, the “s” and “z” sounds in Liszt sort of blend together, so the judges likely decided that “Lizt” or “Lizst” would be accepted. I don’t know if they would have accepted “List”. They may also have accepted something like “Lieszt” or “Leeszt”, as there is probably a lot of wiggle room in dealing with vowel sounds of foreign names like this.

France’s 75% Tax on Millionaires is Not What You Think

Almost two years ago now, there was a big hullabaloo because France proposed a 75% tax on millionaires. Some folks were really upset that millionaires were going to have to pay 75% of what they earned in a year for taxes. WRONG. This is not true. In no country (that I’ve ever seen), do taxes work this way. One of the words you often hear — progressive. Another one — marginal. Confused?

I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days. Since it was announced that the President of France was getting approval for the 75% tax, I’ve been listening to what some folks have been saying about this tax. It reminds me of what happened last year (around this time) when there was talk of extending the Bush tax cuts in the US. People were confusing or not really understanding just how the tax system works.

Essentially, taxes are the same for everyone. How?

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago where there was someone in the US who was worried about making a few extra thousand bucks because she didn’t want to be taxed at the higher rate. What? That’s right. She thought that because she made (fictitious numbers) $100,000 instead of $98,000, she was going to have to pay more taxes on all of her $100,000. If you know anything about taxes, you know that this is not true.

When you pay taxes, you pay the same as everyone else. That is, if someone earns $35,000/year and you earn $50,000/year, you both pay the same amount of taxes (up to) $35,000/year. However, you will also have to pay taxes on that $15,000 difference. Depending on the country’s laws, that might be the same rate. Another word for this is tax brackets.

Remember earlier when I mentioned the words marginal and progressive? This system of paying similar amounts of money across people is called marginal or progressive taxes. It’s important that it’s conducted in this manner, otherwise people would be incentivized to do what that lady in the NYT article was talking about — not earn extra money when you’re near a new bracket for fear of having to pay a different rate on all of your money. Of course, we know that this isn’t true.

Something I don’t understand is how many people simply don’t understand this. There are some things in life that are important and worth knowing and I’d think that knowing how/why you pay your taxes would be one of them. Maybe we need to do a better job of educating folks in school about this idea of marginal/progressive taxes. Maybe we need to change the name, I don’t know. Until then, I’ll keep writing posts like this to remind you just how tax systems work.

By the way — I should note that I’m not arguing for/against the 75% tax that Francois Hollande has just had approved, I’m simply trying to explain what it is, so that when people do debate the merits, they’ll actually be talking about the same thing.

Best Posts of Jeremiah Stanghini’s Blog in 2013

Last year when I did a best posts series, I ended up doing three different posts. This year, since all of the posts that appear on this website originated on this website, I wouldn’t need to include any posts about Genuine Thriving. My first inclination was to do a best of 2013 and a best of all-time, but after looking at the statistics, the best of 2013 and the best of all-time are essentially — identical. As a result, I decided to just do the one post of the best posts of 2013.

Before revealing the top 6 posts along with an excerpt, there is one thing to keep in mind. On the old site, there used to be only an excerpt shown with the post. So, if someone wanted to read the whole post, they had to click the link (this was just how the theme worked). On this site, however, I specifically chose a theme where folks wouldn’t have to click a link to view the whole post (only to share or comment because those links are on the post’s page). As a result, the statistics for the most popular posts are sure to be skewed because people may have read a certain post more than another, but without them clicking the link for the post, there’s no way (that I know of) for me to know. On top of that, the theme I’ve chosen here allows the viewer to scroll (all the way to the first post!) What does that mean? When you’re on the homepage, you can continue to scroll down and more posts will load… all the way ’til you get to the first post. And in looking at the statistics of the top posts, it’s clear that “scrolling down” is far and away the most popular “post” on this site (this was true last year, too). With that in mind, here they are with an excerpt for each:

The Official Final Jeopardy Spelling Rules [UPDATED]

If you know me, you know that I’m really good at finding things on the Internet. After doing a couple of cursory google searches (Final Jeopardy Rules, Official Final Jeopardy Rules, Official Jeopardy Rules), I was surprised that I couldn’t find them. Sometimes, the site that hosts a document like this doesn’t do a good job of using keywords. So, I thought I’d poke around the official Jeopardy site — nothing.

After some more derivations of “Rules of Jeopardy,” I was beginning to think that maybe the rules aren’t online. I thought that maybe the contestants were handed a paper copy that they signed before going on the show and that document wasn’t online. Having never been a contestant on Jeopardy (though I’d like to be some time!) I couldn’t confirm whether this was true. However, given that it’s a game show, I’m sure they signed something before going on the show. Regardless, I didn’t have access to that document.

In The End, Everything Will Be OK – If It’s Not OK, It’s Not Yet The End

It’s no secret that I like quotes. Since converting my Facebook profile to a Facebook page, I’ve gotten into the habit of sharing a “quote of the day.” If my calculations are correct, I’ve been sharing quotes of the day for over 80 days now. As you’ll notice that I also have a quotes category, I’ve shared a number of quotes here on this site, too. And if I think back to the days of AIM (AOL Instant Manager), I often had quotes as my “away” message. And even before then, I remember really liking quotes in high school and in elementary (or grade) school. So, like I said, it’s no secret that I like quotes.

If You Want to Be Happy, Spend Your Bonus On Your Coworkers

That bonus you were looking forward to at the end of the year is “yours” and you should get to spend it on you and your family. Except, research shows that’s not the case. In fact, the research indicates that spending the money on someone other than yourself actually leads to greater happiness. More than that, it can lead to your improved performance at work.

The Confirmation Bias — What Do You Really Know: List of Biases in Judgment and Decision-Making, Part 6

Why is the confirmation bias so loathed? Well, as Nickerson points out, it may be the root cause of many disputes both on an individual and an international level. Let’s think about this for a second: let’s say that in the world of objectivity “out there,” there are any number of possibilities. In the world of subjectivity “inside my head,” there are only the possibilities that I can imagine. Humans, on the whole, tend to fear change (there are over 600,000,000 results for that search on Google!). In order to allay those fears, I’m going to prefer information that already conforms to my previously held beliefs. As a result, when I look “out there,” I’m going to unconsciously be looking for things that are “inside my head.”

Advancing America’s Public Transportation System: High-Speed Rail in the USA

When it was first announced that the US was going to work on high-speed rail in the US over the next 6 years, I was very excited! Growing up in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), I am very familiar with the value of public transportation. I often rode a bus to and from school. As I matured and wanted to explore downtown with my friends, we’d ride the GO Bus (or train) to get there from the suburban area we lived. Beyond that, when I needed to make trips between Detroit and Toronto, I would ride the VIA train between Toronto and Windsor instead of taking the 45 minute flight. Public transportation is a great way, in my opinion, to feel better about reducing one’s carbon footprint.

Three Lessons from The Hobbit: On Doing What You Can, Having Faith, and Demonstrating Leadership

Anyway, as I was watching, there were a few instances I noticed that could serve as quintessential lessons. Given that The Hobbit is a good example of the hero’s journey, it’s not surprising that there’d be great lessons to be found in the story.

What’s Wrong with the Dallas Cowboys?

Yesterday evening was the last game of the 2013 NFL regular season. It featured the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys — bitter rivals — in what was a game where the winner was crowned the NFC East division champion. Both teams took very different paths to the game. The Eagles started the season quite poorly, losing 5 of their first 8 games. The Cowboys finished the season quite poorly, losing 3 of their last 4 games (including the game last night against the Eagles). The one win in the last 4 games for the Cowboys was in the game just before last night’s game where the team’s QB, Tony Romo, played through a season-ending injury to lift the Cowboys to victory.

As Tony Romo was one of the team’s stars, most people didn’t give the Cowboys much of a chance of winning last night’s game. However, there they were, in the waning minutes of the game, with a chance to win. What happened instead? A mental error. The Cowboys have been making mental errors near the end of the game more frequently than they had been in decades past. More importantly, there have been these mental errors when the game is on the line.

Let’s back up for a moment and look at the Cowboys as a franchise. They are one of the most storied football teams in the NFL and certainly one of the most lucrative. In the ’90s, they had what could be called a dynasty when they won the Superbowl in 3 out of 4 years between 1992 and 1995. In the decade of the ’90s, they only missed the playoffs twice (1990 and 1997). In that one decade, they made the playoffs more times than they have in the past 14 years (6 times). What happened?

In 2000, Troy Aikman, the star QB of the ’90s for the Cowboys, retired. In the time between Aikman (and Romo), the Cowboys had a potpourri of QBs that I’m sure most people would rather not remember. In 2006, when Romo took over as the starter in the middle of the season, the Cowboys went on to make the playoffs. They went on to make the playoffs in 3 out of the first 4 seasons that Romo was the QB, but haven’t been back to the playoffs in the last 4 seasons.

Based on how some of those seasons ended and/or how some of those playoff games ended, it seems evident that Tony Romo is in dire need of a sports psychologist. If we go back to the 2006 season playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks, Tony Romo dropped the ball when the kicker was attempting a go ahead field goal with less than 100 seconds left in the game. Or the playoffs in the next season when the Cowboys were tied for the 2nd best record in the NFL. Tony Romo threw an interception in the end zone with less than 10 seconds to go in the game. Or last season’s final game when all the Cowboys had to do was win and they were in the playoffs — Romo threw 3 interceptions. Last night Romo didn’t play, but if we can look at more than one game this season when Romo threw an interception when the game was on the line (against the Broncos and against the Packers).

Because of how the game ended last night, with the Cowboys QB — again –throwing an interception when the game was on the line, I wonder if there might be something else at play here. A couple of years ago, I wrote about some of the problems that the Vancouver Canucks goalie was having in the Stanley Cup Finals and how there might be something else that was affecting play. I wonder if that might be happening with the Dallas Cowboys’ QBs right now.

Part of the reason I talked about the success of Troy Aikman and the Cowboys during the ’90s is because I wonder if something changed — energetically speaking — with the “position” of the Cowboys QB. I know that this might sound strange, but it’s an option worth considering. Tony Romo has been one of the best QBs — statistically speaking — since he’s been in the NFL. He’s already thrown for 50 more TDs than Troy Aikman did in his career and Romo has played in 50+ less games. Romo currently has a 95.8 career passer rating. Currently, that ranks him 5th highest — all-time. Assuming Romo is able to recover from his injury, he’ll more than likely pass Troy Aikman on the all-time passing yards list, where Aikman currently ranks 30th. Tony Romo has been a fantastic QB for the Cowboys — statistically. However, when the game is on the line, things haven’t exactly gone his way. As a result, I’m lead to believe that, a) a sports psychologist is in order, and b) maybe there’s something energetically at play that’s affecting the organizational position of “Dallas Cowboys QB.” It might behoove Jerry Jones to call someone who can figure it out.

Global Museum Attendance has Doubled in the Last Two Decades

A little more than a week ago, The Economist published an article about museums. In particular, they drew attention to the fact that the number of museums isn’t in decline. Instead, it’s quite the opposite. Would you have guessed that today, not only are museums not in decline, but that there are more than double the number of museums there were two decades ago?

As a soon-to-be parent, I can’t help but be pleased with this fact. I’m very much looking forward to taking my little one(s) to the museum to learn about the natural world around them. It seems I’m not the only one pleased by this either, with museum attendance way up.

I suppose what’s surprising to me about this is that I figured that with the advances we have had in technology, most people would be more inclined to explore the natural world around them from the convenience of their couch. While I’m glad that this is not the case, I wish someone would do some sort of study to better understand this behaviour. The article ties in the idea of higher education. That is, more and more people are going to university and graduates are more likely to visit museums. This makes sense, but I don’t think that it explains the whole story.

Another point raised in the article is the burgeoning growth in other countries. If you look at the graph embedded above, you’ll see that there’s quite a bit of growth planned for the Southeast Asian countries. [As an aside, in The Economist’s “The World in 2014,” you may be surprised to know that over 40% of the world’s population will be voting in a national election next year.] While this growth may help explain an addition piece of the growth in museums, it still doesn’t quite feel like it’s explained the whole puzzle. Of course, in science, especially the social sciences, we know that it’s not always possible to completely explain behaviour, but I’d like to think that one aspect of this has to do with technology.

That is, I’d like to think that as a species, we’re recognizing that technology is a useful tool for helping us navigate the world around us, but that it’s not the be-all and end-all of human existence. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate technology. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to type on this external keyboard connected to my laptop, while looking at an external monitor connected to my laptop. Beyond that, you wouldn’t be able to read this article on your smartphone or on your laptop/computer, if it weren’t for technology.

With that being said, technology, in my opinion, hasn’t been able to capture the visceral experience of being there and seeing something. Technology can’t (at least not yet) involve all five of our senses in experiencing. Until it does, I’m happy to continue visiting museums.