If you’ve been following me since I started writing on the internet a couple of years ago, you know that I have a certain soft spot for the power of belief (sampling: here, here, here, and here). I understand that many folks are still leery of that phrase, but when you couch it in the context of the “placebo effect,” it’s amazing how many people begin to accept it as a thing.
Depending upon your philosophical bent, you may believe that willpower is a depletable resource. You certainly wouldn’t be alone in that thought, as President Obama seems to subscribe to this point of view. There are also those who believe that willpower is not a limited resource. So, which one is it? A simple question without a simple answer. It’s important to remember that depending upon from which point we begin, we may be less inclined to believe the other side of the story (remember the confirmation bias?) As much as possible, it’s important to try to take in new information with an open mind. With that being said, (regardless of where you stand), try to examine the following study with an objective and critical eye.
…following a demanding task, only people who view willpower as limited and easily depleted (a limited resource theory) exhibited improved self-control after sugar consumption. In contrast, people who view willpower as plentiful (a nonlimited resource theory) showed no benefits from glucose—they exhibited high levels of self-control performance with or without sugar boosts. Additionally, creating beliefs about glucose ingestion (experiment 3) did not have the same effect as ingesting glucose for those with a limited resource theory.
When I read this, my first thought was, as the title suggests, more evidence that our beliefs can affect our biology (see: Biology of Belief). Of course, I understand if some folks have a hard time jumping on board with this, so, like I said, couching it in the language of the “placebo effect” seems to make it more palatable.
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After reading this, I’d encourage you to follow-through with application. That is, now that you have this knowledge, apply it to your own life. Test it out. See what works for you. Maybe you used to believe that willpower was a limited resource, but after reading this, think the opposite. It’s certainly worth taking a chance, right?
Earlier this summer, I wrote a post about the 2022 World Cup. Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup in December of 2010 at a meeting in Zürich. Usually, facts like the time of year and the place a decision happened are inconsequential. However, from what we know about decision-making, it’s possible that these small factors may have contributed to a country in the Middle East being awarded an event that takes place in the summer.
A couple of days ago, the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, admitted that they ‘may [have] made a mistake at the time.’
While it would have been easier had FIFA not make this mistake 3 years ago, I’m glad that they’ve admitted to it now. It gives them lots of time to try to come to some agreement with some of the soccer leagues who aren’t receptive to the idea of interrupting their season. If you’re not familiar with soccer, the Premier League‘s season takes place in the winter months (the Northern hemisphere’s winter months, I should say). The World Cup usually takes place in the summer (again, Northern hemisphere’s summer months), so that the Premier League’s season can finish. As I discussed in my post in July, there are all sorts of contracts that the Premier League will probably be hard-pressed to try and break. Of course, with the force of FIFA behind it, one would assume that there could be some deal arranged to work this out.
The bit I want to highlight from this piece of news is that the leader (and the organization), didn’t remain steadfast in their wrongness. FIFA could have very well went on believing that playing soccer in 122° weather wouldn’t have that much of an effect on the quality of the competition. They could have continued to look for opinions/facts that confirmed their belief in their rightness.
Let this news be an example to you and your organization: mistakes can be forgivable, so long as you admit to them. If there’s no admission of error, then there’s little room or time for correcting.
Note: The title of this post is a quote from Bruce Lee.
In the past two weeks, I’ve seen a lot of people make a lot of different arguments about why they support/oppose intervening in Syria. Of all the arguments I’ve heard, the ones that irritate me the most: “I’m a Democrat/liberal and Pres. Obama thinks we should go to Syria, so I think we have to intervene.” OR “I’m a Republican/conservative and we can’t give Pres. Obama what he wants, so we shouldn’t intervene.” Both of these arguments (and the many derivatives thereof) are quite frankly, awful. They’re just awful.
Basing your opinion on a label like Democrat or a label like Republican is so near-sighted. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about labels for political ideologies and parties. In that post, I linked to a video from Chris Rock talking about political ideologies and parties. The video has since been taken down, but I did find a few other versions of it (here, here, and here). My purpose in sharing this clip is not because I want you to change your mind and support intervening or change your mind and not support intervening, no. It’s because I want you to make up your mind for yourself.
As I said a few days ago, it’s difficult to know when being in the minority is the right thing to do. It’s even harder to know if that’s right when you’re blindly following the opinion of someone else. So, take a minute (that’s the length of the clip!) and watch Chris Rock.
Warning: NSFW language!
Note: The title of this post is a line from the video.
Yesterday, I was watching Diana Nyad’s press conference and it got me thinking about human potential. Not just human potential, but demonstrated human potential.
Over 50 years ago, Sir Roger Bannister busted all previously held illusions about human potential by running one mile in less than 4 minutes. Today, the world record sits at almost 20 seconds better than what Bannister ran on that fateful day in May. The day before yesterday, Diana Nyad swam — yes, swam — from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, (which from the way she describes it, is a really big deal). A little over a year ago, James Cameron went deeper in the ocean than any other human has ever been. This past October, Felix Baumgartner reached the top of the sky when he jumped out of a capsule almost 40km up (into the stratosphere)! How about William Trubridge who, in 2011, set the world record for “free immersion” diving, [underwater without the use of propulsion], by going to a depth of 121 meters. Or maybe Dashrath Manjhi, commonly referred to as “Mountain Man,” who didn’t want anyone else in his village to die because a doctor was too far away, so he carved a path through a mountain. It took him 22 years.
I think at times — especially like these — it’s important to reflect on the amazing feats that humans can achieve when we put our minds to it.
These are just a few “recent” examples (and one not so recent). We could also pull up other examples from history. A common one is JFK exclaiming that he wanted to put a man on the moon before the end of the 60s — check. At the time, that was an unbelievable goal. It certainly helped that there were political implications to this goal, but nonetheless, humans did it. If we want to go back a little bit into history, we can think about Joshua Slocum who was the first person to single-handedly sail around the world.
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Is there something you’ve always dreamed of doing, but were too afraid to really get into it? People like Felix Baumgartner, Diana Nyad, James Cameron, and Sir Roger Bannister, I hope, can give you the motivation and the confidence you need to venture out to pursue that audacious goal. If there’s something that you dream of, believe that you can do it. Believe that you have the willpower and you will find a way to make it.
If you’re looking for a good place to start on your dreams, I highly recommend the idea of macro goals and micro quotas. It certainly seems to work for some folks who are achieving their dreams. Maybe it can work for you, too.
In 1978, a young woman stood on the shores of Havana, Cuba, and set out to fulfill her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida — a 110-mile journey that includes sharks and plenty of jellyfish. The young woman wouldn’t succeed in her attempt that day. Nor would she succeed on the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th tries. In 1978, there’s no way that she could have known that she wouldn’t have succeeded that day or that she wouldn’t have succeeded on three subsequent tries. Yesterday, however, on her 5th try, Diana Nyad successfully swam from Havana to Key West.
By now, no doubt, you would have heard of this incredible story. A triumph of perseverance and dedication. She had a goal and she wasn’t going to let anything keep her from it. It’s absolutely incredible that she first began this goal over 35 (!) years ago. Many of you out there probably can’t remember the goals you set 10 years ago, much less 35!
One of the most striking things I found about this story was how much has changed. For instance, when Nyad first stepped into the water in Havana to achieve her goal, she probably wouldn’t have guessed that the ‘achievement’ wouldn’t have happened for 35 years. Nor would I imagine that she would have guessed that her name and her story would have been trending on Twitter (what’s that, by the way?) or something called the internet. 1978. In 1978, there wasn’t even a Commodore 64, yet!
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You’ve probably got some lofty goals. You probably hope to achieve them soon — great! Nyad’s story is a perfect example of why you needn’t give up on your dreams. If you’re looking for some inspiration, she’s certainly got a bucket full.
If you enjoyed this story, you’re probably also going to want to hear Nyad speak after she completes this 110-mile journey. You can see what she said on the last video at this link (Sorry, couldn’t embed it!)
Note: I thought I had embedded a video from ABC, but it turns out that the embedded code didn’t agree with WordPress. You can view the video that I tried to embed at the link above.
After reading Kelefa Sanneh‘s piece in The New Yorker that took an in-depth look at MSNBC, it got me thinking about what I wrote a few days about about the future of TV. In that post, I mostly talked about the idea of moving television programs to online streaming or mobile streaming. I didn’t, however, talk about the idea of unbundling TV packages and allowing people to choose which networks they wanted.
This is one of the the things that Sanneh briefly touches on in his article. In particular, he questions whether the unbundling of TV packages would hurt cable news programming. That is, would CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News keep their heads above water if they weren’t part of a bundle? For instance, Sanneh tells us that FOX News (the leading cable news network since 2002), gets about half as many viewers as the lowest-rated network news program. That’s significant. Would FOX News survive if it wasn’t bundled? Might it do better if it weren’t bundled?
Chances are that cable news — barring something unforeseen — would be in trouble if TV packages became unbundled.
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About a quarter of the way into the article, Sanneh has a quote from the President of MSNBC that I find rather startling. I’ll include the lead-in, so the quote makes sense [Emphasis mine]:
“I’m building for the future,” Griffin said, not long after the switch. He was sitting in his office, reviewing a series of promotional clips that highlighted Hayes and the network’s other stars. “You’ve got a young guy who’s incredibly smart, who’s got a following,” he said. “We’re making a bet that this is what our audience wants.”
The startling part is the bit that I’ve bolded. I don’t understand that a company as big as MSNBC would be gambling in the way that Griffin claims to be. They’re making a bet that this is what the audience wants? They don’t have the resources to find out if that’s what their audience wants? Maybe Sanneh hasn’t included the whole quote, but this to me makes it sound like Griffin is being a bit cavalier with the most important time slot.
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FOX News consistently outperforms other cable news networks in an older demographic: 35-64. Take this past Monday’s cable news ratings, for example. FOX News outperformed all the other cable news networks in this demographic at every time slot. The closest any network came in this demographic was in the 9 o’clock hour when Hannity beat The Rachel Maddow Show by over 200,000 viewers. I don’t know how to put this delicately, so I’ll say it like this: what happens when this demographic “passes on?”
Yes, FOX News still outperforms the other networks in the coveted 25-54 age bracket, but their lead is substantially smaller. The largest lead FOX News has is during the 8 o’clock hour and that’s a little more than 250,000 viewers (over the next closest show). If I were Roger Ailes (or the guy who was likely to replace Roger Ailes), this is something I would be thinking considering, in addition to the prospect of unbundling TV packages.
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The last thing I wanted to talk about is this idea that those people who MSNBC is trying to reach may not like cable news or TV:
One explanation for MSNBC’s struggles is that the network is trying to do something nearly impossible: it is a cable news network for people who don’t like cable news, and may not even like television.
MSNBC, in its current format as I understand it, is still quite new. It’s only recently switched over to a more partisan-esque feel. I wonder if there’s still a bit of a lag before the viewers they’re trying to reach will show up. I also wonder if TV does start to move in a new direction (simultaneous online streaming), will this open up a new audience for MSNBC? I’m particularly interested in MSNBC because of this idea that the people who MSNBC is targeting are those people who wouldn’t normally watch cable news or TV. I wonder if these people had another avenue to watch these programs, would they?
When I first saw that, I was a bit surprised. Statistics tells us that for every 100 females born, there are 105 males born. So, there should be more boys than girls and as a result, we might expect that more boys would be reading than girls. Of course, there are so many other factors involved, but from a volume standpoint, I’d think that more boys would read than girls. I thought I’d click-through and read the report, but it’s behind a wee bit of a paywall to the tune of $799. As a result, I won’t be able to (maybe you or someone you know can?) read over the statistics. Nonetheless, I had a different direction I’d like to take this post. Empathy.
I’ve written before about how reading fiction can boost empathy. This very important human skill needs to be cultivated and one of the ways to do that is to read fiction. In addition, we all know the ‘stereotype’ that women are more empathetic than men. However, when there’s data to back it up, I suppose that it’s not so much a ‘stereotype’ as a likelihood. So, in putting these pieces together, my thought was that maybe this empathy gap has grown because women are more likely to read fiction than men. Sounds plausible, right?
In doing research for this post, I came across something from the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley. That post was talking about whether women’s empathy is the result of nature or nurture. It cited a few studies supporting both sides of the debate. I wonder if we could then add the data point of women reading more fiction to the nurture side… or the nature side? Nature side, you ask confused? Well, in saying that women read more fiction leading to greater empathy, we’d have to test whether women reading more fiction leads to a greater empathy or if women having greater empathy prefer to read. If you know anyone doing empathy research, this might be an interesting study.
The actions of CNN & NBC to produce Hillary Clinton programming is disturbing and disappointing and shows political favoritism. — Reince Priebus (@Reince) August 5, 2013
Production of Hillary programming must be stopped or the RNC will not partner with CNN or NBC for any 2016 primary debates.
At first blush, it seems like nothing more than some kind of a stunt to draw attention to the matter. It’s also a great way for the Chairman to do some interviews and bad-mouth CNN/NBC. As I thought about it a bit more, it seems like this can’t end well for the Chairman:
.@Reince & the @GOP not having primary debates on CNN is absurd. How do they expect to win independents/moderates? #tcot#tlot
It wouldn’t surprise anyone that there are more Democrats who watch MSNBC and more Republicans who watch Fox News, but what about the people who watch CNN? Well, as it happens, this is home to the political Independents of the electorate. According to TiVo data (actually quite sophisticated):
CNN, which has branded itself as the cable news network without a partisan skew, has apparently made the sale among independent voters. The network’s biggest skew was among independents, 17 percent above the national average with that group.
So, the majority of Independents that watch TV get their news from CNN. Let’s play out this scenario for the GOP. Assume that CNN/NBC decide not to pull their “Hillary Programming,” then the GOP has two options:
1. They’re forced into reneging on their initial stance of no primary debates for CNN/NBC.
2. Or, Like they said, having no debates with those networks. I suppose there might be some unforeseen third option, but at this point, this is what it looks like.
If they pull they’re debates with CNN/NBC, they’ll be losing out on the largest concentration of Independents. For a party that’s currently not in power that wants to be in power, in what will be an “up for grabs” election with President Barack Obama joining the list of Presidents who’ve served two terms, it seems ludicrous that they’d want to remove “free media” of their candidates to Independents.
So, this would force them into reneging on their stance of not having any debates with CNN/NBC, right? Except that this may make them look weak with their base of voters, which usually wouldn’t matter. However, “Republicans like elected officials who stick to their positions.” From my vantage point, this ultimatum has backed the GOP into a corner for which there is no escape.
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Revisiting that third option… it may just be that no one cares about any of this when the 2014 midterms roll around or the 2016 general election.
I noticed I was getting a bump in search engine traffic for people who were looking for the spelling rules to Final Jeopardy. No doubt, this is in part because there was a small bit about the incident on The Today Show this morning. When I wrote about some of the implications for whether they should have given the contestant the benefit of the doubt, I didn’t include the official final jeopardy spelling rules. At the time, I was merely reflecting in hypothetical, but with people searching for the official rules, it made me wonder just what they rules said about spelling in Final Jeopardy.
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.
When I was poking around the Jeopardy site, I noticed there was a message board for Jeopardy. While not an official source, I thought that there might be some discussion of what had happened on the show last week (EmancipTation Proclamation) in the context of the rules. After reading through some of the messages on the thread talking about it, I realized that it could take a while. Before reading through that thread, I noticed a different thread that was directing everyone to the 22-page thread talking about what happened because it had “several clear explanations” as to why the judges had to rule the way that they did.
After reading the 22-page thread — the majority of which were people who registered for the forum simply to complain about the ruling — there were some interesting anecdotes. For instance, did you know that this misspelling incident has happened on Final Jeopardy in the past? In an episode that aired on June 6, 2007, there was a clue that was looking for the response: “Sargasso Sea.” The person in the lead (going into Final Jeopardy), however, misspelled his response. He wrote, “SarAgasso Sea.” As you can see in the video below, the judges ruled the same way they did for EmancipTation:
As this really didn’t answer my question about the “official rules,” I thought I’d do a Site Search of the message board to see if I could find the rules. I used some of those keywords from earlier and like before, didn’t find anything official. Although, this was an interesting entry [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. While they do have appeal processes, and I presume that they work to the best of their ability to ensure that no contestant is treated unfairly, I’m sure there have been instances of players leaving the show feeling that they were in some way treated unfairly due to an unfortunate judges ruling either against them, or in favor of a competing player.
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 Veteran Affairs or Veterans Affairs, I think it is usually the case that when dealing with something that has an official title, the wording must be exact, and in many cases the inclusion or exclusion of something as small as an “s” could indeed lead to an incorrect ruling.
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.
While to my knowledge there is no list compiled on the web of all Jeopardy! ruling precedents, there are plenty of diehard fans of the show, and many seem to have near-photographic memories of these kinds of things, so you should always feel free to ask any ruling questions on this board or at the jboard. It has been my experience that Jeopardy! fans are always more than willing to help.
We can apply some of what this commenter said to the two examples. Adding the ‘T’ to Emancipation does change the pronunciation. Similarly, the ‘A’ in Sargasso does change the pronunciation. I know that this probably won’t satisfy many people who think that the contestant should have been given the benefit of the doubt, but I hope this will shed a little more light on the process (at least perceived) that judges use to make rulings on spelling in Final Jeopardy.
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So, maybe what this commenter is saying is true — maybe there aren’t any official rules. If there are official rules, they’re not readily available on the Internet. I can imagine that with what’s happened over the last week, some journalist/reporter would have likely emailed the producers of Jeopardy to ask about the official rules and I haven’t seen any articles recently about official rules. For now, I suppose this comment from a message board will have to suffice.
UPDATE: Remember Ken Jennings? Probably the most prolific Jeopardy player — ever. I came across something that Jennings said about what happened last week with EmancipTation. As you’ll see, it seems to be in line with what I found earlier on the message board:
Jeopardy! record-maker and Parade columnistKen Jennings agrees that the ruling, however frustrating, was fair. “I feel bad for Thomas, of course,” he told Parade.com. “But the unwritten rule on Jeopardy! has always been that your Final Jeopardy answer doesn’t have to be spelled right, but it has to be the same phonetically as the right answer. If he’d spelled it ‘Emansipation’ or even ‘Immancipation,’ he probably would have been okay,” Jennings explained. “I once spelled Grenada as ‘Granada’ and Alex let it slide. But add a new consonant sound, like Thomas did, and that’s ball game.”
About a month ago, there was a rather disturbing headline that came as a result of a Gallup study: “70% of americans hate their job.” When I first read that, I thought, that can’t be right, can it? 70%!? That means for every person who likes their job, there are at least 2 people who hate their job. Do you like your job? That means that 2 of your friends hate their job.
Even now, reflecting on this, I find it hard to believe that this many people would stay at a job they don’t like. There would have to be an overwhelmingly compelling reason to stay at a job that one hates. A few things that come to mind: mortgage, children’s college fund, student loans, etc. I suppose we could talk about some of these big-ticket items weigh on the minds of people, but I’d rather talk about work. Why is it that we can’t all be doing something that we like to do?
Assuming that there are as many jobs out there as there are people, couldn’t we reach some sort of Nash equilibrium where everyone’s doing something that they like to do and no one’s doing anything they don’t? Part of the problem with reaching Nash equilibrium would be that some people are motivated by different things or are coming from different situations. So, I might really like construction, but I’m not very good at the things that you need to work in construction. If I have a degree in accounting, I might become an accountant, even though I’d rather be working in construction. There may be someone who’s in just the opposite situation, too. If we could switch jobs, we’d both be moving from miserable situations to desirable situations.
I haven’t really touched on the health implications of hating your job, but that’s an important factor to consider, too:
‘Our analysis clearly established that there was no difference in the rates of common mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, between those who were unemployed and those who were in the poorest quality jobs.’
I think it’s a misnomer to say that work is supposed to “suck.” Why can’t we do what we love? Maybe for some folks, they don’t do what they love “full-time,” but they can gradually work their way into doing what they love full-time. Ken Robinson, noted TEDTalk speaker, wrote a great book a few years ago about finding your passion. If you’re working in a job that you hate (and statistics would tell us that you probably do) or you know someone who is, I’d recommend taking a look at Ken’s book. It just might change your life…
If you’ve been following me since I started writing on the internet a couple of years ago, you know that I have a certain soft spot for the power of belief (sampling: here, here, here, and here). I understand that many folks are still leery of that phrase, but when you couch it in the context of the “placebo effect,” it’s amazing how many people begin to accept it as a thing.
Jeremiah Stanghini 