Category: Social Science

Kids say the funniest things

Why does everybody hate you, Mr President?
Why does everybody hate you, Mr President?

Kids say the funniest things was a British TV series that ran intermittently on ITV from September 2000, hosted by Michael Barrymore. It followed a format from the popular American series Kids say the darndest things aired on CBS from January 1998 to June 2000. In both instances, the real stars were the kids. The idea of the show is that the host would ask a question to a child (around the age of 3-8) who would respond in a “cute” or funny way. Allowing for editing, the cynics amongst us always suspected a bit of prompting; rigorously denied by all involved in the shows! Before these shows however, CBS ran Art Linkletter’s House Party, which ran for 27 years, and is reputed to have interviewed 23,000 children!

TyrenScott

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The case of the unpaid prize

It can be instructive, as well as mildly entertaining, to review legal cases of yesteryear, as I have occasionally  on this site ( The Tichborne Claimant).

victorian court

In 1898, an English journal, the Rocket, had offered a prize of £1000 to anybody who could predict the exact number of male and female births, together with the number of deaths, in London for the week ending December 11th. Continue reading The case of the unpaid prize

Leonard Eric Grogan, 1903 – 1989

During his retirement, my grandfather wrote some notes about his life, family, and memories of his work as a barber and tobacconist, and some of the people he knew in Bristol. Some of his material I have recorded here.

Leonard, myself and sister around 1965
Leonard, myself and sister around 1965

Reflecting back upon my life, I often light upon some incident or detail, which is then as soon forgotten. So it was that I resolved to write them down as I could, ‘for the record’.

Regarding my maternal ancestors, I have only vague information. My grandparents were Yarnalls, Tewkesbury born and bred, and conducted a very successful Ironmongery, corn and forage business in Barton Street, occupying two shop premises. Continue reading Leonard Eric Grogan, 1903 – 1989

Belief and Disbelief, (Part 2)

"A familiar landscape of almost magical richness"
“A familiar landscape of almost magical richness”

In this second article, on the same general theme as Belief and Disbelief , material is based largely upon G R Elton’s The Practice of History, and Huston Smith’s Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition. Brief biographical information is at the conclusion.

“The study of History amounts to the search for the truth”

Today it is almost taken for granted that man cannot be certain what is truth. Continue reading Belief and Disbelief, (Part 2)

‘How to run a company with (almost) no rules’

Interviewing Ricardo Semler of Semco Partners, for TED.com.  Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a clearinghouse of  knowledge from the world’s most inspired thinkers.

Ricardo Semler montage

Ricardo Semler advocates revolutionary stuff that only a handful of companies worldwide practise. He dismisses as corporate window dressing ‘mission statements’ and ‘employee consultation’ and points out how far we claim to defend democracy, but practice Eastern bloc centralisation in our workplace.

He encourages people to start where they are and affect the few people under them, instead of moaning that it’s impossible. He notes how many business schools and consultants preach empowerment, but run autocratic, tightly controlled organisations themselves.
He writes about how he works constantly to pull back from being placed in the role of a guru with the Midas touch, how he wants the business to be sustainable through the efforts of all employees, not only the one with a reputation.

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Unlimited Vacation-time Policies Work

 

vacation timeAt most companies in the United States, vacation starts in the most un-relaxing way possible: filling in a permission form. Accruing enough time to go on vacation then having to go and ask for permission felt more like a school field trip than a grown-up getaway. Worse, many companies insist employees take vacation time before a year-end deadline or lose out.  Is there a better way to care for every companies greatest resource – their employees?

At HubSpot , they designed a progressive policy that allows employees to build their work around their life, not the other way around. They are part of a growing trend, now around 3 percent of US companies.

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The Prisoner (17 TV episodes,1967–1968)

The Prisoner – The Complete Series DVD Rating: ★★★★★

“I will not make any deals with you… I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own…”

The PrisonerThe Prisoner was one of the most original dramas ever aired on television. Brainchild of producer and star Patrick McGoohan (1928- 2009) the series portrays a high-ranking but un-named secret agent in the Government who resigns from his position and while leaving for a holiday, is immediately abducted and taken to what looks like an idyllic resort, but is really a sinister prison known only as “The Village.”  No one has a name. Everyone has a number, all are watched continually by unseen eyes, both in and out of the homes that are given to them. Escape is regarded as impossible by those who have come to accept their captivity. The residents generally appear very ordinary, but there is no knowing who are friends and who are enemies; who are fellow Prisoners and who are spies.

 “I am not a number. I am a person”.

Number 6 ( the new “identity” given to him by his captors) soon learns that no one can be trusted, not even one of his oldest and closest friends whom he finds is there, and certainly not the girls who come into his new life, right from the start.

Continue reading The Prisoner (17 TV episodes,1967–1968)

Emotional Intelligence- Why it matters more than IQ

Gary infuriated his fiancé Ellen, because even though he was intelligent, thoughtful, and a successful surgeon, Gary was emotionally flat, unresponsive to any and all shows of feeling. While Gary could speak brilliantly of science and art, when it came to his feelings- even for Ellen- he fell silent. He lacked emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability to monitor one’s own and Emotional Intelligenceother people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and responding appropriately by using emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour. Emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, clearly seen in child and animal behaviour, often suppressed in adults, sometimes rightly, often not.

The term became widely known with the publication, twenty years ago, of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ (1995). It is to this book’s best-selling status that the term can attribute its popularity. Goleman has followed up with several further popular publications of a similar theme that reinforce use of the term. To date though, tests measuring EI have not replaced IQ tests as a standard metric of intelligence…

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Willing Slaves – How the overwork culture is ruling our lives

 Madeleine Bunting (2005) Rating: ★★★★★

The Apartment (1960)“Some people take, and some people get took. Only they know they’re getting took and (they think) there’s nothing they can do about it..” Fran (Shirley Maclaine) to CC Baxter (Jack Lemmon) in Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’ (1960).

“In the ancient world individuals were often enslaved without choice, but some sold themselves as slaves in order to eat…and so in society.” C S Lewis (1958)

This is a contemporary account of the attack on the loss of liberty suffered by ordinary working people. Since the 18th Century, demands imposed by landowners, the industrial revolution and employers, in both the public and private sectors, have grown in intensity.

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Belief and Disbelief

“The problem with the scientific method is that it is driven far too much by theory, and not enough by fact. By which I mean that science moves forward by the development, and subsequent testing, of hypotheses, when at times formation of hypotheses should be strenuously avoided because they grow into filters which taint otherwise vital and compelling data.” (Michael A Cremo co-author of Forbidden Archeology )

“How could anyone believe that?” is a natural question whenever someone believes what is contrary to the conventional wisdom.

Henry H Bauer
Henry H Bauer

Since the role of unorthodox views in and out of science has been the focus of Henry Bauer’s academic interests for several decades, he thought about that question in a variety of contexts. His conclusion long ago was that this is the wrong question, the very opposite of the right question, which is, “How does anyone ever come to believe differently than others do?”
It’s a widespread illusion that we believe things simply because they’re true. It’s an illusion that we all tend to harbour about ourselves. “Of course I believe what’s true! My beliefs aren’t wrong! It’s the others who are wrong”.
However, we don’t acquire beliefs because they are true; we acquire them because we are taught that they are true…

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