Botox and empathy

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Close-up of a woman's face showing detailed features, including blue eyes and smooth skin texture with subtle expression lines.

Good-looking people get treated better. In particular, women use beauty to gain a sense of superiority and often groom themselves to signal that they  accept the social hierarchy.  People need to look their best to impress and the number of Botox faces in politics is obvious. There is even a specific look to some of them with the prime examples cited as Matt Gaetz and Kristi Noem. Matt Gaetz has resigned from the Senate due to ethics concerns. Kristi Noem is famously known for killing her dog and posing in front of people held prisoner while flashing her Rolex. The Trump family is rumored to have spent millions on cosmetic procedures, including Botox. Most people, including Elon Musk, see nothing wrong with giving your looks a boost. Could this affect their decision making? Maybe.

Botox is an injection made from purified botulinum toxin, a protein derived from a bacterium called Clostridium botulinum. This bacteria is widely found in nature including in dust and notably in an aquatic, anerobic environments, such as found when plants or animals, including algae decompose. Many living things, alga, and invertebrates, are not harmed by this toxin. Fish and water birds are generally immune but can be killed by high concentrations of it. Pollution encourages its growth.  (citation)

In most warm-blooded animals, it produces muscle paralysis which can cause death. It is associated with eating poorly preserved food, often caused by the spores which resist high temperatures associated with cooking. Farm animals can get it from spoiled hay or silage. (citation)

In medicine, when extracted from algae, purified, and administered in controlled doses, the toxin becomes a treatment ranging from wrinkle reduction to alleviating certain medical conditions like chronic migraines, crossed eyes, and other muscle problems. (citation)

Botox works by temporarily blocking nerve signals to the muscles where it is injected. This process prevents the targeted muscles from contracting, paralyzing them, which smooths wrinkles caused by repeated facial expressions like frowning or squinting. Effects typically last three to six months, after which the muscles regain their activity. However, repeated Botox injections can train the muscles to stop working, banishing the wrinkles but causing sagging and skin damage.

Botox affects more than the muscles. It can, indirectly affect the brain. Apparently, your face muscles affect the way you process emotions. When interacting with someone else, an empathetic person will subconsciously reflect their emotions. Botox can dampen this empathy and emotional interaction. People who have Botox forehead exhibit problems interpreting and responding to the emotions of others.  There’s a flip side.

For some, it might improve mental health by dampening emotions. However, it can cause brain fog.

There’s another wrinkle to this whole Botox thing: people who are “too beautiful” can be seen as less trustworthy. This is one reason the occasionally unattractive photo of a politician probably doesn’t inflict much harm.    

Next time you see a politician, or anyone, with a face that fails to move, consider that the empathy factor could be missing. Empathy is an important leadership skill, fostering innovation and engagement. Empathy is a building block of society.

There are other causes of lack of empathy, such as burnout or stress. Fortunately, it can be relearned.

No one wants to be reminded of the advancement of old age, and being older can set you apart from the rest of society, so the Botox trend is understandable. The other day, my granddaughter studied me—with no makeup—finally said, “When you are really old and have no teeth, I’ll give you popsicles.”

The last time I saw my grandmothers, I’d stopped by on my way to a conference. We shed tears upon parting which became lonely sobs in the car. I didn’t know it was the final good-bye but the poignancy of the moment, the raw humanity, the love and advancing loss, the tenderness and the sorrow, has stuck with me forever since. I’m not sure why some of our leaders are so inhumanly calloused, but I for one, will be watching their brows and voting for empathy.

Struck by Lightning

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The US became strong by investing in science. Now it will lose ground to China. Cuts to agencies like NOAA, the CDC, and EPA will leave the average citizen less able to protect themselves. Is the intent of this to create a crisis or to set up another expense we all must shoulder such as private weather information or a medical treatment? I’ve got to wonder, especially given the assault on science.

Below, a recent headline:

We’ve long seen lies about science arising from politicians, there is even a whole book about it. In Iowa, evolution has become unmentionable. A group of politicians recently went against the findings of a group of scientists and declared that covid came from a lab, which most scientists don’t see evidence for. Yet most in the US believe this lie and it is being pushed, along with spooky graphics, by the White House.

Here is a somewhat thoughtful reporting on why this might be occurring. In a few words: xenophobia, racism, seeding doubt about science.

Heck, we are even seeing some challenges to long established scientific views such as germ theory and the efficacy of vaccines, as if someone somewhere is prepping for another pandemic. After all, the rich got richer during the last pandemic. Fifty-four percent richer. Why not set us up for another?

I was wondering about this, the why of it, when I saw a lightning stuck tree. As we now know, lightning is a static charge that forms when winds push ice in clouds around. The top of the cloud becomes positive and the bottom negatively charged. The negative charge in the clouds pulls positive charges on the ground towards it. The positive charges move up, using tall objects as their path. (Thank you to NOAA for this great video about it.) Tall trees that contain a lot of moisture will be prone to lightning strikes.

For most of human history, lightning was associated with deities, and often were an expression of the deities’ anger at how humans were acting. Isaac Newton had some doubts about this but it wasn’t until 1752-3 that Ben Franklin convinced humanity of the natural origins of lightning.

What does this have to do with the defunding of science?

If things have a natural cause, leaders, who perhaps consider themselves sent by god, don’t have the leverage they once had. Even back to the time of Galileo, religious leaders have been threatened by science. When natural phenomenon explains tragedies, it makes it tough for these anointed ones to scare people and control them. They can even create a crisis and fix it, or keep us in a constant state of panic, like good narcissists. Science can remove the fear by offering logical explanation. 

Fortunately for the rich people, they’ve found a workaround: fund politicians and set up phony news sources (including the White House itself) to spread lies about science and to top it off, fire scientists and defund education. They are well on their way to becoming the deities they think they deserve to be. After all, lightning does strike twice.

Hope and a Hop-hornbeam

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

There is so much on my mind right now, I had to take a break from thinking and I had to plant a tree to replace one I lost. The problem is, of course, thinking through what tree to plant took some thinking.

First of all, did I want to plant a tree at all? I live near the hospital, and I do like where I live. The hospital is ambitious but it has a lot of nice trees including ginkgoes, oaks, and apples. Will they someday take my house and kill the tree? Despite this worry, I like being near the hospital. Several members of my family have been in the health care profession and the pulse of the ambulances and medical helicopters is familiar to me, and not as noisy as you might think. When my neighbor got stabbed by his wife, he was quickly saved by the quick emergency responders and ER docs and the hospital was close at hand. He’s back home now, sans wife. Additionally, I’m a short walk from Pella’s beautiful downtown and gardens.

But will the hospital buy up my house someday and cut down the trees? I didn’t want to doom another tree, having recently murdered one.

Several people mentioned how nice my house looked—they hadn’t noticed when the tree blocked the view. I agreed but also found the expanse of yard bare. I pushed through my fears about the hospital someday killing my trees. And since I don’t like to kill my dandelions, I wanted something else out there to detract from them, something medium sized with non-invasive roots.

The city of Pella has a tree planting program, now probably in its final year. They’d pay you back if you planted a desirable tree and followed their rules. Here’s the list of trees and my notes, in case you live in Pella and want to plant a tree.

My friend and neighbor, Elise, provided me with several books about trees and I studied them. I decided on a deciduous tree. Even though most evergreens are mostly non-invasive, they can grow bigger than I wanted for that space. I fixated on the Ironwood (hop hornbeam) and hornbeam. They are varieties of birch, and I liked the photos of their little catkins. Plus, they are strong trees. We all know it’s windy here these days. They were on the Pella tree list.

The problem was, to get paid back I had to buy the tree in town and those two trees weren’t available in town. Oh well, I was focused on these trees now and I’d foot the bill. Elise mentioned a nursery near Des Moines. I thought she said it was in Norwalk but really she’d said Johnston. In any case, I found a place in Norwalk, Bedwell, that had these trees. They even called me back to confirm that yes, they did have hop-hornbeams.

Elise and I, in her pickup, drove to look at the trees. If I had acres of land, I’d fill it with all of the beautiful trees we saw. In the end, yes, I bought a sturdy looking hop-hornbeam with its catkins popping out. Hop-hornbeams are hermaphrodites, monoecious in plant talk, having both male and female on the same tree. We drove it home very slowly.

A group of people standing next to a tree branch AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Elise helped me place it in the yard and a grandchild fond of working out planted it.

Here it is with the planter. As you can see, the removal of the hug tree has left us with a bit of a mess. Fortunately, I don’t mind a mess:

A child standing in front of a house AI-generated content may be incorrect.

And here are the catkins which are really pollen dissemination devices:

A close up of a tree AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Another neighbor remarked that it was going to be a long time before the tree gets big. I said, “Then someone else can enjoy it.” And that is the true meaning, the, hope, the power, and the promise of Earth Day.

Seeing and avoiding Peak Conformity

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Copilot helps me reach Peak Conformity

Microsoft word has upgraded to include an AI program called Copilot. Since I potentially will be teaching Short Story Writing next fall, I tried it out to see what I’ll be facing.

First, I asked it to write a quirky love scene. I’ve written about writing quirky love scenes vs AI love scenes and an AI bot has stalked my blog.  What I got was nothing like what I might write however, as the characters are too stock and the language too ordinary. However, if it was more developed with sensory details, I’d probably give it a B.  

Here it is:

As if on cue, the AI suggested a love scene set in a bustling coffee shop. She imagined two characters, both engrossed in their books, colliding as they reached for the same caffeine fix. Their eyes met over a spilt latte, and laughter bubbled up despite the mess. He offered to buy her a new drink, and soon they were deep in conversation, discovering a shared love for obscure sci-fi novels and bad puns. By the time their cups were empty, they had planned their first date to a quirky bookstore downtown. It was a charmingly chaotic start, fitting for a pair brought together by a combination of coffee stains and serendipity.

Next, I asked it to complete a scene in the novel I’m working on. I’ve been quite slow about writing this one, Book 2 in a series. I asked it to write about two characters resistant to taking off an article of clothing. The program captured details from the previous scene, in which the main character, Gormley, is sent to work at a fertilizer plant as a clandestine spy.  She meets a worker with his jaw covered and suspects it has much to do with the poison and attempts to get a closer look.

Co-pilot came up with this:

His eyes narrowed with suspicion. 

“This isn’t about trust,” I sighed, frustrated. “It’s about your health. Isn’t that more important?”

He shook his head stubbornly. “Not if it means exposing myself to you. I’ve got my pride. I won’t compromise my dignity.” 

 It’s stock, uncreative, and clearly favoring the enemies to lovers trope, but it did give me an idea of expanding the scene. Again, it’s sparse, like Hemmingway, and standard but I’ve read things like this. For someone wanting to stay in the “familiar” it’s okay.

Next, I asked it to add humor. Here goes;

He hesitated, then slowly, as if it pained him, he tugged his collar down to reveal his jaw. The sight was shocking. His skin was red and inflamed, with patches of what looked like chemical burns.

I winced, trying to keep my reaction to myself. “That looks serious. How long has it been like this?” I asked, reaching out to examine the area without touching it.

“A few weeks,” he admitted, his voice a mix of embarrassment and defiance. “I thought it would get better on its own.”

“Clearly, it hasn’t,” I said, frowning. “You need more than just salve. This looks like a reaction to something you’re exposed to regularly. Does your work involve handling chemicals without proper protection?”

He nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, you could say that. But I can’t afford to be picky about jobs.”

“Well, you need to be careful. This could get worse,” I said, my concern evident. “Have you tried using any protective gear?”

He shrugged. “Sometimes, but it gets in the way.”

“Not as much as this,” I pointed out, gesturing to his jaw. “You need to take care of yourself. Your health is more important than any job.”

He sighed, the weight of my words sinking in. “I know, but it’s not that easy.”

“Nothing worthwhile ever is,” I said softly. “We’ll start with the salve and see if it helps. But you need to promise me you’ll be more cautious. Deal?”

He nodded, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Deal. Thanks for the salve. And for the advice.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, relieved. “Now, let’s get you patched up.”

As I applied the salve to his jaw, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope. Maybe this was the first step in helping him turn things around. Only time would tell.

I highlighted a part which resembles something I might have written it on my own, minus the part about nodding. Nodding, shrugging, sighing, and smirking are overused gestures, small smiles.  They are, it seems, part of AI writing. 

I asked Copilot to add setting details. It reads as if Copilot has taken in a lot of steam-punk but it does add some vague and foreboding details of setting, which is good. It also adds more head nodding and it is really fixated on the “time will tell” line. In other words, AI brings about a sense of conformity to writing. One problem is, young writers often dwell in the land of conformity as they seek to fit in with their peers. Conformity lessens disagreement, or in the case of an author, lessens the chance of a bad review.  As with Copilot, conformity teaches social expectations.  Conformity can teach social norms. It can lead to a polarized society with an in and an out group, and in the case of Copilot, dampen aesthetics and bring about a certain dullness. Where are the figures of speech? Where is the originality?

We stepped outside the small clinic, the harsh midday sun beating down on us. The air was heavy with the unmistakable odor of chemicals, a constant reminder of the fertilizer plant nearby. The plant’s towering silos and sprawling pipelines dominated the landscape, casting long shadows over the surrounding area.

A group of workers in worn-out overalls and stained gloves trudged by, their faces etched with fatigue. The rhythmic hum of machinery filled the air, punctuated by the occasional hiss of steam or the distant clang of metal.

“You work here, don’t you?” I asked, breaking the silence.

He nodded, his gaze fixed on the plant. “Yeah, it’s not the best place, but it’s work. And work is hard to come by these days.”

As he walked away, disappearing into the sea of workers, I hoped he would take the advice to heart. The plant loomed behind him, a symbol of both livelihood and hazard. Only time would tell if he could find a balance between the two.

I fully subscribe to the Edgar Allen Poe school of fiction writing, in which you embrace some strangeness. Fortunately, my genre also embraces strangeness. However, I’m sure I’ve already been reading AI generated content in the news especially when it comes to tips such as how to paint your bathroom.  

We’ve got a saying in analytical chemistry:  an experiment can’t be any better than the sample itself. AI takes samples of writing from on-line content. Meta’s AI has taken two of my novels. For all you thinkers, keep putting out quality thoughts, keep thinking. AI can’t be any better than you are but it can be worse. It can make mistakes and push bad ideas. 

Will the conformity of AI make us all less unique and more dulled? Only time will tell. 

Above: seen in Detroit near Eastern Market

Bare trees and public spaces

On By Catherine HausteinIn science1 Comment

Friends of Big Rock Park here in Pella Iowa held their first event of the season–a walk lead by ecologist Dr. Paul Weihe. We learned to identify and appreciate trees without leaves. Several of the walkers were new to Iowa and wanted to learn what trees are native to our state. 

Iowa’s most common type of timber are oak-hickory forests.

Oaks are slow growing but strong with “ski slope” bark, sometimes taking on different colors. This red oak tree, shown below, with bark shading of white, black, green, and red is older than Pella!

Oaks hang onto their leaves longer than many other deciduous trees, keeping them well into winter. It’s thought that this might serve as a buffer against winter winds and also help the trees warm up when spring comes. I’ve long felt slight resentment for my oak trees when they drop leaves onto the snow which makes them inconvenient for raking. Now, I’ll understand them better. 

One identifying feature of an oak is the starburst pattern within the branch. 

This star pattern translates into waves when oak is used for building. 

Oaks are hardy and even a half dead one will provide plenty of habitat for forest creatures.

The Shagbark Hickory is hard to miss with its bark looking like a league of wild cats attacked a favorite couch. 

This poor shagbark, below, was killed during the growing season and unable to undergo seasonal abscission and shed its leaves.

The distinctive ridged bark of the hackberry:

Large, in charge and near water. It must be an Eastern Cottonwood! These are fast growing with weak branches that drop a lot of wood. They aren’t good yard trees. My mom always claimed she was allergic to their fluff—which is their seeds—and I guess she wasn’t alone. Other people say the same. In the wild, the trees  have plenty of uses to foragers including as arthritis wraps. 

The characteristic burst of thorns is found in a Honey Locust.

Shaggy bark and a leak of sap help identify this as a black cherry. These trees grow small cherries with pits and aren’t generally used by humans, but many wild critters including birds and butterflies love them.

It’s even possible to identify a tree from just a stick. Look for leaf scars and check if they are opposite each other or alternated. A big bud such as shown below means a big flower is wintering in there. If it’s wrapped in a fuzzy coat, it’s a magnolia. 

Public spaces are a treasure and here in Iowa, they are rare gems. Iowa has about 1% of its land owned by the state and federal government which makes our city owned land even more precious. Big Rock Park is 83 acres, about the size of Crapo Park in Burlington. By contrast, a single family owns 400,000 acres here in Iowa and this oil-rich family also owns most of Idaho and Utah. Thank you to the Pella Community Foundation for sponsoring this event, to the Friends of Big Rock Park for their arrangements, and to Dr. Paul Weihe of Central College! 

Follow Dr. Weihi here on WordPress.

The rise of the pants police

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Maybe it’s too big, maybe it’s too small, maybe it’s too average or you don’t have one at all.

Maybe you don’t dress right. Your hair’s too long or short. Maybe you like women or nothing of the sort.

The pants police are coming. They’re coming for us all. They’ll use a complex trait or two, to shove us to the wall.

“Almost all human traits are complex traits. They don’t act like a switch being on or off. They are more like a bell curve. The average trait is what most people have but being outside of the middle of the curve is perfectly normal. An example would be height.” People are not 3 inches tall or three miles tall, but they do show variation in height. Likewise, sexual expression and interest is a complex trait.

Recently, a sweet child wanted to have an adult conversation about the election.

“Donald Trump is mean but Kamala Harris wanted men to play women’s sports,” the child said. “So, people had two poor choices.”

I was surprised that the trans issue was one they focused on, but I shouldn’t have been. The Trump campaign spent over 200 million dollars on anti-trans ads. The complexities of the issue have been explained on many levels. Yet the campaign didn’t care to pass this on to the public.

The White House’s definition of two genders as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell [or] a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell” has been called wrong and simplistic. It’s outdated and some in high places want to keep the outdated ideas.

Many animals can be both sexes and can have a fluid sexual attraction. The whole notion of binary sexuality is only one form of normal. Why would anyone care? Clearly, this is paving the way to look into our pants and apply discrimination.

Women have no explicit constitutional rights. Furthermore, Christian Nationalists have a limited view of equality and autonomy.

When you discriminate against a group, you can pay them less and even get free work out of them. Yes, highlighting differences and even saying they are natural can produce a whole underpaid underclass. One example would be saying women are naturally better at housework and taking care of kids and then paying less for these services, not paying at all, and not even recognizing this as useful work. One time women were told they didn’t have brains for complex thoughts, but science didn’t support this. Still, the gender pay gap persists. You can see how bad it is in your area here. We are seeing discrimination in search of a target. Discrimination needs to be able to easily sort us into male and female.  Hence, the pants police and their partners, the book police. Maybe they will sort us further, based on our genitals or some other arbitrary look -or as scientists say “phenotype.”  

 We even work against nature in our society. Throughout history, dressing like a woman has been harmful to health. In  a gender-biased human society, women spend much more time grooming because they need to look like they will accept pain in order to get male approval. We even have a “conservative bad make-up” trend that’s easy to spot and doesn’t look great close up. In fact, it’s based on pageantry and can be easily replicated for drag shows. It’s part of the reason people go to drag shows and pay for it—the pageantry and recognition that gender roles are kind of funny. Maybe drag shows will be banned as well.

In most species, it’s the males who need to preen and look pretty. Why do we think it’s how human women should look?  Women are supposed to have kids, run after them, clean the house, and gob on drag-show level make-up. The animal world is laughing at us.

Why I killed a tree

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I must explain why we killed the magnificent silver maple tree in our yard. It’s gone, cut down, stump soon to be ground to bits. 

It was planted over a half century ago for quick shade and it grew dangerously large. The branches were soft and the roots of were shallow. We were advised to remove it before it plugged the sewer line. Due to their girth, the roots would be difficult to blast away. Not to mention, our sewer line to the street is PVC so the line being plugged would be a good distance away under the street. It might involve digging up the street!

For as long as I can remember, we had no interest in killing the tree.  But lately, I’d grown edgy about it and other things. Iowa is getting over a 4-year long drought.  Trees seek out sewers during droughts and can even pry open places where pipes meet. Tree roots grow in the winter, especially in mild winters as we’ve had lately. Invasive tree roots seek out sewer lines in the winter and they can cause pipes to break in the winter. I hate to favor a sewer line over a tree but the sewer was not my only concern about the tree.

 We didn’t prune it until it was elderly, not knowing this could give it a hollow spot or two in the trunk eventually.  If someone had pruned it when young, it would have maintained a smaller root volume. It was very close to the house and the driveway. The roots cracked a walkway. We didn’t plant it. My parents did when they owned the house, which we bought from them. I recall watching it grow over the years and thinking it was the equivalent of having a baby elephant. 

Part of the reason for removal was the worry about it falling on our house during bad weather. Even the Iowa legislature is admitting it, bad weather has accelerated, as scientists predicted. But instead of doing anything to prevent worse weather, the Iowa legislature has proposed tax free disaster savings accounts. I don’t need a tax break as much as I need them to take steps to keep us safe. I haven’t felt safe with them lately.

I saw danger not only of it dropping big branches but, we were told by an arborist, it was probably going to split down the middle someday. Why did he say this? It also had a lot of branching, along with knot holes fairly low down which meant, eventually, it was going to weaken. Silver maples are among the trees most likely to fall in a storm.  If it was in the way back of the yard, it would be tempting to let nature take its course, but it wasn’t. It was in the front yard, closer to the house than the street. The house is old but it’s well-built. The house won out. 

The tree had been part of my life for so long, something always there. Because of this, I always took its autumn splendor for granted and don’t seem to have a photo of it.

Here it is in winter, peeking over the house. It’s starting to flower already. The squirrels are going to miss the flowers and seeds, although we have another very large maple in the back yard to keep them busy. 

A pose to show its girth.  

Here it is, throwing shade in the summer. 

A large shade tree can reduce energy consumption by 50%.  The temperature moderation provided by a shade tree can prevent paint from peeling on the house. Trees curb noise. However, a silver maple is the number one tree not to plant near your house, for reasons mentioned above.  Yes, it is the most invasive tree you can plant.

In the neighborhood, several big old trees have been lost to disease or due to sewer line entanglement. One 130-year-old tree was removed because branch fell in a neighbor’s yard during the derecho of 2020.  The neighbor freaked out and so did the homeowner. We also removed a sugar maple that was struck by lightning and slowly dying.

The tree’s branches fell with tremendous thumps and sawdust rained like snow. Despite all my rationalization about why this had to be, it made me sad. The tree was fairly healthy. It posed no immediate threat of falling.

The trunk fell with an earthshaking crash and light streamed into my window.

Ironically, the last branch came down on what would have been my Mom’s 93rd birthday. She planted this tree, after she moved to Iowa more than thirty years before the house got air conditioning in 1999. It might have been free from the bank for opening an account. Her childhood home, a place in the Western Michigan country known as Maple Brook Farm, had a similar tree too close to the house. It’s also gone and in fact, the entire farmhouse was bulldozed and replaced.

I want to plant a climate change resistant tree  or ornamental tree in its place. That side of the yard is where the somewhat new sewer line runs so whatever goes there should have non-invasive roots—a tree with roots that grow straight down. There are plenty such trees including other maple species, spruce trees, pine trees, hickory, and sturdy oak trees which fill this neighborhood. Smaller fruit and ornamental trees fit the bill. Silver maple is not one of them. We frequently pruned it to avoid windthrow, which occurs if branches and leaves are thrown by the wind and take the roots with them. Still, I became afraid of it as it grew taller. If you are reading this and feeling throat tightening panic about your tree, relax. Call a tree specialist for an opinion. Most trees can be trimmed to safety. And if you aren’t sure what type of tree you have, use an ap such as Picture This. A well-kept tree is way more benefit than risk.

Needless to say, I’ve been second guessing myself. I can only say I didn’t want to be a penniless retired teacher with axed Social Security paying the city to dig up the street to remove tree roots from the sewer.  Tree roots can grow even without the tree, so I tell myself that this was the right time. Still, I’m sad about it all. 

Tonight, the winds howl around the house, reminding me that some of my actions are simply preparing for storms to come and let’s be honest, they’re coming. 

Efficiency vs people and other living things

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

We’re hearing a lot of hot air about efficiency lately and as a concept, efficiency isn’t all bad.

For example, chemists talk about atom efficiency which compares the atoms in the starting materials with those in the product. If all atoms are used in the product and none are left, the reaction has 100% efficiency. This is a way to assess waste in chemistry.

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When I look for a car, I take fuel efficiency into account. Efficiency is great, isn’t it?

Sometimes it is, but the concept hasn’t always been with us. When and where did this idea come from?

In the 1900s the idea of efficiency, a near worship of it, pervaded society. This idea first came from studies of brewing and of machines. An efficient process lost less heat and did more work. Heat wasn’t lost to the surroundings in an efficient process. For example, an efficient engine got less hot and produces more work. Get your motor running with an efficient engine in 1916.

Thermodynamics began in England with James Joule, the son of a wealthy brewer, who studied thermodynamics but efficiency lurched to life in the juggernaut that was American culture. It even bled into management theory.

Everyone had to work and be useful. The idle rich were a problem. Inefficiency in buildings was a problem. According to literary critic and munitions engineer Hudson Maxim, inefficient prose was a problem as well. Take a look at some of these photos and advertisements.

idle rich

One Grecian urn, two Grecian urns, three Grecian urns and a fountain. The inefficient lives of the idle rich, women in particular, were held in contempt.

house

I grew up learning that Hemingway was a great writer. His prose was so simple and unadorned–just like a punch in the gut. There were characters barely described and given names like “the woman.” He was in a word, efficient. Believe it or not, this whole notion came from science and technology.

Hemingway came about his efficient prose in an honest way. He was a war journalist and telegraphed his stories back to the U.S.. The telegraph coded letters as dots and dashes and each one cost money. And with the advent of photography, people didn’t need or want the long descriptions of scenery that punctuated older fiction. They only needed enough to set the mood and ground the fiction.

Today, the century old efficiency movement is still with us. We are told to want writing to be sleek, like an Apple product. Some publishers even remove the Oxford comma. Professor Cecili Tichi called this new prose “machines made of words,” adopting the phrase from poet William Carlos Williams. The photos I’m using are from her book Shifting Gears.

A book with a label AI-generated content may be incorrect.

I like machines. I get frustrated with rambling and babbling. But sometimes, I want something more delicious. I want the rush of pleasure from abundant words and the keen insights of metaphors and turns of phrase, the dappled light of a brilliant day as was today.

A black and white page of a book AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Forget long, flowery letters. With the invention of the telegraph and telephone, words counted, ten cents for the first ten words and five cents for the next ten words, and communication was instantaneous. People began writing shorter prose as a result of “telegram style.” Today’s text message style is much the same. Write someone a long, embellished text an see how they react. Long sentences aren’t coming back any time soon.

A advertisement for a telephone AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Here’s what the efficiency experts have gotten wrong—not every engineering principal applies to living things. It isn’t efficient to cut back a workforce and make the people left work 120 hours a week at too many tasks.

A person holding a box and pointing at another person AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Above: CEO wants to show he’s doing something efficient so he gets rid of people.

Efficiency can be soul sucking, killing inspiration, and innovation. Over-work goes against the Bible. Inefficiency can be as simple as hanging out, building relationships, looking at the sky and wondering. In other words, it can enhance the workplace and our lives.

Efficiency can be dangerous. As companies pursue profit and efficiency, they lose the ability to adapt to change. An example of this over-efficiency can be seen in the almond industry, concentrated in one area of California, or the corn and eggs industries in the Midwest. And if you haven’t read yet about bananagedon, click this link. Consolidation of sources and lack of diversity (monoculture) leaves the food sources vulnerable to disease, bad weather and other forms of instability. Bananas for example, can no longer reproduce on their own. 

Consolidation, while efficient, gives the few producers the ability to raise prices, even when not necessary. We already have seen covid and bird flu blamed for egg price hikes, as markets shifted and the types of chickens remained the same, making them even more likely to experience epidemics. And we only need to look at the dinosaurs or pandas and their limited diet to see that bigger and more specialized isn’t always better. 

Let’s also considering who is telling us to be efficient. It’s often people who themselves have wasteful private jets, boats, and excessive real estate holdings. Additionally, the release of hot air into the environment is a sign of poor efficiency. It’s where the term for insincere speech comes from. There are a few prominent figures who could take a lesson from efficiency and cool off. All those hot takes aren’t doing any work. 

More importantly, society is not thermodynamics. People and other living things are much more complicated than brewing–even if it does involve yeast. Where is the morality in efficiency? When it comes to people, The Bible warns against haste. Applying STEM principals to every facet of our lives won’t make them better, only more stressful. It might even kill us. So embrace those inefficient moments at times, and don’t take personal advice from the opulent hot air emitters. Chill. 

When science got humans all wrong

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized4 Comments

I like science lab. Science lab doesn’t care about the race or gender of the experimenter. Nature does what it pleases. This doesn’t mean that scientists themselves have done the same. I wrote a novel about this. But it’s out of print. Maybe I’ll revise it and resubmit it. It got good reviews and bad reviews because people are different. We love to classify these differences—give ourselves a Meyers Briggs test or an Enneagram number on the basis of a personality test. As stated by  Merve Emry of Oxford University, “We are seduced by the fact that it presents that knowledge in a painless and easily digestible way.”

Meyers Briggs was developed as a parenting tool in the 1800s but is generally regarded as pseudo science. Classification gives us a tidy, often too tidy, way of knowing about a person or ourselves.

Probably we have always classified ourselves and others in a form of efficient thinking, but science helped us do this. The familiar “Genus species classification” was developed in the mid 1700s by Carl Linnaeus – who saw plants, animals and rocks as each having their own Kingdom and broke the distinctions down from there. His description of Homo Sapiens includes four distinct varieties: “H. sapiens europaeus, H. sapiens afer, H. sapiens asiaticus, and H. sapiens americanus” , ranging from H. sapiens europaeus on the one (best) end, to H. sapiens afer at the other.” By the way, the notion of strict gender roles took off in the 1800s along with the rise of classification. Look different, are different. It lead to scientific racism.

Classification was a hot topic back in the 1800s. Naturalists ran all over the globe catching insects, other animals, and plants to classify them. Classification relied on morphology, which in this case means physical traits. This classification system made it easy for scientist to talk to each other and compare notes. It inspired Charles Darwin’s adventures and Gregor Mendel’s study of pea plants which led to modern genetics.

Yes, scientists had a racism problem.  Almost from the start of the classification scheme, scientists attempted to prove some were better than others. Beautiful people were innately superior and of course, people from non-European cultures were inferior. Science had a racism problem.

A distinction between science and scientific racism is that the creation of separate racial categories was not solely for the sake of a biological system of classification, but rather for political means:

Scientific magical thinking about European superiority led to a nonscientific justification for European colonialism and slavery. The “preconceptions” were based on the idea that nature, and not social forces, created social classes.  Poor people were scientifically ordained by Nature to be usd by the upper class. It explains social inequalities not in terms of the society failing to provide for its citizens, but rather a group’s failure to have superior breeding.

One example of personal racism in science that I’m acutely aware of is that of Percy Julian.  This brilliant chemist faced numerous barriers in his life because he was black African American. You can read about them here in the appropriately titled “Percy Julian and the False Promise of Exceptionalism.”  Despite being a brilliant synthetic and natural products chemist, he faced everything from having his ideas nearly stolen to having his home set on fire. He would show up to college and later job interviews thanks to his impressive resume, only to be turned away by other scientists because once they saw him, the place which invited him to interview didn’t like his morphology. Fortunately, a few anti-racists recognized his potential and he made many advances in steroid chemistry and in products made from soybeans, including paint.

Scientists now use DNA to help them study and classify. They can tell you about many times when morphology will lead you wrong—a fly can look like a bee for example.  Even Darwin suspected as much.

Scientists contributed to racism but now, many are trying to undo the harm. The Human Genome Project has determined that race as doesn’t exist. Why? Because “individual genetic traits are inherited independently”, not as a group. Therefore culture, intelligence, athletic ability, et cetera cannot be racially linked due to the independent nature of these genetic traits. People who hang out together and share traits might interbreed and give the illusion that these traits are connected, but they are not. For this reason, the concept of race is more of a cultural construct than any kind of biological reality.

This doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist.  “Racism has led to injustices against millions of people, through slavery and colonization, through apartheid and through continuing prejudice today. The point of learning about and analyzing racism in science must be to ensure that it is never repeated.” Making up for hundreds of years of science gone wrong has been difficult. The more we learn, the more those with preconceived notions fight back, despite their lack of evidence. In fact, it might happen that very soon, the publications I linked to will dissolved into the realm of 404 error.

New doors and locked in the bathroom

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

When you live in an old house, you’re never sure how much money you should put into it.  Will it maintain its value? Usually, yes, a well-maintained one will hold value. My house is 100 years old and I sometimes ponder moving, encouraged by my kids to find a home with one floor–an older person home where I won’t fall down the stairs. But I haven’t fallen down stairs since that one time in Detroit. And this year, my husband fell in the kitchen, not on stairs, and broke his neck–no home is safe if you aren’t paying attention. And my house has a fallout shelter so I’m not moving for at least four years.

Throughout the years, my older home has gotten –among other things–new basement floors, some new wiring, radon remediation, new paint, a new front porch, a new driveway, and refinished wood floors. As for redecorating, I’ve done some, but old bedrooms and their archaic wallpaper borders hold happy memories. The upstairs bathroom wallpaper is a relic, but I can still picture my happy kids splashing beneath that paper. Back in the day, my husband was handy, but he’s lost his enjoyment of it. I can paint but I’m too short for some spots even with a decent ladder. There’s been a comfortable sameness, a sentimental inertia. But recently, something has pushed me toward doing more than just preserving the status quo. My husband got locked in the bathroom.

A too- old lock broke. His neck was as broken as the lock so climbing out the window wasn’t an option. The screwdriver handed through a transom didn’t remedy the situation. He had to bust the whole lock and in the process, the hollow core door cracked. Memories or not, it was kind of ugly and cheap. And now busted.

We replaced it and the companion door to the basement with some oak doors to match the floors. Oak may be out or maybe it’s back in. No matter. The contractor was a perfectionist and the doors are beautiful. They bring me joy, even a calmness, because they aren’t janky. The locks are new and so are the latches. We can close the doors with confidence.

The doors tell me what Aerosmith tried to back when I was a part time DJ (although Dream On was on oldie by then): the past is gone. Maybe after I paint the hall to the bathroom, I’ll find something new to spruce up, and not let sentimentality hold me back. Then, someday, I’ll move on to my one floor dream house in a liberal area. Dream on.

Above: a new door, and although I did love the beagle mutt that scratched the old frame, it’s time for a new coat of paint. And yes, my husband’s neck has healed.