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Human Behavior

How a tiny company paved the way for Big Tech and big problems – Christian Science Monitor

Sixty years ago, a little-known company called the Simulmatics Corporation claimed credit for helping elect John F. Kennedy president by inventing a computer program that could predict human behavior.

Simulmatics a portmanteau of simulation and automatic used bulky IBM computers to vacuum up punch cards full of data on slivers of the electorate and then spit out predictions about what voters might do. The Kennedy campaign followed Simulmaticss recommendation to address anti-Catholic prejudice head-on, something the candidate might have done anyway.

The publicity-savvy company used the buzz generated about its Kennedy campaign to get hired by Madison Avenue advertising firms. Then, as the 1960s took a darker turn, Simulmatics tried to guide counter-insurgency programs abroad and predict race riots at home.

To historian Jill Lepore, Simulmaticss creators are the long-dead, white-whiskered grandfathers of contemporary tech titans like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg and Googles Sergey Brin, and the origin of the data analytics and algorithms that dominate our lives. At least, thats what Lepore argues in her latest book, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.

Lepore, a Harvard professor and prolific New Yorker staff writer and book author, stumbled upon this missing link in the history of technology while researching a 2015 article on the use of data science in elections.

The challenge in writing this book is that, as Lepore admits, Simulmatics wasnt terribly effective during its decade or so in existence. The real Simulmatics Corporation was a tiny, struggling company, its technicians bumbling, its accounts disastrous. It soared and then it sank, like a helium balloon, Lepore writes.

Ad agencies quickly developed their own simulations to rival Simulmatics. The companys efforts to help The New York Times instantly analyze election results in 1962 proved disastrous. Simulmaticss contracts with the U.S. government in Vietnam ended with accusations of mismanagement and fraud.

Nevertheless, Lepore argues that Simulmaticss long-term influence extended well beyond its modest impact at the time, helping invent the data-mad and near-totalitarian twenty-first century, in which the only knowledge that counts is prediction.

Simulmatics certainly generated plenty of press thanks to its founder Ed Greenfield, a Madison Avenue ad man Lepore describes as a flimflam man and huckster who sold nothing so well as himself.

The idea that political campaigns could use technology to manipulate voters tapped into public anxiety about how new-fangled computers might take over the world. Eugene Burdick, for example, wrote a 1964 political thriller that used Simulmatics as the model for a sinister company that meddled with the presidential election using IBM computers.

Lepore devotes the first third of her book to introducing a cast of fascinating characters central to the Simulmatics. Burdick is one; he was a dashing Stanford political science professor and a prolific author who was once featured in Ballantine Ale ads wearing a scuba suit.

Burdick also did some work for Greenfield before becoming a fierce critic of his efforts to predict and manipulate voter behavior. His better-known dystopian novels, The Ugly American and Fail-Safe, both got turned into movies, and he would probably merit his own biography.

Another main character is Ithiel de Sola Pool, who before joining the company, developed the theory of social networks that came to undergird all social media companies. Pools work for Simulmatics made him a magnet for anti-war protestors before he emerged as a prophet to technological utopians. Lepore credits Pool with writing the founding political theory of the Internet.

Unfortunately, too much of the book is focused on introducing the cast, like a heist movie where the portion of the film devoted to assembling the team to pull off the job gets more screen time than the crime itself.

The book is also weighed down by Lepores efforts to use Simulmatics to tell the entire history of the 1960s from Kennedys Camelot era through the anti-war movement. Simulmatics was largely a bit player in most of these events, and the general history often reads like filler.

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Lepore, to put it mildly, doesnt buy into data analytics hype. As a historian, she is understandably dismissive of Big Techs obsession with predicting the future at the expense of the past. [T]omorrow is not all that matters, Lepore writes. Nor is technology, or the next president, or the best dog food. What matters is what remains, endures, and cures.

Seth Stern is an editor at Bloomberg Law.

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How a tiny company paved the way for Big Tech and big problems - Christian Science Monitor

Human Behavior

Researchers develop new theory that predicts the sensing behavior of animals – News-Medical.net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Sep 23 2020

All animals great and small live every day in an uncertain world. Whether you are a human being or an insect, you rely on your senses to help you navigate and survive in your world. But what drives this essential sensing?

Unsurprisingly, animals move their sensory organs, such as eyes, ears and noses, while they are searching. Picture a cat swiveling its ears to capture important sounds without needing to move its body. But the precise position and orientation these sense organs take over time during behavior is not intuitive, and current theories do not predict these positions and orientations well.

Now a Northwestern University research team has developed a new theory that can predict the movement of an animal's sensory organs while searching for something vital to its life.

The researchers applied the theory to four different species which involved three different senses (including vision and smell) and found the theory predicted the observed sensing behavior of each animal. The theory could be used to improve the performance of robots collecting information and possibly applied to the development of autonomous vehicles where response to uncertainty is a major challenge.

Animals make their living through movement. To find food and mates and to identify threats, they need to move. Our theory provides insight into how animals gamble on how much energy to expend to get the useful information they need."

Malcolm A. MacIver, Lead Researcher and Professor, Department of Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering

MacIver is a professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and a professor of neurobiology (courtesy appointment) in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The new theory, called energy-constrained proportional betting provides a unifying explanation for many enigmatic motions of sensory organs that have been previously measured. The algorithm that follows from the theory generates simulated sensory organ movements that show good agreement to actual sensory organ movements from fish, mammals and insects.

The study was published today (Sept. 22) by the journal eLife. The research provides a bridge between the literature on animal movement and energetics and information theory-based approaches to sensing.

MacIver is the corresponding author. Chen Chen, a Ph.D. student in MacIver's lab, is the first author, and Todd D. Murphey, professor of mechanical engineering at McCormick, is a co-author.

The algorithm shows that animals trade the energetically costly operation of movement to gamble that locations in space will be informative. The amount of energy (ultimately food they need to eat) they are willing to gamble, the researchers show, is proportional to the expected informativeness of those locations.

"While most theories predict how an animal will behave when it largely already knows where something is, ours is a prediction for when the animal knows very little -- a situation common in life and critical to survival," Murphey said.

The study focuses on South American gymnotid electric fish, using data from experiments performed in MacIver's lab, but also analyzes previously published datasets on the blind eastern American mole, the American cockroach and the hummingbird hawkmoth. The three senses were electrosense (electric fish), vision (moth) and smell (mole and roach).

The theory provides a unified solution to the problem of not spending too much time and energy moving around to sample information, while getting enough information to guide movement during tracking and related exploratory behaviors.

"When you look at a cat's ears, you'll often see them swiveling to sample different locations of space," MacIver said.

"This is an example of how animals are constantly positioning their sensory organs to help them absorb information from the environment. It turns out there is a lot going on below the surface in the movement of sense organs like ears and eyes and noses."

The algorithm is a modified version of one Murphey and MacIver developed five years ago in their bio-inspired robotics work. They took observations of animal search strategies and developed algorithms to have robots mimic those animal strategies.

The resulting algorithms gave Murphey and MacIver concrete predictions for how animals might behave when searching for something, leading to the current work.

Source:

Journal reference:

Chen, C., et al. (2020) Tuning movement for sensing in an uncertain world. eLife. doi.org/10.7554/eLife.52371.

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Researchers develop new theory that predicts the sensing behavior of animals - News-Medical.net

Human Behavior

What Americans say about recent climate events in the US – YouGov US

With about a hundred wildfires burning in the West, and the possibility of a record for the number of hurricanes in one season in the East, Americans must deal once again with the prospect that global climate change is affecting weather and causing more severe natural disasters. The President reminded Americans on a visit to California that he is a climate change skeptic, at least when it comes to climate changes impact on the California wildfires. Americans in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll are more likely to see the current two climate crises as the result of global climate change than the opposite, though responses on this question continue to be divided sharply along partisan lines.

Those who live in the West are especially likely to believe that global climate change is causing the Western fires. But even in the West the partisan difference remains. Two in three Democrats attribute the severity of wildfires to climate change; two-thirds of Republicans disagree. The general perceptions of whether climate change exists, and if it does, what causes it, have been mostly unaffected by natural disasters like the recent fires and hurricanes.

About half the public believes that the world is becoming warmer and that this is caused by human activity. Another fifth agrees the world is warming, but says human behavior is not the reason. That leaves one in ten who dont believe the world is becoming warmer. Just 4 percent of Democrats say this, compared with 20 percent of Republicans. Those opinions have changed little in recent years.

Not only do most Democrats believe climate change is occurring, but they also see it as a very important problem: Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to describe climate change and the environment as a very important issue for them.

In fact, Democrats rank climate change and the environment as their second most important issue overall, behind only health care. One in five Democrats (20%) name it as their most important issue, compared with just 1 percent of Republicans.

Republicans are skeptical of the motivations of many climate scientists. Many Republicans believe they are influenced by their own political leanings most of the time (43% vs. 13% of Democrats); most Democrats believe the best available scientific evidence affects climate scientists opinions most of the time (63% vs. 20% of Republicans).

There is more trust today that scientists use the best available evidence than there was in 2016, when the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked the same questions.

See the toplines and tables results from this weeks Economist/YouGov survey

Methodology:The Economist survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 U.S. adult citizens interviewed online between September 13 - 15, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGovs opt-in panel to be representative of all US citizens. The margin of error is approximately 3.4% for the overall sample.

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What Americans say about recent climate events in the US - YouGov US

Human Behavior

Editorial: Bet on Biden to stand up to climate change – The Columbus Dispatch

Staff Writer| The Columbus Dispatch

With the West Coast ablaze and the Gulf Coast drowning, Mother Nature is making a persuasive argument for climate change to play a decisive role in the upcoming presidential election.

Never mind the old adage that you cant do anything about the weather. Scientists have been warning for decades about devastation linked to human activity; they say a public policy focus on carbon emissions can, and must, make a difference.

There may be no issue that presents a clearer choice between President Donald Trump and his challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Trump is a staunch science denier who has spent much of his 3 1/2 years in office undoing about 100 climate regulations enacted in previous administrations.

Biden is ramping up rhetoric on the environment, labeling Trump a climate arsonist and touting his $2 trillion four-year plan with a goal of producing 100% clean energy by 2035.

We need a president who respects science, who understands that the damage from climate change is already here and that unless we take urgent action, itll soon be more catastrophic, Biden said in a Monday speech.

For his part, Trumps plan is to wait and hope things get better on their own.

"It'll start getting cooler. You just watch," the president told a panel of California state officials Monday outside Sacramento.

They had just described West Coast wild fires that have claimed dozens of lives, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses and charred millions of acres. Out-of-control blazes once more common in California are now leveling towns and threatening suburbs in Oregon and Washington as well.

"I wish science agreed with you," Wade Crowfoot, Californias natural resources secretary, responded to Trump.

Confirming his credentials as a denier, Trump answered, "I don't think science knows, actually."

Meanwhile, Hurricane Sally soaked coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in a week that saw five active cyclones all churning in the Atlantic Ocean at the same time something that has happened only once before, in 1971.

Voters should review the most recent State of the Climate report released in August by the American Meteorological Society. The National Centers for Environmental Information is responsible for creating this 30th annual report, drawn from contributions by more than 520 scientists in 60 countries around the world.

The report for 2019 highlights many indicators of a warming planet; among them:

Record high levels of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Near record high global surface temperatures, which puts 2019 among the three warmest years since record-keeping began in the mid-1800s, with July 2019 as the hottest month recorded and each of the past six years being the warmest six years recorded.

Sea surface temperatures as the second-highest recorded, just below highs set in 2016 with a strong El Nino influence.

Record global sea level, setting a new high mark for the eighth year in a row, driven by melting glaciers and ice sheets.

Above average tropical cyclones, with 96 named tropical storms during the storm seasons of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, compared with an average of 82 from 1981-2010, and with five of them reaching the highest level of Category 5 intensity, where wind speeds exceed 155 mph.

These are among the data that scientists cite in support of consistent conclusions that Earths climate is being impacted by human behavior and that changing our behavior can help mitigate the damage.

Critics like to say that Trump tries to greenwash his record on the environment, claiming contrary to the evidence that he is the number one environmental president since Teddy Roosevelt.

HuffPost reported Sept. 8 that Roosevelt protected more than 230 million acres of federal land by establishing five national parks, 18 national monuments and dozens of national forests and wildlife refuges. Trump, by comparison, has weakened protections for 35 million acres and protected just 37,000 acres, HuffPost said.

Biden also takes some flak from environmentalists, but mostly for not going as far left as some in his Democratic Party would. But as he worked for party unity following a contentious primary season, Biden has stepped up proposals for addressing climate change and is selling his plan as economic development.

The former vice president vows to create 1 million jobs with carmakers and suppliers by transforming the federal fleet of vehicles from gas to electric and building 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations along the nations highways. Biden also sees job growth in cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells and polluted industrial sites.

The Trump record on the environment is best assessed by his actions, not his words. He went against allies and domestic pleas to take the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change, is opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, has reduced restrictions on air and water pollution and has moved to repeal about 100 environmental regulations.

Most telling, he has called climate change a hoax his code word for just about anything that threatens his personal and family business interests.

Biden sides with scientists around the world in calling out the harmful effects of continuing to rely on carbon-based fossil fuels and offers a plan to invest in a future fueled by cleaner energy.

The differences between the Republican president and former Democratic vice president on the environment are stark, and Trump is on the wrong side of this issue.

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Editorial: Bet on Biden to stand up to climate change - The Columbus Dispatch

Human Behavior

Let Your Hair Down: The presence of toxic masculinity The Daily Free Press – Daily Free Press

We live in a world cluttered with outdated ideas of how men and women should be. Society often resorts to pasting labels onto different kinds of people in an attempt to simplify human behavior and make uncomplicated explanations for things that are often difficult to understand.

We see this time and time again: people create categories and rules about how others should look and act so that they themselves feel more comfortable.

This allows individuals to live in an untouched reality that molds itself solely to their opinions and affirms only their beliefs a reality they can control, make sense of and define in their particular terms. Meanwhile, they remain firmly unreceptive to new ideas or experiences alternate to their own.

Toxic masculinity is a direct product of this phenomenon, and rests on a rigid, fixed construct of how men should look, think and act. It is rooted in the notion that emotions are weaknesses, men must maintain an appearance of hardness, violence is an indicator of power, and sex and brutality are measurements of conquest and worth.

Toxic masculinity suggests that traits like stamina, resilience and ambition belong exclusively to the male gender. It claims other characteristics, such as self-awareness and empathy, are feminine and therefore unimportant and feeble these are ideas fully wrapped in gender stereotypes and sexism.

It should be noted that masculinity alone is not a problem, but toxic masculinity absolutely is. Without context, the term toxic masculinity can initially sound insulting, even a little aggressive. Far too often, it is completely misunderstood as an assertion that all men are naturally violent.

Toxic is not meant to denote masculinity or any other kind of self-expression. The phrase is used to analyze a form of gendered behavior that results from repressive ideologies of what it means to be masculine in society.

Although heterosexual males can take credit for the development of this dangerous brand of masculinity, it is not exclusive to the heteronormative community. The effects of toxic masculinity span across all kinds of contexts, including the gay community.

Due to the identity boxes that categorize heterosexual men, queer men are subject to an overwhelming list of stereotypes defining how their sexuality should look to others.

A common example of this can be seen through one of the double standards that separates bisexual women from bisexual men. While women who have sex with both men and other women may be approached with a level of acceptance and are often viewed as just experimenting, queer men often battle an assertion that they must be fully straight or gay.

This comes from a place of associating hyper-femininity with homosexuality among men.

The traditional gender construct that fuels toxic masculinity makes no space for men to also experiment. It suggests that if men are attracted to both women and men, they are simply gay or confused. Society often rejects the concept of bisexual men in its entirety, yet accepts that of women this is heavily rooted in the hyper-sexualization of females.

These culturally appropriate versions of manliness and sexuality are extremely problematic. They can feel absolutely suffocating for those who do not fall directly in alignment with those standards. The traditional masculine ideology denies people the freedom to actually explore what it means to be male.

Each of us is much more than just one single thing. In terms of sexual beings, the way we view ourselves is dependent on our own individual journeys and relationships with ourselves and the world around us it is no ones concern, nor place, to say what that should look like.

Toxic masculinity demands conformity at the risk of judgment. When it comes to self-identity, there is nothing more personal, undefinable and individualized than our sexuality. Just like all the aspects that piece together our sense of self, sexuality is flexible, evolving and self-conceptualized.

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Let Your Hair Down: The presence of toxic masculinity The Daily Free Press - Daily Free Press

Human Behavior

Putting their minds to it – McMinnville News-Register

Marcus Larson/News-Register ##Facilitators Chelsie Sanders and Tierney Ferguson lead a Rethinking Barriers job skills class at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. The course helps people who have faced barriers to employment, such as past drug use, prison or homelessness.

Marcus Larson/News-Register ##Facilitators Chelsie Sanders and Tierney Ferguson lead a Rethinking Barriers class, which emphasizes retraining the brain to make job seekers more confident.

Program helps job seekers let go of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors

By STARLA POINTER

Of the News-Register

Some job seekers have already overcome major problemsgotten off drugs, served jail time or moved from the streets into safe housing. But they still might need help in surmounting an overwhelming obstacle in finding employment: their own self-defeating mindsets.

The Willamette Workforce Partnership (WWP) Rethinking Barriers program addresses that by training the addicted, homeless or incarcerated to think I have something to offer rather than nobody wants me anyway, so why even try?

Alot of programs look at helping people with rsum-building or interview skills, said Chelsie Sanders, one of the programs peer facilitators.

This is a different aspect thats not addressed as much, she said. This is about the mental and emotional barriers we place on ourselves, or that society places on us, that we might not even realize are barriers.

That stark contrast became clear to Sanders when she attended the Rethinking Barriers class as part of her training as a facilitator. She had been through several other programs and mentorships when she tried to re-enter the workforce after going through recovery herself.

She had found help through Hope on the Hill, a nonprofit community organization, then gone on to facilitate a group there. She also became a public speaker, offering her own experiences as examples to offer others hope with their struggles.

When she heard about the Rethinking Barriers course, it was being piloted in Yamhill County under the direction of WWP consultant Susan Barksdale.

A psychotherapist, Barksdale developed the new programs based on cognitive behavioral therapy.

We deconstruct what isnt working, and reconstruct their thinking, she said. We develop new neural pathways so it becomes automatic.

Sanders became one of the programs board members, as well as a facilitator.

I thought it would be a perfect fit with my schedule and the work I like to do, she said.

Sanders, whose experience gave herempathy, and co-facilitator Tierney Ferguson are the kind of people Barksdale was seeking.

Theres real power to having peer facilitators. Its extremely effective, shesaid. They are models who show it can be done.

A professional might not be able to offer the same insight. They have walked the walk, she explained.

The facilitators also help recruit students for the program. They work with support organizations such as Provoking Hope, the Champion Team and Hope on the Hill to find participants, along with partner Remnant Initiatives, a Newberg-based program that helps former inmates adapt to society.

We have our feelers out, Barksdale said. People dont have to have all these barriers to qualify. But they do have to meet a condition: that theyre not actively using drugs.

Rethinking Barriers is one of three WWP programs Barksdale developed during 11 years at the agency.

She first created Rethinking Job Search, which used cognitive behavioral techniques to help participants return to work more quickly. The Department of Labor contributed $3 million so the state could run the program for five years.

More recently, sheadded Rethinking Careers, a program aimed at young people and adults who have never been employed, and then Rethinking Barriers.

For the Yamhill County pilot, Barksdale trained Sanders and Ferguson, who was a student in the initial pilot class in 2019. Both facilitators are now certified bythe National Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

They have had many barriers in the past and are now contributing members of society, she said. They are perfectly poised to lead others to healthy thinking, emotions and behaviors, resulting in employment.

The facilitators recently finished leading their first set of classes. St. Barnabas Episcopal Church provided the space.The program also is supported by grants from First Federal, the Give a Little Foundation, Sunrise Rotary, Cuvee and Remnant Initiatives.

The program also receives assistance from students interns at Linfield University and Western Oregon University.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Rethinking Barriers course that started in early summer stopped after a few sessions. Facilitators resumed in late August, holding classes outside and using social distancing and facemasks.

We were excited to get back, Sanders said.

So was the group, which was intentionally small so there would be plenty of personal attention and interaction.

We all share what were comfortable sharing, Sanders said. Everyone has a chance to be heard.

They speak about confidence, and the lack of it.

For example, someone with a felony record or a history of addiction may not think theyre worthy of a job, or that society sees them that way, even if its not true, Sanders said.

Rethinking Barriers addresses those misperceptions directly. We look at how we accept criticism, and the beliefs we have, she said. Do those beliefs serve us?

Facilitators and students also examine appropriate work behavior. They discuss everything from timely attendance to wearing appropriate attire to knowing how to interact and engage.

For instance, they discuss being criticized or corrected by a manager. Its usually not personal, Sanders said. Instead of thinking they are being blamed, or blaming themselves, they learn to view instructive criticism as a way to improve.

Ferguson said she and her co-facilitator also encourage students to be in the present, rather than thinking ahead about what can go wrong.

She used an example of a job interview she had before taking the Rethinking Barriers class. She was so involved in speculating about what the interviewer might ask next, she said, that she had a hard time answering the current question.

She didnt get the job a good thing, actually, she said, since she found a better job after finishing the class.

But if she had it to do again, with the benefit of the cognitive behavioral training, she said, she would slow down and focus.

Ferguson is just the type of student who benefits from Rethinking Barriers, Barksdale said.

A former homeless addict, she now is looking toward a bright future.Shes smart, but she needed the social skills she learned in Rethinking Barriers, she said.

The cognitive restructuring aspect of the program makes all the difference in changing a defeatist attitude, she said.

It builds work readiness, builds credibility and prepares them to behave in a way thats more helpful to themselves, she said.

Kathy Byers of First Federal, one of the programs most enthusiastic champions,said she especially appreciates the psychological aspect of the program.

Building confidence and removing social and emotional barriers are key to long-term success, she said.

People who struggle to make it in the mainstream need that kind of support, she said.

Barksdale described Rethinking Barriers as the most exciting project with which she has been involved, not only by helping participants improve their thinking and their lives, but by saving the state money by reducing unemployment.

It makes such an impact, she said.

Funding already is in place for five classes, including pay for the facilitators, materials and oversight.She expects at least 30 people to have graduated by June 2021.

Afterward, she wants to take the program beyond Yamhill County, with classes in Marion, Polk and Linn counties.

Were poised to continue, she said.

Rethinking Barriers facilitator Tierney Ferguson was fresh out of jail, trying to stay sober, when she first heard about a different kind of job training program.

She met Susan Barksdale of Carlton, a mental health and jobs advocate, who founded Rethinking Barriers. Both were volunteering to serve meals to people in need at the Soup Kitchen @ St. Barnabas.

She wanted to help me, Ferguson recalled.

Soon the McMinnville woman wasenrolled in the program, which helps students retrain their brain so they gain confidence and impede when looking for employment.

I got it, she said. And now I enjoy passing that along to others and helping them have a positive mindset.

Like many people who come to Rethinking Barriers, Ferguson, 38, had a history of drug use going back to childhood and a pattern of using, getting arrested, sobering up, then using again following her release. She described herself as a slave to marijuana and methamphetamines.

I was a pothead for more than 20 years, she said.

Looking back, she said, there were periods when she wasnt using, but never long enough to completely rid herself of toxic substances. I never felt sober, she said.

In early 2019, though, she spent 30 days in jail and came out resolving to quit for good. It wasnt easy, but she was doing well even before she met Barksdale.

The Rethinking Barriers class was a huge help with the bumps in the road, so they didnt get you down.

She had already been job hunting before she started the class. She even made it to the interview stage, but wasnt hired.

She learned in the class that she shouldnt take rejection personally. Lots of people get turned down. It wasnt that she was inherently bad, she realized, and she found the courage to try again.

In Rethinking Barriers, you learn to control your emotions and turn things into a positive, she said.

She learned, as well, to not create her own barriers. Slow down, actively listen, go step-by-step, she said. I definitely recommend that.

Her own experiences helps in her work as a facilitator. She can empathize.

Its about retraining your brain, she added. That can be difficult, uncomfortable, but the more aware you are, the more you recognize that youre doing, the better youll be.

In addition to being hired to facilitate future classes, after graduating Fergusonfound a job at McDonalds. She has worked her way up to manager.

I am totally respected, and I adore my job, she said. My coworkers respect me. Thats pretty cool.

She also is supervising her childrens online learning. Shes proud to be with them, to have a home and earn a living.

Five years ago, I was on the streets, homeless. I never would have imagined this, Ferguson said. It feels really good to be able to relate to people.

Shes even planning to enroll in college. Shes considering studying psychology or social work, and learning about human behavior.

What makes the brain think that way? she asked. I wonder about that.

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Putting their minds to it - McMinnville News-Register

Human Behavior

Home on the Ranch with Travis Fimmel – The New Yorker

The Australian actor Travis Fimmel, formerly known as Ragnar Lothbrok, eighth-century Viking slaughterer-hero, on the History Channel series Vikings, can, as of this month, be found navigating the virgin planet Kepler-22B, on HBO Max. In the new Ridley Scott-produced series, Raised by Wolves, Fimmel plays Marcus, a burly, bearded guy with a mullet, a knightly white surcoat, and a dark past, living among androids and animosity. Despite this, he retains a mellow vibe; so does Fimmel. On a recent Saturday, he was relaxing at his cattle ranch, north of Los Angeles. He wore a plaid shirt and a baseball cap; his beard was shaggy. Ive been busy doing a lot of fencingi.e., putting up fenceswhile Ive got this time off because of Covid, and planting a lot of trees, he said. Fruitless mulberry, because theyre great shade trees. Peppercorn, because theyre so drought-tolerant. Eucalyptus, because Im trying to make everything as Australian as I can. He hasnt minded the time off. Id much rather be doing this sort of stuff than putting on makeup and playing make-believe, he said.

Fimmel, forty-one, grew up in southeastern Australia, on his familys farm. We had dairy cattle, beef, and crops, he said. Hed planned to farm always, but then there was a year in my life, when I was eighteen, where I was, like, I dont want to be on the farm. (Ragnar Lothbrok had a similar impulse.) He ventured to London and L.A., bartending (Working in bars, living above barsit was kind of the funnest time); modelling Calvin Klein underwear, on a traffic-stopping billboard in London (His presence was jaw-dropping, Klein has said); and acting. I had no ambition to do it, Fimmel said. I still dont. Performing live makes him uncomfortable. I cannot audition to save my life, he said. I hate it. I could never be in a play, onstage. Id break down and cry.

Onscreen, he makes do. Hes played Tarzan, in the series Tarzan; Sir Anduin Lothar, knight champion of Azeroth, in the video-game-inspired Warcraft; and Ragnar, who is both assertive and sensitivehis best friend is a monk he captured. Fimmels performance in Vikings caught the eye of Daniel Day-Lewis, whose wife, the director Rebecca Miller, cast Fimmel in her 2015 film, Maggies Plan. In it, he plays an earnest Brooklyn pickle-maker in a knit hat, opposite Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke. He brings to all his roles a startling lack of neurosis. On Raised by Wolves, the aesthetic is a little Blade Runner, a little Westworld, a little White House Christmas decorations, and people act accordinglybut, whenever Fimmel appears, the series enters a realm of recognizable human behavior, even amid dialogue like The necromancer took him.

Its the same as any sort of period, Fimmel said, of life in the year 2159 on Kepler-22B. Its just all about relationships. People trying to get loved or find their place in the world. In Marcuss first scene, he defuses tension between his clan, the Mithraic, who have come to the new planet after killing Earths atheists, and Mother, an atheist android, whose human children came to the planet as embryos. Wait. Please. Apologies, Marcus begins, warmly. Hes picked up a stalk. I see that you have been farming. A lot. Soon, hes at her table, slurping soup. Later, among solemn Mithraic children in a spaceship, he initiates a galumphing round of duck-duck-goose.

On his ranch, Fimmel said, Ive got a few longhorn cattle, horses, chickens, an Englishman whos staying herehes up there, walking around. He waved. Ive got a couple of emus, just because theyre Australian. Theyre not the sharpest bird in the aviary. But theyre always intrigued by whatevers going on. Theyre quirky, and they can run like thirty-five miles an hour. He headed toward a fence; two emus stood atop a hill. Come on, hey! he yelled, whistling. The emus snapped to attention and raced over, bobbing at speed. They cocked their fuzzy heads at him, then ate from his hand. Look at their feettheyre like dinosaurs, he said. Two brown horses approached, and he fed them, too.

Fimmel rides horses onscreen and off. In Vikings, Ragnar executed a daring escape on a white one; while shooting Warcraft, Fimmel was thrown from a spooked horse; he also has up-in-the-air plans to play Wyatt Earp and to star in a spaghetti Western. Beyond that, professionally, Im meant to go back to do a second season of, um, spaceships, he said. Meanwhile: the ranch. I wanted to get kangaroos, he said. Theyre illegal to keep as pets in California, but about this, too, he is serene. If someone were to let one free around me, Id rescue it, he said.

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Home on the Ranch with Travis Fimmel - The New Yorker

Human Behavior

Editor’s Note: Trump Flags Are The New Red Flags – qcnerve.com

In early September I took a trip down to Kure Beach to vacation with my immediate family, our first opportunity to spend time together since early March when COVID-19 clamped down on the country. It was during this trip that I began to notice a relatively new trend, one that points to a disturbing future for the so-called United States: all these damn Trump flags.

The flags were not only hanging from patios and porches but flying on the actual beach, where people decided that a flag was somehow an important part of their setup on the sand.

Now, Im not one to be offended by such things. People can fly whatever the hell flag they choose. As with the inarguably racist Confederate flag, a Trump flag is a good signal for whom I should avoid all interactions with. I find it helpful in that regard.

My concern is with what else this new proliferation of Trump 2020 flags signals.

When I think of what other flags I see flying on a regular basis, I think of the United States flag, the rainbow flag at LGBTQ Pride events, Carolina Panthers flags, etc.

There are also those flags that the right has always been fond of: the aforementioned Confederate flag, which only came back into fashion among racists during the civil rights movement. Theres the yellow snake flag with Dont Tread On Me, brought back into popularity by the Tea Party in 2009 in response to Barack Obamas coming to power.

All of the flags listed above, good or bad, symbolize a person identifying as part of a group that they take pride in, which is relatively normal human behavior. What Trump flags signal to is something wholly separate: loyalty to one man in power as a defining part of your identity.

Of course, this is nothing new. In 2016, we saw the red hats serve the same purpose, and those certainly havent gone anywhere. Before that, there was no shortage of Barack Obama merch, his face plastered on t-shirts worn by people who saw his election as a sign that the country was moving past its horrific racial past (so much for that idea).

I for one have always cringed at the idea that any politician should be lionized in such a way. I voted for Barack Obama twice, yet I had more than a few issues with the way he did things his immigration policy and drone-bombing campaign to name a couple.

When you claim a politician as your own, as you do when you fly their flag and regardless of what Trump sycophants say, hes the president, so hes a politician you are saying, Im on this team, and Ill do whatever I need to do to defend that.

This is exactly the type of cult following that Trump aimed to build from the beginning. He scapegoated the media so as to convince his followers ahead of time that every negative article every survivor of his sexual predation, every administrative whistleblower, every sane person who can see a scam artist for what he is is simply fake news and should be ignored.

Then he went to work on the checks and balances against his power, firing anyone who didnt do his bidding, even if that was never their job in the first place.

His followers dont care one iota about all his wrongdoing because hes owning the libs, and thats their priority. These people dont want to see things get better, per se, they want to see things get worse for the people they dont like.

Im reminded of a Trump voter in Florida who was quoted in a New York Times report from early January of this year, when Trumps government shutdown had so many people suffering around the country so he could fight for funding for his mythical wall.

I thought he was going to do good things. Hes not hurting the people he needs to be hurting, the woman said, revealing the true nature of Trumps following. This is not the reason to vote for a president, people.

Attitudes like that are how Trump was able to run and win on a racist, xenophobic platform. Its how he built his following from a foundation of folks he has no real interest in. They believe he has just a little more interest in them than in those other people those immigrants, those Black folks, those libs, those Antifa boogeymen and thats what matter.

And so now when you see hate speech, the Trump flag is never far behind. Its just become expected. In June, when an old man yelled White power from his golf cart during a procession in a Florida retirement community (in a video retweeted by Trump himself), the flag was there. In August, when Trump supporters drove through a protest in Portland and shot innocent people with paintballs, the flag was there. And on Sept. 19, when multiple members of a pro-Trump convoy passing through Elon on a Saturday afternoon yelled White power, the flags were there.

Maybe Im just a triggered lib, but Id say if this is the group you stake your claim with, thats a pretty big red flag.

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Editor's Note: Trump Flags Are The New Red Flags - qcnerve.com

Human Behavior

Anxious if smartphone not near? You’re not alone – The-review

Emma Scott Moran| The Columbus Dispatch USA Today Network

A study of young adults in Portugal has found that the sense of anxiety and fear some experience when they cannot access their smartphone could be linked to general feelings of isolation and inadequacy.

Ana-Paula Correia, an associate professor at Ohio State University and co-author of the study, said she began researching the topic in 2014 as a professor at Iowa State University. She said that she and her students noticed the number of young adults using their smartphone beyond its initial purpose, which was talking on a phone using a mobile network.

We were intrigued by that, and we wanted to make some kind of measure to indicate that people are actually stressed when they are not with their smartphone close by or in a situation where it cant work, said Correia, who works in Ohio States Department of Educational Studies and is director of the universitys Center on Education and Training for Employment.

Skyler Jackim, a senior anthropology major at Ohio State, said the results of this study hit home. She said she feels an immediate sense of dread when her cellphone is not in its usual spot specifically, her the back left pocket of her jeans.

I think a lot of people my age can relate to this, Jackim said. We do everything on our phones: social media, search on the internet, talk to important people in our lives.

The connectivity that a smartphone provides is comforting, but Jackim said she depends on her phone for much more than interacting with friends and family members.

My phone has everything cellphone numbers I dont have memorized, bank information, medical records, my entire wallet. I definitely feel like I need it at all times, Jackim said.

The measure that Correia created became known as the nomophobia questionnaire. Nomophobia, an abbreviation of the expression no-mobile-phone fear, is a term for the anxiety, discomfort and stress that people suffer when their smartphones are not readily available, according to the study.

The term nomophobia, coined in a 2008 study that was commissioned by the U.K. Post Office and conducted by research data and analytics group YouGov, is not recognized as a diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association.

In 2019, researchers at the Catholic University in Portugal learned of Correias nomophobia measure and asked her to join their project. This allowed her to extend her initial work as she translated the measure into Portuguese and analyzed the new data collected.

That university study analyzed a sample of 495 Portuguese young adults to determine the relationship between the participants smartphone use, sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle and health.

Participants filled out four questionnaires, and it was determined that those who demonstrated nomophobia also exhibited psychopathological symptoms such as obsession-compulsion, hostility and psychoticism.

The studys findings were published in the most recent issue of Computers in Human Behavior Reports, a scholarly journal that publishes research exploring human computer interactions and the impact of computers on human behavior.

Correia said the results were not necessarily surprising. She said she knows that extreme smartphone use must have consequences.

We know from daily observations that extreme use of smartphones must come with a price. Isolation, feelings of not being fit or adequate something will come with it, Correia said.

Although Correia identified a relationship between obsessive-compulsive behavior and extra smartphone use, the study does not tell the direction or nature of that relationship, she said.

We cannot say that the smartphone causes obsessive-compulsive behavior or the other way obsessive-compulsive behavior makes you use your smartphone more often, Correia said. Now a next study could be, what is the nature and direction of that relationship.

Correia said she hopes the results can spur more studies on the topic for example, research into whether the results vary among age groups. She said she is curious about any relationship between smartphone use and other mental disorders, such as depression and violent behavior.

Im not saying were going out and going to blame smartphone usage on all these bad things that happen to us psychologically, no, Correia said. Smartphone usage brings a lot of benefits to our daily lives as well. But we have to be thoughtful when we use a device to an extreme way to the point that you cannot function well if you forget your smartphone at home.

escottmoran@gannett.com

@emmascottmoran

Ana-Paula Correia is an associate professor in Ohio State University's Department of Educational Studies and director of the university's Center on Education and Training for Employment.

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Human Behavior

Kaine, Warner announce more than $7.7M in funding to combat human trafficking – WHSV

Leaders from Eastern Mennonite University and James Madison University joined Harrisonburg City Council members during their Tuesday night Zoom meeting to discuss COVID-19 response updates.EMU hoped to start classes in-person on Aug. 25, but an outbreak occurred on-campus when the universitys campus community assistants returned one week early for additional training.Instead of beginning in-person, EMU began classes online on Aug. 25. On Sept. 3, the university transitioned to a mix of the in-person and virtual learning models.As of Sept. 22, the EMU COVID-19 Dashboard, there are 8 cumulative positive COVID-19 cases. Seven cases were confirmed at the university and one case was self-reported.EMU President Dr. Susan Schultz Huxman said the biggest change on campus was at dining halls.Right now we dont have students that are eating inside in our expansive dining hall. We have grab and go meals with reusable materials, Schultz Huxman said. We have tents everywhere [for students to eat outdoors]. It looks like a festival of sorts.EMU plans to host Homecoming and Family Weekend events online Oct. 16 through Oct. 18.After pivoting to online learning for four weeks, JMU plans to return to in-person learning on Oct. 5. The university is implementing a number of changes when students return to campus for the second time this semester.As many as 85 percent [of students] are still here, so if we have some mix of classes along the lines of what Susan [Schultz Huxman] described, that same kind of mix, we have a greater ability to monitor behavior and require testing, JMU President Jonathan Alger said. The students returning to the residence halls in October represent a small subset of the overall student body, so we dont expect a significant impact on the community when those students return.With the help of a third-party testing company, JMU plans to test 300 non-symptomatic students per week who have not yet tested positive to get ahead of any potential coronavirus outbreaks.As of Sept. 22, the JMU COVID-19 Dashboard reports 132 active cases and 1,313 recovered cases.All JMU students signed a COVID-19 Stop the Spread Agreement before returning to campus, but weeks into the semester it is clear to the university that not all students followed expectations.We have notified 290 students of violations so far this semester, Dr. Tim Miller, VP for Student Affairs, said. Thus far, we have found 45 students responsible for [inappropriate] behavior and those sanctions have ranged from restorative justice process to probation.Dr. Miller said some cases can result in expulsion.He said before classes began, he accompanied Harrisonburg police officers on a ride-along to monitor student behavior and is in the process of scheduling another with the Harrisonburg Fire Department.I believe the only way I can understand what [police are] seeing is if I see it myself, Miller said.

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Kaine, Warner announce more than $7.7M in funding to combat human trafficking - WHSV