Home for a Rest

We'll be home for Christmas!

We leave tomorrow (14th) at 5:50 am (yuk), hop on a plane from Heathrow at 11:30 and, 7 hours after that (around 2:30 local time) voila!

Not sure if I'll be a'bloggin over the break. Internet access is a little hard to come by in the wilds of Loretto. In any case, we've got lots of people to see, places to visit and food to eat. So we'll likely be seeing you at some point, with or without food (preferably with). And we'll have to go see our very expensive pile of dirt, obviously.

We'll be seeing you soon!

The Milgram Experiment

On reading some of the comments about the 'Verizon service people and math' scenario (see previous post) one struck a particular chord with me. First the background: As a teenager, I had a habit of asking myself strange moral questions like 'If I was living in the southern U.S. in round 1830, would I have contributed to the practice of slavery'? Asking this of other people, I was surprised to find that many people (almost everyone, actually) answered 'no'. Especially since my answer was 'probably yes'. The difference is that most other people seem to believe that people in general (and consequently they) are inherently moral. And consequently that some part of them would, despite their environs and their upbringing, be repelled by slavery and rebel against it. I disagree. And the facts and Orwell are on my side.
The 'facts' is that most people from the dominant class (lets say 80% for the sake of argument) were participants in the practice of slavery meaning that, if you were living then (and you're white), there is an 80% chance that you would as well. That is my answer and it is, in my opinion, the only honest one you can give. This is possibly why I identify so strongly with a quote from Orwell's 1984:

You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.

Now, being the sadist I am, I extended this question to even to the most disgusting question. It has the same form: 'If you were living in Germany in the late 1930's early 1940's, and were a member of the dominant class, would you have participated in nazi-ism'?. I don't remember asking many other people this question (they do tend to get offended when I suggest to them that they would have been sympathetic to the slave trade, so I usually stop there), but it is disturbing that, if I'm honest, the answer comes out again 'probably yes'. But, being as I couldn't ask anyone else about this, I was lonely in my admission. I was greatly relieved, therefore to hear about the 'Milgram Experiment' in a TV documentary. If you don't want to plough through the Wikipedia article, here's the short version:
Milgram was a Yale psych prof who wanted to understand how so many everyday Germans could have participated in what was so obviously an evil movement. His hypothesis was that the whole thing was a result of the fact that people absolutely cannot question authority, even under the most extreme circumstances. The experiment he designed to test this was as follows: Person A was told that the experiment was about the effect of negative stimulus on the capacity to learn and that he/she has been randomly selected (between the two participants, who do meet each other at the beginning) as the 'teacher'. So Person A would try to teach word associations to Person B (who is actually an actor) and, if Person B got something wrong, Person A was to give them a shock. Every time person B got something wrong, the voltage went up and Person B's complaints got worse and worse. By 450V, person B was saying things that make it quite clear that their life would be in danger if they were to receive another shock (it is actually very hard to watch... good acting). The most important aspect of the experiment was the presence of the 'experimenter' who was an impressive looking man in a lab coat. The job of the experimenter was, if Person A questioned the experiment, to say one of the four specific phrases ranging from 'Please continue' to 'You have no other choice, you must go on'.
The results were this: 65% of people administered the 450V shock, though many felt uncomfortable doing so. Not a single 'Person A' steadfastly refused to go on before 300V.

So what does this all have to do with Verizon? Well, the guy who made the comment is making the argument that the invisible 'boss over the shoulder' authority figure can, in addition to making people do things they wouldn't normally do, also make people willfully stupid. This is a very clearly articulated theme in Orwell and I'm quite sure it's correct (I've even caught myself doing this a couple of times). I'm not sure if it's exactly right to tie Milgram to this whole Verizon thing, but it does give me a good excuse to expound :-)

Verizon Call Centers: A Place to Find Many a Mathematical Genius

This is one of the funniest things I have ever listened to. Absolutely amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp0HyxQv97Q&eurl=

And remember, he had talked to three or more reps about this prior to this call! Here's a link to this blog in which he tries to explain the problem to the Verizon reps on paper... and they still don't get it! I hope this causes them all kinds of publicity problems.

http://www.verizonmath.blogspot.com/

Brilliant stuff!

Places I've Been: Lisboa

As many of you will know, it takes a lot to get me on a plane. Less now, though, since I've been on so many planes that the mortal panic has receded into more of a general, persistent fear. So I was actually looking forward to climbing on board the 'plane' (or as I like to call it, the death trap) to get to sunny Lisbon! There I could expect to find summer-like temperatures, beautiful beaches and Portuguese women in skimpi bikinis playing beach volleyball (or any other sport that involves a lot of jumping). It was also a steal of a deal, since Jane had a conference and, consequently, accommodations were payed for courtesy of the UK taxpayer. This meant that we would only get one day of sightseeing together, but, as it turned out, that was perfect.
The first sign of trouble was when we were about to touch down. The Captain came on and, amongst rest of the barely recognizable English, I made out something about 'light showers'. 'Rain?' I thought 'in sunny Lisboa?'. Why was the captain giving us a false weather report? Oh well, we'd soon be on the ground, carefree and basking in sunshine (which is sorely lacking in the UK at the moment).

What followed was one of the worst two-day storms in Portuguese history. I managed to find Jane at the conference center OK and then made it to the hotel, but it was all downhill from there. We went out to dinner that night in a rare 'shower lull', but when we left it was pouring! The next day (when I was to explore the city myself) was worse. Lots of rain and wind that made umbrella use inadvisable if not impossible. In any case, that first evening was my first experience with Portuguese food. The portugese seem to like fried steak and pork, especially with an egg on top. But much more than this, they like Butter. Butter goes on everyhting. If you order steak, rice, fries and salad then you will get steak fried in butter, rice with butter on it, fries (deep fried in butter) and salad... with butter dressing. Yum. But at least it's cheap. Lisbon is one of the few remaining european cities in which a typical meal at a typical restaurant will cost < 10 euro. And they also don't overcharge for seeing the sights. Churches are free (with no 'requests' for 'donations') and national properties (castles, mansions etc.) are only a few euro. Students (Jane and I still have international student cards) are half price. So, in spite of the near hurricane (see right) on the first (full) day I was there I managed to fight my way to an art museum that was near our hotel. And, in true Lisbon fashion, my student card got me in for free. It is billed as 'one of the best art collections in europe', but I'm pretty sire it wasn't. It wasn't bad. Lots of Persian carpets and ming vases along with the paintings, but it was a real hodgepodge of stuff. There were some Greek and roman coins from the region that were pretty cool. From there, I struggled back to the conference center (in the university of Lisbon) to meet Jane for Lunch. To avoid being blown away, we ate at the conference center. I had butter pork, butter vegetables, and rice with butter. Jane had a few more talks to go to after that, so I headed back to the hotel, visiting a real live Portuguese shopping mall on the way (strangely, it was much like every other shopping mall on the planet). That night, we headed downtown for the conference 'Banquet'. We hadn't bought a ticket for me, and we asked if I could order something off of the regular menu, but the maitre'd guy just said it would be easier if they just served me like everyone else. So we were basically cheeky enough to get my meal for free. Sweet. And it was good! The best bit was a fish cake topped with smoked salmon. And thats from a guy who doesn't like fish!

The second day, Jane skipped the conference (and if you had seen the scheduled talks, you would have skipped out too) and we hit the town! It had stopped raining and I was actually getting a hint of the Lisbon I had been hoping for. No one was bikini clad, however. Not even me. In any case, we visited probably the main tourist attraction, which is the Castle of São Jorge (pictured left), perched on a high hill quite close to the town center. There are some really great views from the top (right) and you can climb around the walls without relying on sissy hand railings or well built stairs. We then hiked across town, passing the shopping district downtown core (pictured left) and eventually getting to the city cathedral. We also saw the bohemian 'I'm so artsy and hip' district, which is called 'Barro Alto'. We came in to the area expecting alot of this place, but were kindof disappointed. Maybe if we had seen it at night... The last thing was saw was the Edwardo VII park, which is a very long strip of green running towards the waterfront. The view from the top of the park is below. Note the little castle São Jorge on the left.


In any case, after a long day of walking around, it was time to climb on board the flying death trap again for the trip home. At least maybe I'd be able to get out of the rain.

Happy trails!