Boston Tea Party

In grade school I heard North America was largely unpopulated until settlers arrived: a story quite different than the ones my relatives told.

Reading about Indian-settler relations during the colonial period, I wondered why patriots dressed as indigenous folks when they dumped 324 chests of tea into Boston Harbor in December, 1773.

Indians were revered by many settlers, and some even adopted native dress and hunting methods.

In some cases, Indians became symbolic of the New World with renderings of braves and maidens embellished on coins and flags.

For example, the state seal of Massachusetts features a denizen—probably an Algonquin—mouthing the words in Latin (translated here):

With a sword, she seeks quiet peace under liberty

So I figured dressing as Indians to dump the tea must have been an act of respect.

Turns out the folks who raided the ships in Boston were more interested in protecting their identities because of their illegal—yet patriotic—acts.

Several dozen protestors smeared charcoal on their cheeks and stuck feathers in their hair to disguise themselves when they threw 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston’s waters.

But it wasn’t the dumping that signaled a shift in public opinion toward national independence.

Turns out that a few wealthy colonial merchants were upset because Britain had actually reduced taxes.

By the time of the Boston Tea Party most taxes had been dropped—except for tea—which still had a 3 penny tax-per pound, which historians considered a tiny amount.

Tea prices fell from 3 shillings a pound to 2 shillings a pound because there was a glut of tea.

So the colonial entrepreneurs were frightened: they had made deals on the black market with the Dutch, ready to supply colonists with bootlegged tea.

But they couldn’t compete with the cut rates the British gave the colonists.

So they devised a plan to rid the colonies of British tea and created an event reporters at the time called, “The Destruction of the Tea.”

But it wasn’t the rallying cry for independence: the turning point was the reaction of the British to the loss of 90,000 pounds-worth of tea.

Ben Franklin and George Washington urged the colonists to pay back the British for dumping the tea, but their advice went unheeded.

Britain retaliated, closing the harbor and levying fines.

And those actions crystallized public opinion.

Colonists were outraged at the British response and taxation without representation became a rallying cry.

When Washington was elected president 16 years later, he imposed several taxes, including one on tea.

Rather than the 3-penny tax levied by the British, the new American government charged citizens 20 cents per pound for tea.

The Boston Tea Party can be seen through many lenses: what’s interesting is how time shifts the focus and the blame.

Image from http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/5600/5624/boston_tea_party_1.htm

Rendering by Leonardo Da Vinci

I asked readers in the last blog to think about the mind rather than the brain because Samuel Morton’s skull measurements in the 1860s asserted that American Indians have smaller skulls, hence smaller brains.

In other words, American Indian brains were inferior.

Today some folks think that bigger brains mean smarter people. Not true, say neuroscientists.

But average folks—like you and me—cling to beliefs dismissed by scientists.

For example, most neuroscientists reject the notion that we use only 10% of our brain.

A 2002 study reported that 6% of the scientists agree we use only a fraction of our brain, compared to about 59% of college graduates who think we use just 10% of our brain.

And folks who read newspapers were even more likely to accept the myth: 67% of newspaper readers said we use 10% of our brain.

We tend to think of the brain as a computer: 80% of lay publics said the brain “works like a computer.”

But only 47% of scientists likened the brain to a computer.

Still, scientists consider the mind to be a reflection of the brain: 91% agree. And only 3% said the spirit or soul is involved.

Lay folk think of the mind quite differently: at least one-third think the spirit or soul is involved in the mind.

So: do you separate mind from brain? How?

[See Houzel, 2002, Do you know your brain, Neuroscientist, (8; 98)]

Skulls were then shipped back east so scientists could study them.

One of the collectors, Samuel G. Morton, used skulls to extrapolate on personality and intelligence. By one account Morton had about 1000 skulls in his bone cellar.

Morton figured the larger the skull, the bigger the brain. Hence, a larger cranium yielded a more intelligent owner.

White European men had the largest skulls.

Morton would measure skull mass by dumping tiny balls of lead called buckshot into the empty noggin. The more buckshot he could empty into a skull, the more brains.

Morton published his views in three volumes of Crania Americana between 1839 and 1849.

American Indians, he reasoned, were characterized by fierceness and immaturity.

“In their mental character the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful, and fond of war…they are crafty, sensual, ungrateful, obstinate and unfeeling.”

Morton concluded this with a measure of buckshot.

Vestiges of such thinking continue today: clearly beliefs about skin color and race permeate judgments of intelligence and ability.

We put a lot of stock in the noggin, attributing personality to the brain.

But I think it’s time to separate the brain from the mind—we are not just the suitcase for the cerebrum. We are more than myelin and medulla.

Consider the mind, rather than the brain.

Memory Enhancements

That’s the discussion around our dinner table: should doctors prescribe drugs that could improve cognitive skills?

Thanks to medicines developed for folks facing dementia and attention deficit disorders, drugs can also be used “off label” by consumers without such afflictions.

Students, for example, have traded, bought and sold prescription drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall to help them cram for exams and polish research papers.

Journalist Margaret Talbot wrote an article for The New Yorker (link pasted below) on “the underground world of neuro-enhancing drugs” and noted the popularity of stimulants that sharpen focus, concentration and memory.

Neurologists call the cognitive drugs “enhancements,” using the same lingo used to describe enhanced lips or breasts.

And judging from the slurry of popular health news devoted to ways to enrich your brain power, my guess is that consumers—especially aging baby boomers—will be looking for ways to enhance mental acuity.

How many times have you seen a story about how munching on blueberries and working on a crossword puzzle will pump up your brain?

If you could swallow a pill instead, would you?

Physicians are struggling over the ethics of prescribing off-label cognitive enhancements (see the link below).

I think off-label use of neuro-enhancing drugs is like a steam-roller that’s chugging along, soon to pick up speed.

Let’s continue the conversation.

The New Yorker link http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all

Poster from University of Miami http://library.miami.edu/blog/2013/02/06/now-on-display-food-and-memory-an-exploration-of-cuban-cooking-1857-today/

Prof. Charles Xavier

A relative pointed out journalists are fond of saying, for example, Lady Gaga is “confined to a wheelchair,” as reported recently in the Huffington Post (UK).

But a wheelchair is far from confining for most folks with disabilities.

We need a prod about how our everyday talk reveals underlying prejudices.

Not all Dutch uncles are stingy and most blondes aren’t dumb.

This week I spoke about message framing at the Crime Victim Law Conference in Portland.

One participant bristled at the way a news-writer said a woman was assaulted by a masked man.

What’s wrong with that, I asked.

Journalists should instead report, “A masked man assaulted a woman.”

She said the re-wording focusses on the perpetrator rather than the victim.

It is a subtle difference, she admitted. In one case, your attention turns to the person who committed a crime.

In the other example, you focus on the woman as the subject of a crime.

Does it make a difference?

Hard to know without concrete evidence to show wording alone influences how we think.

Still, my colleague David Ritchie and I contend that some phrases slip past our cognitive scrutiny.

And when messages slip under our radar, we pay little heed.

The result? We don’t question a phrase like “confined to a wheelchair.”

And we should question the grammar.

Picture of Prof. Charles Xavier from Marvel Comics at http://www.just-marvel-x-men.com/image-files/marvel-encyclopedia-prof-x-1-50k.jpg

Maria Tallchief

Maria Tallchief.

We learned this week that Tallchief passed on.

She and her sister Marjorie came from a prominent Osage family, whose name can be found on local memorials and in Oklahoma museums.

Even today you can walk down the main street in Fairfax, Oklahoma, and see the Tall Chief movie theatre.

You can then hike down the road to the Grayhorse cemetery. My mother’s gravesite is there, along with remembrances belonging to relatives with names like Herridge, Bigheart, Martin and Tallchief.

The Osages are proud of Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, who left Fairfax for Los Angeles in the 1930s, where the sisters studied ballet.

A loving documentary of the Tallchiefs created by Sandy Osawa was broadcast on PBS in 2007. The film skillfully weaves the Osage people with the ballerinas’ careers as dancers.

Tallchief describes dancing George Ballanchine’s Firebird—which he choreographed for her—as poetry. Here’s the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y_tWR07F7Y

The photograph of Maria Tallchief is uncredited from NPR and obtained at http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/12/177076079/maria-tallchief-brilliant-american-ballerina-who-broke-barriers-dies

The Sweet Smell of Success

You’re a cookie full of arsenic.

That’s just one of the unforgettable quotes from the movie, The Sweet Smell of Success my students viewed this week.

Set in 1950s against the backdrop of Times Square, the film dives into the relationships of newsmen, public relations flacks, politicians, cops and dames.

The story—brilliantly filmed in shades of gray evoking film noir–centers on press agent Sydney Falco, who stops at nothing—bribery, graft, lies and pimping—to get his clients press coverage.

The movie holds up after a half-century, urging viewers to consider the sleazy tactics of promoting a client.

But what grabs me is the crisp dialog.

Imagine Sydney Falco and columnist J J Hunsecker swatting at each other with words carved from acid.

You’ve got more twists than a barrel full of pretzels.

I got nothing against women thinking with their hips. That’s their nature. Just like it’s a man’s nature to go out and hustle and get the things he wants.

Worth viewing, the film shows that stooping to seamy solutions will bite you in the end.

As one of my students observed, the film reflects the old-fashioned sentiment that you should be punished for your bad deeds. Indeed.

Here’s a clip:

At least if it’s an e-book.

Scientists are testing a device teachers can use to see if their students have cracked the book—as long as the book is an electronic version.

In a Big Brother twist, the book can read you.

Turns out professors can see if students are spending time reading their assignments.

In one case, a professor discovered a student who was doing well in the class—his grades were solid—but he had only cracked the book once.

The teacher was alarmed, but it strikes me as odd.

Seems to me if a student is doing well then something is working.

If a student is acing assignments but not reading the book, then perhaps the instructor hasn’t done a good job linking the assignments to the readings.

Many of our college courses have online components where we can chat with students via email, where they can check their grades, and they can download materials.

The new software developed by CourseSmart reveals how, when and what students attend to their online materials.

The program can then alert the professor about the student’s habits.

And while I don’t argue there’s a relationship between habits and grades—and maybe this will help some students and some faculty—it just feels creepy that the computer can report to Big Professor how you spend your time.

At least it can’t read your mind.

Yet.

Here’s the link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/technology/coursesmart-e-textbooks-track-students-progress-for-teachers.html?_r=0

Copyright-free image by Robert Fudd from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fludd

But what caught my eye this week was a full-page advertisement.

The French cosmetics company L’Oréal honors women scientists and the ad reads:

Science Needs Women.

The company teamed up with the United Nations’ educational, scientific and cultural organization (UNESCO) to recognize women scientists from around the world, and have been doing so for 15 years.

Some scientists found ways to raise drought-resistant plants while others examine how bacteria spread.

Biologists, chemists, physicists and all stripes of scientists have been chosen from North America to New Zealand to receive the award.

Five women scientists each year are recognized with a $100,000 prize.

I wondered what kind of a dent that would make in L’Oréal’s pocketbook and discovered the company is the world’s largest cosmetics firm.

Profits totaled 2.2 billion Euros in 2010, according to Wikipedia.

That’s a lot of lipstick—making the $500,000 prize money for women scientists each year a drop in the bucket.

At least women scientists get recognition. In fact, the winners are referred to as laureates.

Laureate, by the way, means award-winner, named for the laurel wreath given as an honor at such occasions as earning a university degree.

And that brings to mind the Nobel prize, which also designates it winners as laureates.

Men have received the lion’s share of Nobel prizes, which carry a much greater cash value at about one million dollars each.

Some 43 women received Nobel awards out of the 862 recipients: that’s nearly 5 percent, or one female for every 20 prizes given.

And it’s not like you can make the excuse that there are fewer women in the pool of scientists to choose from when it comes to the Nobel.

One researcher crunched the numbers for the statistics publication Significance and found that—despite more women entering science in the 1970s—prizes continue to be awarded to men, signaling a growing (not a shrinking) gender gap.

Here’s the link to the L’Oréal-UNESCO award: http://www.loreal.com/DD/loreal/Foundation/News.aspx?topcode=CorpTopic_ForWomeninScience

And here’s a link to the statistics story and the NPR story that referenced it: http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/886603/The-Nobel-Prize-gender-gap.html

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/12/162813929/is-the-nobel-prize-a-boys-mostly-club

Photo from the L’Oreal Foundation http://www.loreal.com/DD/loreal/Foundation/Article.aspx?topcode=Foundation_AccessibleScience_WomenExcellence

And I hate it, too.

A delicious story emerged this week about folks who live on the island of Ikaria, off the mainland of Greece.

Ikarians live longer than most, and scientists wanted to discover if the thick Greek coffee they drink helps stave off heart disease.

The squib in the New York Times reports that coffee may make the blood flow better.

But “coffee is only one factor,” the story says.

Ikarians take naps, eat fruits and vegetables, socialize, walk, and garden.

And their lives are less stressful, according to the story.

Great news, I thought, and wrote a blog immediately about how stress makes us feel nibbled to death by ducks.

I wanted to know more so I might replicate the peaceful life on Ikaria, so I searched the internet and found the scientific study reported in the March 18 issue of Vascular Medicine.

Alas, there is no mention of naps, walks and gardening.

I thought the study would compare all these factors—coffee, sleep, strolling, etc.—but the research stopped at coffee.

From the Times story—I will paste in a link so you can read for yourself—I thought the study was more complex.

Didn’t the article say that, when looking at long life, coffee is only one factor?

Guess what?

Lifestyle wasn’t discussed in the study. Just coffee.

Here’s the synopsis: Researchers recruited 142 islanders from the ages of 66 to 91 and broke them into three groups according to daily coffee consumption: low (57 people), moderate (67 people) and high (18 people).

They tested the influence of coffee drinking on blood flow.

Note that blood flow was measured by an ultrasound of the “flow-mediated dilation” or FMD. This shows how well the blood flows: the more blood flow, the greater the dilation. That’s good.

The researchers found a significant difference in folks who consumed the most coffee: they had better blood flow than the other coffee-drinking groups, after controlling for the effects of age, gender, smoking, heart disease, diabetes, etc.

But the researchers caution about making a causal leap—something the New York Times article failed to do.

For one thing, the number of folks studied is quite low, especially the group that drank the most coffee.

There were only about 18 Ikarians in this group, and we just can’t make inferences from such a small group. That’s bad science.

Still, the Times ran a slug that says, Longevity with the headline: The Secret May Be in the Coffee.

And the Times is not alone.

Fox News announced, “Greek coffee may be the key to living a longer life,” while Business Line says, “A daily cup of boiled Greek coffee may hold the secret to long life and good health.”

I feel duped.

Here’s the link:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/science/on-one-greek-island-a-caffeinated-secret-to-long-life.html?_r=0