I just saw Purton Hupp down in New Orleans, and he gave me the inside scoop on the rules regarding busking there. Apparently, he learned them the hard way, as usual. In short, you can busk just about anywhere  in the French Quarter – except Jackson Square – until something like 11 pm. You can busk along the Moonwalk by the mighty Mississip, too. Buskers do not need a permit.

But the rules are different around Jackson Square. Apparently, you have to stop by 8 pm there, lest you disturb the residents’ slumbers. And here’s the real drawback: unlike buskers, the ‘artists’ (aka painters) have to pay for permits, so they have protected their investment by getting rules passed that restrict buskers in that area. Buskers have to set up at least twenty feet from the fence and cannot block any entrance.

Recent research has suggested that driving while conversing on a cell phone is more dangerous than doing so while speaking with passengers. The researchers suggest that passengers, by paying attention to conditions on the road, help drivers to pay attention at critical moments, thus mitigating the distractions that conversations cause. This seems reasonable. I would like to suggest an additional reason that phone conversations are distracting: humans’ ability and tendency to imagine the world through others’ eyes.

Another line of recent research has focused on “mirror neurons” in humans and other primates. These neurons, or networks thereof, fire similarly whether an individual performs a particular action or observes someone else performing it. That is, were I to observe you opening a jar, the same subset of these neurons would activate as if I were opening the jar. However, researchers are beginning to delve into an obvious complication: we identify with some things and types of actions more than with others. This makes our mirror neurons more likely to “mirror” some people’s actions more than others’.

The third piece of the puzzle is that imagining a scene triggers neurological processes similar to observing it with our eyes. Particularly vivid fantasies can result in significant changes throughout our bodies. For example, I used to drift off to sleep thinking about playing basketball; many nights, on the border of sleep, I would unwittingly hit my partner as I moved my arms to make a pass, and I would awaken with a pounding heart.

So, back to driving: drivers talking on cell phones, handless or not, will imagine themselves to be in the presence of their conversational partner. The closer they feel to their partner, the more deeply they will imagine this displaced scene. Perhaps they see their partner’s face, but perhaps, their mirror neurons firing, they also imagine what the conversant is seeing and doing. For example, imagining my mother’s experience in her house will certainly distract me from driving. Conversely, drivers speaking with passengers are more likely to imagine what the passenger sees – the road ahead. (Passengers watching movies are another story.)

The obvious moral is to avoid speaking on the cell phone while driving. If you insist on doing so, at least monitor your attention so that you do not displace your mind’s eye into someone else’s head.

Scientific American has recently published a provocative article explaining humans’ seemingly universal inability to imagine a lack of consciousness and, thus, an end to consciousness at death. In short, the conscious imagination never experiences non-consciousness. When we’re not conscious, we’re not aware and thus can’t remember what it was like. At most, we can remember regaining consciousness. This inherent quality may be a key part of the explanation for the widespread belief in some sort of afterlife.

But the article does not address at least one important dimension of this issue: imagining that other beings – human or otherwise – have the same kind of consciousness. It is a categorical leap to apply insights about one’s own experience to that of others. The ability to do so – empathy – is also a nearly universal capacity among humans and, at least, many other primates.

However, humans do not employ this capacity in universal ways. Historically, some people have imagined that only some other peoples had immortal consciousness, categorizing the remaining humans as wholly mortal animals. Conversely, quite a few people around the world have held that other animals, plants, and/or geological formations have immortal consciousnesses equivalent to that of humans. Ancient Greek myths provide a handy compendium of examples.

In short, I cannot imagine being dead, but I can imagine the death of your consciousness – or, for that matter, its non-existence – without much strain. I can imagine its immortality, too. Given this flexibility, the historical paths by which humans have developed such a wide variety of beliefs about others’ immortality awaits a fuller explanation.

Have you ever wondered why women’s breasts are so fascinating? If so, here’s your answer, they’re like buttocks with eyes.

Now here’s your explanation. The first part basically recapitulates a common hypothesis:

• Much of evolution results from random genetic mutations that help individuals within a species to reproduce more than other individuals. Survival doesn’t matter unless it helps an individual to procreate. Human breasts are considerably larger than those of other apes, and this size does not seem to improve women’s health (i.e., survival). If anything, large breasts stress the rest of the body. So some researchers have looked for reasons that large breasts would increase reproduction.
• Other apes favor rear-entry sex (although not exclusively) so our common ancestor probably did, too. As a result, things that look like buttocks might trigger a genetically inherited association with sex. A genetic mutation that made breasts fuller would trigger this desire, too.
• This mutation would have more effect among human ancestors than among other apes, because human ancestors spent more time upright, with chests fully exposed. Also, as the only ape with exposed “whites” of the eyes, humans are particularly oriented to others’ eyes. So, being near the face, buttock-like breasts would be particularly noticeable to us.

Here is where my Nobel-laureate-level insight takes place:

• Most human breasts have pronounced differences in darkness between the areola/nipple and the rest of the breast. This is especially visible among humans because of our relative hairlessness, compared to other apes.
• Excluding the occasional pimple, buttocks don’t share this feature, so why would breasts? Watch enough videos of breastfeeding apes, and you’ll know that it’s not to help an infant find the nipple. The answer: the areola/nipple complex mimics eyes, much as breasts mimic buttocks. Ta da! What could be more fascinating?

If this sort of specualtion strikes you as hooey, I suggest that you not dedicate your life to evolutionary psychology or sociobiology. Otherwise, the next time you see breasts, think, “buttocks with eyes.”

P.S. Actually, we could jettison the whole buttocks bullocks and retain my MacArthur Fellowship-deserving insight. After all, many women have quite flat chests.

Our correspondent claims to have scored a highest-possible 800 on two sections of the GRE and over 700 on the third, without studying. S/he shares tips for doing one’s best while taking a test. Preparing is a separate and more important step.

IFS Guide to Test-Taking

Attitude is key:

• Your only goal and focus is to maximize your score for each section.

  • Ignore the consequences – it doesn’t help to remind yourself that the test matters little or greatly.
  • Like sports champions, good test-takers learn this: narrow your focus to the task immediately at hand; nothing outside the test exists.
    • You can’t change your preparation or travel to the future to experience the results.
    • Clear your mind of thoughts about how you did on previous sections, too; it’s now irrelevant.
  • Relax! You don’t know how a test will be scored. Will there be a curve? Will everyone miss that question? Is it possible to miss a lot and still get a great grade? You don’t know, so just focus on the question you’re on.
    • For example, I missed a few questions and still got an 800 out of 800 on the GRE Verbal section.
    • Besides, you’ll do better if you continue to feel confident. You won’t get smarter through despair.
  • As ‘background music,’ recall the feeling you had while you achieved something noteworthy, such as a sports victory or a musical performance or a test.
•  All tests are opportunities and never represent a danger. They are an opportunity to show what you can do.
• Tests are fun. They’re puzzles to solve. This includes essay tests.

 Some entailments of this attitude:

• Work the test until you know that you’re done. You must choose fight over flight.

  • Understand the question clearly, even if you feel rushed.
  • Answer every question if you have time.
    • If guessing is not punished, answer randomly if need be.
      • Consider: You have a 20-25% chance of guessing correctly. The odds are better if you can eliminate one or more answers.
    • If guessing is punished, consider the odds: if you’ve narrowed the answer to two or even three possibilities, it’s probably a good bet to guess.
  • Answer the ones that you’re sure about first, then return to the middling areas, and then to the hardest questions.
    • Some of the later questions might give you a clue or at least let you identify patterns in the test.
  • ALWAYS double-check (and triple-check) everything if you have the chance. In an essay, did you say what you mean? Is your writing or bubbling legible? Did you put the answer in the right spot? Did you understand the question?
    • I mark questions that I’m unsure about and return to them. If I’m still unsure, I return again.
    • I also re-check my math on ALL problems, if I have time
• Trust that the test doesn’t and shouldn’t have any tricks in it.
  • Always choose the best, most obvious answer.
    • If you find yourself trying to determine whether there’s a trick, stop! Sometimes tests have answers that are partially right, but choose the one that’s completely correct.
  • In essays, never make up an answer in the hope that it’s right. It’s better to give greater detail about what you do know is applicable.
• Learn to work the test.
  • For example: Standardized, fill-in-the-bubble tests almost always have a fairly even distribution of answers. When you’re unsure about an answer, consider whether there’s a shortage of one of your possibilities.
    • I create a tally after answering the questions that I’m sure about, and I update it as I go on after that.
    • Focus on how the essay will be graded. For example, if it’s mostly a test of writing skills, rather than content, spend your time polishing the writing rather than  trying to pile on evidence. (And vice versa.)

These tactics can change from test to test. The key is your attitude: confidently focus on maximizing your score on each section of the test. Enjoy the opportunity to work this puzzle and to show what you can do.

Purton Hupp doesn’t like to talk much, and even less about himself. Now, singing is another thing altogether. I’ve spent enough time with the man to know that his music is like waves noisily crashing against the shore. It’s easy to forget there’s a whole ocean behind it.

Still, I’ve learned a bit from the man. I hope he doesn’t mind my sharing some of it here:

• Crickets don’t tweak their songs. The leaves don’t tweak their rustling.
• If it weren’t for bosses, no one would sing about trains.
• Love is like a hurricane in the desert.
• If you’re proud of feeling zen, then you might be ashamed of feeling pain.
• Jokers are wild by nature. Most people prefer to play without them and don’t miss them when they aren’t in the deck.

Now you can listen to Purton break – sometimes against a cliff, sometimes on the rocks, and too seldom across the sand: http://phupp.wordpress.com.

Because I teach anthropology and history, I frequently describe horrific events. I’ve noticed that my teaching and students’ reaction to it change depending on the distance in time of the events in question. It makes me wonder whether, someday, enough time will have passed for even many sensitive people to treat the Holocaust cavalierly.

I first felt concern about this question while watching Schindler’s List, feeling profoundly moved as I usually am when considering the Holocaust. I recently had taught about Aztec sacrifices, including those in which they cut the still-beating hearts from the chests of multitides of live victims, and, also recently, I had visited Tenochtitlán (you call it Mexico City), admiring the monumental Aztec ruins and artifacts. I remembered making off-hand, joking comments about brutal Aztec practices and otherwise treating them as neutral, interesting facts that made most people squeamish, much like the feeding habits of catfish.

You may think that the Aztec example is an exception because of its seeming exoticism and that this principle of diachronically derived indifference does not hold for, say, long-past European or US events. But a visit to most history classrooms will reveal that it does. A matter-of-fact or even good-natured tone accompanies descriptions of the French Revolution’s Terror or medieval fighting techniques, such as pouring hot oil onto attackers from atop defensive walls.

The type of atrocity also is not solely at issue. Mass killings of captured enemies, as with the Aztecs, is hardly an outdated concern. Public killings of captured enemies to bolster one side’s morale or, as with the Aztecs, to sustain their society also have occurred recently. The execution of Saddam Hussein provides just one example. Indeed, in history classes, descriptions of deadly diseases mutate from interested to involved as we move from, say, the Black Death and early epidemics among American Indian groups to influenza during World War I, even though the manner of death is essentially the same. Heck, in some treatments, polio in the twentieth century is presented as equivalent to deadly epidemics of the past, thanks to its recency.

Too touchy?

Nonetheless, why be touchy? I’m unlikely to meet any of the participants in historical horrors such as, say, the Soviet collectivization of peasant farms. And I cannot affect these past events. Forty years from now, the Holocaust will be as distant in time as slavery and the Civil War were when I was born. Will it be ‘open season’ on World War II by then?

Perhaps, though, the criterion for caring should be the need to be on guard against the occurrence of similar events that I may be able to affect – through my government, my economic activity, or my teaching. In that case, I guess I need to remove the statute of limitations on getting political, because whatever has happened in the past is a candidate for happening in the future or, more likely, is occurring somewhere today.

The sympathetic treatment given Genghis Khan in the fine film Mongol provides a fine example. Here, the filmmakers rewrite this butcher (and builder, like so many) into a hero, killing on a massive scale for ascendancy, his family, personal revenge, and stability among the Mongols. To cheer him on, as the film encourages us to do, is the same as cheering on Stalin, Mao, the Inca, Napoleon, and a host of others with similar c.v.’s. It is the same as cheering for Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to succeed in Iraq, where they have treated masses of lives as expendable while pursuing their dream of exploiting and rebuilding the Middle East. The problem is not simply that this idea rankles: Studying history reveals that uncritically accepting such insouciant jokes, movies, and the like prepare people to repeat – or at least to let others repeat – atrocities like as the Holocaust.

- In Favor of Sympathy

The Supreme Court’s recent decision regarding gun control in Washington, DC, has returned this issue to the headlines. A central disagreement, as usual, concerns how to interpret the Second Amendment (the full text of which is at bottom). Part of the problem with this amendment is that it seems internally contradictory. It justifies the uninfringeable rights of “the people” in terms of the necessity of “a well-regulated militia,” but the connection between the two is not clear. Another problem is that it addresses gun-ownership rights in terms of “the security of a free State,” (italics added) when most – but not all - of the debate over gun-control laws these days centers on personal defense, individual liberty, and hunting. Finally, it is not clear whether the amendment limits only federal powers or those of the states, too.

Given these ambiguities, why not replace the amendment altogether? Let’s have a national debate and referendum on a clearer amendment that will address the central point of contention – who, if anyone, can legally control the use and ownership of guns.

The Second Amendment is considerably more anachronistic and obscure than most. By rewriting it, we will have a chance to consider, for example, whether to include in the justification militias, personal defense, any other reason, or no reason at all. Of course, replacing the Second Amendment with a clearer, more contemporaneous text will not end disagreement over its interpretation. It simply will make debates more reasonable and productive, as with those regarding, say, the First Amendment.

A national referendum between two options is propitious in this case because, for the most part, only two sides exist and the dividing line is clear, even though gradations exist within each camp. One side would like any level of government to be able to regulate gun ownership and use but would settle for state and local governments having the freedom to decide such policies. The other side would severely restrict any level of government from regulating the owning and bearing of guns, with exceptions perhaps for those people who had committed crimes with guns previously.

Ideally, gun-control advocates and opponents would each caucus, debate, and produce an potential amendment for the public’s consideration. After a vigorous campaign, voters nationwide could choose between the two, with the understanding that the text that won the most states – or votes - would be put through the process of amending the constitution. I have no idea how the U.S. public would vote on this issue. But isn’t it better to place a fairly clear question in the public’s hands than to leave the current mess of a text to the Supreme Court to interpret?

The Second Amendment: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

- Interpreting Firearm Sales

A recent UN report has highlighted the average American worker’s productivity – about $8000 higher per year than the runners up in Ireland. That’s nice for the average Americans, I suppose, but what about me? I’m pretty sure that my productivity last year as a high-school teacher wouldn’t show up in that UN report. Was I simply an economic parasite?

Teachers’ main economic contribution is to their students’ future earnings, so this seems a reasonable standard for measuring my real productivity. According to the Employment Policy Foundation, graduating from high school will, on average, benefit each worker about $305,000 over a lifetime. That’s right – graduates benefit about $76,000 for each year of high school. Like a lottery jackpot, this quickly earned benefit will be spread over their lifetimes.

But how much did my course benefit these kids? At my school in Tucson, students needed twenty credits to graduate, so I could claim to produce only 1/20 of their total benefit. This equals about $15,000 per student, and I taught 133 of them. So, were all to graduate, my course would have benefited them around $2 million. Sadly, some students don’t graduate. Since my school had a success rate of 87 percent, the economic benefit that one year of my class produced was about $1.8 million.

Of course, we have to subtract costs. My district spent around $800,000 for my 133 pupils. My course could claim about 1/5 of this total. Thus, it contributed a net of $1.6 million to my students’ future earnings.

That, by the way, is almost $14,000 per graduating student. If I had earned the average pay in my district, my take for each of the five periods that I taught would have been $9333. That means that the average student benefited about $4500 more than I did from being in my class.

But other staff deserve some share of the credit for this benefit. Divvying up credit with them requires much more of a judgment call. Let’s attribute a generous fifty percent to the efforts of these non-teachers: I still come out incredibly productive.

And these figures ignore other economic benefits of a secondary education – most notably, the ability of graduates to go on to college and earn even more.

So my hat’s off to those gold-medal-winning, average American workers, who paid me through their taxes. But $800,000 or more of productivity for a teacher’s salary? That’s platinum.

What do I want in return? My otherwise grateful students have selfishly refused to tithe me a portion of their earnings. So throw me a bone – pay more attention to indicators of future productivity, such as education, or even to the infrastructure of productivity, such as baristas. Without us, you soon would be bowing before your Irish masters.

- Investing in Future Statistics

What do grades in high-school classes reflect? Knowledge? Learning? Effort? The truth is that the grading criteria differ from class to class and, with some teachers, from student to student. As a result, parents, employers, colleges, and the students themselves inevitably misinterpret students’ transcripts. And students have insufficient incentive to focus on both of the qualities that people commonly assume are being reported: knowledge and productive behavior. I propose that schools issue separate grades for each.

My interest in this topic comes mostly from working as a high-school teacher and now as college faculty but also from being a student and then parent of students.

Standards-based grading

In recent years education policies across the United States have graded schools on students’ ability to meet specified standards. What many people outside of education do not realize is that a concomitant movement exists toward grading students based solely on their mastery of the standards in each course that they take. From this point of view, students’ attendance and other behaviors are not germane to their grade.

This follows the logic that many perceive colleges to employ. If a student could pass the final exam in, say, World History on the first day of class, then why make the student take the class? Why not allow the equivalent of “CLEPing out”?

In some ways, a high school diploma under this system would be like a GED – a report of knowledge that the student has displayed. However, the assessment of academic knowledge is almost always more varied in classes than on standardized tests. That allows teachers to pass students who clearly know their stuff but who bomb the major test(s).

I like this approach. As a teacher, I employ this logic in much of my grading and it provides clarity. If a student doesn’t show sufficient knowledge, even after expending reasonable effort, how can I pass that student? As a former student, I like it even more. Indeed, I benefited from this logic many times in high school, despite execrable attendance.

Is that all there is?

But, of course, high school is not simply ‘about’ academic knowledge. To many people, especially employers, a diploma certifies a basic level of self-discipline, which teachers usually refer to as “responsibility.” They assume that graduating students have attended reasonably regularly and applied themselves at a moderate level, or higher, to work that they would not ordinarily have performed.

And … they’re usually right! It’s a rare teacher at the secondary level who does not directly or indirectly include these productive habits in his or her grading. For example, s/he’ll assign a grade for effort on practice performed in class, rewarding attendance and effort rather than mastery. Indeed, this has been one of my winking ways of rewarding productive habits. But I tend to give relatively little weight to productive habits, whereas other teachers make it their focus in assigning grades. And most instructors make exceptions for students who, for whatever reason, excel in one area but not the other.

All that for this:

Why not make teachers’ jobs and the academic record clearer by:

1. having teachers assign separate grades for
   • academic mastery
   • productive habits
2. including these separate grades on each student’s official transcript?

Then parents, coaches, employers, and colleges (and potential spouses?) could make better-informed inferences about the student’s past and potential. This change would eliminate much of the mystery and faith involved in interpreting a student’s record. Students who demonstrated sufficient mastery of the required academic subjects – as on a GED exam – would graduate. And only those students would graduate. But each student’s record would also indicate his or her productive habits, which, shockingly, might be more important than academic knowledge for some purposes.

My hope is that, ultimately, this clearer system of grading – more transparent to parents, coaches, colleges, and employers - would provide an incentive for students to improve both their productive habits and their academic mastery, rather than working the ’system’ to avoid focusing on one of these outcomes.

- Incentives For Students

(By the way, it’s not clear to what extent attendance affects learning. See one review of the literature at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/rgroups/cse101/AERA2000/attendance.htm. Indeed, the effects of attending appear to differ depending on the structure of class and, of course, on the grading scheme.)